Convocation: R. Dale Guthrie

Professor emeritus at the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, R. Dale Guthrie is a renowned paleobiologist and artist. His many books and papers have covered a wide range of interests, including evolutionary dwarfing, social anatomy, causes of extinctions, climatic change and human evolution. In the past few decades his lifelong hunting experience and hobbies of painting and sculpting have dovetailed with his scientific interests, leading to his landmark study, The Natural History of Paleolithic Art. Prior to Guthrie's book there was no widespread practice of using information and ideas from natural history and studies of human universals in approaching the thousands of art images made by members of Eurasian Ice Age bands. The cave paintings and other preserved remnants of Paleolithic peoples shed light on a world little known to us. With a natural historian's keen eye for observation, and as one who has spent a lifetime using bones and other excavated materials to piece together past human behavior and environments, Guthrie demonstrates that Paleolithic art is a mode of expression we can comprehend to a remarkable degree and that the perspective of natural history is integral to that comprehension. He employs a mix of ethology, evolutionary biology, and human universals, along with innovative forensic techniques, to access these distant cultures and their art and artifacts. The title of Dr. Guthrie's presentation was "Evolution of Art, Morality, and Romantic Love in the Ice Age Human Band."