Richard Klein
Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences and Professor of Anthropology and of Biology, Emeritus
Bio
Richard G. Klein researches the archeological and fossil evidence for the evolution of human behavior. He has done fieldwork in Spain and especially in South Africa, where he has excavated ancient sites and analyzed the excavated materials since 1969. He has focused on the behavioral changes that allowed anatomically modern Africans to spread to Eurasia about 50,000 years ago, where they swamped or replaced the Neanderthals and other non-modern Eurasians.
After earning his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan, Mr. Klein went to the University of Chicago to pursue his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees. Following receipt of his doctorate, he taught at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Northwestern University, the University of Washington, and for 20 years at the University of Chicago. He came to Stanford from Chicago in 1993.
Mr. Klein has served on numerous editorial and advisory boards, he has edited The Journal of Archaeological Science since 1981, and he co-chairs the Grants Committee of the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the National Academy of Sciences.
Academic Appointments
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Emeritus Faculty, Acad Council, Anthropology
Boards, Advisory Committees, Professional Organizations
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Co-Chair, Leakey Foundation Science and Grants Committee (1995 - Present)
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Member, American Association of Physical Anthropologists (1966 - Present)
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Editor, Journal of Archaeological Science (1981 - Present)
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Member, National Academy of Sciences (2003 - Present)
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Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1992 - Present)
Professional Education
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Ph. D., University of Chicago, Anthropology (1966)
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M. A., University of Chicago, Anthropology (1964)
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B. A., University of Michgain, Anthropology (1962)
Current Research and Scholarly Interests
My primary interest is in the co-evolution of anatomy and behavior in human evolution. My research is mainly on ancient animal remains as indicators of early human ability to make a living. I have analyzed more than 100 assemblages of animal fossils, primarily from southern African archaeological sites dating between 700,000 years ago and the historic present. I am currently directing excavations at a site 70 km NNW of Cape Town that dates from the Last Interglacial interval, between roughly 115,000 and 70,000 years ago. The animal remains show that the inhabitants exploited coastal resources much less efficiently than people who occupied the same coast during Present Interglacial (Holocene). The change in foraging efficiency probably occurred about 50,000 years ago and it helps explain the simultaneous expansion of anatomically modern humans from Africa to Eurasia, where they replaced the Neanderthals and other non-modern Eurasians.
Projects
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Modern Human Origins, Stanford University and the Iziko Museum of South Africa
Investigation of the archaeological and human fossil evidence for modern human origins. Field and laboratory work in South Africa.
Location
South Africa
For More Information:
2024-25 Courses
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Independent Studies (3)
- Directed Reading in Biology
BIO 198 (Aut, Win, Spr, Sum) - Teaching Practicum in Biology
BIO 290 (Aut, Win, Spr, Sum) - Undergraduate Research
BIO 199 (Aut, Win, Spr, Sum)
- Directed Reading in Biology
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Prior Year Courses
2023-24 Courses
- Data Analysis for Quantitative Research
ANTHRO 116, ANTHRO 216 (Aut)
2022-23 Courses
- Data Analysis for Quantitative Research
ANTHRO 116, ANTHRO 216 (Aut) - Human Origins
BIO 8N (Win)
2021-22 Courses
- Data Analysis for Quantitative Research
ANTHRO 116, ANTHRO 216 (Aut) - Human Origins
BIO 8N (Win)
- Data Analysis for Quantitative Research
All Publications
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Profile of Svante Pääbo: 2022 Nobel laureate in physiologyor medicine.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
2023; 120 (1): e2217025119
View details for DOI 10.1073/pnas.2217025119
View details for PubMedID 36580591
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Mammoths and Neanderthals in the Thames Valley: Excavations at Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire (Book Review)
JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH
2022; 78 (2): 223-224
View details for DOI 10.1086/719313
View details for Web of Science ID 000842067800005
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VISITS TO A CLIFF CAVE AMIDST CLIMATE CHANGE: THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF SPRING CAVE, WEST COAST OF SOUTH AFRICA
SOUTH AFRICAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL BULLETIN
2021; 76 (215): 109-124
View details for Web of Science ID 000852551900003
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Middle Stone Age marine resource exploitation at Ysterfontein 1 rockshelter, South Africa.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
2021; 118 (31)
View details for DOI 10.1073/pnas.2107978118
View details for PubMedID 34285083
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A fossil history of southern African land mammals (Book Review)
SOUTH AFRICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE
2020; 116 (1-2)
View details for DOI 10.17159/sajs.2020/6553
View details for Web of Science ID 000510454300015
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Population structure and the evolution of Homo sapiens in Africa.
Evolutionary anthropology
2019
Abstract
It has been proposed that a multiregional model could describe how Homo sapiens evolved in Africa beginning 300,000years ago. Multiregionalism would require enduring morphological or behavioral differences among African regions and morphological or behavioral continuity within each. African fossils, archeology, and genetics do not comply with either requirement and are unlikely to, because climatic change periodically disrupted continuity and reshuffled populations. As an alternative to multiregionalism, I suggest that reshuffling produced novel gene constellations, including one in which the additive or cumulative effect of newly associated genes enhanced cognitive or communicative potential. Eventual fixation of such a constellation in the lineage leading to modern H. sapiens would explain the abrupt appearance of the African Later Stone Age 50-45 thousand years ago, its nearly simultaneous expansion to Eurasia in the form of the Upper Paleolithic, and the ability of fully modern Upper Paleolithic people to swamp or replace non-modern Eurasians.
View details for DOI 10.1002/evan.21788
View details for PubMedID 31237750
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Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past (Book Review)
CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY
2018; 59 (5): 655–62
View details for DOI 10.1086/699987
View details for Web of Science ID 000446120500009
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Arrival routes of first Americans uncertain Response
SCIENCE
2018; 359 (6381): 1225
View details for PubMedID 29590068
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Finding the first Americans.
Science (New York, N.Y.)
2017; 358 (6363): 592-594
View details for DOI 10.1126/science.aao5473
View details for PubMedID 29097536
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Francis H. Brown (1943-2017) IN MEMORIAM
EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY
2017; 26 (6): 245–48
View details for PubMedID 29265658
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Counting and miscounting sheep: genetic evidence for pervasive misclassification of wild fauna as domestic stock
SOUTHERN AFRICAN HUMANITIES
2017; 30: 53–69
View details for Web of Science ID 000417238400003
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Shellfishing and human evolution
JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL ARCHAEOLOGY
2016; 44: 198-205
View details for DOI 10.1016/j.jaa.2016.07.008
View details for Web of Science ID 000389616000006
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Issues in human evolution.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
2016; 113 (23): 6345-7
View details for DOI 10.1073/pnas.1606588113
View details for PubMedID 27274040
View details for PubMedCentralID PMC4988588
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Shellfishing and Human Evolution
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology
2016; 44: 198-205
View details for DOI 10.1016/j.jaa.2016.07.008
- Issues in Human Evolution Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2016; 113: 6345-6347
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The Middle and Later Stone Age faunal remains from Diepkloof Rock Shelter, Western Cape, South Africa
JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL SCIENCE
2013; 40 (9): 3453-3462
View details for DOI 10.1016/j.jas.2013.01.001
View details for Web of Science ID 000321412200006
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Archaeological shellfish size and later human evolution in Africa
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
2013; 110 (27): 10910-10915
Abstract
Approximately 50 ka, one or more subgroups of modern humans expanded from Africa to populate the rest of the world. Significant behavioral change accompanied this expansion, and archaeologists commonly seek its roots in the African Middle Stone Age (MSA; ∼200 to ∼50 ka). Easily recognizable art objects and "jewelry" become common only in sites that postdate the MSA in Africa and Eurasia, but some MSA sites contain possible precursors, especially including abstractly incised fragments of ocher and perforated shells interpreted as beads. These proposed art objects have convinced most specialists that MSA people were behaviorally (cognitively) modern, and many argue that population growth explains the appearance of art in the MSA and its post-MSA florescence. The average size of rocky intertidal gastropod species in MSA and later coastal middens allows a test of this idea, because smaller size implies more intense collection, and more intense collection is most readily attributed to growth in the number of human collectors. Here we demonstrate that economically important Cape turban shells and limpets from MSA layers along the south and west coasts of South Africa are consistently and significantly larger than turban shells and limpets in succeeding Later Stone Age (LSA) layers that formed under equivalent environmental conditions. We conclude that whatever cognitive capacity precocious MSA artifacts imply, it was not associated with human population growth. MSA populations remained consistently small by LSA standards, and a substantial increase in population size is obvious only near the MSA/LSA transition, when it is dramatically reflected in the Out-of-Africa expansion.
View details for DOI 10.1073/pnas.1304750110
View details for Web of Science ID 000321978000024
View details for PubMedID 23776248
View details for PubMedCentralID PMC3704041
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Stable carbon isotopes and human evolution.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
2013; 110 (26): 10470-10472
View details for DOI 10.1073/pnas.1307308110
View details for PubMedID 23744041
View details for PubMedCentralID PMC3696760
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An early date for cattle from Namaqualand, South Africa: implications for the origins of herding in southern Africa
ANTIQUITY
2013; 87 (335): 108-120
View details for Web of Science ID 000315930900008
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Two Holocene rock shelter deposits from the Knersvlakte, southern Namaqualand, South Africa
SOUTHERN AFRICAN HUMANITIES
2011; 23: 109-150
View details for Web of Science ID 000299392200006
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Preface to the special issue-Early-Middle Pleistocene Palaeoenvironment in the Levant
JOURNAL OF HUMAN EVOLUTION
2011; 60 (4): 319-319
View details for DOI 10.1016/j.jhevol.2011.02.002
View details for Web of Science ID 000289178700001
View details for PubMedID 21392633
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The abundance of eland, buffalo, and wild pigs in Middle and Later Stone Age sites
JOURNAL OF HUMAN EVOLUTION
2011; 60 (3): 309-314
View details for DOI 10.1016/j.jhevol.2010.05.003
View details for Web of Science ID 000288481300004
View details for PubMedID 20875912
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HILARY JOHN DEACON 1936-2010 In Memoriam
SOUTH AFRICAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL BULLETIN
2010; 65 (191): 109-110
View details for Web of Science ID 000282834500014
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Comment on the Paleoenvironment of Ardipithecus ramidus
SCIENCE
2010; 328 (5982)
Abstract
White and colleagues (Research Articles, 2 October 2009, pp. 65-67 and www.sciencemag.org/ardipithecus) characterized the paleoenvironment of Ardipithecus ramidus at Aramis, Ethiopia, which they described as containing habitats ranging from woodland to forest patches. In contrast, we find the environmental context of Ar. ramidus at Aramis to be represented by what is commonly referred to as tree- or bush-savanna, with 25% or less woody canopy cover.
View details for DOI 10.1126/science.1185274
View details for Web of Science ID 000278104700022
View details for PubMedID 20508112
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A Howiesons Poort tradition of engraving ostrich eggshell containers dated to 60,000 years ago at Diepkloof Rock Shelter, South Africa
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
2010; 107 (14): 6180-6185
Abstract
Ongoing debates about the emergence of modern human behavior, however defined, regularly incorporate observations from the later part of the southern African Middle Stone Age and emphasize the early appearance of artifacts thought to reflect symbolic practice. Here we report a large sample of 270 fragments of intentionally marked ostrich eggshell from the Howiesons Poort at Diepkloof Rock Shelter, Western Cape, South Africa. Dating from approximately 60,000 years ago, these pieces attest to an engraving tradition that is the earliest reliable evidence of what is a widespread modern practice. These abstract linear depictions were made on functional items (eggshell containers), which were curated and involved in daily hunter-gatherer life. The standardized production of repetitive patterns, including a hatched band motif, suggests a system of symbolic representation in which collective identities and individual expressions are clearly communicated, suggesting social, cultural, and cognitive underpinnings that overlap with those of modern people.
View details for DOI 10.1073/pnas.0913047107
View details for Web of Science ID 000276374400013
View details for PubMedCentralID PMC2851956
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Morphometric identification of bovid metapodials to genus and implications for taxon-free habitat reconstruction
JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL SCIENCE
2010; 37 (2): 389-401
View details for DOI 10.1016/j.jas.2009.10.001
View details for Web of Science ID 000273073400017
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Darwin and the recent African origin of modern humans
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
2009; 106 (38): 16007-16009
View details for DOI 10.1073/pnas.0908719106
View details for Web of Science ID 000270071600001
View details for PubMedID 19805251
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MOGAPELWA: ARCHAEOLOGY PALAEOENVIRONMENT AND ORAL TRADITIONS AT LAKE NGAMI, BOTSWANA
SOUTH AFRICAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL BULLETIN
2009; 64 (189): 13-32
View details for Web of Science ID 000271549400003
- The Human Career: Human Biological and Cultural Origins University of Chicago Press. 2009
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Out of Africa and the Evolution of Human Behavior
EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY
2008; 17 (6): 267-281
View details for DOI 10.1002/evan.20181
View details for Web of Science ID 000262150800005
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Intertidal shellfish use during the Middle and Later Stone Age of South Africa
ARCHAEOFAUNA
2008; 17: 63-76
View details for Web of Science ID 000260553800005
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Going strong, and growing
JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL SCIENCE
2008; 35 (2): 213-213
View details for DOI 10.1016/j.jas.2007.11.026
View details for Web of Science ID 000253006900001
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Obituary - F. Clark Howell (1925-2007)
JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL SCIENCE
2007; 34 (9): 1552-1553
View details for DOI 10.1016/j.jas.2007.04.005
View details for Web of Science ID 000248408600021
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The mammalian fauna associated with an archaic hominin skullcap and later Acheulean artifacts at Elandsfontein, Western Cape Province, South Africa
JOURNAL OF HUMAN EVOLUTION
2007; 52 (2): 164-186
Abstract
The Elandsfontein site, Western Cape Province, South Africa, is well known for an archaic hominin skullcap associated with later Acheulean artifacts. The site has also provided nearly 13,000 mammalian bones that can be identified to skeletal part and taxon. The assemblage derives from 49 species, 15 of which have no historic descendants. Comparisons to radiometrically dated faunas in eastern Africa indicate an age between 1 million and 600 thousand years ago. Unique features of the fauna, including the late occurrence of a dirk-toothed cat and a sivathere, may reflect its geographic origin in a region that was notable historically for its distinctive climate and high degree of biotic endemism. Together, taxonomic composition, geomorphic setting, and pollen extracted from coprolites indicate the proximity of a large marsh or pond, maintained by a higher water table. The small average size of the black-backed jackals implies relatively mild temperatures. The sum of the evidence places bone accumulation during one of the mid-Pleistocene interglacials that were longer and cooler than later ones, including the Holocene. The geomorphic context of the fauna presents no evidence for catastrophe, and most deaths probably resulted from attritional factors that disproportionately killed the young and old. However, only the dental-age profile of long-horned buffalo supports this directly. Field collection methods biased skeletal-part representation, but originally, it probably resembled the pattern in the younger, marsh-edge Acheulean occurrence at Duinefontein 2, 45 km to the south. Excavation there exposed multiple vertebral spreads, which probably mark carcasses from which hominins or large carnivores removed the meatier elements. Bone damage at both sites suggests that, despite abundant artifacts, hominins were much less important than carnivores in the bone accumulation. Together with limited observations from other sites, Elandsfontein and Duinefontein provisionally suggest that Acheulean-age hominins obtained few large mammals, whether by hunting or scavenging.
View details for DOI 10.1016/j.jhevol.2006.08.006
View details for Web of Science ID 000244619800004
View details for PubMedID 17030056
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The Ysterfontein 1 Middle Stone Age site, South Africa, and early human exploitation of coastal resources
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
2004; 101 (16): 5708-5715
Abstract
Human fossils and the genetics of extant human populations indicate that living people derive primarily from an African population that lived within the last 200,000 years. Yet it was only approximately 50,000 years ago that the descendants of this population spread to Eurasia, where they swamped or replaced the Neanderthals and other nonmodern Eurasians. Based on archaeological observations, the most plausible hypothesis for the delay is that Africans and Eurasians were behaviorally similar until 50,000 years ago, and it was only at this time that Africans developed a behavioral advantage. The archaeological findings come primarily from South Africa, where they suggest that the advantage involved much more effective use of coastal resources. Until now, the evidence has come mostly from deeply stratified caves on the south (Indian Ocean) coast. Here, we summarize results from recent excavations at Ysterfontein 1, a deeply stratified shelter in a contrasting environment on the west (Atlantic) coast. The Ysterfontein 1 samples of human food debris must be enlarged for a full comparison to samples from other relevant sites, but they already corroborate two inferences drawn from south coast sites: (i) coastal foragers before 50,000 years ago did not fish routinely, probably for lack of appropriate technology, and (ii) they collected tortoises and shellfish less intensively than later people, probably because their populations were smaller.
View details for DOI 10.1073/pnas.0400528101
View details for PubMedID 15007171
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Paleoanthropology. Whither the Neanderthals?
Science
2003; 299 (5612): 1525-1527
View details for PubMedID 12624250
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Whither the Neanderthals?
SCIENCE
2003; 299 (5612): 1525-1527
View details for Web of Science ID 000181367900020