Surviving: The Body of Evidence

June 6 through August 30, 2009
Location: Kahn Hall

How have humans adapted over time to survive? The answer lies within you. You are a survivor. Your body holds the evidence. The process of evolution and its outcomes have affected every aspect of your daily life. And the process continues.

Take a journey of self discovery through "Surviving: The Body of Evidence," an interactive, multimedia exhibition that starts, and ends, with you. Developed by the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and funded by the National Science Foundation, this innovative exhibition tells the story of how the human race has adapted, thrived and continues to evolve. It leads visitors on a rich exploration of physical anthropology and evolutionary science, and it will debut at The Cleveland Museum of Natural History on Saturday, June 6, 2009.

Explore the Body of Evidence

Enter the exhibit ready to take a tour through what makes us human. First, you will start at Fit for Life, a multimedia introduction to the inherited human strengths and capabilities that make each individual a survivor in our complex world. A cascading video display shows ordinary people doing ordinary things such as walking, eating and talking. Each of these actions illustrates the human abilities that have been fundamental to human evolutionary survival. 

Next, travel back millions of years to meet ancestors from now-extinct species as you consider Our Place in the Natural World. Touch and compare bone casts from a variety of animal species to find the evidence that connects humans to our ancient past. 

Then, examine more than 100 casts of fossil bones from the primate and human evolutionary record as you move forward in Finding Our Human Ancestors. Hold the hand of the famous "Lucy," an Australopithecus afarensis human ancestor that lived 3.2 million years ago, and stand face to face with the skeleton of a boy who lived 1.6 million years ago. See the stages of evolution as the species move closer and closer to Homo sapiens.

As you continue to explore the exhibit, you will also encounter some of the world's most brilliant scientists and revolutionary thinkers in Witnessing Evolution. A series of dramatic audio re-enactments allow you to hear, in the scientist's own words, the breakthrough concepts and theories he or she contributed to the field of evolutionary science.

Then, face the realities of the imperfect, but remarkable, aspects of your own body in We Are Not Perfect, But We Are OK. An array of models and interactive multimedia displays provide evolutionary answers about why your back may ache, why you have wisdom teeth or why giving birth is so strenuous. In this section, you will meet the "Body of Evidence." This oversized model of a woman illustrates how our bodies now function because of our evolutionary past.

The final section of the exhibition, We Keep Evolving, invites you to access the impact of evolution both today and into the future. Take in video presentations of geneticists, evolutionary biologists, nanotechnology engineers and even school children discussing their thoughts about where we are going from here, in evolutionary terms. Then, share your own ideas and predictions for our evolutionary future.  

"Surviving: The Body of Evidence" will be on display in Kahn Hall through August 30, 2009. The exhibition is free with Museum admission.