When it rains, it pours!

Get ready for a veritable feast of anthropologically interesting talks in the greater Denver area on this coming Thursday, April 21:

• On the Auraria campus, where UC Denver is located, Dr. Biruté Galdikas (Orangutan Foundation) is giving a talk on her research on orangs at St. Cajetans (5:30-7:00PM). The event is free, but you need to register.If you can't make that talk, she'll also be lecturing at the DMNS on Saturday, April 23.
• Dr. Biruté Galdikas is a primatologist, conservationist, ethologist, and author of several books relating to the endangered orangutan, particularly the Bornean orangutan. Well known in the field of modern primatology, Galdikas is recognized as a leading authority on orangutans. 

• On the DU campus, Noam Chomsky is giving a talk on "Dilemmas in US Foreign Policy", at 7:00PM. Again, free but you need to register. 
• Finally, the Colorado Scientific Society is sponsoring a talk by Tom Strasser on "Crete before the Cretans: Paleolithic Mariners in the Mediterranean", at 8:00PM.
• A survey in 2008 and 2009 on the southwestern coast of Crete in the region of Plakias documented 28 preceramic lithic sites. Sites were identified with artifacts of Mesolithic type similar to assemblages from the Greek mainland and islands, and some had evidence of Lower Palaeolithic occupation dated by geological context to at least 130,000 years ago. The long period of separation (more than 5,000,000 years) of Crete from any landmass implies that the early inhabitants of Crete reached the island using seacraft capable of open-sea navigation and multiple journeys—a finding that pushes the history of seafaring in the Mediterranean back by more than 100,000 years and has important implications for the dispersal of early humans.

All in all, it's going to be a busy Thursday evening! Now, though I'm a highly mobile kinda guy, there's only so much traveling I can do, so I'll be at the Strasser talk, especially considering the various posts I've put up on this humble blog about that research. I'll be very interested to learn more about the survey and the artifacts Strasser's group found. If any readers in the Denver area are in attendance, feel free to introduce yourself!