# @ucsc on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DU81C_lj44e
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/56995935-ucsc-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/aad5711db6.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-02-19T19:00:38.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** UC Santa Cruz (@ucsc) — https://gondola.cc/ucsc

## Caption

From East Africa to Santa Cruz, the story of human evolution is being shaped one stone tool at a time, and bringing early human history to life 🪨 🪏

Through the Human Evolution and Lithics Experimental (HELEX) Teaching Laboratory, anthropology professor Jay Reti is investigating cultural patterns and decision-making in human evolution through hands-on stone tool production. 

This work has taken him halfway across the world to Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania), Koobi Fora (East Turkana, Kenya), and, most recently, from the 1.9 million-year-old West Turkana sites of Kokiselei in northern Kenya.

Now, undergraduate students in the lab are modeling how early hominins selected rock, crafted tools, and used them to navigate their world.

This led Reti and 15 UC Santa Cruz anthropology undergraduates to partner with local high school teachers to strengthen human evolution curricula, developing new lessons and reaching 180 high school biology students in the past year. 

With fossil casts and real stone tools in hand, undergraduate students have led interactive sessions that invited younger students to ask big questions about our origins and explore pathways into biological anthropology and archaeology.

Looking forward to this spring, the HELEX lab will expand its outreach to reach 250 more high school students, continuing to connect cutting-edge research with community-engaged education. 

Want to get involved with archeology while on campus? Check out the Archeological Research Center, which connects students with faculty working on exciting projects like these. Learn more at arc.ucsc.edu. 

#WorldAnthropologyDay

Photo 1: Reti’s survey work at the Kokiselei site complex, West Turkana, Kenya.

Photo 2: Jay Reti, Sonia Harmand, and Ph.D. Candidate Kristin Carline at the Turkana Basin Institute, West Turkana, with approximately 1,500 pounds of collected rock from the area of Kokiselei.  Kokiselei represents the earliest Acheulean stone tool materials yet found, dating to approximately 1.9 million years ago.

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## Tags

worldanthropologyday

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