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Keynote address

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 June 2019

Francesco d'Errico
Affiliation:
George Washington University, Washington DC
Lucinda Backwell
Affiliation:
University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
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Summary

This Round Table is a celebration of Franco–South African collaboration in the fields of palaeoanthropology and archaeology. In this cooperative endeavour, we who pursue our lives and researches in South Africa have been at the receiving end of extraordinary largesse from France, mediated with sagacity and imagination by the Embassy of France in South Africa and the CNRS. This conference is the latest manifestation of this fruitful inter-hemispheric interaction. It is our hope that the research opportunities and facilities which South Africa is able to offer in abundance and the ‘Open House’ policy towards visiting researchers and students which we have pursued for nearly half a century may effect a certain symmetry in this relationship.

It is symbolic of this cross-pollination that this symposium has been organised by a French scientist, Francesco d'Errico, and a South African one, Lucinda Backwell. For their combined efforts, coupled with their manifest organisational skills, we who participated in the meeting are deeply indebted. To them and their helpers, a sincere expression of thanks is due.

Personally, I convey my gratitude to the organisers for their very kind thought in dedicating the Round Table to myself, a most touching and generous gesture which I deeply appreciate.

A fitting time was chosen for the holding of this conference: worthy of celebration is the fact that fifty years ago Francis Crick and James Watson published their historic paper announcing the double helix model for the structure of DNA; another cause of rejoicing is the award of a Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine for 2002 to Sydney Brenner, who obtained his first four degrees at the University of the Witwatersrand and is also a Doctor of Science honoris causa of this University. In part commemoration of both these historic events, a meeting is to be held next week, in tandem with this one, on the Human Genome in Africa, organised by Dr Wilmot James of the South African Human Sciences Research Council.

Cette Table Ronde est une célébration de la collaboration franco-sud-africaine dans les domaines de la paléoanthropologie et de l'archéologie.

Type
Chapter
Information
From Tools to Symbols
From Early Hominids to Modern Humans
, pp. xxxi - xxxii
Publisher: Wits University Press
Print publication year: 2005

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