Sub-Saharan Africa provides an archaeological and palaeontological record that is crucial to understanding hominid anatomical and behavioural evolution. This cradle of humanity has attracted a number of international interdisciplinary research teams in search of answers as to what made us human. Collaboration with African scientists has been particularly fruitful, producing in the last few decades some of the most significant contributions to these fields of study. Since the 1920s French archaeologists and palaeoanthropologists have collaborated with South African colleagues to unearth and highlight this unique heritage. The primary aim of the symposium was to synthesise and debate results of current research on the origin of humankind and share thoughts on the future of this endeavour. More specifically, it provided the opportunity to highlight results of collaborative French–South African research projects in the framework of international research programmes conducted in southern Africa, and envision paths for future collaboration.

Scholars interested in the human past are living in an exciting era, in which crossfertilisation between disciplines such as palaeoanthropology, primatology, genetics, archaeology, palaeoecology, climatology, linguistics, ethnography, evolutionary psychology and the neurosciences is producing novel integrated attempts at modelling biological–cultural interactions. The challenge is how to promote this dialogue in a manner that stimulates better comprehension of the human adventure without creating dogmatic paradigms or mainstream scenarios.

In the past the concept of ‘culture’ played a crucial role in creating a conceptual barrier between humans and other primates. We now accept that chimpanzees possess rather complex cultural traditions that are independent of ecological constraints (Whiten et al., 1999). Partly as a consequence of this, it has become commonplace to use the notion of ‘behavioural modernity’ rather than that of culture to indicate the range of ‘advanced’ traits that distinguish us and our recent ancestors from living primates and a fluctuating number of fossil hominid populations (Bar-Yosef, 2002; Klein, 1999; McBrearty & Brooks, 2000). However, it is argued that the definitions of ‘behavioural modernity’ proposed thus far are ambiguous and often represent ad hoc accommodative arguments to provide a theoretically grounded basis for the interpretation of archaeological evidence (d'Errico, 2003; d'Errico et al., 2003; Henshilwood & Marean, 2003).