By 1972, as a result of informal contacts among researchers from the University of Chicago who had gathered around Dan Freedman, a group around Irenaeus Eibl-Eibesfeldt at the Max-Planck-Institute in Seewiesen and researchers from Bill Charlesworth´s group at the University of Minnesota, a small group of somewhat innocent, self-labeled human ethologists held the first international meeting at the University of Minnesota. Attendance consisted mostly of German, Canadian, and American students.
It was a modest beginning to say the least, but it did lead later to two much larger, more sophisticated meetings. The first one was held in Starnberg (Eibl´s first research station); the second immediately followed in London under the sponsorship of Nick Blurton-Jones. Both meetings were very well attended and, despite much healthy disagreement on about almost everything, it became apparent that a substantive scientific enterprise was in the making.
(Bill Charlesworth)