Carsten Niemitz (born 29 September 1945 in Dessau) is a German anatomist, ethologist, and human evolutionary biologist.
At the age of 32 he was appointed Professor of Human Biology at the Free University of Berlin, a post he held as head of the Institute until 2010.
In brief, his thesis was that the abilities to read and write are biologically older than those of language, because such visual communication was later supplemented by vocal and acoustic signals.
In the late eighties and the nineties he was one of those who raised the alarm about the depletion of tropical rain forests.
From 1992 to 2014, he was deputy chairman of the Urania cultural community in Berlin, a center for the exchange between science and the public.