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Books > Science & Mathematics > Biology, life sciences > Human biology & related topics > Biological anthropology > Early man
This is an extremely scarce and important work. It is profusely illustrated with over 100 pictures and illustrations. Partial Contents: Antiquity and Birthplace of Man; Africa Birthplace of Man; Piltdown Skull; Burial Customs; Ancient Implements and How to Distinguish Them; Primary Man; Non-Totemic or Pre-Totemic and Non-Anthropophagous People; Spirit Worship; Non- or Pre-Totemic People; Masaba Negros; Totemic and Androphagi People; Nilotic Negroes; Totemic Group; Further Proofs that the Nilotic Negro was the Founder of Ancient Egypt; Totem and Totemism; Heidelberg and Neanderthal Types; Tribes of Borneo and the Todas; Stellar Mythos People; Further Proofs of Stellar Cult in America; Central America and Mexico; Stellar Mythos People in Asia; Chinese People; Evidence of Stellar Cult in Africa, Ancient Egypt and Northern Europe; Lunar Cult; Solar Mythos People; Solar Cult People; People of the British Isles; Comparative Wisdom, Ancient and Modern.
Award-winning science writer Steven Mithen explores how an understanding of our ancestors and their development can illuminate our brains and behaviour today How do our minds work? When did language and religious beliefs first emerge? Why was there a cultural explosion of art and creativity with the arrival of modern humans? This ground-breaking book brings the insight of archaeology to our understanding of the development and history of the human mind, combining them with ideas from evolutionary psychology in a brilliant and provocative synthesis.
The discoveries of the last decade have brought about a completely revised understanding of human evolution due to the recent advances in genetics, palaeontology, ecology, archaeology, geography, and climate science. Written by two leading authorities in the fields of physical anthropology and molecular evolution, Processes in Human Evolution presents a reconsidered overview of hominid evolution, synthesising data and approaches from a range of inter-disciplinary fields. The authors pay particular attention to population migrations - since these are crucial in understanding the origin and dispersion of the different genera and species in each continent - and to the emergence of the lithic cultures and their impact on the evolution of cognitive capacities. Processes in Human Evolution is intended as a primary textbook for university courses on human evolution, and may also be used as supplementary reading in advanced undergraduate and graduate courses. It is also suitable for a more general audience seeking a readable but up-to-date and inclusive treatment of human origins and evolution.
A. Bowdoin Van Riper provides an account of how Victorian scientists raised and resolved the question of human antiquity. During the early part of the 19th century, scientists divided the history of the earth into a series of "former worlds," populated by mammoths and other prehistoric animals, and a "modern world," in which humans lived. According to this view, the human race was no older than 6000 years. The discovery of tools with mammoth bones, however, prompted a group of British geologists to argue in 1859 that the origin of humankind dated back to prehistoric times. The idea of prehistoric human origins threatened long-cherished religious beliefs and set off an intense debate among scientists as well as members of the clergy and the educated public. Van Riper chronicles this debate within the context of Victorian science, showing how the notion of human antiquity forced Victorians to redefine their assumptions about human evolution and the relationship of science to Christianity. The new study of human prehistory also crossed the boundaries of scientific disciplines, and the once-distinct fields of geology, archaeology and anthropology were drawn together to study early human life. Van Riper shows how, from the beginning, the study of human prehistory was an interdisciplinary endeavour.
The discovery of the first species of African hominin, Australopithecus africanus, from Taung, South Africa in 1924, launched the study of fossil man in Africa. New discoveries continue to confirm the importance of this region to our understanding of human evolution. Outlining major developments since Raymond Dart's description of the Taung skull and, in particular, the impact of the pioneering work of Phillip V. Tobias, this book will be a valuable companion for students and researchers of human origins. It presents a summary of the current state of palaeoanthropology, reviewing the ideas that are central to the field, and provides a perspective on how future developments will shape our knowledge about hominin emergence in Africa. A wide range of key themes are covered, from the earliest fossils from Chad and Kenya, to the origins of bipedalism and the debate about how and where modern humans evolved and dispersed across Africa.
The contribution of Neandertals to the biological and cultural emergence of early modern humans remains highly debated in anthropology. Particularly controversial is the long-held view that Neandertals in Western Europe were replaced 30,000 to 40,000 years ago by early modern humans expanding out of Africa. This book contributes to this debate by exploring the diets and foraging patterns of both Neandertals and early modern humans. Eugene Morin examines the faunal remains from Saint-Cesaire in France, which contains an exceptionally long and detailed chronological sequence, as well as genetic, anatomical and other archaeological evidence to shed new light on the problem of modern human origins.
Readings for a History of Anthropological Theory curates and collects many of the most important publications of anthropological thought spanning the last hundred years, building a strong foundation in both classical and contemporary theory. The sixth edition includes seventeen new readings, with a sharpened focus on public anthropology, gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, linguistic anthropology, archaeology, and the Anthropocene. Each piece of writing is accompanied by a short introduction, key terms, study questions, and further readings that elucidate the original text. On its own or together with A History of Anthropological Theory, sixth edition, this anthology offers an unrivalled introduction to the theory of anthropology that reflects not only its history but also the changing nature of the discipline today.
Kim Sterelny here builds on his original account of the evolutionary development and interaction of human culture and cooperation, which he first presented in The Evolved Apprentice (2012). Sterelny sees human evolution not as hinging on a single key innovation, but as emerging from a positive feedback loop caused by smaller divergences from other great apes, including bipedal locomotion, better causal and social reasoning, reproductive cooperation, and changes in diet and foraging style. He advances this argument in The Pleistocene Social Contract with four key claims about cooperation, culture, and their interaction in human evolution. First, he proposes a new model of the evolution of human cooperation. He suggests human cooperation began from a baseline that was probably similar to that of great apes, advancing about 1.8 million years ago to an initial phase of cooperative forging, in small mobile bands. Second, he then presents a novel account of the change in evolutionary dynamics of cooperation: from cooperation profits based on collective action and mutualism, to profits based on direct and indirect reciprocation over the course of the Pleistocene. Third, he addresses the question of normative regulation, or moral norms, for band-scale cooperation, and connects it to the stabilization of indirect reciprocation as a central aspect of forager cooperation. Fourth, he develops an account of the emergence of inequality that links inequality to intermediate levels of conflict and cooperation: a final phase of cooperation in largescale, hierarchical societies in the Holocene, beginning about 12,000 years ago. The Pleistocene Social Contract combines philosophy of biology with a reading of the archaeological and ethnographic record to present a new model of the evolution of human cooperation, cultural learning, and inequality.
This work deals with Neanderthal subsistence behaviours during the Middle Palaeolithic in Hungary, through the example of Erd site. Very discreet, hunting and mainly scavenging, activities are shown by zooarchaeological study for meat procurement. This is different for carnivores, except for cave bears. The latter, using the place for hibernation, meant a high number of their remains are associated with "Charentian" lithic industry and with those of cave hyena. This carnivore has a significant impact on bone accumulations, herbivores and bears, and shows signs of cannibalism on its congener's remains. Human activities are visible only on a few bones belonging to large ungulates and cave bear. However, no proof supports the proposition of a clear specialization in cave bear hunting on acquiring meat resources (as written by V. Gabori Csank in the monography on Erd published in 1968); a contrario, on scavenging carcasses and/or visiting (actively?) dens for weakened wintering/hibernating bears. These results attest the contemporaneity of a part of the bear carcasses with human installation or presence on the site.
Originally published during the early part of the twentieth century, the Cambridge Manuals of Science and Literature were designed to provide concise introductions to a broad range of topics. They were written by experts for the general reader and combined a comprehensive approach to knowledge with an emphasis on accessibility. Prehistoric Man by W. L. H. Duckworth was first published in 1912, and reissued as this second edition during the same year. The volume contains an account of the earliest phases in the development of humanity, beginning with the precursors of Paleolithic man and ending at the time of the Aurignacian culture.
The discovery of the first species of African hominin, Australopithecus africanus, from Taung, South Africa in 1924, launched the study of fossil man in Africa. New discoveries continue to confirm the importance of this region to our understanding of human evolution. Outlining major developments since Raymond Dart's description of the Taung skull and, in particular, the impact of the pioneering work of Phillip V. Tobias, this book will be a valuable companion for students and researchers of human origins. It presents a summary of the current state of palaeoanthropology, reviewing the ideas that are central to the field, and provides a perspective on how future developments will shape our knowledge about hominin emergence in Africa. A wide range of key themes are covered, from the earliest fossils from Chad and Kenya, to the origins of bipedalism and the debate about how and where modern humans evolved and dispersed across Africa.
Just 28,000 years ago, the blink of an eye in geological time, the last of Neanderthals died out in their last outpost, in caves near Gibraltar. Thanks to cartoons and folk accounts we have a distorted view of these other humans - for that is what they were. We think of them as crude and clumsy and not very bright, easily driven to extinction by the lithe, smart modern humans that came out of Africa some 100,000 years ago. But was it really as simple as that? Clive Finlayson reminds us that the Neanderthals were another kind of human, and their culture was not so very different from that of our own ancestors. In this book, he presents a wider view of the events that led to the migration of the moderns into Europe, what might have happened during the contact of the two populations, and what finally drove the Neanderthals to extinction. It is a view that considers climate, ecology, and migrations of populations, as well as culture and interaction. His conclusion is that the destiny of the Neanderthals and the Moderns was sealed by ecological factors and contingencies. It was a matter of luck that we survived and spread while the Neanderthals dwindled and perished. Had the climate not changed in our favour some 50 million years ago, things would have been very different. There is much current research interest in Neanderthals, much of it driven by attempts to map some of their DNA. But it's not just a question of studying the DNA. The rise and fall of populations is profoundly moulded by the larger scale forces of climate and ecology. And it is only by taking this wider view that we can fully understand the course of events that led to our survival and their demise. The fact that Neanderthals survived until virtually yesterday makes our relationship with them and their tragedy even more poignant. They almost made it, after all.
Human Paleobiology provides a unifying framework for the study of human populations, both past and present, to a range of changing environments. It integrates evidence from studies of human adaptability, comparative primatology, and molecular genetics to document consistent measures of genetic distance between subspecies, species and other taxonomic groupings. These findings support the interpretation of the biology of humans in terms of a smaller number of populations characterised by higher levels of genetic continuity than previously hypothesised. Using this as a basis, Robert Eckhardt then goes on to analyse problems in human paleobiology including phenotypic differentiation, patterns of species range expansion and phyletic succession in terms of the patterns and processes still observable in extant populations. This book will be a challenging and stimulating read for students and researchers interested in human paleobiology or evolutionary anthropology.
Known for his curly red hair, day-old stubble, and uncannily preserved two-thousand-year-old physique, Grauballe Man - a mummified body discovered in 1950s Denmark - was an instant archaeological sensation. But he was not the first of his kind: recent history has resurrected from northern Europe's bogs several men, women, and children who were deposited there as sacrifices in the early Iron Age and kept startlingly intact by the chemical properties of peat. In this remarkable account of their modern afterlives, Karin Sanders argues that the discovery of bog bodies began an extraordinary - and ongoing - cultural journey. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Sanders shows, these eerily preserved remains came alive in art and science as material metaphors for such concepts as trauma, nostalgia, and identity. Sigmund Freud, Joseph Beuys, Serge Vandercam, Seamus Heaney, and other major figures have used them to reconsider fundamental philosophical, literary, aesthetic, and scientific concerns. Exploring this intellectual spectrum, Sanders contends that the power of bog bodies to provoke such a wide range of responses is rooted in their unique status as both archaeological artifacts and human beings. They emerge as corporeal time capsules that transcend archaeology to challenge our assumptions about what we can know about the past. By restoring them to the roster of cultural phenomena that force us to confront our ethical and aesthetic boundaries, "Bodies in the Bog" excavates anew the question of what it means to be human.
Olduvai is one of the most important prehistoric sites in the world; indeed, the only Middle Pleistocene site of comparable importance is Choukoutien and Olduvai can show deposits far older. The site has produced a mass of material of the highest archaeological and palaeontology importance and in this first of five volumes Dr Leakey and his collaborators make their preliminary reports. The story of the excavations initiated by Dr Leakey in 1951 is well known. Their purpose was to locate and uncover a series of living-floors of early Hand-axe man and, if possible, of the preceding Olduwan culture. The discoveries were of striking and far-reaching importance. They included, besides a mass of tools and artefacts, small animal and human remains and the famous skull of Zinjanthropus boisei, the earliest tool-making man. Against this background Leakey and his collaborators discuss the geological evidence, its relation to the fauna and other fossil evidence, the problems of climatic sequence and the use of potassium-argon dating. The purpose of this volume is to provide a context in which the fossil human remains and the Stone Age cultural sequence at Olduvai can be studied.
Olduvai Groge is a valley in the Serengeti Plains at the western margin of the Eastern Rift Valley in northern Tanzania. The formations discussed in this volume, Beds I and II, were deposited in the Lower and Middle Pleistocene and have yielded large quantities of the remains of early man, in the form of bones and stone tools and evidence of the environment in which they lived. Bed I, in which remains of Australopithecus boisei and Homo habilis have been found, is firmly dated between 1.9 million years for the lowest level and 1.65 million years for a level below the top. This third volume describes the excavations. In Part I, starting with the lowest levels and devoting a chapter to each main level, Dr Leakey describes the actual process of excavation and the finding of the principal remains. In Part II, Dr Leakey describes the circumstances of the discovery of the hominid skeletal remains. These range from purposive excavation to accidental discovery while collecting small stones for mixing in concrete. Finally, mammalian bones, as tools and as food remains are discussed.
At Olduvai Gorge natural erosion exposed a deep series of superimposed geological beds containing rich artefact and fossil assemblages spanning the last 1.8 million years. The sire ot famous as a rsult of excavations conducted there since 1951 under the direction of Mary Leakey and her husband, the late Louis Leakey. This volume, written largely by Mary Leakey herself, is the last of the reports and records the archaeological finds in the upper part of the Olduvai sequence from excavations carried out from the end of 1968 until 1971. The period covered here is from about 1.2 to 0.4 million years ago and th efinds include artefacts and faunal remains excavated from sites in beds II, IV na the Masek beds. The volume follows on from the archaeological record in beds I and II published in volume 3 of the series.
Studies of brain evolution have moved rapidly in recent years, building on the pioneering research of Harry J. Jerison. This book provides state-of-the-art reviews of primate (including human) brain evolution. The volume is divided into two sections, the first offers new perspectives on the developmental, physiological, dietary, and behavioral correlates of brain enlargement. However, it has long been recognized that brains do not merely enlarge globally as they evolve, but that their cortical and internal organization also changes in a process known as reorganization. Species-specific adaptations therefore have neurological substrates that depend on more than just overall brain size. The second section explores these neurological underpinnings for the senses, adaptations, and cognitive abilities that are important for primates. With a prologue by Stephen J. Gould and an epilogue by Harry J. Jerison, this is an important new reference work for all those working on primate brain evolution.
Paleodemography is the field of enquiry that attempts to identify demographic parameters from past populations (usually skeletal samples) derived from archaeological contexts, and then to make interpretations regarding the health and well-being of those populations. However, paleodemographic theory relies on several assumptions that cannot easily be validated by the researcher, and if incorrect, can lead to large errors or biases. In this book, physical anthropologists, mathematical demographers and statisticians tackle these methodological issues for reconstructing demographic structure for skeletal samples. Topics discussed include how skeletal morphology is linked to chronological age, assessment of age from the skeleton, demographic models of mortality and their interpretation, and biostatistical approaches to age structure estimation from archaeological samples. This work will be of immense importance to anyone interested in paleodemography, including biological and physical anthropologists, demographers, geographers, evolutionary biologists and statisticians.
Anthropology / Ancient History In The Neanderthal Legacy, eminent psychologist and paranormal researcher Stan Gooch brings together the wide-ranging investigative strands of his lifetime of study of the human brain. One of the world's leading experts on the influence of the Neanderthals on the cultural and biological development of humanity, Gooch contends that the Neanderthals' enlarged cerebellum was a source of deep connection with the psychic and dream worlds, which remains extant in modern humans in paranormal phenomena that conventional science cannot explain.Gooch offers scientific evidence of the crossbreeding between Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons that is responsible for the dichotomous nature of our feelings, thoughts, impressions, beliefs, and even our cultural mores and politics. The hybrid vigor produced by this mating has gifted modern humans with abilities and sensibilities that the scientific establishment and conventional educational system entirely ignore. Gooch calls for recognition and acceptance of the dominance of our genetic makeup in determining all our behaviors and traits. Only by embracing this understanding of our essential nature will we be able to achieve any degree of peace and unity in the face of the diametrically opposed instincts of our genetic heritage.STAN GOOCH began his career as a highly regarded psychological researcher who studied the evolution and history of the brain in his books Total Man and Personality and Evolution. His research on paranormal influences and Neanderthal culture appear in his books The Dream Culture of the Neanderthals, The Origins of Psychic Phenomena, The Double Helix of the Mind, Cities of Dreams, and The Secret Life ofHumans. He lives in Wales.
Our ability to 'think' is really one of our most puzzling characteristics. What it would be like to be unable to think? What would it be like to lack self-awareness? The complexity of this activity is striking. 'Thinking' involves the interaction of a range of mental processes--attention, emotion, memory, planning, self-consciousness, free will, and language. So where did these processes arise? What evolutionary advantages were bestowed upon those with an ability to deceive, to plan, to empathize, or to understand the intention of others? In this compelling new work, Peter Gardenfors embarks on an evolutionary detective story to try and solve one of the big mysteries surrounding human existence--how has the modern human being's way of thinking come into existence. He starts by taking in turn the more basic cognitive processes, such as attention and memory, then builds upon these to explore more complex behaviors, such as self-consciousness, mindreading, and imitation. Having done this, he examines the consequences of "putting thought into the world" -i.e., using external media like cave paintings, drawings, and writing. Immensely readable and humorous, the book will be valuable for students in psychology and biology, and accessible to readers of popular science.
A study of the morphological variation of the skull in children, taking into consideration their age, sex and geographical origin. Extensive research (761 skulls were studied) has resulted in an exhaustive report which clearly fills a long-standing gap in the study of human cranial development.
The chimpanzee of all other living species is our closest relation, with whom we last shared a common ancestor about five million years ago. These African apes make and use a rich and varied kit of tools, and of the primates they are the only consistent and habitual tool-users and tool-makers. Chimpanzees meet the criteria of a culture as originally defined for human beings by socio-cultural anthropologists. They show sex differences in using tools to obtain and to process a variety of plant and animal foods. The technological gap between chimpanzees and human societies that live by foraging (hunter-gatherers) is surprisingly narrow at least for food-getting. Different communities of wild chimpanzees have different tool-kits and not all of this regional and local variation can be explained by the demands of the physical and biotic environments in which they live. Some differences are likely to be customs based on socially derived and symbolically encoded traditions. This book describes and analyzes the tool-use of humankind's nearest living relation. It focuses on field studies of these apes across Africa, comparing their customs to see if they can justifiably be termed cultural. It makes direct comparisons with the material culture of human foraging peoples. The book evaluates the chimpanzee as an evolutionary model, showing that chimpanzee behavior helps us to infer the origins of technology in human prehistory.
This is the first book to focus on the role of Southern Asia and Australia in our understanding of modern human origins and the expansion of Homo sapiens between East Africa and Australia before 30,000 years ago. With contributions from leading experts that take into account the latest archaeological evidence from India and Southeast Asia, this volume critically reviews current models of the timing and character of the spread of modern humans out of Africa. It also demonstrates that the evidence from Australasia should receive much wider and more serious consideration in its own right if we want to understand how our species achieved its global distribution. Critically examining the 'Out of Africa' model, this book emphasises the context and variability of the global evidence in the search for human origins.
This book presents the state-of-the art in the analysis of animal movements in the past and its implications for human societies. It also addresses the importance of animal activity and mobility for understanding past human societies and past human-animal relationships through cases studies from different periods and areas. It is the first book to focus on the archaeology of animal movement on different scales - from fine-tuned muscle movements of working animals to feeding behavior and to long-distance movements across landscapes and regions.With the recent development of fine-tuned methodologies such as stable isotope analysis and physical activity assessment, the potential to understand how animals moved about in the past has increased substantially. While the chapters in the volume utilize a wide range of archaeological methods, they are all united by an emphasis on understanding animal activity and mobility patterns as something that has a major impact on human societies and human-animal relationships. Chapters in this volume show that animal activity patterns provide information on multiple aspects of human-animal relationships, including analysis of animal management practices, transhumance, global and regional trade networks, and animal domestication. This volume is of interest to scholars working in zooarchaeology and early human societies. |
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