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.

Anthropologists, archaeologists, biologists, and ecologists report the latest thinking on human evolution at a level suitable for undergraduates. The six papers are from a March 1992 symposium in Los Angeles. Includes a glossary without pronunciation. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, O

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Preface List of Figures List of Tables 1. Fossilisation Patterns of Social Organisation; Taphonomy; Dating Fossils; Methods; Direct Methods; Indirect Methods; Chronometric dating; Half-life; Relative Dating Procedures; Stratigraphy; Fluorine dating; Nitrogen dating; Uranium dating; Absolute Dating Techniques; Radiocarbon dating; Obsidian dating; Fission-track technique; Potassium-Argon dating: Material Used; Period; Thermoluminescence (TI); Palaeomagnetism Technique; Electron Spin Resonance Technique; Faunal Correlation Technique (Biostratigraphy); Dendrochronology; Amino Acid Racemization Technique. 2. Primate Radiation Primate Development; Early Tertiary Period; Miocene Epoch; Parapithecus; Propliopithecus; Limnopithecus; Pliopithecus; Prohylobates; Dryopithecinae; Dryopithecus; Ramapithecus; Rudapithecus hungaricus; Sugrivapithecus; Sivapithecus -- Sivapithecus sivalensis; Sivapithecus himalayensis; Gigantopithecus. 3. Australopithecines Australopithecus - East Africa; Early species; The Robust Australopithecines - The Gracile Australopithecines; Paranthropus. 4. Homo habilis Sites; Tool making capabilities; Social organisation. 5. Homo erectus Bodily Structure of Homo erectus; Origin of Homo erectus; Variations in Homo erectus; Transition from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens; Other Homo erectus Finds; Narmada Man Heidelberg Man (Homo Heidelbergensis); Asian Fossils; African Fossils; European Fossils; Behavioural Inferences; Evolutionary Implications; Gradualistic Views of the Transition to Homo sapiens; Alternative Modes of Species Change. 6. Neanderthal Man The Extinction of Neanderthal Man; Burials; Archaic and Modern Peoples; Physical Characteristics; PreNeanderthal Man (Early Homo sapiens) - Relationship between Neanderthal man and modern man. 7. Modern Men Cro-Magnon; Hunting Techniques; Place in Human Evolution; Culture; Eyziea-de-Tayac Caves; The Tautavel Man; Swanscombe Man; Steinheim Man. 8. Human Evolution The Antiquity of Homo sapiens; Structure of Homo sapiens; Evolution of the Human Skull. 9. Human Origins Dating; African Eve Hypothesis; Ancient Africans, Whose Ancestors?; Early Dispersal and Homo sapiens; Genetic Evidence for Modern Human Origins; The Story of how we became man; Split from the Apes; The Earliest Humans; Modern Humans; The End of Evolution?; Man; But were the CroMagnon Africans?; Cultural Evidence for Modern Human Origins; Rethinking? 10. Molecular Clock Chromosomal Evolution; Chromosomal Homology; DNA; Gene Mapping. 11. Palaeodemography Methodology; Sexing; Ageing; Parity and Weaning Age; Population Size Estimates; Mortality Patterns; Growth; Disease, Diet and Demography; Australopithecus; Homo Habilis; Neanderthals. 12. Palaeopathology Neanderthal Man; Bone Tumour; General. Literature Cited Index

The theme of this book is the appropriate methodology for the study of the history of life on earth. In particular, it focuses on the interplay between form and structure: the things that we might predict and model and the things we cannot predict -- the arbitrary and the contingent -- which may be as important, or even more important, than the way in which life on earth has evolved.

The contributors are drawn from palaeontology, archaeology, anthropology and human evolution; the timescales covered are from the development of life on earth, through human evolution to later prehistory and historic archaeology. Underpinning the theme of the book is the work of Stephen Jay Gould, who has developed a distinctive philosophy of history concerning the nature of long-term and short-term evolutionary processes, particularly stressing the interplay between structure and contingency.

The partial skeleton of Homo erectus found in Kenya by Alan Walker, Richard Leakey, and others is truly one of the great discoveries in paleoanthropology, after the world's best paleoanthropologists have diligently searched for traces of Homo erectus in Africa and Asia for a century. In this book, the authors present descriptions and photographs of all parts of the skeleton and accompany these with a thorough analysis. It consists of three parts. The first part covers the geology, dating, paleoenvironments, and the taphonomy of the site. The second part is a description of the specimen and a review of other Homo erectus specimens from the Lake Turkana region. The last part is composed of analytical papers on certain aspects of the boy's biology as they apply to other Homo erectus specimens. "What impresses me most about the volume is that apart from the basic description of the fossil, which itself is of great importance, the editors have sought out leading experts to tackle problems relating to specific issues in the evolutionary biology of Homo erectus. Many of these chapters would stand alone as major contributions. Together, they make a remarkable volume that will become a standard reference." (Robert A. Foley, Professor of Biological Anthropology, University of Cambridge)

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.

For over twenty years, A History of Anthropological Theory has provided a strong foundation for understanding anthropological thinking, tracing how the discipline has evolved from its origins to the present day. The sixth edition of this important text offers substantial updates throughout, including more balanced coverage of the four fields of anthropology, an entirely new section on the Anthropocene, and significantly revised discussions of public anthropology, gender and sexuality, and race and ethnicity. Written in accessible prose and enhanced with illustrations, key terms, and study questions in each section, this text remains essential reading for those interested in studying the history of anthropology. On its own or used with the companion volume, Readings for a History of Anthropological Theory, sixth edition, this text provides comprehensive coverage in a flexible and easy-to-use format for teaching in the anthropology classroom.

Fred Flintstone lived in a sunny Stone Age American suburb, but his ancestors were respectable, middle-class Victorians. They were very amused to think that prehistory was an archaic version of their own world because it suggested that British ideals were eternal. In the 1850s, our prehistoric ancestors were portrayed in satirical cartoons, songs, sketches and plays as ape-like, reflecting the threat posed by evolutionary ideas. By the end of the century, recognisably human cave men inhabited a Stone Age version of late-imperial Britain, sending-up its ideals and institutions. Cave men appeared constantly in parades, civic pageants and costume parties. In the early 1900s American cartoonists and early Hollywood stars like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton adopted and reimagined this very British character, cementing it in global popular culture. Cave men are an appealing way to explore and understand Victorian and Edwardian Britain. -- .

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.

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.

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.

Salento is a peninsula in Southern Italy, the heel of the Italian boot, characterised both by an abundance of Middle Palaeolithic sites and a scarcity of raw material suitable for knapping. The research question at the basis of this book concerns the managing of raw materials by Neanderthals, through both the procurement and use of the locally available raw materials and the exploitation of possibly more distant sources. | Le Salento est une peninsule du sud de l'Italie, le talon de la botte italienne, caracterisee a la fois par l'abondance des sites du Paleolithique moyen et par une penurie des matieres premieres propres a la taille. La question de recherche a la base de ce livre concerne la gestion des matieres premieres par les Neandertaliens, a travers l'approvisionnement et l'utilisation des matieres premieres disponibles localement et l'exploitation eventuelle de sources plus eloignees.

David Christian, creator of Big History ('My favourite course of all time' Bill Gates), brings us the epic story of the universe and our place in it, from 13.8 billion years ago to the remote future 'Nails home the point: Life is a miracle ... A compelling history of everything' Washington Post 'Spectacular' Carlo Rovelli How did we get from the Big Bang to today's staggering complexity, in which seven billion humans are connected into networks powerful enough to transform the planet? And why, in comparison, are our closest primate relatives reduced to near-extinction? Big History creator David Christian gives the answers in a mind-expanding cosmological detective story told on the grandest possible scale. He traces how, during eight key thresholds, the right conditions have allowed new forms of complexity to arise, from stars to galaxies, Earth to homo sapiens, agriculture to fossil fuels. This last mega-innovation gave us an energy bonanza that brought huge benefits to mankind, yet also threatens to shake apart everything we have created. 'Rather like the Big Bang, the book is awe-inspiring ... Superb' The Times 'With fascinating ideas on every page and the page-turning energy of a good thriller, this is a landmark work' Sir Ken Robinson, author of The Element

This book examines the first human colonization of Asia and particularly the tropical environments of Southeast Asia during the Upper Pleistocene. In studying the unique character of the Asian archaeological record, it reassesses long-accepted propositions about the development of human 'modernity.' Ryan J. Rabett reveals an evolutionary relationship between colonization, the challenges encountered during this process - especially in relation to climatic and environmental change - and the forms of behaviour that emerged. This book argues that human modernity is not something achieved in the remote past in one part of the world, but rather is a diverse, flexible, responsive and ongoing process of adaptation.

This volume, the first in a series devoted to the paleoanthropological resources of the Middle Awash Valley of Ethiopia, studies Homo erectus, a close relative of Homo sapiens. Written by a team of highly regarded scholars, this book provides the first detailed descriptions, photographs, and analysis of the fossil vertebrates - from elephants and hyenas to humans - from the Daka Member of the Bouri Formation of the Afar, a place renowned for an abundant and lengthy record of human ancestors.These fossils contribute to our understanding human evolution, and the associated fauna provide new information about the distribution and variability of Pleistocene mammals in eastern Africa. The contributors are all active researchers who worked on the paleontology and geology of these unique deposits. Here they have combined their disparate efforts into a single volume, making the original research results accessible to both the specialist and the general reader. The volume synthesizes environmental backdrop and anatomical detail to open an unparalleled window on the African Pleistocene and its inhabitants.

This is the first volume to address directly the question of the speciation of modern Homo sapiens. The subject raises profound questions about the nature of the species, our defining characteristic (it is suggested it is language), and the brain changes and their genetic basis that make us distinct. The British Academy and the Academy of Medical Sciences have brought together experts from palaeontology, archaeology, linguistics, psychology, genetics and evolutionary theory to present evidence and theories at the cutting edge of our understanding of these issues.
Palaeontological and genetic work suggests that the transition from a precursor hominid species to modern man took place between 100,000 and 150,000 years ago. Some contributors discuss what is most characteristic of the species, focussing on language and its possible basis in brain lateralization. This work is placed in the context of speciation theory, which has remained a subject of considerable debate since the evolutionary synthesis of Mendelian genetics and Darwinian theory. The timing of specific transitions in hominid evolution is discussed, as also is the question of the neural basis of language. Other contributors address the possible genetic nature of the transition, with reference to changes on the X and Y chromosomes that may account for sex differences in lateralization and verbal ability. These differences are discussed in terms of the theory of sexual selection, and with reference to the mechanisms of speciation.
These essays will be vital reading for anyone interested in the nature and origins of the species, and specifically human abilities.

Alison Jolly believes that biologists have an important story to tell about being human-not the all-too-familiar tale of selfishness, competition, and biology as destiny but rather one of cooperation and interdependence, from the first merging of molecules to the rise of a species inextricably linked by language, culture, and group living. This is the story that unfolds in Lucy's Legacy, the saga of human evolution as told by a world-renowned primatologist who works among the female-dominant ringtailed lemurs of Madagascar. We cannot be certain that Lucy was female-the bones themselves do not tell us. However, we do know, as Jolly points out in this erudite, funny, and informative book, that the females who came after Lucy-more adept than their males in verbal facility, sharing food, forging links between generations, migrating among places and groups, and devising creative mating strategies-played as crucial a role in the human evolutionary process as "man" ever did. In a book that takes us from the first cell to global society, Jolly shows us that to learn where we came from and where we go next, we need to understand how sex and intelligence, cooperation and love, emerged from the harsh Darwinian struggle in the past, and how these natural powers may continue to evolve in the future.

Richard Leakey's personal account of his fossil hunting and landmark discoveries at Lake Turkana, his reassessment of human prehistory based on new evidence and analytic techniques, and his profound pondering of how we became "human" and what being "human" really means.

It has been shown through a variety of independent studies that members of the family Hyaenidae are consummate collectors of bones at their respective dens. This in turn has been inferred upon the fossil record suggesting hyaenids as the source for a number of fossil bearing cave deposits, especially in southern Africa. The question of how to differentiate between collections made by hyaenids, hominids and other bone collecting species has also been a highly published field of study. Here we take an in depth look at the bone collecting behaviours of the three extant bone collecting members of the family Hyaenidae, Crocuta crocuta, Parahyaena brunnea and Hyaena hyaena. Paying particular attention to distinctive carnivore gnawing and fragmentation patterns left upon the bones collected, we find that not only are there differences between the species of hyaenids but also within the species. It would appear that the environmental conditions at the time of collection have a greater than anticipated impact upon the taphonomic signatures left behind by the various hyaenid species. We conclude that for any study of fossil assemblages, one must take a multi-disciplined approach and examine not only the carnivore damage, but also palaeoenvironmental factors in determining the probable collector.