Before Modern Humans - New Perspectives on the African Stone Age (Paperback)

This fascinating volume, assessing Lower and Middle Pleistocene African prehistory, argues that the onset of the Middle Stone Age marks the origins of landscape use patterns resembling those of modern human foragers. Inaugurating a paradigm shift in our understanding of modern human behavior, Grant McCall argues that this transition-related to the origins of "home base" residential site use-occurred in mosaic fashion over the course of hundreds of thousands of years. He concludes by proposing a model of brain evolution driven by increasing subsistence diversity and intensity against the backdrop of larger populations and Pleistocene environmental unpredictability. McCall argues that human brain size did not arise to support the complex patterns of social behavior that pervade our lives today, but instead large human brains were co-opted for these purposes relatively late in prehistory, accounting for the striking archaeological record of the Upper Pleistocene.

General

Imprint:	Left Coast Press Inc
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	September 2016
Authors:	Grant S McCall
Dimensions:	229 x 152 x 27mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback
Pages:	390
ISBN-13:	978-1-61132-223-1
Categories:	Books > Humanities > Archaeology > General
LSN:	1-61132-223-5
Barcode:	9781611322231

Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate? Let us know about it.

Does this product have an incorrect or missing image? Send us a new image.

Is this product missing categories? Add more categories.

Review This Product

No reviews yet - be the first to create one!