This book summarizes the work of several decades, culminating in a revolutionary model of recent human evolution. It challenges current consensus views fundamentally, presenting in its support a mass of evidence, much of which has never been assembled before. This evidence derives primarily from archaeology, paleoanthropology, genetics, clinical psychology, neurosciences, linguistics and cognitive sciences. No even remotely similar thesis of recent human origins has ever been published, but some of the key elements of this book have been published by the author in major refereed journals in the last two years. Its implications are far-reaching and profoundly affect the way we perceive ourselves as a species. This book about what it means to be human is heavily referenced, with a bibliography of many hundreds of scientific entries.

This book summarizes the work of several decades, culminating in a revolutionary model of recent human evolution. It challenges current consensus views fundamentally, presenting in its support a mass of evidence, much of which has never been assembled before. This evidence derives primarily from archaeology, paleoanthropology, genetics, clinical psychology, neurosciences, linguistics and cognitive sciences. No even remotely similar thesis of recent human origins has ever been published, but some of the key elements of this book have been published by the author in major refereed journals in the last two years. Its implications are far-reaching and profoundly affect the way we perceive ourselves as a species. This book about what it means to be human is heavily referenced, with a bibliography of many hundreds of scientific entries.

Human behavior is of fundamental importance not only to the individual, but to the community and all of humanity. Now that humans have acquired the capability of interfering with or destroying living systems, it is of great consequence to the planet itself. With this in mind, the book Understanding Human Behavior: Theories, Patterns, and Developments is the result of inviting several leading innovative thinkers to consider how they could contribute to a discussion of understanding human behavior. Their perspectives differ in approach and focus, but they all confirm the great complexity of the topic, and they show that science has hardly scratched its surface. The eight chapters of this volume are dominated by considerations of how the behavior of humans began and developed in the distant past, during the evolution of early humans. In human sociology, the term behavior refers to the range of physical action/reaction and observable emotion associated with individuals today, as well as human society as a whole. But this describes only effects or symptoms of a condition pertaining to today, without considering how it came about, i.e., its original causes. This is examined in several chapters of this book, together with apparent historical trajectories of human behavior in an attempt to explore its etiology. Other contributions investigate more specific aspects of human behavior, including those recorded in history and even in modern times. In summary, this volume provides a well-rounded investigation into current cutting-edge understanding of the origins and nature of human behavior.

This book examines the psychology of human behaviour which is dominated by the topic of how the extant behaviour of modern humans may have developed, thus establishing an empirical framework for comprehending human ethology. An aetiology of human behaviour clearly has to be grounded in an understanding of its historical development through time, which is an aspect that has so far not received adequate consideration in scientific literature, be it that of psychology, psychiatry, human evolution, neuroscience, cognitive science, or paleoanthropology. The distinctly interdisciplinary format of this book provides an inkling into the complexity of dealing with human behaviour, and the reasons for its complexity relative to the behaviour of other animal species.

Gudenus Cave summarises the author's 60 years of research (1962 to 2021) at the earliest human occupation site known in Austria. The cave had been excavated in 1883-84 without separation of sediment layers, and subsequent endeavours to clarify its stratigraphy and dating have failed. The book describes the strategies and methods of studying a Pleistocene cave site that had been regarded as fully excavated, and their long-term applications. A significant part of the fieldwork was conducted before 1967, but the use of analytical processes and literature review continued for several decades after that. Through sustained interrogation of the site's clear palynology and lithic typology, the volume succeeds in clarifying the cave's stratigraphical sequence and placing its several Palaeolithic occupations chronologically. This has significant effects on our understanding of the local Palaeolithic sequence that has been the subject of various controversies. These are discussed in the concluding chapter, which places Gudenus Cave first within its Austrian context and then into the wider picture. The book thus shows that intensive archaeological research can reinstate the scientific importance of a site even after it has been declared bereft of all sediment.

Papers from the International Cupule Conference held in Cochabamba, central Bolivia, from 17 to 23 July 2007. Contents: The first cupule conference: introduction and summary (Robert G. Bednarik); 1) Estimating the age of cupules (Robert G. Bednarik); 2) Cupules in Qatar: potential for determining minimum ages (Marvin W. Rowe and Brandon Chance); 3) Lower Palaeolithic cupules obtained from the excavations at Daraki-Chattan in India from 2002 to 2006 (Giriraj Kumar); 4) Relevance of site lithology and taphonomic logic to cupules (Robert G. Bednarik); 5) Discriminating between cupules and other rock markings (Robert G. Bednarik); 6) Robert G. Bednarik: The technology of cupule making (Robert G. Bednarik);

This collection of papers from the 15th UISPP congress seek to integrate perspectives from cognitive evolution and from the study of palaeoart, bringing together the latest key evidence from both disciplines. Different approaches include a study of the geometry of palaeoart, positing highly sophisticated spatial awareness among early hominins, neurovisual connections, behavioural studies, through the analysis of tools used in rock art production, semiotics, and two more conventional reports from excavations in India.

This book contains a series of selected papers presented at two symposia entitled 'Scientific study of rock art', one held in the IFRAO Congress of Rock Art in La Paz, Bolivia, in June 2012, the other held in the IFRAO Congress in Caceres, Spain, in September 2015; as well as some invited papers from leading rock art scientists. The core topic of the book is the presentation of scientific approaches to the materiality of rock art, ranging from recording and sampling methods to data analyses. These share the fact that they provide means of testing hypotheses and/or of finding trends in the data which can be used as independent sources of evidence to support specific interpretations. The issue of the materiality of visual productions of the distant past, which in archaeological theory has attracted much attention recently and has stimulated much conceptual debate, is addressed through a variety of scientific approaches, including fieldwork methods, laboratory work techniques and/or data analysis protocols. These, in turn, will provide new insights into human agency and people-image engagements through the study of rock art production, display and use.

The many hundreds of books and thousands of academic papers on the topic of Pleistocene (Ice Age) art are limited in their approach because they deal only with the early art of southwestern Europe. This is the first book to offer a comprehensive synthesis of the known Pleistocene palaeoart of six continents, a phenomenon that is in fact more numerous and older in other continents. It contemplates the origins of art in a balanced manner, based on reality rather than fantasies about cultural primacy. Its key findings challenge most previous perceptions in this field and literally re-write the discipline. Despite the eclectic format and its high academic standards, the book addresses the non-specialist as well as the specialist reader. It presents a panorama of the rich history of palaeoart, stretching back more than twenty times as long in time as the cave art of France and Spain. This abundance of evidence is harnessed in presenting a new hypothesis of how early humans began to form and express constructs of reality and thus created the ideational world in which they existed. It explains how art-producing behaviour began and the origins of how humans relate to the world consciously.