Download or read book Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Oldowan written by Erella Hovers and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-03-08 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An understanding of the uniquely human behavior of stone tool making tackles questions about hominins’ ability to culturally transmit and expand their base of social and practical knowledge and their cognitive capacities for advanced planning. The appearance of stone tools has often been viewed as a threshold event, impacting directly and profoundly the later course of cultural and social evolution. Alternatively, it has been understood as a prelude to significant succeeding changes in behavioral, social and biological evolution of hominins. This book presents a series of recent enquiries into the technological and adaptive significance of Oldowan stone tools. While anchored in a long research tradition, these studies rely on recent discoveries and innovative analyses of the archaeological record of ca. 2.6–1.0 million years ago in Africa and Eurasia, dealing with the earliest lithic industries as manifestations of hominin adaptations and as expressions of hominin cognitive abilities.
Download or read book The Emergence of the Acheulean in East Africa and Beyond written by Rosalia Gallotti and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-08-17 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume presents current archaeological research and data from the major early Acheulean sites in East Africa, and addresses three main areas of focus; 1) the tempo and mode of technological changes that led to the emergence of the Acheulean in East Africa; 2) new approaches to lithic collections, including lithic technology analyses; and 3) the debated coexistence of the Developed Oldowan and the early Acheulean. The chapters are the proceedings from the workshop titled “The Emergence of the Acheulean in East Africa”, held at University of Rome “La Sapienza” on September 12–13, 2013. The aim of the workshop was to bring together researchers currently working in this field in East Africa, in order to define the characteristics and the evolution of the early Acheulean. The volume was expanded with some chapters on the preceding Oldowan, on the African fauna and on paleovegetation, on the Acheulean in Asia and, eventually, on the Acheulean in Europe. The book is addressed to the scientific community, and will be of interest to researchers, graduate students, archaeologists, paleontologists, and paleoanthropologists. This volume is dedicated to the memory of Jean Chavaillon (March 25, 1925 - December 21, 2013), the leading archaeologist and Quaternary geologist who researched with unfailing enthusiasm the earliest human cultures and directed from 1965 to 1995 the French Archaeological Mission at Melka Kunture.
Download or read book The Oldowan written by Kathy Diane Schick and published by Stone Age Institute Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The earliest traces of proto-human technology emerged over 2.5 million years ago on the African continent. Called the Oldowan after the famous site of Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, these technologies herald a major evolutionary shift in the human lineage. The Oldowan: Case Studies into the Earliest Stone Age provides a critical look at early archaeological sites and their evidence. This volume also shows how a range of probing, multidisciplinary, experimental investigations - including experimental tool-making, comparative studies of ape technologies, biomechanical analysis, and PET studies of brain activity - help us evaluate this tantalizing prehistoric evidence and appreciate its relevance to human evolution.
Download or read book Human Prehistory written by Deborah Barsky and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-18 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a concise overview of human prehistory. It shows how an understanding of the distant past offers new perspectives on present-day challenges facing our species - and how we can build a sustainable future for all life on planet Earth. Deborah Barsky tells a fascinating story of the long-term evolution of human culture and provides up-to-date examples from the archaeological record to illustrate the different phases of human history. Barsky also presents a refreshing and original analysis about issues plaguing modern globalized society, such as racism, institutionalized religion, the digital revolution, human migrations, terrorism, and war. Written in an accessible and engaging style, Human Prehistory is aimed at an introductory-level audience. Students will acquire a comprehensive understanding of the interdisciplinary, scientific study of human prehistory, as well as the theoretical interpretations of human evolutionary processes that are used in contemporary archaeological practice. Definitions, tables, and illustrations accompany the text.
Download or read book Evolution of the Human Diet written by Peter S. Ungar and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2007 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher description
Download or read book Origins of Human Innovation and Creativity written by Scott A. Elias and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2012-12-31 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Innovation and creativity are two of the key characteristics that distinguish cultural transmission from biological transmission. This book explores a number of questions concerning the nature and timing of the origins of human creativity. What were the driving factors in the development of new technologies? What caused the stasis in stone tool technological innovation in the Early Pleistocene? Were there specific regions and episodes of enhanced technological development, or did it occur at a steady pace where ancestral humans lived? The authors are archaeologists who address these questions, armed with data from ancient artefacts such as shell beads used as jewelry, primitive musical instruments, and sophisticated techniques required to fashion certain kinds of stone into tools. Providing ‘state of art’ discussions that step back from the usual archaeological publications that focus mainly on individual site discoveries, this book presents the full picture on how and why creativity in Middle to Late Pleistocene archeology/anthropology evolved. Gives a full, original and multidisciplinary perspective on how and why creativity evolved in the Middle to Late Pleistocene Enhances our understanding of the big leaps forward in creativity at certain times Assesses the intellectual creativity of Homo erectus, H. neanderthalensis, and H. sapiens via their artefacts
Download or read book Human Beginnings in South Africa written by H. J. Deacon and published by New Africa Books. This book was released on 1999 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Stone Age is now beginning to be recognised as vital in establishing who we are and where we have come from. This period has long been neglected.
Download or read book The First Peoples of Oman Palaeolithic Archaeology of the Nejd Plateau written by Jeffrey I. Rose and published by Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2019-07-31 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The archaeological evidence presented in this work encompasses the cultural remains of over a million years of successive human occupation of Nejd Plateau, Dhofar, from the Lower Palaeolithic to the Late Palaeolithic. This volumes suggests a fundamental reconsideration of the role of Southern Arabia in the origin and dispersal of our species.
Download or read book World Prehistory and Archaeology written by Michael Chazan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-04-30 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World Prehistory and Archaeology provides an integrated discussion of world prehistory and archaeological methods, presenting an up-to-date perspective on what we know about our human prehistory and how we come to know it. A cornerstone of World Prehistory and Archaeology is the discussion of prehistory as an active process of discovery. Methodological issues are addressed throughout the text to engage readers. Archaeological methods are introduced, following which the question of how we know the past is discussed. This fifth edition involves readers in the current state of archaeological research, revealing how archaeologists work and interpret what they find. Through the coverage of various new research, author Michael Chazan shows that archaeology is truly a global discipline. In this edition there is a particular emphasis on the relevance of archaeology to contemporary society and to the major issues that face us today. This edition will provide students with a necessary grounding in the fundamentals of archaeology, before engaging them with the work that goes into understanding world prehistory. They will be given the tools to place this knowledge in the context of the modern world, acknowledging the relevance of archaeology to the concerns of today.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of African Archaeology written by Peter Mitchell and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-07-04 with total page 1080 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Africa has the longest and arguably the most diverse archaeological record of any of the continents. It is where the human lineage first evolved and from where Homo sapiens spread across the rest of the world. Later, it witnessed novel experiments in food-production and unique trajectories to urbanism and the organisation of large communities that were not always structured along strictly hierarchical lines. Millennia of engagement with societies in other parts of the world confirm Africa's active participation in the construction of the modern world, while the richness of its history, ethnography, and linguistics provide unusually powerful opportunities for constructing interdisciplinary narratives of Africa's past. This Handbook provides a comprehensive and up-to-date synthesis of African archaeology, covering the entirety of the continent's past from the beginnings of human evolution to the archaeological legacy of European colonialism. As well as covering almost all periods and regions of the continent, it includes a mixture of key methodological and theoretical issues and debates, and situates the subject's contemporary practice within the discipline's history and the infrastructural challenges now facing its practitioners. Bringing together essays on all these themes from over seventy contributors, many of them living and working in Africa, it offers a highly accessible, contemporary account of the subject for use by scholars and students of not only archaeology, but also history, anthropology, and other disciplines.
Download or read book Anthropology written by Raymond Scupin and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2019-12-20 with total page 705 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Integrating historical, biological, archaeological, and applied approaches with ethnographic data from around the world, Anthropology: A Global Perspective is founded on four essential themes: the diversity of human societies; the similarities that tie all humans together; the interconnections between the sciences and humanities; and a new theme addressing psychological essentialism.
Download or read book Landscapes of Human Evolution written by James Cole and published by Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2020-02-13 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fourteen papers are presented here in honour of John Gowlett. John has a wide range of research interests primarily focused on the human genus Homo and is a world leader in understanding the cognitive and behavioural preconditions necessary for the emergence of complex behaviours such as language and art.
Download or read book On Human Nature written by Michel Tibayrenc and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2016-09-12 with total page 814 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On Human Nature: Biology, Psychology, Ethics, Politics, and Religion covers the present state of knowledge on human diversity and its adaptative significance through a broad and eclectic selection of representative chapters. This transdisciplinary work brings together specialists from various fields who rarely interact, including geneticists, evolutionists, physicians, ethologists, psychoanalysts, anthropologists, sociologists, theologians, historians, linguists, and philosophers. Genomic diversity is covered in several chapters dealing with biology, including the differences in men and apes and the genetic diversity of mankind. Top specialists, known for their open mind and broad knowledge have been carefully selected to cover each topic. The book is therefore at the crossroads between biology and human sciences, going beyond classical science in the Popperian sense. The book is accessible not only to specialists, but also to students, professors, and the educated public. Glossaries of specialized terms and general public references help nonspecialists understand complex notions, with contributions avoiding technical jargon. Provides greater understanding of diversity and population structure and history, with crucial foundational knowledge needed to conduct research in a variety of fields, such as genetics and disease Includes three robust sections on biological, psychological, and ethical aspects, with cross-fertilization and reciprocal references between the three sections Contains contributions by leading experts in their respective fields working under the guidance of internationally recognized and highly respected editors
Download or read book The Primate Origins of Human Nature written by Carel P. Van Schaik and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-01-22 with total page 543 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Primate Origins of Human Nature (Volume 3 in The Foundations of Human Biology series) blends several elements from evolutionary biology as applied to primate behavioral ecology and primate psychology, classical physical anthropology and evolutionary psychology of humans. However, unlike similar books, it strives to define the human species relative to our living and extinct relatives, and thus highlights uniquely derived human features. The book features a truly multi-disciplinary, multi-theory, and comparative species approach to subjects not usually presented in textbooks focused on humans, such as the evolution of culture, life history, parenting, and social organization.
Download or read book The Prehistory of Uganda Protectorate written by T. P. O'Brien and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-08-14 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1939, this book presents the results of an eighteen-month study by T. P. O'Brien into the prehistory of Uganda. The text is illustrated with line drawings and photographs of stone hand axes from the various cultures who inhabited the region.
Download or read book Archaeology at the Millennium written by Gary M. Feinman and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-10-17 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book an internationally distinguished roster of contributors considers the state of the art of the discipline of archaeology at the turn of the 21st century and charts an ambitious agenda for the future. The chapters address a wide range of topics including, paradigms, practice, and relevance of the discipline; paleoanthropology; fully modern humans; holocene hunter-gatherers; the transition to food and craft production; social inequality; warfare; state and empire formation; and the uneasy relationship between classical and anthropological archaeology.
Download or read book Squeezing Minds From Stones written by Karenleigh A. Overmann and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-04 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cognitive archaeology is a relatively new interdisciplinary science that uses cognitive and psychological models to explain archeological artifacts like stone tools, figurines, and art. Squeezing Minds From Stones is a collection of essays from early pioneers in the field, like archaeologists Thomas Wynn and Iain Davidson, and evolutionary primatologist William McGrew, to 'up and coming' newcomers like Shelby Putt, Ceri Shipton, Mark Moore, James Cole, Natalie Uomini, and Lana Ruck. Their essays address a wide variety of cognitive archaeology topics, including the value of experimental archaeology, primate archaeology, the intent of ancient tool makers, and how they may have lived and thought.
