Download or read book Across Atlantic Ice written by Dennis J. Stanford and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2012-02-28 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who were the first humans to inhabit North America? According to the now familiar story, mammal hunters entered the continent some 12,000 years ago via a land bridge that spanned the Bering Sea. Distinctive stone tools belonging to the Clovis culture established the presence of these early New World people. But are the Clovis tools Asian in origin? Drawing from original archaeological analysis, paleoclimatic research, and genetic studies, noted archaeologists Dennis J. Stanford and Bruce A. Bradley challenge the old narrative and, in the process, counter traditional—and often subjective—approaches to archaeological testing for historical relatedness. The authors apply rigorous scholarship to a hypothesis that places the technological antecedents of Clovis in Europe and posits that the first Americans crossed the Atlantic by boat and arrived earlier than previously thought. Supplying archaeological and oceanographic evidence to support this assertion, the book dismantles the old paradigm while persuasively linking Clovis technology with the culture of the Solutrean people who occupied France and Spain more than 20,000 years ago.

Download or read book First Steps written by Jeremy DeSilva and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Science News Best Science Book of the Year: “A brilliant, fun, and scientifically deep stroll through history, anatomy, and evolution.” —Agustín Fuentes, PhD, author of The Creative Spark: How Imagination Made Humans Exceptional Winner of the W.W. Howells Book Prize from the American Anthropological Association Blending history, science, and culture, this highly engaging evolutionary story explores how walking on two legs allowed humans to become the planet’s dominant species. Humans are the only mammals to walk on two rather than four legs—a locomotion known as bipedalism. We strive to be upstanding citizens, honor those who stand tall and proud, and take a stand against injustices. We follow in each other’s footsteps and celebrate a child’s beginning to walk. But why, and how, exactly, did we take our first steps? And at what cost? Bipedalism has its drawbacks: giving birth is more difficult and dangerous; our running speed is much slower than other animals; and we suffer a variety of ailments, from hernias to sinus problems. In First Steps, paleoanthropologist Jeremy DeSilva explores how unusual and extraordinary this seemingly ordinary ability is. A seven-million-year journey to the very origins of the human lineage, this book shows how upright walking was a gateway to many of the other attributes that make us human—from our technological abilities to our thirst for exploration and our use of language—and may have laid the foundation for our species’ traits of compassion, empathy, and altruism. Moving from developmental psychology labs to ancient fossil sites throughout Africa and Eurasia, DeSilva brings to life our adventure walking on two legs. Includes photographs “A book that strides confidently across this complex terrain, laying out what we know about how walking works, who started doing it, and when.” —The New York Times Book Review “DeSilva makes a solid scientific case with an expert history of human and ape evolution.” —Kirkus Reviews “A brisk jaunt through the history of bipedalism . . . will leave readers both informed and uplifted.” —Publishers Weekly “Breezy popular science at its best.” —Science News

Download or read book The Origin of Our Species written by Chris Stringer and published by Penguin Books. This book was released on 2012 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chris Stringer's bestselling The Origin of our Species tackles the big questions in the ongoing debate about the beginnings of human life on earth. Do all humans originate from Africa? How did we spread across the globe? Are we separate from Neanderthals, or do some of us actually have their genes? When did humans become 'modern' - are traits such as art, technology, language, ritual and belief unique to us? Has human evolution stopped, or are we still evolving? Chris Stringer has been involved in much of the crucial research into the origins of humanity, and here he draws on a wealth of evidence - from fossils and archaeology to Charles Darwin's theories and the mysteries of ancient DNA - to reveal the definitive story of where we came from, how we lived, how we got here and who we are. 'A new way of defining us and our place in history' Sunday Times 'When it comes to human evolution Chris Stringer is as close to the horse's mouth as it gets ... The Origin of Our Species should be the one-stop source on the subject. Read it now' BBC Focus 'Britain's foremost expert on human evolution ... you need a primer to make sense of the story so far. Here is that book' Guardian 'Combines anecdote and speculation with crisp explanation of the latest science in the study of the first humans ... an engaging read' New Scientist Chris Stringer is Britain's foremost expert on human origins and works in the Department of Palaeontology at the Natural History Museum. He also currently directs the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain project, aimed at reconstructing the first detailed history of how and when Britain was occupied by early humans. His previous books include African Exodus- The Origins of Modern Humanity, The Complete World of Human Evolutionand most recently, Homo Britannicus, which was shortlisted for the Royal Society Science Book of the Year in 2007.

Download or read book The First Human written by Ann Gibbons and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2007-04-10 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this dynamic account, award-winning science writer Ann Gibbons chronicles an extraordinary quest to answer the most primal of questions: When and where was the dawn of humankind?Following four intensely competitive international teams of scientists in a heated race to find the “missing link”–the fossil of the earliest human ancestor–Gibbons ventures to Africa, where she encounters a fascinating array of fossil hunters: Tim White, the irreverent Californian who discovered the partial skeleton of a primate that lived 4.4 million years ago in Ethiopia; French paleontologist Michel Brunet, who uncovers a skull in Chad that could date the beginnings of humankind to seven million years ago; and two other groups–one led by zoologist Meave Leakey, the other by British geologist Martin Pickford and his French paleontologist partner, Brigitte Senut–who enter the race with landmark discoveries of their own. Through scrupulous research and vivid first-person reporting, The First Human reveals the perils and the promises of fossil hunting on a grand competitive scale.

Download or read book Catching Fire written by Richard Wrangham and published by Profile Books. This book was released on 2010-08-06 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this stunningly original book, Richard Wrangham argues that it was cooking that caused the extraordinary transformation of our ancestors from apelike beings to Homo erectus. At the heart of Catching Fire lies an explosive new idea: the habit of eating cooked rather than raw food permitted the digestive tract to shrink and the human brain to grow, helped structure human society, and created the male-female division of labour. As our ancestors adapted to using fire, humans emerged as "the cooking apes". Covering everything from food-labelling and overweight pets to raw-food faddists, Catching Fire offers a startlingly original argument about how we came to be the social, intelligent, and sexual species we are today. "This notion is surprising, fresh and, in the hands of Richard Wrangham, utterly persuasive ... Big, new ideas do not come along often in evolution these days, but this is one." -Matt Ridley, author of Genome

Download or read book Science and Creationism written by National Academy of Sciences (U.S.) and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edition of Science and Creationism summarizes key aspects of several of the most important lines of evidence supporting evolution. It describes some of the positions taken by advocates of creation science and presents an analysis of these claims. This document lays out for a broader audience the case against presenting religious concepts in science classes. The document covers the origin of the universe, Earth, and life; evidence supporting biological evolution; and human evolution. (Contains 31 references.) (CCM)

Download or read book The People s Peking Man written by Sigrid Schmalzer and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-05-15 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1920s an international team of scientists and miners unearthed the richest evidence of human evolution the world had ever seen: Peking Man. After the communist revolution of 1949, Peking Man became a prominent figure in the movement to bring science to the people. In a new state with twin goals of crushing “superstition” and establishing a socialist society, the story of human evolution was the first lesson in Marxist philosophy offered to the masses. At the same time, even Mao’s populist commitment to mass participation in science failed to account for the power of popular culture—represented most strikingly in legends about the Bigfoot-like Wild Man—to reshape ideas about human nature. The People’s Peking Man is a skilled social history of twentieth-century Chinese paleoanthropology and a compelling cultural—and at times comparative—history of assumptions and debates about what it means to be human. By focusing on issues that push against the boundaries of science and politics, The People’s Peking Man offers an innovative approach to modern Chinese history and the history of science.

Download or read book Sapiens written by Yuval Noah Harari and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2015-02-10 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Readers’ Pick: Top 100 Books of the 21st Century New York Times Bestseller A Summer Reading Pick for President Barack Obama, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution—a #1 international bestseller—that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human.” One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one—homo sapiens. What happened to the others? And what may happen to us? Most books about the history of humanity pursue either a historical or a biological approach, but Dr. Yuval Noah Harari breaks the mold with this highly original book that begins about 70,000 years ago with the appearance of modern cognition. From examining the role evolving humans have played in the global ecosystem to charting the rise of empires, Sapiens integrates history and science to reconsider accepted narratives, connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and examine specific events within the context of larger ideas. Dr. Harari also compels us to look ahead, because over the last few decades humans have begun to bend laws of natural selection that have governed life for the past four billion years. We are acquiring the ability to design not only the world around us, but also ourselves. Where is this leading us, and what do we want to become? Featuring 27 photographs, 6 maps, and 25 illustrations/diagrams, this provocative and insightful work is sure to spark debate and is essential reading for aficionados of Jared Diamond, James Gleick, Matt Ridley, Robert Wright, and Sharon Moalem.

Download or read book Understanding Climate s Influence on Human Evolution written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2010-04-17 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The hominin fossil record documents a history of critical evolutionary events that have ultimately shaped and defined what it means to be human, including the origins of bipedalism; the emergence of our genus Homo; the first use of stone tools; increases in brain size; and the emergence of Homo sapiens, tools, and culture. The Earth's geological record suggests that some evolutionary events were coincident with substantial changes in African and Eurasian climate, raising the possibility that critical junctures in human evolution and behavioral development may have been affected by the environmental characteristics of the areas where hominins evolved. Understanding Climate's Change on Human Evolution explores the opportunities of using scientific research to improve our understanding of how climate may have helped shape our species. Improved climate records for specific regions will be required before it is possible to evaluate how critical resources for hominins, especially water and vegetation, would have been distributed on the landscape during key intervals of hominin history. Existing records contain substantial temporal gaps. The book's initiatives are presented in two major research themes: first, determining the impacts of climate change and climate variability on human evolution and dispersal; and second, integrating climate modeling, environmental records, and biotic responses. Understanding Climate's Change on Human Evolution suggests a new scientific program for international climate and human evolution studies that involve an exploration initiative to locate new fossil sites and to broaden the geographic and temporal sampling of the fossil and archeological record; a comprehensive and integrative scientific drilling program in lakes, lake bed outcrops, and ocean basins surrounding the regions where hominins evolved and a major investment in climate modeling experiments for key time intervals and regions that are critical to understanding human evolution.

Download or read book The Ancient Human Occupation of Britain written by Nick Ashton and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2010-11-12 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ancient Human Occupation of Britain Project (AHOB) funded by the Leverhulme Trust began in 2001 and brought together researchers from a range of disciplines with the aim of investigating the record of human presence in Britain from the earliest occupation until the end of the last Ice Age, about 12,000 years ago. Study of changes in climate, landscape and biota over the last million years provides the environmental backdrop to understanding human presence and absence together with the development of new technologies. This book brings together the multidisciplinary work of the project. The chapters present the results of new fieldwork and research on old sites from museum collections using an array of new analytical techniques. - Features an up-to-date treatment of the record of human presence in the British Isles during the Palaeolithic period (700,000 - 10,000 years before present) - Takes multidisciplinary approach that includes archaeology, geochemistry, geochronology, stratigraphy and sedimentology - Coincides with the culmination of the AHOB project in 2010, providing a benchmark statement on the record of human occupation in Britain that can be utilized and tested by future research

Download or read book The Journey of Man written by Spencer Wells and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-10-31 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Around 60,000 years ago, a man—genetically identical to us—lived in Africa. Every person alive today is descended from him. How did this real-life Adam wind up as the father of us all? What happened to the descendants of other men who lived at the same time? And why, if modern humans share a single prehistoric ancestor, do we come in so many sizes, shapes, and races? Examining the hidden secrets of human evolution in our genetic code, Spencer Wells reveals how developments in the revolutionary science of population genetics have made it possible to create a family tree for the whole of humanity. Replete with marvelous anecdotes and remarkable information, from the truth about the real Adam and Eve to the way differing racial types emerged, The Journey of Man is an enthralling, epic tour through the history and development of early humankind.

Download or read book Gods and Robots written by Adrienne Mayor and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-21 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the story of how ancient cultures envisioned artificial life, automata, self-moving devices and human enhancements, sharing insights into how the mythologies of the past related to and shaped ancient machine innovations.

Download or read book Kennewick Man written by Douglas W. Owsley and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2014-09-10 with total page 1213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Almost from the day of its accidental discovery along the banks of the Columbia River in Washington State in July 1996, the ancient skeleton of Kennewick Man has garnered significant attention from scientific and Native American communities as well as public media outlets. This volume represents a collaboration among physical and forensic anthropologists, archaeologists, geologists, and geochemists, among others, and presents the results of the scientific study of this remarkable find. Scholars address a range of topics, from basic aspects of osteological analysis to advanced ?research focused on Kennewick Man’s origins and his relationships to other populations. Interdisciplinary studies, comprehensive data collection and preservation, and applications of technology are all critical to telling Kennewick Man’s story. Kennewick Man: The Scientific Investigation of an Ancient American Skeleton is written for a discerning professional audience, yet the absorbing story of the remains, their discovery, their curation history, and the extensive amount of detail that skilled scientists have been able to glean from them will appeal to interested and informed general readers. These bones lay silent for nearly nine thousand years, but now, with the aid of dedicated researchers, they can speak about the life of one of the earliest human occupants of North America.

Download or read book The Earliest Europeans written by Robert Hosfield and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2020-05-31 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Earliest Europeans explores the early origins of man in Europe through the perspective of ‘a year in the life’: how hominins in the Lower Palaeolithic coped with the year-round practical challenges of mid-latitude Europe with its distinctive temperatures, seasonality patterns, and available resources. Current research has provided increasingly robust archaeological and Quaternary Science records, but there are ongoing uncertainties as to both the earliest Europeans’ specific survival strategies and behaviours, and the character of their dispersals into Europe. In short, how sustained and ‘successful’ were the individual phases of European occupation by Lower Palaeolithic hominins and what sorts of ‘human’ where they? Using a season-by-season chapter structure to explore, for example, the contrasting demands and opportunities of winter versus summer survival, Hosfield explores how foods and other resources would vary across the four seasons in quantity and quality, and the resulting implications for hominin behaviours. Text boxes provide the background on key issues, and the book draws on a range of supporting evidence including technology (e.g. the nature of Lower Palaeolithic stone tools; the evidence for organic tools), hominin life history (e.g. the length of infant dependency; the nature of ‘parenting’; the implications of different mating models; the Social Brain Hypothesis), cognitive studies (e.g. brain scanning research into possible planning capabilities) and potential bias in the archaeological record (e.g. in terms of what is and isn’t preserved). By testing the likelihood of different scenarios by comparing short-term, site-based insights with long-term, regional trends, Hosfield is able to out forward ideas on how our earliest European ancestors survived and what their lives were like.

Download or read book The Dawn of Human Culture written by Richard G. Klein and published by Wiley. This book was released on 2002-11-06 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bold new theory on what sparked the "big bang" of human culture The abrupt emergence of human culture over a stunningly short period continues to be one of the great enigmas of human evolution. This compelling book introduces a bold new theory on this unsolved mystery. Author Richard Klein reexamines the archaeological evidence and brings in new discoveries in the study of the human brain. These studies detail the changes that enabled humans to think and behave in far more sophisticated ways than before, resulting in the incredibly rapid evolution of new skills. Richard Klein has been described as "the premier anthropologist in the country today" by Evolutionary Anthropology. Here, he and coauthor Blake Edgar shed new light on the full story of a truly fascinating period of evolution. Richard G. Klein, PhD (Palo Alto, CA), is a Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University. He is the author of the definitive academic book on the subject of the origins of human culture, The Human Career. Blake Edgar (San Francisco, CA) is the coauthor of the very successful From Lucy to Language, with Dr. Donald Johanson. He has written extensively for Discover, GEO, and numerous other magazines.

Download or read book The Dawn of Everything written by David Graeber and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2021-11-09 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A dramatically new understanding of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution—from the development of agriculture and cities to the origins of the state, democracy, and inequality—and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation. For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike—either free and equal innocents, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a conservative reaction to powerful critiques of European society posed by Indigenous observers and intellectuals. Revisiting this encounter has startling implications for how we make sense of human history today, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery, and civilization itself. Drawing on pathbreaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we learn to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive what’s really there. If humans did not spend 95 percent of their evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing all that time? If agriculture, and cities, did not mean a plunge into hierarchy and domination, then what kinds of social and economic organization did they lead to? The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of human history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful, hopeful possibilities, than we tend to assume. The Dawn of Everything fundamentally transforms our understanding of the human past and offers a path toward imagining new forms of freedom, new ways of organizing society. This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual range, animated by curiosity, moral vision, and a faith in the power of direct action. Includes Black-and-White Illustrations

Download or read book The History of Our Tribe written by Barbara Welker and published by Open SUNY Textbooks. This book was released on 2017-01-31 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Where did we come from? What were our ancestors like? Why do we differ from other animals? How do scientists trace and construct our evolutionary history? The Evolution of Our Tribe: Hominini provides answers to these questions and more. The book explores the field of paleoanthropology past and present. Beginning over 65 million years ago, Welker traces the evolution of our species, the environments and selective forces that shaped our ancestors, their physical and cultural adaptations, and the people and places involved with their discovery and study. It is designed as a textbook for a course on Human Evolution but can also serve as an introductory text for relevant sections of courses in Biological or General Anthropology or general interest. It is both a comprehensive technical reference for relevant terms, theories, methods, and species and an overview of the people, places, and discoveries that have imbued paleoanthropology with such fascination, romance, and mystery.