Product Description

This book acknowledges and celebrates the contributions of Dr. Frederick S. Szalay to the field of Mammalian Evolutionary Morphology. Professor Szalay has published about 200 articles, six monographs, and six books on this subject. He is a strong advocate for biologically and evolutionarily meaningful character analysis, which, in his view, can be accomplished only through an integrated strategy of functional, adaptational, and historical analysis. The articles in this book employ this strategy to address a wide range of problems in mammalian and primate evolution.

'A tribute to Professor Frederick S. Szalay, and a state-of-the-art overview of many of his favorite topics in primate and mammalian morphology and paleontology.', Philip Gingerich, University of Michigan, USA

Product Description

This volume presents the cutting-edge research of leading scientists, re-examining the major debates in Neanderthal research with the use of innovative methods and exciting new theoretical approaches. Coverage includes the re-evaluation of Neanderthal anatomy, inferred adaptations and habitual activities, developmental patterns, phylogenetic relationships, and the Neanderthal extinction; new methods include computer tomography, 3D geometric morphometrics, ancient DNA and bioenergetics. The book offers fresh insight into both Neanderthals and modern humans.

Product Description

This is the first volume of its kind on prehistoric cultures of South Asia. The book brings together archaeologists, biological anthropologists, geneticists and linguists in order to provide a comprehensive account of the history and evolution of human populations residing in the subcontinent. New theories and methodologies presented provide new interpretations about the cultural history and evolution of populations in South Asia.

Product Description

The manipulation of fire by early hominins was a turning point in our evolutionary history. Once "domesticated", fire provided warmth, light and protection from predators, as well as enabling the exploitation of a new range of foods. This book presents the spatial analyses of burned and unburned flint items which provide evidence for the controlled use of fire at the 790,000-year-old Acheulian site of Gesher Benot Ya‘aqov (GBY). Clusters of burned flint, interpreted as the remnants of hearths, occur throughout the entire occupational sequence of the site. The fact that fire is repetitively used suggests that the knowledge of fire-making and the technological skills of the Acheulian hominins of Gesher Benot Ya‘aqov enabled them to set fire at will in diverse environmental settings.

"Control of fire marks a significant landmark in human evolution, providing warmth, protection, and many new foods. This important volume compellingly shows that fire was already in regular use some 800,000 years ago." John D. Speth, Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA

"A major contribution to knowledge of early human fire history, the finds at Gesher Benot Ya‘aqov add immensely to the picture of our early ancestors by the fireside. The authors present a painstaking and multidimensional scientific investigation which should convince even sceptics of the importance of fire use in prehistory" John A.J. Gowlett, British Academy Centenary Research Project, The Archaeology of the Social Brain, UK.

Product Description
Since the Western world first became aware of the existence of Neanderthals, this Pleistocene human has been a regular focus of interest among specialists and also among the general public. In fact, we know far more about Neanderthals than we do about any other extinct human population. Furthermore, over the past 150 years no other palaeospecies has been such a constant source of discussion and fierce debate among palaeoanthropologists and archaeologists. This book presents the status of our knowledge as well as the methods and techniques used to study this extinct population and it suggests perspectives for future research. ... Read more

Product Description
This book represents the first comprehensive attempt to bring to western scholarship the great advances made in Paleolithic archaeology and palaeoanthropology in the PeopleÂ’s Republic of China. The 15 chapters are devoted to a historical overview of past and recent studies, the development of chronological frameworks, the composition and stratigraphy of vertebrate fauna, the pongid and hominid palaeontological records, and Pleistocene prehistoric archaeology. Maps, illustrations and tables illustrate the materials presented here. ... Read more

Product Description
For the first two thirds of our evolutionary history, we hominins were restricted to Africa. Dating from about two million years ago, hominin fossils first appear in Eurasia. This volume addresses many of theissues surrounding this initial hominin intercontinental dispersal. Why did hominins first leave Africa in the early Pleistocene and not earlier? What do we know about the adaptations of the hominins that dispersed - their diet, locomotor abilities, cultural abilities? Was there a single dispersal event or several? Was the hominin dispersal part of a broader faunal expansion of African mammals northward? What route or routes did dispersing populations take? ... Read more

Product Description
Chapters: Lucy. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 50. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Lucy (also given a second (Amharic) name: dinqine, or Dinkenesh, meaning "you are beautiful" or "you are wonderful") is the common name of AL 288-1, several hundred pieces of bone representing about 40% of the skeleton of an individual Australopithecus afarensis. The specimen was discovered in 1974 at Hadar in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia's Afar Depression. Lucy is estimated to have lived 3.2 million years ago. The discovery of this hominid was significant as the skeleton shows evidence of small skull capacity akin to that of apes and of bipedal upright walk akin to that of humans, providing further evidence that bipedalism preceded increase in brain size in human evolution. In 1994, a new hominid, Ardi, was found, pushing back the earliest known hominid date to 4.4 million years ago, although details of this discovery were not published until October 2009. Side view of Lucy replicaFrench geologist, Maurice Taieb discovered the Hadar Formation in 1972. He then formed the International Afar Research Expedition (IARE), inviting Donald Johanson, an American anthropologist, and Founding Director of the Institute of Human Origins of Arizona State University, Mary Leakey, a British archaeologist, and Yves Coppens, a French born paleontologist now based at the Collège de France to co-direct the research. An expedition was formed with four American and seven French participants, and in the autumn of 1973 the team surveyed Hadar, Ethiopia for fossils and artifacts related to the origin of humans. In November 1973, near the end of the first field season, Johanson noticed a fossil of the upper end of a shinbone, which had been sliced slightly on the front. The lower end of a thighbone was found near to it, ...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=6595512 ... Read more

Product Description
High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Paleoanthropology, which combines the disciplines of paleontology and physical anthropology, is the study of ancient humans as found in fossil hominid evidence such as petrifacted bones and footprints.The science arguably began in the late 1800s when important discoveries occurred which led to the study of human evolution. The discovery of the Neanderthal in Germany, Thomas Huxley's Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature, and Charles Darwin's The Descent of Man were all important to early paleoanthropological research. ... Read more

Product Description
Anatomically modern human (AMH) or early modern human in paleoanthropology refers to early individuals of Homo sapiens with an appearance similar to that of modern humans. Anatomically modern humans evolved from archaic Homo sapiens in the Middle Paleolithic, about 200,000 years ago. The emergence of anatomically modern human marks the dawn of the subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens, i.e. the subspecies of Homo sapiens that includes all modern humans. The oldest fossil remains of anatomically modern humans are the Omo remains that date to 195,000 years ago. Other fossils include Homo sapiens idaltu from Herto in Ethiopia that are 150kya and remains from Skhul in Israel that are 90kya ... Read more

Product Description
The book has the character of a treatise on human evolution, well documented and advanced on the numerous topicshistory philosophy and life science a superb volume that is intended as a textbook for courses in human evolution at the upper division undergraduate or graduate level it is rich in detail and up to date in its cove understanding humans: introduction to physical anthropology and archaeology shows students how anthropologists and archaeologists go about their work as they study human evolution, living nonhuman primates, human adaptation and variation, the origin and dispersal of modern humans, food production, the first civilizations of the old and new worlds, and so much more. "At a glance" sections and "focus questions" help students better understand the material and study more effectively for exams. ... Read more

Product Description
This volume offers a comprehensive introduction to Paleoanthropology.
Introduction to Paleoanthropology is one of the very few Wikibooks to gain the coveted "Featured Books" rating by the administrators of Wikibooks, a project of Wikipedia, attesting to its highly developed and comprehensive nature.

This book can be used as an excellent High School or College level textbook, reference work, and/or a volume for general reading and learning.

Wikibooks is a collaborative book authoring website, where users from all over the world work together to write textbooks and other types of instructional books on many topics. It is a Wikimedia project, operated by the same group of people who run Wikipedia, the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikibooks went online on 10 July 2003. Wikibooks is a collection of open-content textbooks. Wikipedia attracts 683 million visitors annually reading over 10 million articles in 253 languages, comprising a combined total of over 1.74 billion words for all Wikipedias. The English Wikipedia edition passed the 2,000,000- article mark on September 9, 2007, and as of May 31, 2008 it had over 2,396,000 articles consisting of over 1,034,000,000 words.
This volume is published by Seven Treasures Publications, an independent book publisher unaffiliated with the Wikipedia Foundation, under the terms of the GNU license. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Convenient book form of Wikipedia material
This book, an Introduction to Paleoanthropology, is a printed version of a Featured Selection from Wikibooks, a project of Wikipedia. Having this nicely printed and bound version is so much more convenient than any other alternative, such as reading online.

For those who don't know, Wikibooks is the book publishing project of the Wikimedia Foundation, the same group running the ultra popular Wikipedia. I think this is the one of the first Wikibooks to make it into print.

If you're interested in the facinating subject of paleoanthropology (not to confused with plain vanilla paleontology or anthropology), this is one book you really want to add to your collection. ... Read more