The Emergence Of Humans

Author : Patricia J. Ash,David J. Robinson
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 282 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2011-09-20
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781119964247

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The Emergence of Humans by Patricia J. Ash,David J. Robinson Pdf

The Emergence of Humans is an accessible, informative introduction to the scientific study of human evolution. It takes the reader through time following the emergence of the modern human species Homo sapiens from primate roots. Acknowledging the controversy surrounding the interpretation of the fossil record, the authors present a balanced approach in an effort to do justice to different views. Each chapter covers a significant time period of evolutionary history and includes relevant techniques from other disciplines that have applications to the field of human evolution. Self-assessment questions linked to learning outcomes are provided for each chapter, together with further reading and reference to key sources in the primary literature. The book will thus be effective both as a conventional textbook and for independent study. Written by two authors with a wealth of teaching experience The Emergence of Humans will prove invaluable to students in the biological and natural sciences needing a clear, balanced introduction to the study of human evolution.

Author : National Research Council,Division on Earth and Life Studies,Board on Earth Sciences and Resources,Committee on the Earth System Context for Hominin Evolution
Publisher : National Academies Press
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 48,9 Mb
Release : 2010-04-17
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780309148382

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Understanding Climate's Influence on Human Evolution by National Research Council,Division on Earth and Life Studies,Board on Earth Sciences and Resources,Committee on the Earth System Context for Hominin Evolution Pdf

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.

Author : Fred H. Smith,James C. Ahern
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 585 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2013-07-09
Category : Science
ISBN : 9781118659908

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The Origins of Modern Humans by Fred H. Smith,James C. Ahern Pdf

This update to the award-winning The Origins of Modern Humans: A World Survey of the Fossil Evidence covers the most accepted common theories concerning the emergence of modern Homo sapiens adding fresh insight from top young scholars on the key new discoveries of the past 25 years. The Origins of Modern Humans: Biology Reconsidered allows field leaders to discuss and assess the assemblage of hominid fossil material in each region of the world during the Pleistocene epoch. It features new fossil and molecular evidence, such as the evolutionary inferences drawn from assessments of modern humans and large segments of the Neandertal genome. It also addresses the impact of digital imagery and the more sophisticated morphometrics that have entered the analytical fray since 1984. Beginning with a thoughtful introduction by the authors on modern human origins, the book offers such insightful chapter contributions as: Africa: The Cradle of Modern People Crossroads of the Old World: Late Hominin Evolution in Western Asia A River Runs through It: Modern Human Origins in East Asia Perspectives on the Origins of Modern Australians Modern Human Origins in Central Europe The Makers of the Early Upper Paleolithic in Western Eurasia Neandertal Craniofacial Growth and Development and Its Relevance for Modern Human Origins Energetics and the Origin of Modern Humans Understanding Human Cranial Variation in Light of Modern Human Origins The Relevance of Archaic Genomes to Modern Human Origins The Process of Modern Human Origins: The Evolutionary and Demographic Changes Giving Rise to Modern Humans The Paleobiology of Modern Human Emergence Elegant and thought provoking, The Origins of Modern Humans: Biology Reconsidered is an ideal read for students, grad students, and professionals in human evolution and paleoanthropology.

Author : National Academy of Sciences
Publisher : Sackler Colloquium
Page : 388 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 2007
Category : Science
ISBN : UOM:39015073872999

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In the Light of Evolution by National Academy of Sciences Pdf

The Arthur M. Sackler Colloquia of the National Academy of Sciences address scientific topics of broad and current interest, cutting across the boundaries of traditional disciplines. Each year, four or five such colloquia are scheduled, typically two days in length and international in scope. Colloquia are organized by a member of the Academy, often with the assistance of an organizing committee, and feature presentations by leading scientists in the field and discussions with a hundred or more researchers with an interest in the topic. Colloquia presentations are recorded and posted on the National Academy of Sciences Sackler colloquia website and published on CD-ROM. These Colloquia are made possible by a generous gift from Mrs. Jill Sackler, in memory of her husband, Arthur M. Sackler.

Author : Yuval Noah Harari
Publisher : Signal
Page : 512 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2014-10-28
Category : History
ISBN : 9780771038525

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Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari Pdf

NATIONAL BESTSELLER NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Destined to become a modern classic in the vein of Guns, Germs, and Steel, Sapiens is a lively, groundbreaking history of humankind told from a unique perspective. 100,000 years ago, at least six species of human inhabited the earth. Today there is just one. Us. Homo Sapiens. How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations, and human rights; to trust money, books, and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables, and consumerism? And what will our world be like in the millennia to come? In Sapiens, Dr. Yuval Noah Harari spans the whole of human history, from the very first humans to walk the earth to the radical -- and sometimes devastating -- breakthroughs of the Cognitive, Agricultural, and Scientific Revolutions. Drawing on insights from biology, anthropology, palaeontology, and economics, he explores how the currents of history have shaped our human societies, the animals and plants around us, and even our personalities. Have we become happier as history has unfolded? Can we ever free our behaviour from the heritage of our ancestors? And what, if anything, can we do to influence the course of the centuries to come? Bold, wide-ranging and provocative, Sapiens challenges everything we thought we knew about being human: our thoughts, our actions, our power...and our future.

Author : Paul Mellars
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Page : 576 pages
File Size : 42,8 Mb
Release : 1990
Category : Science
ISBN : 0801426146

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The Emergence of Modern Humans by Paul Mellars Pdf

Author : Charles Darwin
Publisher : Princeton University Press
Page : 960 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2008-09-02
Category : Science
ISBN : 1400820065

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The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex by Charles Darwin Pdf

In the current resurgence of interest in the biological basis of animal behavior and social organization, the ideas and questions pursued by Charles Darwin remain fresh and insightful. This is especially true of The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, Darwin's second most important work. This edition is a facsimile reprint of the first printing of the first edition (1871), not previously available in paperback. The work is divided into two parts. Part One marshals behavioral and morphological evidence to argue that humans evolved from other animals. Darwin shoes that human mental and emotional capacities, far from making human beings unique, are evidence of an animal origin and evolutionary development. Part Two is an extended discussion of the differences between the sexes of many species and how they arose as a result of selection. Here Darwin lays the foundation for much contemporary research by arguing that many characteristics of animals have evolved not in response to the selective pressures exerted by their physical and biological environment, but rather to confer an advantage in sexual competition. These two themes are drawn together in two final chapters on the role of sexual selection in humans. In their Introduction, Professors Bonner and May discuss the place of The Descent in its own time and relation to current work in biology and other disciplines.

Author : Adam Rutherford
Publisher : The Experiment, LLC
Page : 303 pages
File Size : 47,7 Mb
Release : 2020-05-12
Category : Science
ISBN : 9781615195329

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The Book of Humans: A Brief History of Culture, Sex, War, and the Evolution of Us by Adam Rutherford Pdf

“Rutherford describes [The Book of Humans] as being about the paradox of how our evolutionary journey turned ‘an otherwise average ape’ into one capable of creating complex tools, art, music, science, and engineering. It’s an intriguing question, one his book sets against descriptions of the infinitely amusing strategies and antics of a dizzying array of animals.”—The New York Times Book Review Publisher’s Note: The Book of Humans was previously published in hardcover as Humanimal. In this new evolutionary history, geneticist Adam Rutherford explores the profound paradox of the human animal. Looking for answers across the animal kingdom, he finds that many things once considered exclusively human are not: We aren’t the only species that “speaks,” makes tools, or has sex outside of procreation. Seeing as our genome is 98 percent identical to a chimpanzee’s, our DNA doesn’t set us far apart, either. How, then, did we develop the most complex culture ever observed? The Book of Humans proves that we are animals indeed—and reveals how we truly are extraordinary.

Author : David Graeber,David Wengrow
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Page : 384 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2021-11-09
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780374721107

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The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber,David Wengrow Pdf

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

Author : D. Tab Rasmussen
Publisher : Jones & Bartlett Learning
Page : 166 pages
File Size : 46,9 Mb
Release : 1993
Category : Medical
ISBN : 0867208570

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The Origin and Evolution of Humans and Humanness by D. Tab Rasmussen Pdf

This volume represents the proceedings of the Irving Stone Memorial Symposium on "The Origin of Humans and Humanness." Scientists in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, biology and ecology were invited to discuss their research concerning the how's, where's and why's of the evolutionary history of humans. Using our knowledge of the behavior and reproduction of living primates, chapter 1 describes what made the earliest human-like animals of 4 million years ago different from their ape relatives. While showing how the science of paleontology works, the origin of our genus, Homo, is discussed in chapter 2. With emphasis on those humans who first made regular use of stone tools some 2 million years ago, chapter 3 interprets ancient human behavior and ecology from an archeological perspective. Tools from genetics, molecular biology, archaeology and paleontology are used to examine the origin of modern Homo sapiens in chapter 4. Chapter 5 looks at the artistry of Ice Age craftsmen. Finally, using computer methods, chapter 6 delves into the complex issue of how does human behavior change, and what is the relationship between biological and cultural evolution?

Author : Richard Wrangham
Publisher : Profile Books
Page : 318 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 2010-08-06
Category : Science
ISBN : 9781847652102

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Catching Fire by Richard Wrangham Pdf

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

Author : Hugh Chisholm
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 1016 pages
File Size : 49,5 Mb
Release : 1911
Category : Encyclopedias and dictionaries
ISBN : UOM:39015015204509

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The Encyclopaedia Britannica by Hugh Chisholm Pdf

Author : National Academy of Sciences (U.S.)
Publisher : National Academies Press
Page : 48 pages
File Size : 47,9 Mb
Release : 1999
Category : Education
ISBN : 0309064066

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Science and Creationism by National Academy of Sciences (U.S.) Pdf

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)

Author : Tom Phillips
Publisher : Harlequin
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2019-05-07
Category : Humor
ISBN : 9781488051135

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Humans by Tom Phillips Pdf

“If Sapiens was a testament to human sophistication, this history of failure cheerfully reminds us that humans are mostly idiots.” —Greg Jenner, author of A Million Years in a Day Now an International Bestseller A Toronto Star–Bestselling Book of the Year Modern humans have come a long way in the seventy thousand years they’ve walked the earth. Art, science, culture, trade—on the evolutionary food chain, we’re true winners. But it hasn’t always been smooth sailing, and sometimes—just occasionally—we’ve managed to truly f*ck things up. Weaving together history, science, politics and pop culture, Humans offers a panoramic exploration of humankind in all its glory, or lack thereof. From Lucy, our first ancestor, who fell out of a tree and died, to General Zhou Shou of China, who stored gunpowder in his palace before a lantern festival, to the Austrian army attacking itself one drunken night, to the most spectacular fails of the present day, Humans reveals how even the most mundane mistakes can shift the course of civilization as we know it. Lively, wry and brimming with brilliant insight, this unique compendium offers a fresh take on world history and is one of the most entertaining reads of the year. “It’s hard to imagine someone other than Phillips pulling off a 250+ page roast of mankind, but his perfect blend of brilliance and goofiness makes it a joy to read.” —Buzzfeed “With the delicate touch of a scholar and the laugh-out-loud chops of a comedian, Tom Phillips shows us how our species has been messing things up . . . [for] four million years.” —Steve Brusatte, New York Times–bestselling author

Author : Frederick E. Grine,John G Fleagle,Richard E. Leakey
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 220 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2009-05-24
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781402099809

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The First Humans by Frederick E. Grine,John G Fleagle,Richard E. Leakey Pdf

There are some issues in human paleontology that seem to be timeless. Most deal with the origin and early evolution of our own genus – something about which we should care. Some of these issues pertain to taxonomy and systematics. How many species of Homo were there in the Pliocene and Pleistocene? How do we identify the earliest members the genus Homo? If there is more than one Plio-Pleistocene species, how do they relate to one another, and where and when did they evolve? Other issues relate to questions about body size, proportions and the functional adaptations of the locomotor skeleton. When did the human postcranial “Bauplan” evolve, and for what reasons? What behaviors (and what behavioral limitations) can be inferred from the postcranial bones that have been attributed to Homo habilis and Homo erectus? Still other issues relate to growth, development and life history strategies, and the biological and archeological evidence for diet and behavior in early Homo. It is often argued that dietary change played an important role in the origin and early evolution of our genus, with stone tools opening up scavenging and hunting opportunities that would have added meat protein to the diet of Homo. Still other issues relate to the environmental and climatic context in which this genus evolved.