Human Prehistory

In Prehistory, the award-winning archaeologist and renowned scholar Colin Renfrew covers human existence before the advent of written records–the overwhelming majority of our time here on earth–and gives an incisive, concise, and lively survey of the past, and of how scholars and scientists labor to bring it to light. Renfrew begins by looking at prehistory as a discipline, detailing how breakthroughs such as radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis have helped us to define humankind’s past–how things have changed–much more clearly than was possible just a half century ago. As for why things have changed, Renfrew pinpoints some of the issues and challenges, past and present, that confront the study of prehistory and its investigators. Renfrew then offers a summary of human prehistory from early hominids to the rise of literate civilization that is refreshingly free of conventional wisdom and grand “unified” theories. In this invaluable account, Colin Renfrew delivers a meticulously researched and passionately argued chronicle about our life on earth–and our ongoing quest to understand it.

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.

From the 3.5 million-year-old Lucy-one of our most famous early ancestors-to the rise of Homo sapiens and the spread of our species throughout the globe, this guide explores everything curious readers want to know about prehistory.

What was the world like for people thousands of years ago? How can we know? Through fiction? This is a work of literary criticism, and more. It begins with a discussion of the problem of authenticity and then considers twelve pieces of fiction that depict human prehistory: H.G. Wells' The Island of Doctor Moreau, Pierre Boulle's The Planet of the Apes, Jules Verne's The Village in the Treetops, Edgar Rice Burroughs' The Land That Time Forgot, the struggle for legitimacy in Wells' "The Grisly Folk," the Tasmanian analogue in Lester Del Rey's "The Day Is Done," William Golding's The Inheritors, "the promise of humanity" in Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey, the theme of "a god among the heathen" in Wells' "The Lord of the Dynamos" and other works, Jean Auel's The Clan of the Cave Bear, J.H. Rosny-Aine's Quest for Fire, and Wells' The Time Machine: An Invention. A final chapter considers the paleoanthropologist as literary critic.

Cultural evolution, much like general evolution, works from the assumption that cultures are descendent from much earlier ancestors. Human culture manifests itself in forms ranging from the small bands of hunters, through intermediate scale complex hunter-gatherers and farmers, to the high density urban settlements and complex polities that characterize much of today’s world. The chapters in the volume examine the dynamic interaction between the micro- and macro-scales of cultural evolution, developing a theoretical approach to the archaeological record that has been termed evolutionary processual archaeology. The contributions in this volume integrate positive elements of both evolutionary and processualist schools of thought. The approach, as explicated by the contributors in this work, offers novel insights into topics that include the emergence, stasis, collapse and extinction of cultural patterns, and development of social inequalities. Consequently, these contributions form a stepping off point for a significant new range of cultural evolutionary studies.

The aim of the book is to present original and though-provoking essays in human paleontology and prehistory, which are at the forefront of human evolutionary research, in honor of Professor Yoel Rak (a leading scholar in paleoanthropology).​ ​The volume presents a collection of original papers contributed by many of Yoel's friends and colleagues from all over the globe. Contributions from experts around the globe fall roughly into three broad categories: Reflections on some of the broad theoretical questions of evolution, and especially about human evolution; the early hominins, with special emphasis on Australopithecus afarensis and Paranthropus; and the Neanderthals, that contentious group of our closest extinct relatives. Within and across these categories, nearly every paper addresses combinations of methodological, analytical and theoretical questions that are pertinent to the whole human evolutionary time span. This book will appeal most to scholars and advanced students in paleoanthropology, human paleontology and prehistoric archaeology.

Human prehistory is an effective tool for adopting an evolutionary perspective on present day and future challenges humans face.

A Smithsonian Book of the Year A Nature Book of the Year “Provides much-needed foundation of the relationship between museums and Native Americans.” —Smithsonian “How did our museums become great storehouses of human remains? What have we learned from the skulls and bones of unburied dead? Bone Rooms chases answers to these questions through shifting ideas about race, anatomy, anthropology, and archaeology and helps explain recent ethical standards for the collection and display of human dead.” —Ann Fabian, author of The Skull Collectors “Details the nascent views of racial science that evolved in U.S. natural history, anthropological, and medical museums...Redman effectively portrays the remarkable personalities behind [these debates]...pitting the prickly Aleš Hrdlička at the Smithsonian...against ally-turned-rival Franz Boas at the American Museum of Natural History.” —David Hurst Thomas, Nature “In exquisite detail...Bone Rooms narrates the rise and fall of racial science in America...This complicated and engrossing story is filled with unexpected twists and significant implications for the history of anthropology...and intellectual history of race in the United States, and American intellectual history more generally.” —Matthew Dennis, author of Seneca Possessed “A beautifully written, meticulously documented analysis of [this] little-known history.” —Brian Fagan, Current World Archeology In 1864 a U.S. army doctor dug up the remains of a Dakota man who had been killed in Minnesota and sent the skeleton to a museum in Washington that was collecting human remains for research. In the “bone rooms” of the Smithsonian, a scientific revolution was unfolding that would change our understanding of the human body, race, and prehistory. Seeking evidence to support new theories of racial classification, collectors embarked on a global competition to recover the best specimens of skeletons, mummies, and fossils. As the study of these discoveries increasingly discredited racial theory, new ideas emerging in the budding field of anthropology displaced race as the main motive for building bone rooms. Today, debates about the ethics of these collections have taken on a new urgency as a new generation seeks to learn about the indigenous past and to return objects of spiritual significance to native peoples.