Making Silent Stones Speak

In this dramatic reconstruction of the daily lives of the earliest tool-making humans, two leading anthropologists reveal how the first technologies-- stone, wood, and bone tools-- forever changed the course of human evolution. Drawing on two decades of fieldwork around the world, authors Kathy Schick and Nicholas Toth take readers on an eye-opening journey into humankind's distant past-- traveling from the savannahs of East Africa to the plains of northern China and the mountains of New Guinea-- offering a behind-the-scenes look at the discovery, excavation, and interpretation of early prehistoric sites. Based on the authors' unique mix of archaeology and practical experiments, ranging from making their own stone tools to theorizing about the origins of human intelligence, "Making Silent Stones Speak" brings the latest ideas about human evolution to life.

Science and the Bible do not contradict one another. The author shows that the plain and literal text of the Bible is in perfect harmony with even the latest findings of mainstream science. You need not compromise either your faith or your intellect.

This is the first book-length critical analysis in any language of Hans Blumenberg’s theory of myth. Blumenberg can be regarded as the most important German theorist of myth of the second half of the twentieth century, and his Work on Myth (1979) has resonated across disciplines ranging from literary theory, via philosophy, religious studies and anthropology, to the history and philosophy of science. Nicholls introduces Anglophone readers to Blumenberg’s biography and to his philosophical contexts. He elucidates Blumenberg’s theory of myth by relating it to three important developments in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century German philosophy (hermeneutics, phenomenology and philosophical anthropology), while also comparing Blumenberg’s ideas with those of other prominent theorists of myth such as Vico, Hume, Schelling, Max Müller, Frazer, Sorel, Freud, Cassirer, Heidegger, Horkheimer and Adorno. According to Nicholls, Blumenberg’s theory of myth can only be understood in relation to the ‘human sciences,’ since it emerges from a speculative hypothesis concerning the emergence of the earliest human beings. For Blumenberg, myth was originally a cultural adaptation that constituted the human attempt to deal with anxieties concerning the threatening forces of nature by anthropomorphizing those forces into mythic images. In the final two chapters, Blumenberg’s theory of myth is placed within the post-war political context of West Germany. Through a consideration of Blumenberg’s exchanges with Carl Schmitt, as well as by analysing unpublished correspondence and parts of the original Work of Myth manuscript that Blumenberg held back from publication, Nicholls shows that Blumenberg’s theory of myth also amounted to a reckoning with the legacy of National Socialism.

Bestselling author Barbara Hand Clow shows how the Mayan Calendar is a bridge to galactic wisdom that fosters personal growth and human evolution • Unearths the meaning behind the calendar, its message for modern civilization, and what will happen when the calendar ends • Reveals how time acceleration is a manifestation of the acceleration of consciousness • By the author of The Pleiadian Agenda The Mayan Code is a deep exploration of how, as we approach the end of the Mayan Calendar, time and consciousness are accelerating, giving us a new understanding of the universe. Using Carl Johan Calleman’s research, as well as the ideas of other Mayan Calendar scholars, Barbara Hand Clow examines 16.4 billion years of evolution to decode the creative patterns of Earth--the World Mind. These great patterns culminate in 2011, and then during 2012 major astrological influences will inspire us to attain oneness and enlightenment. The Mayan Code shows how the time cycles of the Calendar match important periods in the evolutionary data banks of Earth and the Milky Way Galaxy. These stages of evolution are converging during the final stage of the Calendar, the period between 1999 and 2011. War and territoriality, resource management and separation from nature, are all part of daily events we must process during these few short years: evidence of the tightening spiral of time that we experience as time speeding up. Barbara Hand Clow counsels that our own personal healing is the most important factor as we prepare to make this critical leap in human evolution--now referred to as the awakening of the World Mind.

Annotation Early humans did not drift north from Africa as their ability to cope with cooler climates evolved. Settlement of Europe and northern Asia occurred in relatively rapid bursts of expansion. This study tells the complex story, spanning almost two million years, of how humans inhabited some of the coldest places on earth.

In an offhand, never systematically elaborated comment Karl Marx deemed ‘human corporeal organisation’ the ‘first fact for the study of human history’. This book explores the implications of Marx’s radically corporeal insight for historical-materialist analysis of socio-economic and cultural forms.

As co-founder of the expedition that discovered Lucy, and leader of most of the first site-surveys in the Afar Depression in Ethiopia, Jon Kalb has years of experience with the region, its politics, and the scientists involved in the excavations. A participant himself in the "bone wars" that accompanied these discoveries, Kalb recounts the cutthroat competition and back stabbing that were often part of the media-highlighted race to find the oldest hominid fossil. He weaves this story in the rich fabric of Ethiopian society and politics, the plight of the regions peoples, and the international maneuverings for control of the fossil finds.