Origins of Anatomically Modern Humans

Front Cover
Doris V. Nitecki, Matthew H. Nitecki
Springer Science & Business Media, 2013 M11 11 - 341 pages
This volume is based on the Field Museum of Natural History Spring System atics Symposium held in Chicago on May 11, 1991. The financial support of Ray and Jean Auel and of the Field Museum is gratefully acknowledged. When we teach or write, we present only those elements that support our arguments. We avoid all weak points of our debate and all the uncer tainties of our models. Thus, we offer hypotheses as facts. Multiauthored books like ours, which simultaneously advocate and question diverse views, avoid the pitfalls and lessen the impact of indoctrination. In this volume we analyze the anthropological and biological disagreements and the positions taken on the origins of modern humans, point out difficultieswith the inter pretations, and suggest that the concept of the human origin can be explained only when we first attempt to define Homo sapiens sapiens. One of the major controversies in physical anthropology concerns the geographic origin of anatomically modern humans. It is undisputed, due to the extensive research of the Leakeys and their colleagues, that the family Hominidae originated in Africa, but the geographic origin of Homo sapiens sapiens is less concretely accepted. Two schools of thought existon this topic.
 

Contents

INTRODUCTION
1
The Contribution of Geochronology
7
Conclusion
14
Similarities
20
Chapter 2 The Contributions of Southwest Asia to the Study
23
Middle and Upper Paleolithic Human Behavior as Reflected
43
Discussion
50
Concluding Remarks
56
MULTIREGIONAL HYPOTHESIS
173
Complete ReplacementThe Eve Theory
179
Contradictions
180
Evidence from Africa
189
References
195
Species Concepts and Hybridization Zones
203
The Modern Synthesis and Regional Continuity
213
Samples Species and Speculations in the Study
227

Hominids Energy Environment and Behavior
67
Southwest AsiaThe Biocultural Evidence
73
What Happened to the Western European Neandertals?
81
Conclusions
87
Behavioral and Cultural Changes at the Middle
93
References
100
Olga Soffer
106
The Transition Scenario
112
New Advances in the Field of Ice Age
121
New Techniques of Analysis
128
Applications of New mtDNA Techniques
141
References
147
19751978
155
19851988
163
The Klasies River Mouth Hominids
235
The Nature of Modern Human Origins
242
Background and Roots of Homo
253
Eastern Oriental Palearctic Region
264
Western Asia and Levant
280
176
287
121
291
Discussion
300
179
301
Conclusions
306
Index
321
124
322
230
324
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