Southern Asia, Australia, and the Search for Human Origins

Robin Dennell, Martin Porr

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781107017856
• eBook ISBN:
  9781107722750
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

This is the first book to focus on the role of Southern Asia and Australia in our understanding of modern human origins and the expansion of Homo sapiens between East Africa and Australia before 30,000 years ago. With contributions from leading experts that take into account the latest archaeological evidence from India and Southeast Asia, this volume critically reviews current models of the timing and character of the spread of modern humans out of Africa. It also demonstrates that the evidence from Australasia should receive much wider and more serious consideration in its own right if we want to understand how our species achieved its global distribution. Critically examining the 'Out of Africa' model, this book emphasises the context and variability of the global evidence in the search for human origins.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Southern Asia, Australia and the Search for Human Origins
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Tables
• List of Contributors
• Chapter 1 The Past and Present of Human Origins in Southern Asia and Australia
• Chapter 2 East Asia and Human Evolution From Cradle of Mankind to Cul-De-Sac
• Chapter 3 “Rattling the Bones” The Changing Contribution of the Australian Archaeological Record to Ideas about Human Evolution
• Chapter 4 Smoke and Mirrors The Fossil Record for Homo sapiens between Arabia and Australia
• Chapter 5 An Arabian Perspective on the Dispersal of Homo sapiens Out of Africa
• Chapter 6 Assessing Models for the Dispersal of Modern Humans to South Asia
• Chapter 7 East of Eden Founder Effects and the Archaeological Signature of Modern Human Dispersal
• Chapter 8 Missing Links, Cultural Modernity and the Dead Anatomically Modern Humans in the Great Cave of Niah (Sarawak, Borneo)
• Chapter 9 Faunal Biogeography in Island Southeast Asia Implications for Early Hominin and Modern Human Dispersals
• Chapter 10 Late Pleistocene Subsistence Strategies in Island Southeast Asia and Their Implications for Understanding the Development of Modern Human Behaviour
• Chapter 11 Modern Humans in the Philippines Colonization, Subsistence and New Insights into Behavioural Complexity
• Chapter 12 Views from Across the Ocean A Demographic, Social and Symbolic Framework for the Appearance of Modern Human Behaviour
• Chapter 13 Early Modern Humans in Island Southeast Asia and Sahul Adaptive and Creative Societies with Simple Lithic Industries
• Chapter 14 Tasmanian Archaeology and Reflections on Modern Human Behaviour
• Chapter 15 Clothing and Modern Human Behaviour The Challenge from Tasmania
• Chapter 16 Patterns of Modernity Taphonomy, Sampling and the Pleistocene Archaeological Record of Sahul
• Chapter 17 Late Pleistocene Colonisation and Adaptation in New Guinea Implications for Modelling Modern Human Behaviour
• Chapter 18 Modern Humans Spread from Aden to the Antipodes With Passengers and When?
• Chapter 19 It’s the Thought that Counts Unpacking the Package of Behaviour of the First People of Australia and Its Adjacent Islands
• Chapter 20 Essential Questions Modern Humans and the Capacity for Modernity
• References
• Index