In the Footsteps of Our Ancestors

Following Homo sapiens into Asia and Oceania

Takeshi Ueki, Peter Hiscock, Glenn Summerhayes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2024
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781040046760
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

In the Footsteps of Our Ancestors details through archaeological analysis, the dispersal of our species, Homo sapiens, providing a broad examination of evidence for early human migration into Asia and Oceania. Those migrations are crucial to our understanding of the global story of human evolution and cultural diversification. Chapters from an international team of experts provide the new geographical and temporal coverage. Controversies around timing, pathways, and competing models of migrations are explored in regions where archaeological data can be scarce. Genetic and archaeological data often seem inconsistent, but this book uses syntheses of archaeological evidence to give an updated view of our current knowledge of when and how these regions were first settled. These analyses help us understand the pattern of human movement and adaptation that led to the contemporary distribution of our species. This book provides the latest coverage of this important topic and contributes to thinking about the history of our species.

In the Footsteps of Our Ancestors is an essential text for researchers and students of archaeology, anthropology, and human evolution.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• 1 Beginnings: Africa and Beyond
• 2 The Colonisation of South Asia by Homo sapiens: Assessing Alternative Hypotheses through Cladistic Analyses of Lithic Assemblages
• 3 The Settlement of Mainland Southeast Asia by Anatomically Modern Humans
• 4 A Middle to Late Upper Pleistocene Lithic Industry from North Vietnam
• 5 Early Modern Humans in Island Southeast Asia
• 6 Northern Sahul and the Bismarck Archipelago
• 7 Human Dispersal Across Southern and Central Sahul
• 8 The Peopling of East Asia: Perspectives from the Russian Far East
• 9 Early Peopling in and Around Taiwan: Pleistocene through Middle Holocene Groups before the Austronesian Era
• 10 The Arrival of Modern Humans in North China during the Late Palaeolithic
• 11 The Philippines: Origins to the End of the Pleistocene
• 12 Emergence of Pleistocene Modernity and Its Background in the Korean Peninsula
• 13 Analyzing Japanese Sites Belonging to the Initial Period of the Upper Palaeolithic: Creating Macro-Models
• 14 Archaeological Materials from the Japanese Early Upper Palaeolithic and Their Implications
• 15 Pleistocene Okinawa: Unique Culture and Lifeway in the Oceanic Islands of the Western Pacific
• Appendix A: Comparison of Radiocarbon and Calibrated Dates
• Appendix B: Analysing the Age and Heating History of Archaeological Materials Using Remanent Magnetization
• Index