The Origins of Modern Humans (eBook)

Fred Smith is Chairman of the Department of Anthropology at Illinois State University and a past president of the American Association of Physical Anthropology. A noted authority on neanderthal and early modern human evolution, Dr. Smith has a 40 year record of thought-leading publications. Jim Ahern is Associate Professor of Biological Anthropology at the University of Wyoming. Dr. Ahern's research has covered many aspects of human biological and biocultural evolution, ranging from work on the origin of the hominin lineage to the peopling of the Americas.

Contributors ix

Introduction: Thoughts on Modern Human Origins: From 1984 to 2012
xi

Fred H. Smith and James C. M. Ahern

1 Africa: The Cradle of Modern People 1

Osbjorn M. Pearson

2 Crossroads of the Old World: Late Hominin Evolution in Western
Asia 45

Robert G. Franciscus and Trenton W. Holliday

3 A River Runs through It: Modern Human Origins in East Asia
89

Karen R. Rosenberg and Xinzhi Wu

4 Perspectives on the Origins of Modern Australians 123

Arthur C. Durband and Michael C. Westaway

5 Modern Human Origins in Central Europe 151

James C. M. Ahern, Ivor Jankoviæ, Jean-Luc Voisin, and Fred
H. Smith

6 The Makers of the Early Upper Paleolithic in Western Eurasia
223

Jean-Jacques Hublin

7 Neandertal Craniofacial Growth and Development and Its Relevance
for Modern Human Origins 253

Frank L'Engle Williams

8 Energetics and the Origin of Modern Humans 285

Andrew W. Froehle, Todd R. Yokley, and Steven E.
Churchill

9 Understanding Human Cranial Variation in Light of Modern Human
Origins 321

John H. Relethford

10 The Relevance of Archaic Genomes to Modern Human Origins
339

John Hawks and Zach Throckmorton

11 The Process of Modern Human Origins: The Evolutionary and
Demographic Changes Giving Rise to Modern Humans 355

Rachel Caspari and Milford H. Wolpoff

12 The Paleobiology of Modern Human Emergence 393

Erik Trinkaus

Index 435

The color plate section can be found between pages 242 and
243.

"A valuable resource, likely to be a source of discussion
for specialists through the decade. Summing Up: Highly
recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above."
(Choice, 1 July 2014)

"The editors are to be congratulated for having assembled this
overall extraordinary group of researchers to update the
three-decades-old Origins. I am confident that the present
volume will take its place alongside its predecessor as a book to
which many professionals and students alike will turn for current
information and thinking on the biology of modern human origins. I
am certain that Frank Spencer would have approved of the
editors' efforts." (The Quarterly Review of
Biology, 1 June 2014)