Human Evolution Bones, Cultures, and Genes

This is an introductory textbook for the study of human evolution, and covers all major topics of human origins taught under paleoanthropology, anthropology, archaeology, and evolutionary biology courses. This book differs from the existing selection of textbooks in the following ways:

Part I Introduction.- 1. The Reflection in the Mirror.- 2. Background: Evolutionary Classification and Fossil Dating.- 3. A Primate Heritage.- Part II The First Hominins.- 4. Miocene Hominoids.- 5. The Early Hominins: Australopiths.- 6. The Ecological Context of Early Hominin Evolution.- 7. Understanding Australopiths.- 8. The Evolution of Bipedality.- Part III The First Humans.- 9. The Earliest Humans in Africa.- 10. The First Technology.- 11. Diet of Early Homo.- 12. Evolution of the Brain.- 13. Leaving Africa.- Part IV The Middle Pleistocene.- 14. The Erectines of Asia.- 15. Erectines of the West.- 16. Behavior in the Middle Pleistocene.- Part V The Emergence of Modern People.- 17. Late Pleistocene Homo and the Emergence of Modern Humans.- 18. From the Middle Paleolithic to the Modern Mind.- 19. Modern Humans Disperse From Africa.- 20. Distributing Modern Peoples.- 21. Life History and Reproduction.- 22. Evolution Today and Tomorrow.

John H. Langdon is Professor Emeritus of Biology and Anthropology at the University of Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. Professor Langdon has written four books, Getting it Right: The Science of human Evolution (Springer), The Human Strategy: An Evolutionary Perspective on Human Anatomy (Oxford University Press); Human Dissection for the Allied Health Sciences (Little, Brown), and Functional Morphology of the Miocene Hominoid Foot  (S. Karger), and co-edited a fourth, The Natural History of Paradigms (University of Indianapolis Press). His research interests are in the field of historical demography; human biology; human evolution; functional and evolutionary morphology; history and development of paleoanthropology; evolution of human behavior; history and process of the natural sciences. Professor Langdon has a BA in anthropology from Harvard University, and MPhil and PhD in anthropology from YaleUniversity.