First Peoples in a New World: Colonizing Ice Age America - Couverture souple

Meltzer, David J.

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0520267990 ISBN 13 : 9780520267992

Editeur : University of California Press, 2010

Synopsis

More than 12,000 years ago, in one of the greatest triumphs of prehistory, humans colonized North America, a continent that was then truly a new world. Just when and how they did so has been one of the most perplexing and controversial questions in archaeology. This dazzling, cutting-edge synthesis, written for a wide audience by an archaeologist who has long been at the center of these debates, tells the scientific story of the first Americans: where they came from, when they arrived, and how they met the challenges of moving across the vast, unknown landscapes of Ice Age North America. David J. Meltzer pulls together the latest ideas from archaeology, geology, linguistics, skeletal biology, genetics, and other fields to trace the breakthroughs that have revolutionized our understanding in recent years. Among many other topics, he explores disputes over the hemisphere's oldest and most controversial sites and considers how the first Americans coped with changing global climates. He also confronts some radical claims: that the Americas were colonized from Europe or that a crashing comet obliterated the Pleistocene megafauna. Full of entertaining descriptions of on-site encounters, personalities, and controversies, this is a compelling behind-the-scenes account of how science is illuminating our past.

A propos du livre

À propos de l?auteur

David J. Meltzer is Henderson-Morrison Professor of Prehistory in the Department of Anthropology at Southern Methodist University and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is the author of Folsom: New Archaeological Investigations of a Classic Paleoindian Bison Kill (UC Press) and Search for the First Americans, among other books.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: University of California Press
• Date d'édition: 2010
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0520267990
• ISBN 13: 9780520267992
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 464
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible