In Search of the Neanderthals: Solving the Puzzle of Human Origins [FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING]

Stringer, Christopher; Gamble, Clive

Edité par Thames and Hudson, New York, 1993

A propos de cet article

Fine unread condition glossy color photographic softcover wraps. Includes Author Dedication; Preface; Epilogue: The Lesson for Human Unity; Appendix: Selected Absolute Dates; Notes to the Text; Further Reading; Bibliography; Sources of Illustrations; Acknowledgments; and Index. Profusely illustrated with three sections of black-and-white photographic plates plus additional black-and-white drawings interspersed throughout the volume (183 illustrations). "Ever since the discovery of the bones of a pre-modern human in the Neander Valley, Germany, in 1856, the Neanderthals have provoked controversy. Who were these bettle-browed, heavy-limbed creatures, and how were they related to modern people? What caused their disappearance 35,000 years ago? Portrayed in endless cartoons and novels as club-wielding cavemen, the Neanderthals have become the archetype of all that is primitive and uncultured. Today Neanderthal specialists are locked in one of the fiercest debates in modern science. One side, the "multiregional" school, argues that the Neanderthals and their contemporaries elsewhere evolved semi-independently into modern humans. The other side, the "out of Africa" school, believes that the Neanderthals were an evolutionary dead end, replaced by fully modern people coming ultimately from Africa. The latter camp, now gaining the upper hand, is led by Christopher Stringer. Here, in this long-awaited volume, he sets out his views for the first time, in conjunction with the archaeologist Clive Gamble. Step by step the authors put their case. The Neanderthals had an anatomy crucially different from our own, adapted to the cold of Ice Age Europe. Neanderthal behavior, captured in the archaeological record, similarly points to fundamental differences. New genetic evidence strongly suggests a single origin for modern humans in Africa. What, then, was the fate of the Neanderthals? Stringer and Gamble argue that, capable and intelligent as they were, they eventually proved no match for the better-organized, better equipped newcomers. They did not evolve into modern humans: they simply died out. This important study, incorporating a photographic catalogue of key fossil finds, provides the most up-to-date account of curent knowledge about the Neanderthals and their world. For anthropologists, archaeologists, ecologists, evolutionary biologists, palaeontologists - fro anyone interested in where we came from - it is essential reading." - from the rear outer cover.

N° de réf. du vendeur 007829

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: In Search of the Neanderthals: Solving the Puzzle of Human Origins [FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING]
• Éditeur: Thames and Hudson, New York
• Date de parution: 1993
• Reliure: Soft cover
• Illustrateur: Woods, Michael (jacket photograph)
• Édition: 1st Edition
• État de l'article: Fine