Southern Asia, Australia, and the Search for Human Origins

The first book to focus on the role of Southern Asia and Australia in our understanding of modern human origins and the expansion of Homo sapiens.

Robin Dennell (Edited by), Martin Porr (Edited by)

9781107017856, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 24 February 2014

348 pages, 30 b/w illus. 19 maps 12 tables
25.7 x 18.3 x 2.8 cm, 0.88 kg

This is the first book to focus on the role of Southern Asia and Australia in our understanding of modern human origins and the expansion of Homo sapiens between East Africa and Australia before 30,000 years ago. With contributions from leading experts that take into account the latest archaeological evidence from India and Southeast Asia, this volume critically reviews current models of the timing and character of the spread of modern humans out of Africa. It also demonstrates that the evidence from Australasia should receive much wider and more serious consideration in its own right if we want to understand how our species achieved its global distribution. Critically examining the 'Out of Africa' model, this book emphasises the context and variability of the global evidence in the search for human origins.

1. The past and present of human origins in Southern Asia and Australia Robin Dennell and Martin Porr
2. Asia and human evolution: from cradle of mankind to cul-de-sac Robin Dennell
3. The changing contribution of the Australian archaeological record to ideas about human evolution Sandra Bowdler
4. Smoke and mirrors: the fossil record for Homo sapiens in southern Asia Robin Dennell
5. An Arabian perspective on the dispersal of Homo sapiens out of Africa Huw Groucutt and Michael Petraglia
6. The Indian subcontinent and modern human origins Michael Petraglia and James Blinkhorn
7. East of Eden: founder effects and the archaeological signature of modern human dispersal Christopher Clarkson
8. Missing links, cultural modernity and the dead: anatomically modern humans in the Great Cave of Niah (Sarawak, Borneo) Graeme Barker and Chris Hunt
9. Faunal biogeography in island Southeast Asia: implications for early hominin and modern human dispersals Mike Morwood
10. Late Pleistocene subsistence strategies in Island Southeast Asia and its implications for understanding the development of modern human behaviour Philip J. Piper and Ryan J. Rabett
11. Modern humans in the Philippines: colonization, subsistence and new insights into behavioural complexity Armand Salvador B. Mijares, Philip J. Piper and Alfred F. Pawlik
12. Views from across the ocean: a demographic, social and symbolic framework for the appearance of modern human behaviour Philip J. Habgood and Natalie R. Franklin
13. Early modern humans in Island Southeast Asia and Sahul: adaptive and creative societies with simple lithic industries Jane Balme and Sue O'Connor
14. Tasmanian archaeology and reflections on modern human behaviour Richard Cosgrove, Anne Pike-Tay and Wil Roebroeks
15. Explaining prehistoric human behavioural change: the challenge from Tasmania Ian Gilligan
16. Patterns of modernity: taphonomy, sampling and the Pleistocene archaeological record of Sahul Michelle C. Langley
17. Late Pleistocene colonisation and adaptation in New Guinea: implications for debates on modern human behaviour Glenn R. Summerhayes and Anne Ford
18. Modern human spread from Aden to the Antipodes, and then Europe: with passengers and when? Stephen Oppenheimer
19. It's the thought that counts: unpacking the package of behaviour of the first Australians Iain Davidson
20. Essential questions: 'modern humans' and the capacity for modernity Martin Porr.

Subject Areas: Human growth & development [MFKH], Prehistoric archaeology [HDDA], Archaeology by period / region [HDD], Ancient history: to c 500 CE [HBLA]