Understanding Human Evolution

Understanding Human Evolution
Author: Jeffrey K. McKee
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 430
Release: 2015-10-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317342801

For the one-term course in human evolution, paleoanthropology, or fossil hominins taught at the junior/senior level in departments of anthropology or biology. This new edition provides a comprehensive overview to the field of paleoanthropology–the study of human evolution by analyzing fossil remains. It includes the latest fossil finds, attempts to place humans into the context of geological and biological change on the planet, and presents current controversies in an even-handed manner.

Conversations in Human Evolution: Volume 2

Conversations in Human Evolution: Volume 2
Author: Lucy Timbrell
Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd
Total Pages: 132
Release: 2021-05-06
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1789699487

This second volume reports another twenty interviews with scholars at the forefront of human evolution research, covering the broad scientific themes of Palaeolithic archaeology, palaeoanthropology and biological anthropology, earth science and palaeoclimatic change, evolutionary anthropology and primatology, and human disease co-evolution.

Human Origins

Human Origins
Author: Camilla Power
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2016-12-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1785333798

Human Origins brings together new thinking by social anthropologists and other scholars on the evolution of human culture and society. No other discipline has more relevant expertise to consider the emergence of humans as the symbolic species. Yet, social anthropologists have been conspicuously absent from debates about the origins of modern humans. These contributions explore why that is, and how social anthropology can shed light on early kinship and economic relations, gender politics, ritual, cosmology, ethnobiology, medicine, and the evolution of language.

Simulating Human Origins and Evolution

Simulating Human Origins and Evolution
Author: K. P. Wessen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2011-11-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9780521397995

The development of populations over time, and, on longer timescales, the evolution of species, are both influenced by a complex of interacting, underlying processes. Computer simulation provides a means of experimenting within an idealised framework to allow aspects of these processes and their interactions to be isolated, controlled, and understood. In this book, computer simulation is used to model migration, extinction, fossilisation, interbreeding, selection and non-hereditary effects in the context of human populations and the observed distribution of fossil and current hominoid species. The simulations described enable the visualisation and study of lineages, genetic diversity in populations, character diversity across species and the accuracy of reconstructions, allowing insights into human evolution and the origins of humankind for graduate students and researchers in the fields of physical anthropology, human evolution, and human genetics.

Reconstructing Evolution

Reconstructing Evolution
Author: Olivier Gascuel
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 349
Release: 2007-06-28
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 0199208220

Evolution is a complex process, acting at multiple scales, from DNA sequences and proteins to populations of species. Understanding and reconstructing evolution is of major importance in numerous subfields of biology. For example, phylogenetics and sequence evolution is central to comparative genomics, attempts to decipher genomes, and molecular epidemiology. Phylogenetics is also the focal point of large-scale international biodiversity assessment initiatives such as the 'Tree ofLife' project, which aims to build the evolutionary tree for all extant species.Since the pioneering work in phylogenetics in the 1960s, models have become increasingly sophisticated to account for the inherent complexity of evolution. They rely heavily on mathematics and aim at modelling and analyzing biological phenomena such as horizontal gene transfer, heterogeneity of mutation, and speciation and extinction processes. This book presents these recent models, their biological relevance, their mathematical basis, their properties, and the algorithms to infer them fromdata. A number of subfields from mathematics and computer science are involved: combinatorics, graph theory, stringology, probabilistic and Markov models, information theory, statistical inference, Monte Carlo methods, continuous and discrete algorithmics.This book arises from the Mathematics of Evolution & Phylogenetics meeting at the Mathematical Institute Henri Poincaré, Paris, in June 2005 and is based on the outstanding state-of-the-art reports presented by the conference speakers. Ten chapters - based around five themes - provide a detailed overview of key topics, from the underlying concepts to the latest results, some of which are at the forefront of current research.

Ancestors in Our Genome

Ancestors in Our Genome
Author: Eugene E. Harris (Professor)
Publisher:
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2015
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0199978034

In 2001, scientists were finally able to determine the full human genome sequence, and with the discovery began a genomic voyage back in time. Since then, we have sequenced the full genomes of a number of mankind's primate relatives at a remarkable rate. The genomes of the common chimpanzee (2005) and bonobo (2012), orangutan (2011), gorilla (2012), and macaque monkey (2007) have already been identified, and the determination of other primate genomes is well underway. Researchers are beginning to unravel our full genomic history, comparing it with closely related species to answer age-old questions about how and when we evolved. For the first time, we are finding our own ancestors in our genome and are thereby gleaning new information about our evolutionary past. In Ancestors in Our Genome, molecular anthropologist Eugene E. Harris presents us with a complete and up-to-date account of the evolution of the human genome and our species. Written from the perspective of population genetics, and in simple terms, the book traces human origins back to their source among our earliest human ancestors, and explains many of the most intriguing questions that genome scientists are currently working to answer. For example, what does the high level of discordance among the gene trees of humans and the African great apes tell us about our respective separations from our common ancestor? Was our separation from the apes fast or slow, and when and why did it occur? Where, when, and how did our modern species evolve? How do we search across genomes to find the genomic underpinnings of our large and complex brains and language abilities? How can we find the genomic bases for life at high altitudes, for lactose tolerance, resistance to disease, and for our different skin pigmentations? How and when did we interbreed with Neandertals and the recently discovered ancient Denisovans of Asia? Harris draws upon extensive experience researching primate evolution in order to deliver a lively and thorough history of human evolution. Ancestors in Our Genome is the most complete discussion of our current understanding of the human genome available.

Moving Forward

Moving Forward
Author: Heather M. Morgan
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 180
Release: 2011-10-18
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1443834807

This book has been compiled following the quality and reception of papers presented at the Moving Forward Postgraduate Conference, held at the University of Aberdeen, 21–22 July 2009. The volume comprises editorial and seven substantive papers on the themes of ‘tradition and transformation’, carefully chosen by the editorial team from in excess of fifty full written papers. These represent and tender a wide range of scholarly approaches to and within the arts and social sciences; the remit of Moving Forward. Each paper has been catered to a non-specialist audience in order to make the collection more widely accessible. Although ‘tradition and transformation’ seems loose terminology in many respects, it struck the editors that the dichotomy between past and future, the desire to respect history but also to effect change, and the presence of the present, were three issues that resounded throughout the conference contributions, but were those specifically captured within the selected papers. From each of six disciplinary areas, ranging across the arts and social sciences, delegates use the freedom of their positions as early-career researchers to boldly explore relations between these concepts without fear of censure, but with enthusiasm and energy for academic knowledge development and contribution. Indeed, through the papers chosen for inclusion here, distinct in their disciplinary origins, approaches and foci, we emphasise the many similarities that exist among the arts and social sciences subjects.

Southern Asia, Australia and the Search for Human Origins

Southern Asia, Australia and the Search for Human Origins
Author: Robin Dennell
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 349
Release: 2014-02-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107017858

This volume summarizes what is - and is not - known about the earliest evidence of our species outside Africa, from Arabia to Australia. Most books on the origins of "modern human behavior" and the expansion of our species across the world focus on evidence from Africa, Europe, and the Levant, which have been extensively researched. This book focuses instead on the important areas of southern Asia such as Arabia and India, as well as evidence from Australia, which deserve far wider attention than they have hereto received.

Who We Are and How We Got Here

Who We Are and How We Got Here
Author: David Reich
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2018-03-29
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0192554387

The past few years have seen a revolution in our ability to map whole genome DNA from ancient humans. With the ancient DNA revolution, combined with rapid genome mapping of present human populations, has come remarkable insights into our past. This important new data has clarified and added to our knowledge from archaeology and anthropology, helped resolve long-existing controversies, challenged long-held views, and thrown up some remarkable surprises. The emerging picture is one of many waves of ancient human migrations, so that all populations existing today are mixes of ancient ones, as well as in many cases carrying a genetic component from Neanderthals, and, in some populations, Denisovans. David Reich, whose team has been at the forefront of these discoveries, explains what the genetics is telling us about ourselves and our complex and often surprising ancestry. Gone are old ideas of any kind of racial 'purity', or even deep and ancient divides between peoples. Instead, we are finding a rich variety of mixtures. Reich describes the cutting-edge findings from the past few years, and also considers the sensitivities involved in tracing ancestry, with science sometimes jostling with politics and tradition. He brings an important wider message: that we should celebrate our rich diversity, and recognize that every one of us is the result of a long history of migration and intermixing of ancient peoples, which we carry as ghosts in our DNA. What will we discover next?