Neanderthals and Modern Humans: An Ecological and Evolutionary Perspective: 38 (Cambridge Studies in Biological and Evolutionary Anthropology, Series Number 38)
Cambridge University Press, 9/15/2009
EAN 9780521121002, ISBN10: 0521121000
Paperback, 268 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm
Language: English
Neanderthals and Modern Humans develops the theme of the close relationship between climate change, ecological change and biogeographical patterns in humans during the Pleistocene. In particular, it challenges the view that Modern Human 'superiority' caused the extinction of the Neanderthals between 40 and 30 thousand years ago. Clive Finlayson shows that to understand human evolution, the spread of humankind across the world and the extinction of archaic populations, we must move away from a purely theoretical evolutionary ecology base and realise the importance of wider biogeographic patterns including the role of tropical and temperate refugia. His proposal is that Neanderthals became extinct because their world changed faster than they could cope with, and that their relationship with the arriving Modern Humans, where they met, was subtle.
Preface and acknowledgements
1. Human evolution in the Pleistocene
2. Biogeographical patterns
3. Human range expansions, contractions and extinctions
4. The modern human-Neanderthal problem
5. Comparative behaviour and ecology of Neanderthals and modern humans
6. The conditions in Africa and Eurasia during the last Glacial Cycle
7. The modern human colonization and the Neanderthal extinction
8. The survival of the weakest
References
Index.
Review of the hardback: '... valuable for its synthesis of the climatic backdrop to later human evolution, which reminds us of the remarkable climatic challenges that our Pleistocene predecessors had to face.' Science