Antropology

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Anthropology

The Human Fossil Record, Brain Endocasts: The Paleoneurological Evidence, Volume 3
by Ralph L. Holloway, Douglas C. Broadfield, Michael S. Yuan, Jeffrey H. Schwartz, Ian Tattersall
Wiley-Liss; (May 14, 2004)
Some of the most important clues indicating human brain evolution come from the cranial cavities of ancient skulls. Endocasts of these crania provide excellent three-dimensional models that yield information regarding the size, surface features, and asymmetry patterns of hominid brains. Looked at as a group, these endocasts provide essential information regarding the human brain’s overall development.
Brain Endocasts, Volume Three of The Human Fossil Record, is the only comprehensive, single-volume work dealing exclusively and uniformly with fossil hominid brain endocasts. Never-before-published photographs come together with easily accessible, coherent descriptions to create a detailed reference on the paleoneurological evidence for human evolution.

Each entry offers essential information related to the location, dating, associations, and morphology of a given endocast. The text also covers the latest methodologies and techniques available for studying endocasts. In addition, a concise summary shows how these fossil records contribute to our understanding of human evolution and behavior.

Written by some of the foremost authorities on the subject, Brain Endocasts is an invaluable resource for advanced students, researchers, and instructors in paleoanthropology, neurology, and evolutionary biology.
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Editorial Reviews
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Though inarguably revolutionary, Charles Darwin's theories of evolution and natural selection had many intellectual forebears, some of them little known. One was Mary Anning, a young Dorset woman who, in the early 19th century, turned to "fossiling" to earn a living, supplying private collectors and museums with the curiosities she found in the chalk cliffs--and who knew far more about comparative anatomy than many of the academics of her time. Anning's identification of unknown dinosaur species and explanations of curiosities such as the ichthyosaurus's kinked tail provided grist for contemporary scientists, who, arguing against theological orthodoxy, sought to extend the chronology of life far into the past--and who, in the bargain, published Anning's work as their own even as they professed scorn for amateurs.

In this lucid and lively book, Christopher McGowan, a Canadian zoologist, examines the contributions to 19th-century science of Anning and other self-taught fossil-hunters, from difficult eccentrics like Thomas Hawkins to superb scholars like Richard Owen, all of whom had to battle plenty of orthodoxies in their status-conscious time. They succeeded admirably, McGowan suggests, and they should provide inspiration for other amateurs in science. For, he writes, "the future for paleontological discoveries looks very bright ... [and] many of the most important finds will be made by those who are not employed as paleontologists." --Gregory McNamee

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Monogamy. Bipedalism. Tools. Language. Intelligence. Why on Earth did we develop all those tricks? Though it's trendy to diminish the differences between humans and other species, most of us just can't help noticing our often-striking peculiarities and wondering how they arose. Paleontologist Ian Tattersall's story of human origins is as compelling as a well-designed museum exhibit--no surprise, as he is Curator of Anthropology for the American Museum of Natural History. His prose, while not flashy, is satisfyingly clear and unapologetically fascinated with its topic. Covering genetics, evolutionary theory, primate anatomy, and archaeology, Becoming Human explains how and why our ancestors adapted to their surroundings to produce such clever, talented, immodest progeny. If you find it preposterous that a dumb, skinny ape can go from foraging for fruit and fleeing from lions to splitting the atom and solving Rubik's cube in just five million years, this book might change your mind. --Rob Lightner --This text refers to the hardcover edition of this title
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Abraham on Trial: The Social Legacy of Biblical Myth analyzes the Father of Faith as a progenitor of pathology. Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac, argues author Carol Lowery Delaney, left an ethical legacy of abuse that has overpowered the biblical imperative to protect and nurture one's children. Delaney finds this legacy not only in the violence between sibling religions Abraham spawned (Islam and Judaism) but also in subtler realms. Most importantly, Delaney argues that the Bible endorses without question Abraham's interpretation of God's command to sacrifice Isaac. For Delaney, this endorsement undergirds western culture's assumption that the father is the ultimate authority in a family.

These are provocative ideas, and they will force readers to ponder how Judaism and Christianity have been forces not only of good but also of evil in everyday life.

In the end, the tragedy of Abraham on Trial is not the abusive legacy that Delaney describes, it's the culture that makes such an argument credible--a culture where even sophisticated people like Delaney have a hard time getting past literal readings of stories like Abraham's. --Michael Joseph Gross
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Ever since Darwin first suggested that humans are descended from apes, the theory of evolution has engendered a firestorm of controversy. But the schism between creationism and evolution is by no means the only source of disagreement; even within the evolutionist camp there are fierce divisions. Are all humans part of a single species comprised of many different varieties? Or is each race a separate species? Even Darwin had no easy answer for that one. Some scientists, including Carleton Coon believe that Homo erectus began in Africa, then migrated to different locations in the world, where it evolved into Homo sapiens at different rates--Europeans and Asians evolved quickly, while other races remained more "primitive." Others, such as author Christopher Stringer, agree that Homo erectus spread across Asia and Europe, but became extinct everywhere but in Africa, where they continued to evolve. Eventually, a new and improved Homo sapiens swept once more out of Africa--this time to stay.

There's plenty of paleontological and genetic evidence to support Stringer's point of view, and he argues it convincingly. Short of the invention of a time machine, African Exodus is the next best way to revisit the origins of modern man. --This text refers to the hardcover edition of this title
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The ancient settlement of Zuni Pueblo has seen many visitors over the centuries, from Spanish conquistadors to tourists from around the world. For more than a century, it has also drawn great attention from anthropologists, three of whom--Matilda Coxe Stevenson, Frank Hamilton Cushing, and Stewart Culin--brought remarkably different views of the Zuni people to the professional literature.

In this study, historian Eliza McFeely considers the work of Stevenson, Cushing, and Culin at Zuni, which, though influential, often misrepresented the realities of life there. Although of mixed value for anthropologists today, their work, McFeely suggests, reveals much about what contemporary Anglo Americans wished Native Americans to be; their "scientific creation stories" point to the shortcomings and contributions of the anthropological enterprise. A woman committed to science and accustomed to having to struggle in a culture dominated by men, Stevenson, for example, gave undue import to the role of women in Zuni society and revealed secretly observed rituals while dismissing matters of spirituality as superstitious. Cushing, a writer of then-popular books, tended to turn all Zuni expression into fables. "When artifacts and informants could not answer his questions," McFeely holds, "he 're-created' the circumstances and allowed his own intuition to supply the missing links." And Culin was so entranced by Zuni material culture, by baskets and jewelry he acquired mostly from white traders, that he scarcely seems to have noticed the living people of the pueblo.

McFeely's critical study of fieldwork at Zuni throws light on Native American history, and the uses and misuses to which it has been put. --Gregory McNamee

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There are two widely held scientific theories concerning the origin of the human species. One posits a single cradle, generally thought to be in Africa, in which Homo sapiens originated. This dominant theory is assisted by its charismatic spokesmodel Eve, a fictitious personification of a DNA strain that some scientists argue indicates a unique source for the Earth's human population. The other, decidedly less popular theory is known as multiregionalism. Multiregionalists argue that populations may have originated in Africa, but these populations migrated to distant regions where the human species developed and took on different characteristics, known to scientists as biological diversity but more conventionally referred to as different races. This divide is obviously controversial, and it is not always the steady eye of science that influences which model is deemed correct (or at least politically correct). After all, one model promises a scientific verification of our common humanity, the other, interpreted too loosely, could result in a scientific rationale that hardens concepts of racial difference.
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Synopsis
As demonstrated by the popular writings of Donald Johanson, Richard Leakey, and Stephen Jay Gould, the contending theories of human evolution hold a special fascination for book buyers. In this book, Stanley offers an intriguing new answer to the classic question about which came first, bipedal locomotion or the large brain of our own genus, Homo. Line drawings. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Margaret Mead's 1928 Coming of age in Samoa, a report of her anthropological study of adolescent girls and a triumph of cultural relativism, firmly established her as a guiding voice of anthropology. Her work was mostly unquestioned during her lifetime, but in 1983 anthropologist Derek Freeman released a critical review of her work, showing that her assertion that adolescence in Samoa is easier because of free sexuality (upon which she based her nurture-over-nature theories) is in conflict with the facts of Samoan life and even with her own field notes. He suffered insult and approbation from nearly every member of the scientific establishment, to whom Mead was a hero and a saint, but he has rejoined the fray, perhaps to finish it, with The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead.

This scholarly review examines all of the primary sources related to Mead's fieldwork and the important 1987 recanting of one of her informers. Forcefully written and carefully constructed, Freeman's book shows that Mead's stay in Samoa was too brief and too consumed with a much larger ethnographic project to have accumulated much data on adolescent sexuality. Her need to finish the project and her fervent belief in culturalism then led her to accept the joking references of her two closest informers about free sex as truth. Careful to make it clear that his focus is on Mead's science, Freeman shows that it is extremely unlikely that Mead deliberately falsified her report, simply that her preconceptions blinded her to inconvenient facts. Given the impressive evidence arrayed here, it's hard to see how Mead's work in Samoa can be now viewed as anything but a pretty fable. --Rob Lightner
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Divided Labours : An Evolutionary View of Women at Work

Hardcover - 80 pages (September 1999)
Yale Univ Pr; ISBN: 0300080263 ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.49 x 7.32 x 4.87
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Anthropological Studies of Women
by Sue Ellen Jacobs
Amazon.com Price: $36.00
Hardcover (November 2001)
Westview Press; ISBN: 0813303648
This item will be published in December 2002. You may order it now and we will ship it to you when it arrives.
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Annual Review Of Antropology. 1997 (Vol. 26)

By William H. Durham (Editor)

Paperback
Annual Reviews, Oct. 1997
ISBN: 0824319265

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