Author: Christian Schäfer
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3640392302
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 37

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Book Description
Essay from the year 2005 in the subject Biology - Evolution, grade: A (very good), Umea University (Department of Ecology and Environmental Sciences), course: Evolutionary Ecology, 14 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: The Neanderthals lived in Europe and the Near East for at least 250,000 years and they outdared several climate changes. They were capable of surviving in a harsh, cold environment and were well adapted to it - cultural and morphological. Thus, the Neanderthals have been proven to be a successful human kind. But why then did they disappear so quickly and without a trace just between 40,000 and 28,000 yr BP (= years before present) [8]? One possible answer is that modern humans starting to invade the Near East and Europe out of Africa 45,000 to 40,000 yr BP have outcompeted them, due to higher cultural and mental abilities, using the resources in a more efficient way than the Neanderthals. But is this really true? Have modern humans really had higher abilities? Did they admix with the local Neanderthal populations, integrating the native genes in their gene pool? Or did modern humans not interbreed with them? And - the big question: were Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans distinct species or just local variants of the same species? To bring more light into this scenario, these questions will be answered in the following chapters using genetic, morphological and simulation-data that has been brought up by several researchers over the last years. Answering these fundamental questions also lies in the range of basic needs of human mind: we all want to know where we come from, who was our ancestor and who was it not. To realize which strange ways evolution sometimes takes and to determine what really happened is for sure an exciting thing, and that is exactly what researchers do when they trace human evolution back to the point when Neanderthals and modern humans met in Europe during the last ice age. Only one of them shoul

Author: Francisco José Ayala
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198739907
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 585

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Book Description
Updated and rewritten version of first edition, published under title: Human evolution: trails from the past (Oxford biology) / Camilo J. Cela-Conde and Francisco J. Ayala. 2007.

Author: Clive Finlayson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139449710
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
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.

Author: Jon Schiller
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 1451546084
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Your author decided to write this book about Human Evolution after seeing a Science Program about Evolution on KCET, the Public Service TV Station in the Los Angeles area. I was impressed with the amount of research going on in this area trying to find out where we, Homosapiens, came from. I decided to use the Google and Yahoo search engines to find out the latest probes which I used for this book. I have included the many reference sources so the reader can visit these Internet accounts to keep up with what is happening after this book is published. In other words, this is a snapshot-in-time report of what is happening research-wise at the end of the first decade of the 21st Century.

Author: Takeru Akazawa
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 4431545115
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
This volume presents the first of two proceedings from the International Conference on the Replacement of Neanderthals by Modern Humans, which took place in Tokyo in November 2012. Focussing on a highly innovative working hypothesis called the ‘learning hypothesis’, which attempts to explain the replacement as a result of differences in the learning abilities of these two hominid populations, the conference served as the latest multidisciplinary discussion forum on this intriguing Palaeoanthropological issue. The present volume reports on outcomes of the conference in three major sections. Part 1 provides an archaeological overview of the processes of replacement/assimilation of Neanderthals by modern humans. Part 2 consists of archaeological and ethnographic case studies exploring evidence of learning behaviours in prehistoric and modern hunter-gatherer societies. Part 3 presents a collection of papers that directly contributes to the definition, validation and testing of the learning hypothesis in terms of population biology and evolutionary theory. A total of 18 papers in this volume make available to readers unique cultural perspectives on mechanisms of the replacement/assimilation of Neanderthals by modern humans and suggested relationships between these mechanisms and different learning strategies.

Author: Pat Shipman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674425405
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
Humans domesticated dogs soon after Neanderthals began to disappear. This alliance between two predator species, Pat Shipman hypothesizes, made possible unprecedented success in hunting large Ice Age mammals—a distinct and ultimately decisive advantage for human invaders at a time when climate change made both humans and Neanderthals vulnerable.

Author: Francesca Romagnoli
Publisher: Academic Press
ISBN: 0128214295
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
Updating Neanderthals: Understanding Behavioral Complexity in the Late Middle Paleolithic provides comprehensive knowledge on Neanderthals who lived throughout the European and Asian continents. The book synthesizes historical information about the study of Middle Paleolithic populations and presents current debates about their genetics, subsistence, technology, social and cognitive behaviors. It focuses on the last phase of Neanderthal settlements and presents the main patterns of modern humans across Europe. Written by international experts on the Middle Paleolithic who have conducted innovative studies in the last three decades, this book explores the implications of interactions between different human species, including Neanderthals, Denisovans and Sapiens. In addition, the book discusses the diversity and variability of human adaptations and behaviors in the changing climate and environment of the Late Pleistocene, and the relationship between these behaviors, demography and cognitive capabilities. Offers a comprehensive update on the variability and diversity of Neanderthal behaviors during the Late Pleistocene Presents an interdisciplinary reconstruction of Neanderthals by assessing archaeology, paleontology, paleoecology, anthropology, genetics and cognition Reviews the reliability of archaeological data and the theoretical and methodological advances of the last 30 years Discusses the most debated Neanderthal themes, such as demography, diet, socio-economy and art

Author: Jörg Orschiedt
Publisher:
ISBN: 9783980583978
Category : Europe
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Author: Svante Pääbo
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 0465080685
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
A preeminent geneticist, winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in medicine, hunts the Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes to answer the biggest question of them all: how did our ancestors become human? Neanderthal Man tells the riveting personal and scientific story of the quest to use ancient DNA to unlock the secrets of human evolution. Beginning with the study of DNA in Egyptian mummies in the early 1980s and culminating in the sequencing of the Neanderthal genome in 2010, Neanderthal Man describes the events, intrigues, failures, and triumphs of these scientifically rich years through the lens of the pioneer and inventor of the field of ancient DNA, Svante Pääbo. We learn that Neanderthal genes offer a unique window into the lives of our ancient relatives and may hold the key to unlocking the mysteries of where language came from as well as why humans survived while Neanderthals went extinct. Pääbo redrew our family tree and permanently changed the way we think about who we are and how we got here. For readers of Richard Dawkins, David Reich, and Hope Jahren, Neanderthal Man is the must-read account of how he did it.

Author: Leslie Aiello
Publisher: McDonald Inst of Archeological
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
What role did Ice Age climate play in the demise of the Neanderthals, and why was it that modern humans alone survived? For the past seven years a team of international experts from a wide range of disciplines have worked together to provide a detailed study of the world occupied by the European Neanderthals between 60,000 and 25,000 years ago: the period known as Oxygen Isotope Stage 3. This collection of papers documents the extensive environmental research conducted by the Stage 3 Project. The new chronological and archaeological database constructed by the Project sets the Neanderthal and modern human sites in a continent-wide framework of space and time. A mammalian data base maps the ecology and fauna of the period, providing fresh insights into the availability of plant and animal foods in different parts of the European landscape as Ice Age climate changed and fluctuated. New high-resolution computer simulations give detailed estimates of temperature and rainfall, and above all of the wind-chill and snow cover that would have such an impact on both humans and on the resources they needed for survival. The results provide revolutionary insights into the glacial climate of Stage 3 and the landscapes and resources that influenced late Palaeolithic life-styles.