Human Evolution: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions - 142) PDF
Preview Human Evolution: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions - 142)
Human Evolution: A Very Short Introduction Very Short Introductions are for anyone wanting a stimulating and accessible way in to a new subject. They are written by experts, and have been published in more than 25 languages worldwide. The series began in 1995, and now represents a wide variety of topics in history, philosophy, religion, science, and the humanities. Over the next few years it will grow to a library of around 200 volumes – a Very Short Introduction to everything from ancient Egypt and Indian philosophy to conceptual art and cosmology. Very Short Introductions available now: ANARCHISM Colin Ward CHRISTIANITY Linda Woodhead ANCIENT EGYPT Ian Shaw CLASSICS Mary Beard and ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY John Henderson Julia Annas CLAUSEWITZ Michael Howard ANCIENT WARFARE THE COLD WAR Robert McMahon Harry Sidebottom CONSCIOUSNESS Susan Blackmore THE ANGLO-SAXON AGE Continental Philosophy John Blair Simon Critchley ANIMAL RIGHTS David DeGrazia COSMOLOGY Peter Coles ARCHAEOLOGY Paul Bahn CRYPTOGRAPHY ARCHITECTURE Fred Piper and Sean Murphy Andrew Ballantyne DADA AND SURREALISM ARISTOTLE Jonathan Barnes David Hopkins ART HISTORY Dana Arnold Darwin Jonathan Howard ART THEORY Cynthia Freeland Democracy Bernard Crick THE HISTORY OF DESCARTES Tom Sorell ASTRONOMY Michael Hoskin DESIGN John Heskett Atheism Julian Baggini DINOSAURS David Norman Augustine Henry Chadwick DREAMING J. Allan Hobson BARTHES Jonathan Culler DRUGS Leslie Iversen THE BIBLE John Riches THE EARTH Martin Redfern BRITISH POLITICS EGYPTIAN MYTH Geraldine Pinch Anthony Wright EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY Buddha Michael Carrithers BRITAIN Paul Langford BUDDHISM Damien Keown THE ELEMENTS Philip Ball BUDDHIST ETHICS Damien Keown EMOTION Dylan Evans CAPITALISM James Fulcher EMPIRE Stephen Howe THE CELTS Barry Cunliffe ENGELS Terrell Carver CHOICE THEORY Ethics Simon Blackburn Michael Allingham The European Union CHRISTIAN ART Beth Williamson John Pinder EVOLUTION MEDICAL ETHICS Tony Hope Brian and Deborah Charlesworth MEDIEVAL BRITAIN FASCISM Kevin Passmore John Gillingham and Ralph A. Griffiths FOSSILS Keith Thomson MODERN ART David Cottington FOUCAULT Gary Gutting MODERN IRELAND Senia Pasˇeta THE FRENCH REVOLUTION MOLECULES Philip Ball William Doyle MUSIC Nicholas Cook FREE WILL Thomas Pink Myth Robert A. Segal Freud Anthony Storr NATIONALISM Steven Grosby Galileo Stillman Drake NIETZSCHE Michael Tanner Gandhi Bhikhu Parekh NINETEENTH-CENTURY GLOBALIZATION Manfred Steger BRITAIN Christopher Harvie and GLOBAL WARMING Mark Maslin H. C. G. Matthew HABERMAS NORTHERN IRELAND James Gordon Finlayson Marc Mulholland HEGEL Peter Singer PARTICLE PHYSICS Frank Close HEIDEGGER Michael Inwood paul E. P. Sanders HIEROGLYPHS Penelope Wilson Philosophy Edward Craig HINDUISM Kim Knott PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE HISTORY John H. Arnold Samir Okasha HOBBES Richard Tuck PLATO Julia Annas HUME A. J. Ayer POLITICS Kenneth Minogue IDEOLOGY Michael Freeden POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY Indian Philosophy David Miller Sue Hamilton POSTCOLONIALISM Intelligence Ian J. Deary Robert Young ISLAM Malise Ruthven POSTMODERNISM JOURNALISM Ian Hargreaves Christopher Butler JUDAISM Norman Solomon POSTSTRUCTURALISM Jung Anthony Stevens Catherine Belsey KAFKA Ritchie Robertson PREHISTORY Chris Gosden KANT Roger Scruton PRESOCRATIC PHILOSOPHY KIERKEGAARD Patrick Gardiner Catherine Osborne THE KORAN Michael Cook Psychology Gillian Butler and LINGUISTICS Peter Matthews Freda McManus LITERARY THEORY QUANTUM THEORY Jonathan Culler John Polkinghorne LOCKE John Dunn RENAISSANCE ART LOGIC Graham Priest Geraldine A. Johnson MACHIAVELLI Quentin Skinner ROMAN BRITAIN Peter Salway THE MARQUIS DE SADE ROUSSEAU Robert Wokler John Phillips RUSSELL A. C. Grayling MARX Peter Singer RUSSIAN LITERATURE MATHEMATICS Timothy Gowers Catriona Kelly THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION SPINOZA Roger Scruton S. A. Smith STUART BRITAIN John Morrill SCHIZOPHRENIA TERRORISM Chris Frith and Eve Johnstone Charles Townshend SCHOPENHAUER THEOLOGY David F. Ford Christopher Janaway THE HISTORY OF TIME SHAKESPEARE Germaine Greer Leofranc Holford-Strevens SIKHISM Eleanor Nesbitt TRAGEDY Adrian Poole SOCIAL AND CULTURAL THE TUDORS John Guy ANTHROPOLOGY TWENTIETH-CENTURY John Monaghan and BRITAIN Kenneth O. Morgan Peter Just THE VIKINGS Julian D. Richards SOCIALISM Michael Newman Wittgenstein A. C. Grayling SOCIOLOGY Steve Bruce WORLD MUSIC Philip Bohlman Socrates C. C. W. Taylor THE WORLD TRADE THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR ORGANIZATION Helen Graham Amrita Narlikar Available soon: AFRICAN HISTORY FUNDAMENTALISM John Parker and Richard Rathbone Malise Ruthven ANGLICANISM Mark Chapman HIV/AIDS Alan Whiteside THE BRAIN Michael O’Shea INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS CHAOS Leonard Smith Paul Wilkinson CITIZENSHIP Richard Bellamy JAZZ Brian Morton CONTEMPORARY ART MANDELA Tom Lodge Julian Stallabrass THE MIND Martin Davies THE CRUSADES PERCEPTION Richard Gregory Christopher Tyerman PHILOSOPHY OF LAW THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS Raymond Wacks Timothy Lim PHOTOGRAPHY Steve Edwards Derrida Simon Glendinning PSYCHIATRY Tom Burns GLOBAL CATASTROPHES RACISM Ali Rattansi Bill McGuire THE RAJ Denis Judd EXISTENTIALISM THE RENAISSANCE Thomas Flynn Jerry Brotton FEMINISM Margaret Walters ROMAN EMPIRE THE FIRST WORLD WAR Christopher Kelly Michael Howard ROMANTICISM Duncan Wu For more information visit our web site www.oup.co.uk/vsi/ Bernard Wood HUMAN EVOLUTION A Very Short Introduction 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in OxfordNew York AucklandCape TownDar es SalaamHong KongKarachi Kuala LumpurMadridMelbourneMexico CityNairobi New DelhiShanghaiTaipeiToronto With offices in ArgentinaAustriaBrazilChileCzech RepublicFranceGreece GuatemalaHungaryItalyJapanPolandPortugalSingapore South KoreaSwitzerlandThailandTurkeyUkraineVietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Bernard Wood 2005 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published as a Very Short Introduction 2005 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organizations. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available ISBN 0–19–280360–3 978–0–19–280360–3 13579108642 Typeset by RefineCatch Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd., Padstow, Cornwall Contents Acknowledgements viii List of illustrations ix List of tables xi 1 Introduction 1 2 Finding our place 7 3 Fossil hominins: their discovery and context 24 4 Fossil hominins: analysis and interpretation 37 5 Early hominins: possible and probable 58 6 Archaic and transitional hominins 71 7 Pre-modern Homo 84 8 Modern Homo 100 Timeline of thought and science relevant to human origins and evolution 116 Further reading 121 Index 125 Acknowledgements For an author used to the luxury of lengthy academic papers and the occasional 500-page monograph, and to the protection afforded by technical language and multiple qualifications, boiling down human evolutionary history to the size constraints and style of a VSI was a considerable challenge. That it was overcome at all is in large measure due to the contributions of Barbara Miller, senior co-author with me of Anthropology (Allyn & Bacon, 2006). The clarity of the writing and many of the ideas in the VSI are the result of our collaboration. Thanks go to Mark Weiss and Matthew Goodrum for much valued advice about, respectively, genetics and the history of human origins research, to Monica Ohlinger for advice about style, my colleague, Robin Bernstein, my OUP editor, Marsha Filion, and to an anonymous reviewer, for reading the entire manuscript and making valuable suggestions for revisions. Graduate students in the Hominid Paleobiology program at George Washington University and my program assistant, Phillip Williams, wittingly and unwittingly contributed by providing information, helping me find ‘lost’ files and notes. I am grateful to several publishers, notably Allyn & Bacon, for allowing me to adapt and use previously published images and figures. This book is for my family and my teachers, living and dead, young and old. List of illustrations 1 The vertebrate part of the 5 Plot of oscillations in Tree of Life 2 oxygen isotope levels © Bernard Wood during the past six million years 36 2 Diagram showing how http://delphi.esc.cam.ac.uk/ progress can be made coredata/v677846.html in palaeoanthropology research 4 6 The two main hypotheses © Bernard Wood for evolution: ‘phyletic gradualism’ and 3 C. K. (Bob) Brain ‘punctuated demonstrating the equilibrium’ 45 complex stratigraphy at Adapted from Miller and Wood, Swartkrans 29 Anthropology (Allyn & Bacon) © Bernard Wood 7 Comparison of the 4 Some of the methods concepts of clades and used to date fossil grades as applied to hominins 33 living higher primates 52 Adapted from C. Stanford, J. S. © Bernard Wood Allen, and S. Antón, Biological Anthropology p. 250 8 ‘Lumping/simple’ (A) and (Pearson/ Prentice Hall, 2005) ‘splitting/complex’ (B) interpretations of the higher primate twig of the Tree of Life 62 © Bernard Wood
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