Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
24,700
result(s) for
"prehistory"
Sort by:
The Mesolithic lithic industries of the eastern Adriatic zone
In the Mesolithic, specific traits of the environment of the eastern Adriatic coast resulted in the emergence of a local cultural province, different from the Central Balkans and open to trans-Adriatic influences. This province was distinguished by the blending of three different cultural traditions: Epigravettian, Sauveterian, and Castelnovian.
Journal Article
Dated language phylogenies shed light on the ancestry of Sino-Tibetan
The Sino-Tibetan language family is one of the world’s largest and most prominent families, spoken by nearly 1.4 billion people. Despite the importance of the Sino-Tibetan languages, their prehistory remains controversial, with ongoing debate about when and where they originated. To shed light on this debate we develop a database of comparative linguistic data, and apply the linguistic comparative method to identify sound correspondences and establish cognates. We then use phylogenetic methods to infer the relationships among these languages and estimate the age of their origin and homeland. Our findings point to Sino-Tibetan originating with north Chinese millet farmers around 7200 B.P. and suggest a link to the late Cishan and the early Yangshao cultures.
Journal Article
Lucy & Andy Neanderthal
\"Lucy and her goofball brother Andy, two Neanderthal siblings living 40,000 years ago, take on a wandering baby sibling, bossy teens, cave paintings, and a mammoth hunt. But what will happen when they encounter a group of humans? Includes a special paleontologist section that helps to dispel common Neanderthal myths\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Identifying early modern human ecological niche expansions and associated cultural dynamics in the South African Middle Stone Age
The archaeological record shows that typically human cultural traits emerged at different times, in different parts of the world, and among different hominin taxa. This pattern suggests that their emergence is the outcome of complex and nonlinear evolutionary trajectories, influenced by environmental, demographic, and social factors, that need to be understood and traced at regional scales. The application of predictive algorithms using archaeological and paleoenvironmental data allows one to estimate the ecological niches occupied by past human populations and identify niche changes through time, thus providing the possibility of investigating relationships between cultural innovations and possible niche shifts. By using such methods to examine two key southern Africa archaeological cultures, the Still Bay [76–71 thousand years before present (ka)] and the Howiesons Poort (HP; 66–59 ka), we identify a niche shift characterized by a significant expansion in the breadth of the HP ecological niche. This expansion is coincident with aridification occurring across Marine Isotope Stage 4 (ca. 72–60 ka) and especially pronounced at 60 ka. We argue that this niche shift was made possible by the development of a flexible technological system, reliant on composite tools and cultural transmission strategies based more on “product copying” rather than “process copying.” These results counter the one niche/one human taxon equation. They indicate that what makes our cultures, and probably the cultures of other members of our lineage, unique is their flexibility and ability to produce innovations that allow a population to shift its ecological niche.
Journal Article
Searching for stinkodon
Surprises are in store as Stink excavates his backyard in search of a relic from an extinct beast -- and Judy lends him a little sleight of hand. Mega-chomp! Stink wants to make the find of the century. He's on a dig, dig, digging quest in his backyard to find a tooth from a saber-toothed cat, otherwise known as a Smilodon. Why not? Two kids in Michigan found a mastodon bone in a backyard stream, and a girl in Great Britain found a pterosaur bone. It could happen! But Judy thinks the chances of finding a saber-toothed anything in the Moody backyard are one in a gazillion million. Will Stink make a discovery before their whole backyard caves in? Just right for newly independent readers, this latest story from Megan McDonald is sure to leave Moody fans with smiles as wide as a Smilodon's.
Book
Humans occupied diverse habitats 70,000 years ago
Homo sapiens spread across the globe owing to our capacity to adapt culturally and technologically to a diverse array of environmental conditions (ecological niches). Successful migrations of H. sapiens out of Africa resulting in long-term populations elsewhere began shortly after 60,000 years ago, when groups moved out of the African continent in a sustained manner. Towards the end of the last ice age, a little more than 20,000 years ago 1 , hunter-gatherers had reached as far as the American continents. What is it about our species that enabled humans to populate the globe? Writing in Nature, Hallett et al. 2 address this question and describe the results of an interdisciplinary study that identifies changes in the ecological niches occupied by H. sapiens hunter-gatherer populations in Africa before their sustained expansion into regions outside the continent.
Journal Article
The Origins of Agriculture: New Data, New Ideas
This introduction to the symposium and to this issue of Current Anthropology attempts to provide some sense of the topic, the meeting itself, the participants, and some of the initial results. Our symposium brought together a diverse international group of archaeological scientists to consider a topic of common interest and substantial anthropological import-the origins of agriculture. The group included individuals working in most of the places where farming began. This issue is organized by chronology and geography. Our goal was to consider the most recent data and ideas from these different regions in order to examine larger questions of congruity and disparity among the groups of first farmers. There is much new information from a number of important areas, particularly Asia. Following a review of the history of investigation of agricultural origins, this introduction summarizes the results of the conference. There are at least 10 different places around the world where agriculture was independently developed, and the antiquity of domestication is being pushed back in time with new discoveries. Our symposium has emphasized the importance of a multidisciplinary approach to such large questions in order to assemble as much information as possible. We anticipate that the results and consequences of this symposium will have long-term ripple effects in anthropology and archaeology.
Journal Article
First evidence of early neolithic archery from Cueva de los Murciélagos (Albuñol, Granada) revealed through combined chemical and morphological analysis
The extraordinary preservation of Cueva de Los Murciélagos (Albuñol, Spain) provides a unique opportunity to identify the materials and the techniques involved in archery during the Early Neolithic period. Arrows with preserved feathers, tied fibres, adhesive substance, and two probable bowstrings have been studied trough an unprecedented multi-proxy investigation, including microscopy and biomolecular methods, to unravel archery techniques. The study has identified the oldest known sinew bowstrings, the first evidence for the use of olive tree (Olea europaea) and reed (Phragmites sp.) to produce arrow shafts in prehistoric European archery, and the identification of birch bark tar as a coating on the shafts. The results of this study provide insights into ancient craft, technological solutions, and adaptations to local resources in the production of these reed-shafted hardwood tipped arrows and bowstrings. Their deposition in a burial cave sheds new light on the role of these artefacts in a Neolithic farming community.
Journal Article