Origins of Modern Humans

Fred Smith is Chairman of the Department of Anthropology at Illinois State University and a past president of the American Association of Physical Anthropology.  A noted authority on neanderthal and early modern human evolution, Dr. Smith has a 40 year record of thought-leading publications. Jim Ahern is Associate Professor of Biological Anthropology at the University of Wyoming.  Dr. Ahern's research has covered many aspects of human biological and biocultural evolution, ranging from work on the origin of the hominin lineage to the peopling of the Americas.

• Contributors ix Introduction: Thoughts on Modern Human Origins: From 1984 to 2012 xiFred H. Smith and James C. M. Ahern 1 Africa: The Cradle of Modern People 1Osbjorn M. Pearson 2 Crossroads of the Old World: Late Hominin Evolution in Western Asia 45Robert G. Franciscus and Trenton W. Holliday 3 A River Runs through It: Modern Human Origins in East Asia 89Karen R. Rosenberg and Xinzhi Wu 4 Perspectives on the Origins of Modern Australians 123Arthur C. Durband and Michael C. Westaway 5 Modern Human Origins in Central Europe 151James C. M. Ahern, Ivor Jankoviæ, Jean-Luc Voisin, and Fred H. Smith 6 The Makers of the Early Upper Paleolithic in Western Eurasia 223Jean-Jacques Hublin 7 Neandertal Craniofacial Growth and Development and Its Relevance for Modern Human Origins 253Frank L’Engle Williams 8 Energetics and the Origin of Modern Humans 285Andrew W. Froehle, Todd R. Yokley, and Steven E. Churchill 9 Understanding Human Cranial Variation in Light of Modern Human Origins 321John H. Relethford 10 The Relevance of Archaic Genomes to Modern Human Origins 339John Hawks and Zach Throckmorton 11 The Process of Modern Human Origins: The Evolutionary and Demographic Changes Giving Rise to Modern Humans 355Rachel Caspari and Milford H. Wolpoff 12 The Paleobiology of Modern Human Emergence 393Erik Trinkaus Index 435The color plate section can be found between pages 242 and 243.

“A valuable resource, likely to be a source of discussion for specialists through the decade.  Summing Up: Highly recommended.  Upper-division undergraduates and above.”  (Choice, 1 July 2014)"The editors are to be congratulated for having assembled this overall extraordinary group of researchers to update the three-decades-old Origins.  I am confident that the present volume will take its place alongside its predecessor as a book to which many professionals and students alike will turn for current information and thinking on the biology of modern human origins. I am certain that Frank Spencer would have approved of the editors’ efforts."  (The Quarterly Review of Biology, 1 June 2014)