IN SEARCH OF THE NEANDERTHALS : Solving the Puzzle of Human Origins

Gamble, Clive; Stringer, Christopher

ISBN 10: 0500050708 / ISBN 13: 9780500050705

Published by Thames & Hudson, New York, NY, 1993

About this Item

Text/BRAND NEW. First Edition, First Thus. Gilt embossed brown linen boards/NF w/small dents to front. DJ/NF w/trace wear to upper edges, and back surface. On ancestry of modern man. In 1856 bones of a possible pre-modern human were found in Neader Valley, Germany. The relationship between the 35,000 year-old low-browed, heavy-limbed creature and man has been much debated since, giving rise to "Multregional 1" versus "Out of Africa 2" schools. Here, English anthropologists Stringer & Gamble argue for the "Out of Africa 2" scenario. 247 pgs w/183 illustrations, in 9 chapters: 1, Who Where the Neanderthals?; 2, The Ice Age World; 3, Neanderthal Beginnings; 4, Portrait of a Neanderthal; 5, Humans at Crossroads: The Middle East Corridor; 6, The Dark Continent & Beyond: The Origin of Homo Sapiens; 7, Archaelogy of the Ancients; 8, The Fate of the Neanderthals; and 9, Close Kin or Distant Relatives?, followed by Epilogue abd Appendix. Fine copy despite flaws.

Seller Inventory # 005220

Bibliographic Details

• Title: IN SEARCH OF THE NEANDERTHALS : Solving the Puzzle of Human Origins
• Publisher: Thames & Hudson, New York, NY
• Publication Date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0500050708
• ISBN 13: 9780500050705
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st American Edition, First Thus
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • Science/Technology
  • Anthropology/Ethnology
  • History

About this title

Synopsis

Ever since the first discovery of their bones, the Neanderthals have provoked controversy. Who were they? How were they related to modern people? What caused their disappearance 35,000 years ago? The Neanderthals have become the archetype of all that is primitive. But what is their true story? Today Neanderthal specialists are locked in one of the fiercest debates in modern science. One side, the "multiregional" school, argues that the Neanderthals and their contemporaries evolved semi-independently into modern humans. Christopher Stringer leads the "out of Africa" school, which believes that the Neanderthals were replaced by modern people from Africa. Here he sets out his views for the first time, with the archaeologist Clive Gamble. Step by step the authors put forward their case. The Neanderthals had an anatomy crucially different from our own, adapted to Ice Age Europe. Neanderthal behaviour similarly points to fundamental differences. New genetic evidence strongly suggests a single origin for modern humans in Africa. The authors argue that, capable and intelligent as the Neanderthals were, they proved no match for the better-organized, better-equipped newcomers, and died out.