Out of Africa I

Out of Africa I

This book examines the first expansion of hominins from Africa into Eurasia, two million years ago. Experts address such questions as Why did hominins not disperse earlier? Was there more than one dispersal? Did other mammal species move northward as well?

For the first two thirds of our evolutionary history, we hominins were restricted to Africa. Dating from about two million years ago, hominin fossils first appear in Eurasia. This volume addresses many of the issues surrounding this initial hominin intercontinental dispersal. Why did hominins first leave Africa in the early Pleistocene and not earlier? What do we know about the adaptations of the hominins that dispersed - their diet, locomotor abilities, cultural abilities? Was there a single dispersal event or several? Was the hominin dispersal part of a broader faunal expansion of African mammals northward? What route or routes did dispersing populations take?

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Richard Leakey, geboren 1944 in Kenia, wurde durch seine spektakulären Fossilienfunde weltbekannt. 1989 wurde er zum Leiter des Kenya Wildlife Service ernannt.

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Inhaltsangabe

Part I. The African Background
1. Early Pleistocene mammals of Africa: background to dispersal.
Meave Leakey and Lars Werdelin
2. Carnivoran dispersal out of Africa during the Early Pleistocene: relevance for hominins?
Margaret E. Lewis and Lars Werdelin
3. Saharan corridors and their role in the evolutionary geography of Out of Africa I .
Marta Mirazón Lahr
4. Stone Age visiting cards revisited: a strategic perspective on the lithic technology of early hominin dispersal.
John J. Shea
Part II. Eastern Asia
5. Behavioral and environmental background to Out-of-Africa I and the arrival of Homo erectus in East Asia.
Richard Potts and Robin Teague
6. New archeological evidence for the earliest hominin presence in China.
Ya-Mei Hou and Ling-Xia Zhao
7. Geological evidence for the earliest appearance of hominins in Indonesia.
Yahdi Zaim
8. Divorcing hominins from the Stegodon-Ailuropoda fauna: new views on the antiquity of hominins in Asia.
Russell L. Ciochon
Part III. South Asia
9.Early Pleistocene mammalian faunas of India and evidence of connections with other parts of the world.
Rajeev Patnaik and Avinash C. Nanda
10. The Indian subcontinent and Out of Africa 1
Parth R. Chauhan
11. The Early Paleolithic of the Indian subcontinent: hominin colonization, dispersals and occupation history.
Michael D. Petraglia
Part IV. Europe and Western Asia
12. Early Pleistocene faunal connections between Africa and Eurasia: an ecological perspective.
Miriam Belmaker
13. Early Pleistocene faunas of Eurasia and hominin dispersals
Bienvenido Martínez-Navarro
14. Fossil skulls from Dmanisi: a paleodeme representing earliest Homo in Eurasia
G. Philip Rightmire and David Lordkipanidze
Part V. Summary, Synthesis and Future Directions
15. Out of Africa 1 : current problems and future prospects
Robin Dennell
16. Summary and Prospectus
John G. Fleagle and John J. Shea