Summary of Tom Higham's The World Before Us

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The Palaeolithic era, which is a key phase of late human evolution from 300,000 to 40,000 years ago, is a period when we, Homo sapiens, became us. This period has changed dramatically over the last couple of decades, and what we know now about our own deep past is very different from what we once thought.
#2 The Denisovans are one strand of a much bigger story. What we know about the evolution of our genus, Homo, has changed dramatically over the last two decades. We will learn about the different groups of humans that existed 50,000 years ago, and why we are the last ones left.
#3 I have always been fascinated by the past, and I am very fortunate to work at the University of Oxford, which is one of the founding archaeological science facilities in the world.
#4 The scientific arm of archaeology is responsible for an increasing majority of all publications in the field. Radiocarbon dating, the game-changing chronometric method that heralded the birth of archaeological science in the early 1950s, is used in over a hundred laboratories around the world.

Sujets

• Évolution
• Life science

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 25 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669363880
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Tom Higham's The World Before Us
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9 Insights from Chapter 10 Insights from Chapter 11 Insights from Chapter 12 Insights from Chapter 13 Insights from Chapter 14 Insights from Chapter 15 Insights from Chapter 16 Insights from Chapter 17
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The Palaeolithic era, which is a key phase of late human evolution from 300,000 to 40,000 years ago, is a period when we, Homo sapiens, became us. This period has changed dramatically over the last couple of decades, and what we know now about our own deep past is very different from what we once thought.

#2

The Denisovans are one strand of a much bigger story. What we know about the evolution of our genus, Homo, has changed dramatically over the last two decades. We will learn about the different groups of humans that existed 50,000 years ago, and why we are the last ones left.

#3

I have always been fascinated by the past, and I am very fortunate to work at the University of Oxford, which is one of the founding archaeological science facilities in the world.

#4

The scientific arm of archaeology is responsible for an increasing majority of all publications in the field. Radiocarbon dating, the game-changing chronometric method that heralded the birth of archaeological science in the early 1950s, is used in over a hundred laboratories around the world.

#5

The study of human remains can help us understand when, where, and how people lived. Scientific methods can also help us study the variety in different stone tools, and categorize them using complex statistical packages.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

The idea that humans originated in Africa dates back to Charles Darwin, who predicted that in order to find the ancestors of humans we should explore places where our closest living relatives, the great apes, now live.

#2

The primacy of Africa in our story emerged in the 1970s and 80s, as researchers began to use more quantitative methods to study the cranial remains of humans and their relatives. The evidence supported a model in which Africa was the most likely source of the human mitochondrial gene pool.

#3

The fossil record is incomplete and patchy, and when we look at people around the world today, we see diversity and variation. There was a high degree of morphological variation amongst the human remains that fell into the period from about 300,000 years ago.

#4

The fossil record shows that humans in Africa were on an evolutionary trajectory towards modern people, but this did not happen linear or quickly; it was a trajectory characterized by variability. There were probably phases of isolation and independent evolution happening in different regions of Africa, with periodic interbreeding and contact.

#5

It has been difficult to identify the one group or sub-population within Africa that was ancestral to everyone outside it. It is more likely that there was gene flow, population movement, and mixing between groups across wide areas of Africa through time.

#6

The date of the cave and its contents was a mystery, with many estimating a age of several million years, but later work has suggested a surprisingly recent date: between 236,000 and 335,000 years ago. This means that our early Homo sapiens ancestors almost certainly overlapped with Homo naledi in Africa.

#7

There are two main hypotheses for when Out of Africa II happened. The first, and more traditional, account is that it occurred around 50–60,000 years ago. Some proponents of this idea argue that something must have happened to humans around this time, perhaps to do with cognitive changes, that conferred an advantage.

#8

There are several sites in eastern Eurasia that contain evidence for humans, but they are not clear whether they are archaic forms of Homo sapiens, modern humans, or something else. The picture is muddied by the challenges of dating, the difficulties in extracting DNA from human remains in warmer and tropical environments, and the fragmented and poor nature of many of the fossil remains.

#9

There are two possible paths that modern humans might have taken out of Africa. The Sinai Peninsula is one, and it is possible to walk across the Sinai into the Levant, the area encompassing modern Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and Israel.

#10

The Greek Apidima humans and the Israelites are two examples of early exits of the age.