Human Past, The: World Prehistory & The Development Of Human

Description: In The Human Past: World Prehistory and the Development of Human Societies, a team of leading archaeologists, all well-known specialists in their fields, provides a seamless yet uniquely authoritative account of human prehistory on a global scale. It highlights the enormous diversity of human experience and the ways in which archaeologists are able to learn about it. This includes the deep prehistory of human evolution, the more recent prehistory of postglacial foragers and farmers, and the literate civilizations of Egypt, the Mediterranean world, South and East Asia, and Central and South America. It provides an introductory account that takes the student through the human past using a regional and chronological framework, focusing as much on the archaeology of the everyday as on the spectacular and unusual. The text is accompanied by hundreds of specially commissioned diagrams and photographs, many in full colour, that illustrate key sites, artifacts and regions, as well as clear timelines, boxes on key sites, methods, discoveries and controversies, and maps.

Review: "'What an accomplishment!... Each chapter provides an incisive, up-to-date summary of its subject that will remain an authoritative source for years to come' - Professor Richard A. Diehl, author of The Olmecs; 'A brilliant synthesis and the best single account of the state of archaeological knowledge about our past' - Professor Ezra Zubrow"

Contents: Introduction: The Study of the Human Past; Part I The Evolution of Humanity African Origins Hominin Dispersals in the Old World; The Rise of Modern Humans; Part II After the Ice The World Transformed; From Foragers to Complex Societies in Southwest Asia; East Asian Agriculture and Its Impact Australia and the Austronesians; Origins of Food-Producing Economies in the Americas; Holocene Africa Holocene Europe; The Rise of Civilization in Southwest Asia; The Mediterranean World; South Asia: From Early Villages to Buddhism; Complex Societies of East and Southeast Asia; Mesoamerican Civilization; From Village to Empire in South America; The Human Past: Retrospect and Prospect


Author Biography: Chris Scarre is Deputy Director of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, and editor of the Cambridge Archaeological Journal. He is co-author with Brian Fagan of the textbook Ancient Civilizations.