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  1. Home
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  3. Neanderthals and Modern Humans
  • Cited by 92
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
August 2009
Print publication year:
2004
Online ISBN:
9780511542374
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511542374
Subjects:
Earth and Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Palaeontology and Life History, Biological Anthropology and Primatology
Series:
Cambridge Studies in Biological and Evolutionary Anthropology (38)
Information

Book description

Neanderthals and Modern Humans develops the theme of the close relationship between climate change, ecological change and biogeographical patterns in humans during the Pleistocene. In particular, it challenges the view that Modern Human 'superiority' caused the extinction of the Neanderthals between 40 and 30 thousand years ago. Clive Finlayson shows that to understand human evolution, the spread of humankind across the world and the extinction of archaic populations, we must move away from a purely theoretical evolutionary ecology base and realise the importance of wider biogeographic patterns including the role of tropical and temperate refugia. His proposal is that Neanderthals became extinct because their world changed faster than they could cope with, and that their relationship with the arriving Modern Humans, where they met, was subtle.

Reviews

Review of the hardback:‘… valuable for its synthesis of the climatic backdrop to later human evolution, which reminds us of the remarkable climatic challenges that our Pleistocene predecessors had to face.’

Source: Science

Review of the hardback:‘… an interesting and stimulating read …’

Source: TRENDS in Ecology and Evolution

Review of the hardback:‘… an interesting and stimulating volume. I recommend this book for those interested in human evolution.’

Source: PalArch, Netherlands Scientific Journal

Review of the hardback:‘… it will help to shape the debates of the next decade.’

Source: Journal of Biosocial Science

Review of the hardback:'I'm sure that this study will have a great influence on many anthropologists and archaeologists.'

Source: Anthropological Science

‘… this book is certainly recommended, being a solitary volume giving the alternative environmentally driven perspective of Neanderthal extinction.‘

Source: Journal of Quaternary Science

'I found this a fascinating book to read, almost like a detective story as various strands of evidence are assembled and combined.'

Source: Rezensionen

'The book is well laid out and the argument develops logically over the eight chapters … this is a very erudite and worthwhile book that lays out a plausible set of testable conclusions.'

Source: Journal of Cambridge Archaeological Journal

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