Review by Choice Review
Pettitt (Durham Univ., UK), author of The Palaeolithic Origins of Human Burial (CH, Sep'11, 49-0372), mounts substantive evidence from recent scientific advances that have helped to rewrite understandings of how humans evolved from early hominids over the past 300,000 years. Over 18 chapters, supplemented by numerous black-and-white and color illustrations, he assembles verification beginning in Sub-Saharan Africa and tracing migrations to Southwest Asia, Eurasia, and then into Siberia and the Americas. The documentation--with Pettit's personal reflections--employs the scientific method to engage complex topics, among them the evolution of the human brain, hominid bipedalism, and molecular genetics. Pettitt introduces methodologies and evidence, including DNA analysis results, radiocarbon and thermoluminescence dating, demographics, ghost populations, and remodeling ecosystems. The story of adaptation to intolerant, constantly changing climates unfolds with innovations in art, technology, and society. Ancestral Neanderthals, Denisovians, and Homo erectus florensiensis devised Levalloisian, Aurignacian, Solutrean, and Magdalenian lithic tool cultures and ritual burials. One chapter focuses on the domestication of flora and fauna; another documents the arrival and dispersal of humans in the Americas. Pettit is an accomplished storyteller whose writing will appeal to a variety of readers. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers through faculty; professionals. --Charles C. Kolb, independent scholar
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
