Africa from MIS 6-2: Population Dynamics and Paleoenvironments

Book Overview

Bringing together archaeological, paleoenvironmental, paleontological and genetic data, this book makes a first attempt to reconstruct African population histories from out species' evolution to the Holocene. Africa during Marine Isotope Stages (MIS) 6 to 2 ( 190-12,000 years ago) witnessed the biological development and behavioral florescence of our species. Modern human population dynamics, which involved multiple population expansions, dispersals, contractions and extinctions, played a central role in our species' evolutionary trajectory. So far, the demographic processes - modern human population sizes, distributions and movements - that occurred within Africa during this critical period have been consistently under-addressed.
The authors of this volume aim at (1) examining the impact of this glacial-interglacial- glacial cycle on human group sizes, movements and distributions throughout Africa; (2) investigating the macro- and micro-evolutionary processes underpinning our species' anatomical and behavioral evolution; and (3) setting an agenda whereby Africa can benefit from, and eventually contribute to, the increasingly sophisticated theoretical and methodological palaeodemographic frameworks developed on other continents.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9402413685
• ISBN13: 9789402413687
• Release Date: April 2018
• Publisher: Springer
• Length: 424 Pages
• Weight: 2.17 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 8.3" x 11.0"