Human evolution: An introduction to the new physical anthropology

By Joseph B. Birdsell and J.B. Birdsell

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0395307848
• ISBN13: 9780395307847
• Release Date: January 1981
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co
• Length: 440 Pages
• Weight: 2.35 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A textbook from one of the greats of anthropology

Joseph Birdsell, although somewhat underated, is one of the greats of physical anthropology. A young Harvard graduate who studied under Earnest Hooton, he was among the half dozen who shaped physical anthropology in the period between 1930 and 1970. Birdsell worked with the great Australian polymath, geologist and archaeologist Norman Tindale in the 1930s. Tindale largely single handedly mapped the tribal territories of all Australian aboriginal tribes across the continent, and during World War Two, played a key role in identifying the launch point of Japanese Fugu incendiary balloons launched at the Pacific North West. Tindale analysed the balloon's ballast. At one time Birdsell was even one of James Dean's professors at college. During the postwar period Birdsell absorbed and mastered the newly emerging Neo-Darwinian Synthesis. By major effort he incorporated it's insights into a massive rework and reinterpretation of much of the physical anthropology database that he and his peers had been patiently collecting and collating for decades. Birdsell adopted the cline approach to measuring physical differences, and used his massive studies of Australian Aboriginal people (based upon field work he and Tindale had performed in the 1930s and 1960s) as the basis for his work providing an empirical base for Sewall Wright's 'shifting balance' hypothesis of evolution. Birdsell's shifting balance work really came to the fore in his final book published when Joseph was in his eighties, just before his death, sums up a lifetime of work and thinking. This textbook however represents a milestone on the path of that thinking. What is not often recognised, mainly by commentators unfamiliar with Birdsell's later work, is that his approach helped provide a new approach to human physical anthropology scientifically more rigorous than the older racial classification systems, that other students of Hooton were associated with. Birdsell, who had great sympathy for the status of indigenous people under colonial regimes, knew it was not sufficient to merely provide a politically correct alternative, but a scientifically valid alternative. Many of the critics of physical anthropology, especially of the Franz Boas - Margaret Mead Columbia cultural anthropology school, unlike Birdsell, concentrated on the former at the expense of the later. This great textbook represents the thought of Birdsell in his later period. One of the unique features of the book is it's heavy reliance on numerous Australian examples. That being said you would imagine Australian colleges would be keen to acquire and distribute this book. Not so! Alas as far as I can ascertain it was never used as a textbook in any Australian course. This absence speaks volumes about both the "colonial cringe" in Australia and the politics of anthropology. In due course Birdsell's role will receive the credit it deserves and I suspect his volumes will become more valuable items in the future.