Human Dispersal and Species Movement: From Prehistory to the Present

Description

How have humans colonised the entire planet and reshaped its ecosystems in the process? This unique and groundbreaking collection of essays explores human movement through time, the impacts of these movements on landscapes and other species, and the ways in which species have co-evolved and transformed each other as a result. Exploring the spread of people, plants, animals, and diseases through processes of migration, colonisation, trade and travel, it assembles a broad array of case studies from the Pliocene to the present. The contributors from disciplines across the humanities and natural sciences are senior or established scholars in the fields of human evolution, archaeology, history, and geography.

Nicole Boivin is Director of the Department of Archaeology at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany. Her archaeological research is multi-disciplinary, and cross-cuts the traditional divide between the natural sciences and humanities. She is author of Material Cultures, Material Minds: The Role of Things in Human Thought, Society and Evolution (Cambridge, 2008). Remy Crassard is a permanent Research Fellow at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Lyon, France. He is also directing the Globalkites Project, focused on the interdisciplinary study of desert kites across the world, and especially in the Middle East and Central Asia. His research addresses the dispersal and cultural evolution of modern humans during the Palaeolithic and Neolithic periods through the study of the lithic industries in the Arabian Peninsula. Michael Petraglia is Head of the Human Evolution, Environment and Culture group of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany. He is the author of 150 journal articles and book chapters and co-editor of eight books and special journal issues, including The Evolution of Human Populations in Arabia: Palaeoenvironments, Prehistory and Genetics (2009) and The Evolution and History of Human Populations in South Asia: Inter-disciplinary Studies in Archaeology, Biological Anthropology, Linguistics and Genetics (2007). His research interests include the biological and cultural evolution of hominins and the dispersal of human populations out of Africa.