The improbable primate : how water shaped human evolution / Clive Finlayson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Finlayson, Clive, 1955- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Human beings--Origin.

Human beings.

Water--History.

Water.

Human evolution.

Paleoecology--Pleistocene.

Paleoecology.

Human beings--Effect of environment on.

Monogenism and polygenism.

Neanderthals.

Paleoanthropology.

History.

Physical Description:

xix, 202 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford, United Kingdom : Oxford University Press, 2014.

Summary:

We are improbable primates. We left the others "'.eating fruit in the forest while we set off into the growing regions of savannah, developing the habit of walking on two legs, and varying our diet with meat. Over a central belt of the Earth the climate was drying, and sources of water were becoming scattered. Our evolution was driven by and played out in the context of access to water. In this intriguing and provocative book, Clive Finlayson gives a new view of human evolution which draws on ecology to interpret the fossil evidence. It is an account of a single human species, split into groups that tackled the challenge of new landscapes as they spread across the world. Without water, we quickly die; and it was the need to reach water, he argues, that shaped our bodies and drove the development of our brains. Book jacket.

Contents:

The inverted panda

And the world changed forever

At the lake's edge

The first humans

Middle earth : the home of the first humans

The drying world of the Middle Pleistocene

The rain chasers : solutions in a drying world

The exceptional world of the Neanderthal

Global expansion of the rain chasers

Australia

From Lake Chad to Puritjarra and beyond.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 153-191) and index.

ISBN:

9780199658794 :

019965879X

OCLC:

857537612