Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables, Figures, and Boxes
- Preface
- 1 Asia and Its Place in Palaeoanthropology
- 2 The African Background to the Colonisation of Asia
- 3 The Climatic and Environmental Background to Hominin Settlement in Asia before 1 MA
- 4 The Earliest Inhabitants of Southwest Asia
- 5 The Earliest Inhabitants of South and Southeast Asia and China
- 6 “Out of Africa 1” Reconsidered and the Earliest Colonisation of Asia
- 7 The Climatic and Environmental Background to Hominin Settlement in Asia between ca. 1 Ma and the Last Interglacial
- 8 The Middle Pleistocene Archaeological Record for Southwest and Central Asia
- 9 The Middle Pleistocene Archaeological Record of the Indian Subcontinent
- 10 The Middle Pleistocene Archaeological Record of China and Southeast Asia
- 11 Human Evolution in Asia during the Middle Pleistocene
- 12 Concluding Remarks
- Appendix 1 The Sizes of Countries and Regions in Asia, with Comparative Examples
- Appendix 2 Geographical Coordinates of Principal Early Palaeolithic Sites in Asia
- Appendix 3 Geographical Coordinates of Geological Sections and Cores
- Appendix 4 English Names of Various Mammals Recorded in Asia
- Bibliography
- Index
Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables, Figures, and Boxes
- Preface
- 1 Asia and Its Place in Palaeoanthropology
- 2 The African Background to the Colonisation of Asia
- 3 The Climatic and Environmental Background to Hominin Settlement in Asia before 1 MA
- 4 The Earliest Inhabitants of Southwest Asia
- 5 The Earliest Inhabitants of South and Southeast Asia and China
- 6 “Out of Africa 1” Reconsidered and the Earliest Colonisation of Asia
- 7 The Climatic and Environmental Background to Hominin Settlement in Asia between ca. 1 Ma and the Last Interglacial
- 8 The Middle Pleistocene Archaeological Record for Southwest and Central Asia
- 9 The Middle Pleistocene Archaeological Record of the Indian Subcontinent
- 10 The Middle Pleistocene Archaeological Record of China and Southeast Asia
- 11 Human Evolution in Asia during the Middle Pleistocene
- 12 Concluding Remarks
- Appendix 1 The Sizes of Countries and Regions in Asia, with Comparative Examples
- Appendix 2 Geographical Coordinates of Principal Early Palaeolithic Sites in Asia
- Appendix 3 Geographical Coordinates of Geological Sections and Cores
- Appendix 4 English Names of Various Mammals Recorded in Asia
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In this book, I have tried to summarise and integrate the archaeological, fossil hominin, and climatic records of Asia before it was colonised by modern humans ca. 100 ka. I first thought about writing this book ten to fifteen years ago, but had to delay the attempt until I had published the results of the fieldwork I had directed in the Pabbi Hills, Pakistan (Dennell 2004a), and also until I had escaped the burdens of departmental administration. There are several reasons that I have long wanted to write a synthesis of Asia's early prehistory. The first is that (surprisingly) no one has ever written one, despite the fact that Asia, as the largest continent, was where a substantial part of early human prehistory took place in the last two million years, and it thus deserves to be treated in its own right as much as that of Europe or Africa. Second, and as a result of this neglect, most accounts of early human prehistory are biased towards evidence from Europe and Africa, with often only brief mention of what is known from Asia. One unfortunate result of this bias is the prominence that is usually ascribed to European evidence. Europe is little more than the western peninsula of Asia, and was often a very small tail wagged by a much larger dog.
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- Information
- The Palaeolithic Settlement of Asia , pp. xix - xxivPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008