It highlights the enormous diversity of human experience and the ways in which archaeologists are able to learn about it. This includes the deep prehistory of human evolution, the more recent prehistory of postglacial foragers and farmers, and the literate civilizations of Egypt, the Mediterranean world, South and East Asia, and Central and South America. It provides an introductory account that takes the student through the human past using a regional and chronological framework, focusing as much on the archaeology of the everyday as on the spectacular and unusual.

    In fact, recent research has shown that this vision bears little relation to reality.The field of archaeology has changed dramatically in the past two decades, as women have challenged their male colleagues' exclusive focus on hard artifacts such as spear points rather than tougher to find evidence of women's work. J. M. Adovasio and Olga Soffer are two of the world's leading experts on perishable artifacts such as basketry, cordage, and weaving. In The Invisible Sex, the authors present an exciting new look at prehistory, arguing that women invented all kinds of critical materials, including the clothing necessary for life in colder climates, the ropes used to make rafts that enabled long-distance travel by water, and nets used for communal hunting. Even more important, women played a central role in the development of language and social life—in short, in our becoming human. In this eye-opening book, a new story about women in prehistory emerges with provocative implications for our assumptions about gender today.

    David Lewis-Williams proposes that the explanation for this lies in the evolution of the human mind. Cro-Magnons, unlike the Neanderthals, possessed a more advanced neurological makeup that enabled them to experience shamanistic trances and vivid mental imagery. It became important for people to "fix," or paint, these images on cave walls, which they perceived as the membrane between their world and the spirit world from which the visions came. Over time, new social distinctions developed as individuals exploited their hallucinations for personal advancement, and the first truly modern society emerged.Illuminating glimpses into the ancient mind are skillfully interwoven here with the still-evolving story of modern-day cave discoveries and research. The Mind in the Cave is a superb piece of detective work, casting light on the darkest mysteries of our earliest ancestors while strengthening our wonder at their aesthetic achievements.

    An archaeological and linguistic monograph on the origins and expansion of the Indo-European

    The archaeological finds included the remains of textiles, plants, and animals, and some female terra-cotta figures that suggested the existence of a "mother goddess" cult.The initial excavation was interrupted in 1965, and answers to the riddles of this Neolithic site remained unresolved until Ian Hodder initiated a new campaign of research in the 1990s. Described by Colin Renfrew as "one of the most ambitious excavation projects currently in progress, undertaken at one of the world's great archaeological sites," this has been a truly multidisciplinary undertaking, involving the participation of over one hundred archaeologists, scientists, and specialists. Hodder and his colleagues have established that this great site, dating back some 9,000 years, provides the key to understanding the most important change in human existence--the time when people moved into villages and towns, adopted farming as a way of life, and began to accept domination of one social group by another. Through meticulous excavation procedures and laboratory analyses, they peel back the layers of history to reveal how people lived and died and how they engaged with one another, with their environment, and with the spirit world.Full of insights into past lives and momentous events, "The Leopard's Tale" is superbly illustrated with images of the art, the excavations, and the people involved in this world-famous dig.

    The story begins in Africa, six to seven million years ago, and encompasses twenty known human species, of which Homo sapiens is the sole survivor. Illustrated with spectacular, three-dimensional scientific reconstructions portrayed in their natural habitat developed by a team of physical anthropologists at the American Museum of Natural History and in concert with experts from around the world, the book is both a guide to extinct human species and an astonishing hominid family photo album.The Last Human presents a comprehensive account of each species with information on its emergence, chronology, geographic range, classification, physiology, lifestyle, habitat, environment, cultural achievements, co-existing species, and possible reasons for extinction. Also included are summaries of fossil discoveries, controversies, and publications. What emerges from the fossil story is a new understanding of Homo sapiens. No longer credible is the notion that our species is the end product of a single lineage, improved over generations by natural selection. Rather, the fossil record shows, we are a species with widely varied precursors, and our family tree is characterized by many branchings and repeated extinctions.Exhibition information:Photographs of most of the reconstructions that appear in this book will be featured in exhibits appearing in the new Hall of Human Origins at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.  The opening of the Hall is planned for November 2006.

    It offers what is frequently seen as a forbidden theory of the origin of religion that goes deep into evolution, especially but not exclusively cultural evolution.How did our early ancestors transcend the quotidian demands of everyday existence to embrace an alternative reality that called into question the very meaning of their daily struggle? Robert Bellah, one of the leading sociologists of our time, identifies a range of cultural capacities, such as communal dancing, storytelling, and theorizing, whose emergence made this religious development possible. Deploying the latest findings in biology, cognitive science, and evolutionary psychology, he traces the expansion of these cultural capacities from the Paleolithic to the Axial Age (roughly, the first millennium BCE), when individuals and groups in the Old World challenged the norms and beliefs of class societies ruled by kings and aristocracies. These religious prophets and renouncers never succeeded in founding their alternative utopias, but they left a heritage of criticism that would not be quenched.Bellah's treatment of the four great civilizations of the Axial Age--in ancient Israel, Greece, China, and India--shows all existing religions, both prophetic and mystic, to be rooted in the evolutionary story he tells. Religion in Human Evolution answers the call for a critical history of religion grounded in the full range of human constraints and possibilities.

    Archaeologist Timothy Taylor paints a dramatic and startling picture of our sexual evolution as he follows human sexuality from its origins four million years ago to modern times to answer our most titillating questions about this endlessly fascinating andpowerful subject.Taylor draws on recent archaeological discoveries such as skeletons of Amazon women, golden penis sheaths, the charred remains of aphrodisiac herbs, and awealth of prehistoric erotic art to trace practices such as contraception, homosexuality, transsexuality, prostitution, sadomasochism, and bestiality back to their ancient origins. He makes the startling claim that although humans have used contraceptives from the very earliest times to separate sex from reproduction, techniques to maximize population growth were developed only when farming began--a revolution involving control of animals' sex lives, widespread oppression of women, and an attitude to nature that continues to have devastating ecological consequences. He draws the radical conclusion that theevolution of our species has been shaped not only by the survival of the fittest but by the very sexual choices our ancestors made. And he links ancient sexuality with our own in a contemporary survey of artificial insemination, surrogate pregnancies, drag queens, brothels, pornography, and the spectre of racial dominance.How has human sexuality changed--and how has it remained the same--over the span of millions of years? How did the ideas of eroticism, ecstasy, immortality, and beauty become linked to sex? Taylor explores these questions and sets out to prove that our sexual behavior is and has always been a matterof choice rather than something genetically determined.  He eloquently and accessibly explains how our sexual politics--issues of gender and power,control and exploitation--are not new but are deeply rooted in our prehistory.Surely one of the most illuminating and controversial books on human sexuality ever written, The Prehistory of Sex invites readers to become voyeurs into the bizarre--and so far hidden--prehistoric sexual world.

    Their discoveries have spawned a host of new questions: Should chimpanzees be included as a human species? Was it the physical difficulty of human childbirth that encouraged the development of social groups in early human species? Did humans and Neanderthals interbreed? Why did humans supplant Neanderthals in the end? In answering such questions, Smithsonian Intimate Guide to Human Origins sheds new light on one of the most important questions of all: What makes us human?

    Esther experiences a very different kind of childhood. Will she get back to her own time?

    When it was originally published in 1974, E. Evans-Pritchard of the Times Literary Supplement noted that this classic study of anthropological economics "is rich in factual evidence and in ideas, so rich that a brief review cannot do it justice; only another book could do that."

    The barriers to what we can know about our distant relatives have been falling as a result of scientific advance, such as decoding the genomes of humans and Neanderthals, and bringing together different perspectives to answer common questions. These collaborations have brought new knowledge and suggested fresh concepts to examine. The results have shaken the old certainties.The results are profound; not just for the study of the past but for appreciating why we conduct our social lives in ways, and at scales, that are familiar to all of us. But such basic familiarity raises a dilemma. When surrounded by the myriad technical and cultural innovations that support our global, urbanized lifestyles we can lose sight of the small social worlds we actually inhabit and that can be traced deep into our ancestry. So why do we need art, religion, music, kinship, myths, and all the other facets of our over-active imaginations if the reality of our effective social worlds is set by a limit of some one hundred and fifty partners (Dunbar’s number) made of family, friends, and useful acquaintances? How could such a social community lead to a city the size of London or a country as large as China? Do we really carry our hominin past into our human present? It is these small worlds, and the link they allow to the study of the past that forms the central point in this book.

    Chauncy Rollock is an amiable archaeologist with just the right knack for solving logic problems. And the Mexican Military captain Gustavo De Leon is tired of fighting corruption at all levels of government. All three men and their families become entangled in the secret of the Mayan Riddle found on the steps of a newly discovered pyramid. Those who would use the treasure for personal gain are never far from their goal and must be stopped at all costs.The Yucatan will never be the same.Treasure of the Mayan King is a clean action-adventure novel that is safe and enjoyable for the whole family to read. “If you like Indiana Jones, you’ll love this book!”From the back cover:A violent tropical storm has uncovered a previously unknown Mayan pyramid in the Yucatan Peninsula. On the steps of this temple lies a riddle that leads to the hidden treasure of a great Mayan king. One man, the French linguist Dr. Sova, believes he knows the secrets of the riddle. But his efforts to find it are cut short and the information falls into the hands of unscrupulous people. The race is on to see who will be the first to find the treasure of the Mayan king!

    But the treasure inside was not what they expected, and in fact far more valuable: the walls were covered with stunning prehistoric paintings and engravings, preserved within the sealed cave for over 17,000 years. This is the true story of the boys who discovered the cave of Lascaux, bringing to the modern world powerful examples of the very beginning of art.

    As they created larger societies, however, inequality rose, and by 2500 BCE truly egalitarian societies were on the wane. In The Creation of Inequality, Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus demonstrate that this development was not simply the result of population increase, food surplus, or the accumulation of valuables. Instead, inequality resulted from conscious manipulation of the unique social logic that lies at the core of every human group.A few societies allowed talented and ambitious individuals to rise in prestige while still preventing them from becoming a hereditary elite. But many others made high rank hereditary, by manipulating debts, genealogies, and sacred lore. At certain moments in history, intense competition among leaders of high rank gave rise to despotic kingdoms and empires in the Near East, Egypt, Africa, Mexico, Peru, and the Pacific.Drawing on their vast knowledge of both living and prehistoric social groups, Flannery and Marcus describe the changes in logic that create larger and more hierarchical societies, and they argue persuasively that many kinds of inequality can be overcome by reversing these changes, rather than by violence.