Human Origins and Environmental Backgrounds

Advances in fossil studies relating to the origin of Homo sapiens have strengthened the hypothesis that our direct ancestors originated on the African continent. Most researchers also agree that the time when prehumans diverged from the last common ancestor was in the early part of the Late Miocene epoch.

Focus must now shift from determining the times and places of hominid origins to clarifying hominid evolutionary problems, such as the selective factors and acquisition processes of hominid bipedalism. In March of 2003, researchers from Africa, Europe, Japan and the United States convened in Kyoto for a symposium on Human Origins and Environmental Backgrounds, an interdisciplinary effort to consider these evolutionary puzzles, to report current research and to exchange thoughts towards better understanding the relationship among environmental changes, adaptive mechanisms and human origins. This book is the result of that symposium, and includes a diverse and unique set of papers on topics such as hominid evolution, dispersal and morphology, and the origins of bipedalism.

Human Origins and Environmental Backgrounds is a benchmark compendium of research that presents itself at a major paradigm shift in paleoanthropology. The editors offer a variety of theoretical approaches to puzzles on the place of the Hominidae, particularly Homo sapiens, among the Primates, including our unique bipedal positional behavior and social structure and the selective factors that might have been involved in our evolution in the broad context of Miocene and later environments. The contributors represent several generations of pioneering laboratory and field researchers from Japan, France and the United States, who have worked together over the past 40 years and who have trained future leaders in evolutionary anthropology and experimental primatology. This volume, compiled by the leading experts in the field, explores the interface between hominid origins and palaeoenvironments.