Human Origins: An Introduction

Human Origins: An Introduction is a textbook geared towards undergraduate freshmen anthropology majors and non-majors. Generally, it will give all majors a basic foundation in biological anthropology and prepare them for further studies in human evolution.

Why use this textbook? This textbook was created for simplicity in learning key concepts and practicality in terms of completing all chapters within a semester without sacrificing important topics and concepts. The author created the text from a course pack of PowerPoint lecture outlines used in his Human Origins course, which speaks to the student-centered learning aspect of it. In short, this textbook will not overwhelm the user with twenty-five to thirty page chapters and blind them with excessive color images. Additionally, this textbook has a comprehensive glossary and presents several topics that have relevance to real world problems, such as the distribution of the ABO blood types in the world and disease history in human populations; evolution of respective mutant genes that prevents HIV and malarial infections; evolution of human skin color; history of the race concept; the 98% genetic similarity between chimps and humans and what it really means; and the origins of modern humans. Finally, each chapter includes a summary of key ideas; key terms; study guides; and practice exercises where a student can write directly on the sheet and detach it from the textbook.