Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents Summary for Volumes 1, 2 and 3
- Contents
- Volume 1 Maps
- Volume 2 Maps
- Volume 3 Maps
- About the Contributors
- Volume 1
- I. Introduction
- II. Africa
- 1.4 Early Hominins
- 1.5 Earliest Industries of Africa
- 1.6 The Human Revolution
- 1.7 The Genus Homo in Africa
- 1.8 Becoming Human: Archaeology of the Sub-Saharan Middle Stone Age
- 1.9 The Later Stone Age of Southern Africa
- 1.10 Prehistory in North Africa after the Middle Palaeolithic
- 1.11 Holocene Prehistory of West Africa
- 1.12 The Archaeology of the Central African Rainforest: Its Current State
- 1.13 The Later Prehistory of Southern Africa from the Early to the Late Iron Age
- 1.14 The Prehistory of East Africa
- 1.15 Neolithic and Predynastic Egypt
- 1.16 The Emergence of the Egyptian State
- 1.17 Pharaonic History
- 1.18 Summary of Classical and Post-Classical Africa
- 1.19 Africa: Languages
- III. South and Southeast Asia
- IV. The Pacific
- Volume 2
- Volume 3
- Index
- References
1.7 - The Genus Homo in Africa
from II. - Africa
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents Summary for Volumes 1, 2 and 3
- Contents
- Volume 1 Maps
- Volume 2 Maps
- Volume 3 Maps
- About the Contributors
- Volume 1
- I. Introduction
- II. Africa
- 1.4 Early Hominins
- 1.5 Earliest Industries of Africa
- 1.6 The Human Revolution
- 1.7 The Genus Homo in Africa
- 1.8 Becoming Human: Archaeology of the Sub-Saharan Middle Stone Age
- 1.9 The Later Stone Age of Southern Africa
- 1.10 Prehistory in North Africa after the Middle Palaeolithic
- 1.11 Holocene Prehistory of West Africa
- 1.12 The Archaeology of the Central African Rainforest: Its Current State
- 1.13 The Later Prehistory of Southern Africa from the Early to the Late Iron Age
- 1.14 The Prehistory of East Africa
- 1.15 Neolithic and Predynastic Egypt
- 1.16 The Emergence of the Egyptian State
- 1.17 Pharaonic History
- 1.18 Summary of Classical and Post-Classical Africa
- 1.19 Africa: Languages
- III. South and Southeast Asia
- IV. The Pacific
- Volume 2
- Volume 3
- Index
- References
Summary
The genus Homo almost certainly first evolved in Africa, and it is on that continent that we find the most diversity of species and the greatest evolutionary changes through time. In the mid-20th century, most palaeoanthropologists would have held that, from a palaeontological perspective, our genus contained only a few species, and perhaps only one at any given time. Thus, most would have recognised the existence of perhaps two or three species following one another in time, beginning with Homo erectus in the Early Pleistocene. The past sixty years have witnessed the recovery of a treasure trove of hominin fossils from a variety of temporal horizons in various parts of Africa, Asia and Europe, and of ancient DNA from fossil bones in Europe. These developments, together with more sophisticated analytical techniques, have revealed our genus to have contained considerably more species in the past. At present, we recognise eight or nine species within the genus Homo, with two or more species existing synchronically throughout the Pleistocene (Fig. 1.7.1).
Since the mid-1980s, the lower boundary of the Pleistocene Epoch [i.e. the beginning of the Quaternary Period] has been regarded as corresponding with the base of the Calabrian stratotype, at 1.81 Ma. Recently, however, the International Union of Geological Sciences has recognised the base of the Gelasian stratotype, which corresponds to the Matuyama [C2r] chronozone, or the Gauss-Matuyama boundary, as defining the Pliocene-Pleistocene boundary at 2.588 Ma [Riccardi 2009]. This change is significant for discussion of hominin palaeontology; and pending the outcome of appeals to this ruling we continue here to regard the base of the Pleistocene as 1.8 Ma.
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- Information
- The Cambridge World Prehistory , pp. 85 - 105Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014
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