The Neanderthal Legacy: An Archaeological Perspective from Western Europe

The Neanderthals populated western Europe from approximately 250,000 to 30,000 years in the past after they disappeared from the archaeological list. In flip, populations of anatomically sleek people, Homo sapiens, got here to dominate the world. looking to comprehend the character of this substitute, which has turn into a hotly debated factor, Paul Mellars brings jointly an remarkable volume of data at the habit of Neanderthals. His entire evaluate levels from the facts of device manufacture and comparable styles of lithic know-how, throughout the problems with subsistence and cost styles, to the extra debatable proof for social association, cognition, and intelligence. Mellars argues that earlier makes an attempt to signify Neanderthal habit as both "modern" or "ape-like" are either overstatements. we will be able to higher understand the substitute of Neanderthals, he keeps, through targeting the social and demographic constitution of Neanderthal populations and on their particular variations to the cruel ecological stipulations of the final glaciation.

Mellars's method of those matters is grounded firmly in his archaeological facts. He illustrates the consequences of those findings by way of drawing from the tools of comparative socioecology, primate reports, and Pleistocene paleoecology. The booklet offers an in depth assessment of the climatic and environmental history to Neanderthal profession in Europe, and of the presently topical problems with the behavioral and organic transition from Neanderthal to totally "modern" populations.

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