Asian Perspectives on Human Evolution

Contents: Acknowledgements. Introduction. I. The Hominoid antecedents: 1. Which was the last common ancestor?/A.R. Sankhyan. 2. The Chinese Giant Ape Gigantopithecus/Wang Wei. 3. Siwalik Palaeoecology and hominoid extinctions/Rajan Gaur. II. The Palaeolithic hominins: 4. Siwalik Palaeoecology and early Hominin Dispersals/Rajeev Patnaik. 5. Affinities of Narmada Hominin fossils/A.R. Sankhyan. 6. Cultural, faunal and stratigraphic contexts of Narmada Hominins/A.R. Sankhyan, Sheuli Chakraborty, L.N. Dewangan, Shashi Prabha, Suvendu Kundu and V.R. Rao. 7. Evolutionary trends in Narmada Fossil Fauna/G.L. Badam and A.R. Sankhyan. 8. Cranial embryogeny and Hominin phylogeny/Anne D. Malasse. 9. The entombed Baby of Tamil Nadu/P. Rajendran and Peter Koshy. 10. The oldest Palaeolithic of China/Ya-Mei HOU and Lingxia ZHAO. 11. Vegetation and climate Narmada Hominins/Poonam Verma, M.R. Rao and Rajeev Patnaik. 12. Jinniushan Hominin and Modern human origins/Karen Rosenberg and Lu Zune. 13. A re-look at prehistoric Susunia, West Bengal/A.R. Sankhyan, L.N. Dewangan, Sheuli Chakraborty, Shashi Prabha, Suvendu Kundu and V.R. Rao. 14. Indian Palaeolithic transitions/A.R. Sankhyan and Indu Talwar. 15. Hobbits and pygmies: trends in evolution/Anneke H. Van Heteren and A.R. Sankhyan. III. The early modern humans: 16. A new sub-Himalayan Holocene Lithic industry/V.S. Soni and A.S. Soni. 17. Archaeology of transhumance in Ladakh Himalayas/S.B. Ota. 18. Early occupations of coastal Sri Lanka/Samanti Kulatilke. 19. Dental evolution in protohistoric Indians/S.R. Walimbe. 20. Continuum in the rock art of Eastern India/A.K. Prasad. 21. Continuum in the rock art of Central and Eastern India/Somnath Chakraverty. 22. Modern adaptations of the Andaman Pygmy/Umesh Kumar. 23. Bio-cultural adaptations and evolution in Andaman Islanders/B.N. Sarkar. 24. On evolutionism, progress and development/Kanchan Mukhopadhyay. Index.

"Present book covers a wide range of aspects on human bio-cultural evolution, right from the ancestors, through the stone age hominins, early modern humans, and the recent primitive human groups, their ecology, dispersals, and diversity and adaptations in Asia, more specifically South and Eastern Asia. The book would serve as a good reference as well as general reading material for palaeontologists, palaeoanthropologists, archaeologists, ecologists, social and cultural anthropologists, planners of the marginalized groups, all scholars and student interested in understanding the story of the evolving humankind in Asia. It speaks something different than what we know of the African and European perspectives." (jacket)