Out of Africa I The First Hominin Colonization of Eurasia [Paperback]

For the first two thirds of our evolutionary history, we hominins were restricted to Africa. Dating from about two million years ago, hominin fossils first appear in Eurasia. This volume addresses many of the issues surrounding this initial hominin intercontinental dispersal. Why did hominins first leave Africa in the early Pleistocene and not earlier? What do we know about the adaptations of the hominins that dispersed - their diet, locomotor abilities, cultural abilities? Was there a single dispersal event or several? Was the hominin dispersal part of a broader faunal expansion of African mammals northward? What route or routes did dispersing populations take?This book examines the first expansion of hominins from Africa
into Eurasia, two million years ago. Experts address such questions as Why did hominins not disperse earlier? Was there more than one dispersal? Did other mammal species move northward as well?For the first two thirds of our evolutionary history, we hominins were restricted to Africa. Dating from about two million years ago, hominin fossils first appear in Eurasia. This volume addresses many of the issues surrounding this initial hominin intercontinental dispersal. Why did hominins first leave Africa in the early Pleistocene and not earlier? What do we know about the adaptations of the hominins that dispersed - their diet, locomotor abilities, cultural abilities? Was there a single dispersal event or several? Was the hominin dispersal part of a broader faunal expansion of African mammals northward? What route or routes did dispersing populations take?Part I. The African Background1. Early Pleistocene mammals of Africa: background to dispersal.Meave Leakey and Lars Werdelin2. Carnivoran dispersal out of Africa during the Early Pleistocene: relevance for hominins?Margaret E. Lewis and Lars Werdelin3. Saharan corridors and their role in the evolutionary geography of Out of Africa I.Marta Miraz?n Lahr4. Stone Age visiting cards revisitl#