Southern Asia, Australia, and the Search for Human Origins [Hardcover]

The first book to focus on the role of Southern Asia and Australia in our understanding of modern human origins and the expansion of Homo sapiens.This volume summarizes what is  and is not  known about the earliest evidence of our species outside Africa, from Arabia to Australia. Most books on the origins of modern human behavior and the expansion of our species across the world focus on evidence from Africa, Europe, and the Levant, which have been extensively researched. This book focuses instead on the important areas of southern Asia such as Arabia and India, as well as evidence from Australia, which deserve far wider attention than they have hereto received.This volume summarizes what is  and is not  known about the earliest evidence of our species outside Africa, from Arabia to Australia. Most books on the origins of modern human behavior and the expansion of our species across the world focus on evidence from Africa, Europe, and the Levant, which have been extensively researched. This book focuses instead on the important areas of southern Asia such as Arabia and India, as well as evidence from Australia, which deserve far wider attention than they have hereto received.This is the first book to focus on the role of Southern Asia and Australia in our understanding of modern human origins and the expansion of Homo sapiens between East Africa and Australia before 30,000 years ago. With contributions from leading experts that take into account the latest archaeological evidence from India and Southeast Asia, this volume critically reviews current models of the timing and character of the spread of modern humans out of Africa. It also demonstrates that the evidence from Australasia should receive much wider and more serious consideration in its own right if we want to understand how our species achieved its global distribution. Critically examining the Out of Africa model, this book emphasizes the context and variability of the global evidence in the searlã'