The Human Career: Human Biological and Cultural Origins, Third Edition / Edition 3

by Richard G. Klein

Overview

Since its publication in 1989, The Human Career has proved to be an indispensable tool in teaching human origins. This substantially revised third edition retains Richard G. Klein’s innovative approach while showing how cumulative discoveries and analyses over the past ten years have significantly refined our knowledge of human evolution.

Klein chronicles the evolution of people from the earliest primates through the emergence of fully modern humans within the past 200,000 years. His comprehensive treatment stresses recent advances in knowledge, including, for example, ever more abundant evidence that fully modern humans originated in Africa and spread from there, replacing the Neanderthals in Europe and equally archaic people in Asia. With its coverage of both the fossil record and the archaeological record over the 2.5 million years for which both are available, The Human Career demonstrates that human morphology and behavior evolved together. Throughout the book, Klein presents evidence for alternative points of view, but does not hesitate to make his own position clear.

In addition to outlining the broad pattern of human evolution, The Human Career details the kinds of data that support it. For the third edition, Klein has added numerous tables and a fresh citation system designed to enhance readability, especially for students. He has also included more than fifty new illustrations to help lay readers grasp the fossils, artifacts, and other discoveries on which specialists rely. With abundant references and hundreds of images, charts, and diagrams, this new edition is unparalleled in its usefulness for teaching human evolution.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226439655
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	06/01/2009
Edition description:	Third Edition
Pages:	1024
Product dimensions:	7.30(w) x 10.00(h) x 2.00(d)

About the Author

Richard G. Klein is Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor in Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University. His books include Ice-Age Hunters of the Ukraine and, with Kathryn Cruz-Uribe, The Analysis of Animal Bones from Archaeological Sites, both published by the University of Chicago Press.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

List of Tables

Preface to the Third Edition

Preface to the Second Edition

Preface to the First Edition

1 Evolution, Classification, and Nomenclature

2 The Geologic Time Frame

3 The Primate Background

4 The Australopiths and Homo habilis

5 Evolution of the Genus Homo

6 The Neanderthals and Their Contemporaries

7 Anatomically Modern Humans

8 Synopsis: Anatomy, Behavior, and Modern Human Origins

References

Reference Index

Site Index

Subject Index

What People are Saying About This

F. Clark Howell

The new edition of The Human Career substantially reworks, emends, updates, and adds to the initial edition in regard to the text, as well as to the many essential figures and tables. It is in many respects an almost totally new volume, not only in its currency, but also in its thrust and expanded and deepened argumentation. It is a work of extraordinary quality and is unquestionably a major accomplishment and an exceptional presentation of the scope of modern paleoanthropology.

Editorial Reviews

"This imposing tome represente the third iteration of the preeminent textbook in the field of paleoanthropology. . . . It is the definitive work for a comprehensive upper-level summary of the human fossil record. . . . With accessible, accurate prose and copious illustations, this book is simply an indispensable resource."

Choice

If you could only have one book that deals with human evolution, this is definitely the one to choose.
— Nature

Jean-Jacques Hublin

Klein (anthro, U. of Chicago) summarizes our current knowledge and ongoing debates about human evolution from the earliest primates to modern man. Both the fossil and archaeological evidence are examined, showing the relationship between human form and behavior. A highly detailed, well-illustrated and accessible monograph. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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