Life on Earth - The First Humans - Facts on File, Science
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THE FIRST
HUMANS
THE DIAGRAM GROUP
LIFE ON EARTH
Life On Earth: The First Humans
Copyright © 2004 by The Diagram Group
Written, edited, and produced by Diagram Visual Information Ltd
Editorial director:
Denis Kennedy
Editors:
Bender Richardson White, Gordon Lee
Contributors:
Quartz Editions, John Stidworthy
Indexer:
Martin Hargreaves
Art director:
Roger Kohn
Senior designer:
Lee Lawrence
Designers:
Anthony Atherton, Christian Owens
Illustrators:
Pavel Kostal, Kathleen McDougall, Coral Mula, Graham Rosewarne
Picture researcher:
Neil McKenna
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Facts On File, Inc.
132 West 31st Street
New York NY 10001
For Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data, please contact Facts On File, Inc.
ISBN 0-8160-5050-3
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Printed in the United States of America
EB Diagram 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Contents
4 Introduction
60 The first farmers
62 Burials
64 Early writing
WHO ARE WE?
6 Who are we?
8 Hominid or not?
10 Bones of contention
12 Meet the australopithecines
GREAT AGES
66 The Ice Ages
68 The Stone Age
70 The Bronze Age
72 The Iron Age
BECOMING HUMAN
14 The first tool-users
16 Out of Africa
18 Toward modern humans
20 From the Neander Valley
22 The arrival of modern man
24 The rise of
Homo sapiens
AROUND THE WORLD
74 Long ago in Africa
76 Long ago in Asia
78 Ancient Europeans
80 To the Americas
82 Long ago in Australia
KEEPING TRACK OF CHANGE
26 Brain power
28 Changing shape
30 Another way to study
ancestry
32 More about genes
ON THE TRACK
84 Famous fossil finders
86 What a hoax!
88 Lucky finds 1
90 Lucky finds 2
92 An unlucky loss
94 Naming the finds
LIFE LONG AGO
34 Early tool kits
36 On the hunt
38 The prehistoric menu
40 Cannibals!
42 Ancient illnesses
44 The wanderers
46 First dwellings
48 Speaking up
50 The prehistoric mind
52 Clothes
54 The first art galleries
56 Making music
58 Settling down
TALKING POINTS
96 Uncovering the past
98 Making sense of fossils
100 Population growth
102 Tomorrow‘s people
104 Timeline
106 Glossary
109 Websites to visit
111 Index
4
Introduction
about the evolution of our own human species from its
early ancestors. Texts, explanatory diagrams, illustrations,
captions, and feature boxes combine to help readers grasp
important information. A glossary clarifies the more difficult
terms for younger students, while a list of websites provides
links to other relevant sources of additional information.
Chapter 1,
Who Are We?
, places us in the context of the
natural world and our relatives among the animals. It also
looks at some of the earliest fossils that are thought to have
some connection with human ancestry, up to and including
the australopithecines.
Chapter 2,
Becoming Human
, tells the fossil history of
humans, from the first primitive toolmakers living in Africa, up
to the appearance of our own species,
Homo sapiens
, that is
now entrenched worldwide.
Chapter 3,
Keeping Track of Change
, looks at some of the
main changes that have taken place in the human body
during its evolution, and takes a brief look at modern methods
of tracing ancestry and what they tell us about our past.
Chapter 4,
Life Long Ago
, looks at many aspects of human
life, including speech, hunting, farming, and art, and details
some of the things that are known about ways of life in the
distant past.
Chapter 5,
Great Ages
, looks at the changing conditions of
life, both environmental and technological, that humans have
lived through, in some of the great “Ages” that have been
named by paleontologists and archeologists.
Chapter 6,
Around the World
, takes a continent-by-continent
approach to human history, focusing on stories that
illuminate the past.
Chapter 7,
On the Track
, looks at the business of finding
fossils, giving an account of just some of the famous human
fossil finders. Examples are also given of some notable finds,
and some major disappointments, including a hoax.
T
HIS BOOK is a concise, illustrated guide to what we know
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