“The premier anthropologist in the country today.”
–Evolutionary Anthropology on Richard Klein “High above the western shore of Lake Naivasha, a blue pool on the parched floor of East Africa’s Great Rift Valley, sits a small rockshelter carved into the Mau Escarpment. Maasai pastoralists who once occupied this region in central Kenya called the place Enkapune Ya Muto, or ‘Twilight Cave.’ People have long sought shelter there. The cave’s sedim… More >>
A book on human morfologic evolution
and ancient tools (stones).
A few words on culture precisely.
If you don�t want to read about
bones, stones, more bones and more
stones read instead “The Prehistory
of the Mind”, by Steven Mithen.
Rating: 2 / 5
Looks like I will be the minority voice in these ratings. While _The Dawn of Human Culture_ does cover many aspects of human evolution clearly and well, explaining theories and pitfalls, and including a lot of clear sketches, most of the book is just that, a rehash of evolutionary theory. The authors don’t get to the subject at hand until very late in the book (in fact, I haven’t finished reading yet, and only the knowledge that they do eventually make some sort of a point is keeping me reading it). I think I would have enjoyed the book more if I had been better prepared going in, because I kept expecting to read something really new and interesting.
Rating: 2 / 5
A very well written book; easy to read, even for the lay person. I highly recommend it.
Rating: 4 / 5
This is a well-written easy to understand update on the state of evolution of man. It reviews the data of the earliest hominids and ends with early culture in the late stone-age. For those who wish to know the current state of knowledge in this field it is a wonderful source.
Rating: 5 / 5
The Dawn of Human Culture written by Richard G. Klein and Blake Edgar is a upon which human evolution relates.
This book says with reasonable certainty that humans, defined by their habit of walking bipedally, evolved about 6 million years ago from an African ape; that multiple bipedal species appeared between 6 million and 2.5 million years ago; that all these early biped remained remarkably ape-like in brain size and upper body form; that some human species, perhaps the first whose brain exceeded that of an ape in size, invented stone flaking about 2.5 million years ago; that the earliest stone tools makers used their tools to add animal flesh and marrow to a mainly vegetarian diet.
Recent advances in our understanding of human evolution owe as much to methods of dating as they do to new fossil and archeological discoveries. This book describes the principal dating methods in the text, since the descriptions are scattered, fossils and artifacts provide the hard evidence for human evolution and culture.
This book explores the evolution of man into the being and culture that exists today from the fossil record. From the earliest beginings in Africa to the rest of the world man has made his impression felt throughout the world. There is comparative anatomy throughout the book as it is easily readable and the prose well-wriiten and understandable.
For a book on early human existance, this is a good book to start with as it all of the known species variations of man are in this book. Brain case volume and bone structures are very much in evidence while reading this book are explored.
Rating: 5 / 5