East Asian population history has only recently been the focus of intense investigations using ancient genomics techniques, yet these studies have already contributed much to our growing understanding of past East Asian populations, and cultural and linguistic dispersals. This Element aims to provide a comprehensive overview of our current understanding of the population history of East Asia through ancient genomics. It begins with an introduction to ancient DNA and recent insights into ar...

A groundbreaking book about how ancient DNA has profoundly changed our understanding of human history.Geneticists like David Reich have made astounding advances in the field of genomics, which is proving to be as important as archeology, linguistics, and written records as a means to understand our ancestry.In Who We Are and How We Got Here, Reich allows readers to discover how the human genome provides not only all the information a human embryo n...

"The who, what, where, when and how of human evolution, from one of the world's experts on the dating of prehistoric fossils." —Steve Brusatte, New York Times –bestselling authorA fascinating investigation of the origin of humans based on incredible new discoveries and advanced scientific technology.Fifty thousand years ago, Homo sapiens was not the only species of humans in the world. There were also Nea...

In a brilliant synthesis of genetic, archaeological, linguistic and climatic data, Oppenheimer challenges current thinking with his claim that there was only one successful migration out of Africa. In 1988 Newsweek headlined the startling discovery that everyone alive on the earth today can trace their maternal DNA back to one woman who lived in Africa 150,000 years ago. It was thought that modern humans populated the world through a series of migratory waves from their African homeland.

Humans are the most intelligent beings this planet has ever produced. But how is it that we can travel into space, cure diseases and decode the fundamentals of life, and at the same time find ourselves faced with an existential crisis that threatens to overwhelm us? What lies behind this uncharacteristic failure to master the most important challenge of our existence?In this compelling book, the leading archaeogeneticist Johannes Krause and the journalist Thomas Trappe investigate ...

The first publication to outline the complex global story of human migration and dispersal throughout the whole of human prehistory. Utilizing archaeological, linguistic and biological evidence, Peter Bellwood traces the journeys of the earliest hunter-gatherer and agriculturalist migrants as critical elements in the evolution of human lifeways.The first volume to chart global human migration and population dispersal throughout the whole of human prehistory, in all regions of...

'Masterful and ambitious. If you want to understand the power of population genetics in revealing the complex and diverse story of humanity, read this book' Tom HighamThe international bestseller and new Bible of population genetics: the science transforming our understanding of the pastWe are living through a revolution in knowledge. Over the past twenty years, genetics has shed light on the history of humanity in unprecedented ways. It en...

How genomics reveals deep histories of inequality, going back many thousands of years.Inequality is an urgent global concern, with pundits, politicians, academics, and best-selling books all taking up its causes and consequences. In Inequality, Carles Lalueza-Fox offers an entirely new perspective on the subject, examining the genetic marks left by inequality on humans throughout history. Lalueza-Fox describes genetic studies, made possible by novel DNA se...

Archaeology of East Asia constitutes an introduction to social and political development from the Palaeolithic to 8th-century early historic times. It takes a regional view across China, Korea, Japan and their peripheries that is unbounded by modern state lines. This viewpoint emphasizes how the region drew on indigenous developments and exterior stimuli to produce agricultural technologies, craft production, political systems, religious outlooks and philosophies that characterize the civi...

Red Panda: Biology and Conservation of the First Panda provides a broad-based overview of the biology of the red panda, Ailurus fulgens. A carnivore that feeds almost entirely on vegetable material and is colored chestnut red, chocolate brown and cream rather than the expected black and white. This book gathers all the information that is available on the red panda both from the field and captivity as well as from cultural aspects, and attempts to answer that most fundamental of questions,...

Research in human evolution in Asia has long been thought to lag far behind similar research in Africa and Europe. However, the limited dissemination of findings is often to blame, rather than a lack of scholarship. The Paleoanthropology of Eastern Asia attempts to rectify this misconception by synthesizing research on human evolution in eastern Asia into a single authoritative and definitive text. Covering the span of time from more than two million years ago to the end of the la...

Rivers of the Asian Highlands introduces readers to the intersecting headwaters of Asia’s eight largest rivers, focusing on the upper reaches of two river systems: the Brahmaputra’s highland tributaries in the eastern Himalayan Mountains and the Dri Chu (upper Yangzi), which descends from the Tibetan Plateau’s east through the Hengduan Mountains.This book guides its readers through these two rivers’ physical, environmental, cultural, social, and political histories before ...