Recent Discoveries and Perspectives in Human Evolution

The present volume is based on research articles submitted as part of an international conference Exploring Human Origins: Exciting discoveries at the start of the 21st Century', 5-10 August 2013 in Manchester, UK, under the auspices of the International Union of the Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES). The main focus of these papers was to record the more recent fossil, archaeological and genomic discoveries in the field of human origins and evolution, besides a few very significant ones made in 1990s. This volume presents the findings of various researchers that highlight different perspectives contributing to the greater understanding of human origins and ongoing evolution. A new juvenile cranium from Zhaotong City, Southwest China indicates complexity of hominoid evolution in Eastern Asia (Ji Xueping, Deng Chenglong and Yu Tengsong); Australopithecines shoulders: new remains for old debate (Jean-Luc Voisin); Hominin palaeoanthropology in Asia comes of age (Robin Dennell); Pleistocene hominin fossil discoveries in India: implications for human evolution in South Asia (Anek R. Sankhyan); The role of Balkans in people of Europe: new evidence from Serbia (Mirjana Roksandic); The role of landscapes in shaping hominin habitats in Africa (Sally C. Reynolds); The Denisova genome: an unexpected window into the past (John Hawks); Preliminary results on the first paleontological, anthropological and archaeological Pleistocene locality in Adrar, Mauritania (Cherif Ousmane Toure and Anne Dambricourt Malasse); The Orsang Man: a robust Homo sapiens in central India with Asian Homo Erectus features (Anne Dambricourt Malasse, Rachna Raj and S. Shah); Geoarchaeology of the fluvial terraces of middle Tagus River, central Portugal (Satya Dev); Morphometrics of the frontal bone: a new method for measuring intracranial profiles (Yannick Korpal); Discovery of two prehistoric sites at Galudih in east Singbhum, Jharkhand: a study in typo technology and geomorphology (Ratna Bhattacharya); Unbalanced endemic island faunas: are hominins the exception? (Anneke H. Van Heteren); Imaging Oldowan-Acheulian knappers: scope and limitations (Tanusree Pandit and Anek R. Sankhyan); Pleistocene beads and cognitive evolution (Robert G. Bednarik); The Andaman pygmy: origins and new adaptations (Anek R. Sankhyan and Ramesh Sahani); Amazing skills: practice of trepanation around the world (Alexandra Comsa and Anek R. Sankhyan); Decryption of ethnic identity of the white mummies in Tarim Basin, China (Xinyan Chi); Identification of a breast cancer BRCA1 mutation in West Bengal, India (Abhishikta Ghosh Roy, B. N. Sarkar, R. Roy and A. R. Bandopadhyay); Depleting biosphere reserves: traditional and modern concerns in India (Umesh Kumar); Rock art in India: a data appraisal (Somnath Chakraverty); Astronomical orientation of the trepanned Neolithic woman of Burzahom, Kashmir (Iharka Szucs-Csillik, Alexandra Comsa and Anek R. Sankhyan).