Two key factors distinguish Evolution and Prehistory from other introductory anthropology texts: our integrative presentation of the discipline’s four fields and a trio of unifying themes that tie the book together.
Integration of the Four Fields
Unlike traditional texts that present anthropology’s four fields—archaeology, linguistics, cultural anthropology, and physical anthropology—as if they were relatively separate or independent, our book takes an integrative approach. This reflects the comprehensive character of our discipline, a domain of knowledge where members of our species are studied in their totality—as social creatures biologically evolved with the inherent capacity of learning and sharing culture by means of symbolic communication. This approach also reflects our collective experience as practicing anthropologists who recognize that we cannot fully understand humanity in all its fascinating complexity unless we appreciate the systemic interplay among environmental, physiological, material, social, ideological, psychological, and symbolic factors, both past and present.
For analytical purposes, of course, we have no choice but to discuss physical anthropology as distinct from archaeology, linguistics, and sociocultural anthropology. Accordingly, this text focuses primarily on biological anthropology and archaeology, but the links between biology and culture, past and present, are shown repeatedly. Among many examples of this integrative approach, Chapter 12, “Modern Human Diversity: Race and Racism,” discusses the social context of “race” and recent cultural practices that have impacted the human genome. Similarly, material concerning linguistics appears not only in the chapter on living primates (Chapter 3), but also in the chapters on primate behavior (Chapter 4), on early Homo and the origins of culture (Chapter 8), and on the emergence of cities and states (Chapter 11). These chapters include material on the linguistic capabilities of apes, the emergence of human language, and the origin of writing. In addition, every chapter includes a Biocultural Connection feature to further illustrate the interplay of biological and cultural processes in shaping the human experience.
Unifying Themes
In our own teaching, we have come to recognize the value of marking out unifying themes that help students see the big picture as they grapple with the vast array of material involved with the study of human beings. In Evolution and Prehistory we employ three such themes:
1. We present anthropology as a study of humankind’s responses through time to the fundamental challenges of survival. Each chapter is framed by this theme, opening with a Challenge Issue paragraph and photograph and ending with Questions for Reflection tied to that particular challenge.
2. We emphasize the integration of human culture and biology in the steps humans take to meet these challenges. The Biocultural Connection theme appears throughout the text—as a thread in the main narrative and in a boxed feature that highlights this connection with a topical example for each chapter.
3. We track the emergence of globalization and its disparate impact on various peoples and cultures around the world. While European colonization was a global force for centuries—leaving a significant, often devastating, footprint on the affected peoples in Asia, Africa, and the Americas—decolonization began about 200 years ago and became a worldwide wave in the mid-1900s. Since the 1960s, however, political and economic hegemony has taken a new and fast-paced form—namely, globalization (in many ways a concept that expands or builds on imperialism). Attention to both forms of global domination—colonialism and globalization—runs through Evolution and Prehistory, in our treatment of specific topics such as primate habitat destruction, ownership of the past, and the social distribution of health and disease.
World History
