The Paleoanthropology of Eastern Asia

In Asia, research in human evolution has long been considered to have lagged far behind what was going on in places like Africa and Europe. Oftentimes this is due to the limited dissemination of research findings rather than the lack of actual research. The Paleoanthropology of Eastern Asia is an attempt to rectify this discrepancy by providing rich evidence rooted in deep research traditions from East and Southeast Asia. It covers fossils from the earliest arrival of hominins more than two million years ago to the end of the last Ice Age 15,000 years ago. During this wide span of time, many exciting and important events happened in eastern Asia. The earliest hominins arrived in the region; various hominin species evolved and interacted with one another, including Homo erectus, Homo sapiens, and a few more in between.

While fossils can reveal what these hominins may have looked like, the rich Paleolithic archaeological record yields clues to their behavior. Handaxes have been found in eastern Asia where they were previously believed to have been absent. Watercraft was used by foragers as early as 40,000 years ago to reach regions like the Japanese archipelago, showing that deep-sea voyaging has a long and deep history. In Indonesia, captivating cave art older than the famous Lascaux paintings from France have been reported. The story continues with a tremendous amount of new and important discoveries from the region being reported almost daily. Providing comprehensive coverage of paleoanthropological research in eastern Asia—from the groundbreaking finds in a cave near Beijing in the early twentieth century to the discovery and identification of new human species during the twenty-first century—this book will interest anyone wishing to learn about the human evolutionary record.