Jeffrey H. Schwartz - Böcker

In Skeleton Keys: An Introduction to Human Skeletal Morphology, Development, and Analysis, Second Edition, Jeffrey H. Schwartz presents a detailed yet highly accessible introduction to the study of the human skeleton. This unique volume examines the skeleton from its developmental basis to the expression of individual variation. It reviews a variety of different approaches used to determine an individual's sex, age, and pathological history and challenges readers to think critically about how to analyze a human skeleton rather than learning formulas for quick results. An ideal text for courses in human osteology, skeletal analysis, and bioarchaeology, this book is also a helpful reference for professionals. Thoroughly revised and updated, the second edition of Skeleton Keys features: * The companion website contains hundreds of color images of skeletons and skeletal elements--demonstrating morphology, pathology, and nonmetric variation--that can be used as classroom projections or for individual study. * Coverage of the most recent developments in the field, including the molecular regulation of bone and tooth formation* Expanded studies in each area of analysis: sex, age, nonmetric variation, pathology, biodistance and bioarchaeology, and stable isotope analysis* Additional photographic images, especially in the pathology and sexing chapters* Two separate and extensively illustrated chapters on the skull, one dealing with articulated elements and one with isolated bones (these topics were covered in one chapter in the first edition)* Integration of material--such as anthropometric landmarks--from appendices in the previous edition into relevant chapters as tables* More accessible language throughout and an extensive glossary

In the early 20th century, paleoanthropologists interpreted the oft-profound differences between specimens of an expanding human fossil record as reflecting taxonomic and evolutionary diversity. Why, then, in the 1940s, did geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky reconfigure human evolution into one, profoundly morphologically variable lineage which changed slowly through time?Neanderthals: Fact, Fiction, and Wishful Thinking exposes, for the first time, the history of how conceptions of race have configured interpretations of the first-found human fossils; how assumptions underlying human fossils were and still are interpreted as to species and their evolutionary relationships. No matter how "different" Nazis thought living humans were, differences between Neanderthals and bigger-browed, chunkier-faced specimens and living humans trivialized the differences between living humans. In 1950, without basis, taxonomist Ernst Mayr lumped all fossil and extant humans into three transforming species of genus Homo: transvaalensis>erectus>sapiens; sapiens subsumed humans, Neanderthals, and even less morphologically sapiens-like specimens. In 1962, at a Wenner-Gren Foundation meeting, participants-mostly geneticists and behaviorists, unfamiliar with the human fossil record-voted to keep these specimens, Neanderthals, and humans in Homo sapiens. Even when Neanderthals were returned to species neanderthalensis, the assumption remained: humans and Neanderthals interbred. When a Neanderthal nuclear DNA sequence was cobbled together and compared to human nDNA, molecular anthropologists could claim humans received "genes" identified in Neanderthal DNA via interbreeding. In its press release, the Committee that awarded Svante Pääbo the Nobel Prize for "demonstrating" human inheritance of Neanderthal "genes" made clear that his claims were predicated on assuming Neanderthal-human interbreeding. It's remarkable how received wisdom continues to influence evolutionarily naïve paleoanthropologists and molecular anthropologists who then present as fact, to a naïve public, assumptions that are biologically and evolutionarily wrong.