Robert G. Bednarik – författare

The Domestication of Humans explains the alternative to the African Eve model by attributing human modernity, not to a speciation event in Africa, but to the unintended self-domestication of humans. This alternative account of human origins provides the reader with a comprehensive explanation of all features defining our species that is consistent with all the available evidence. These traits include, but are not limited to, massive neotenisation, numerous somatic changes, susceptibility to almost countless detrimental conditions and maladaptations, brain atrophy, loss of oestrus and thousands of genetic impairments. The teleological fantasy of replacement by a ‘superior’ species that has dominated the topic of modern human origins has never explained any of the many features that distinguish us from our robust ancestors. This book explains all of them in one consistent, elegant theory. It presents the most revolutionary proposal of human origins since Darwin. Although primarily intended for the academic market, this book is perfectly suitable for anyone interested in how and why we became the species that we are today.

The Domestication of Humans explains the alternative to the African Eve model by attributing human modernity, not to a speciation event in Africa, but to the unintended self-domestication of humans. This alternative account of human origins provides the reader with a comprehensive explanation of all features defining our species that is consistent with all the available evidence. These traits include, but are not limited to, massive neotenisation, numerous somatic changes, susceptibility to almost countless detrimental conditions and maladaptations, brain atrophy, loss of oestrus and thousands of genetic impairments. The teleological fantasy of replacement by a ‘superior’ species that has dominated the topic of modern human origins has never explained any of the many features that distinguish us from our robust ancestors. This book explains all of them in one consistent, elegant theory. It presents the most revolutionary proposal of human origins since Darwin. Although primarily intended for the academic market, this book is perfectly suitable for anyone interested in how and why we became the species that we are today.

This book summarizes the work of several decades, culminating in a revolutionary model of recent human evolution. It challenges current consensus views fundamentally, presenting in its support a mass of evidence, much of which has never been assembled before. This evidence derives primarily from archaeology, paleoanthropology, genetics, clinical psychology, neurosciences, linguistics and cognitive sciences. No even remotely similar thesis of recent human origins has ever been published, but some of the key elements of this book have been published by the author in major refereed journals in the last two years. Its implications are far-reaching and profoundly affect the way we perceive ourselves as a species. This book about what it means to be human is heavily referenced, with a bibliography of many hundreds of scientific entries.

This book summarizes the work of several decades, culminating in a revolutionary model of recent human evolution. It challenges current consensus views fundamentally, presenting in its support a mass of evidence, much of which has never been assembled before. This evidence derives primarily from archaeology, paleoanthropology, genetics, clinical psychology, neurosciences, linguistics and cognitive sciences. No even remotely similar thesis of recent human origins has ever been published, but some of the key elements of this book have been published by the author in major refereed journals in the last two years. Its implications are far-reaching and profoundly affect the way we perceive ourselves as a species. This book about what it means to be human is heavily referenced, with a bibliography of many hundreds of scientific entries.

This book summarizes the work of several decades, culminating in a revolutionary model of recent human evolution. It challenges current consensus views fundamentally, presenting in its support a mass of evidence, much of which has never been assembled before. This evidence derives primarily from archaeology, paleoanthropology, genetics, clinical psychology, neurosciences, linguistics and cognitive sciences. No even remotely similar thesis of recent human origins has ever been published, but some of the key elements of this book have been published by the author in major refereed journals in the last two years. Its implications are far-reaching and profoundly affect the way we perceive ourselves as a species. This book about what it means to be human is heavily referenced, with a bibliography of many hundreds of scientific entries.

Tribology, the science of interacting surfaces in relative motion, has traditionally focused on technological applications, although some attention has been given to geotribology and tribochemistry. This volume explores the geological applications of tribology in some detail, before introducing the entirely new subdisciplines of archaeotribology and the tribology of rock art. The various geological, archaeological, and rock art applications are then correlated through the detailed description of a tribological phenomenon of the natural world that was only discovered most recently, kinetic energy metamorphosis (KEM). This newly described phenomenon was first observed as a by-product of rock art production, but it was subsequently recognized as a widespread physical process whose effects are much more common in both geology and archaeology. Not only does this book illuminate the holistic and thus inter-disciplinary character of natural processes, it also presents the need to view tribology as a science connected to many other fields. Therefore, this volume advocates an extended scope for a science traditionally focused on aspects of friction, wear, and lubrication of machines. This enhances the importance of tribology, while at the same time enriching disciplines that have never even been considered to have potential connections with tribology. The book therefore succeeds in demonstrating that, ultimately, all disciplines are interconnected in the magnificent web of science, in which all fields of scientific enquiry must play a role. This book thus presents a strong statement on the need for integrative understanding, but at the same time it demands high standards of epistemology. The introductory chapter presents a rigorous definition of science, and of the inherent characteristics of scientific propositions. It is followed by a chapter about geotribology, detailing the many applications of tribology in the vast field of geology. This includes reviews of fluvial, aeolian, glacial, and tectonic processes, each of which deals with interacting surfaces in relative motion. In the next section, the numerous applications of tribology in archaeology are examined in some detail. The chapter on the tribological nature of all rock art presents an innovative review of a topic never before defined as tribological. The “climax” of the book, however, is in the concluding chapter, which expounds and analyzes the newly discovered process of KEM. First detected in a specific kind of rock art, it was upon investigation identified as a major contributor to several hitherto unexplained phenomena in geology. In this way, the volume demonstrates strikingly how all of science, in the end, forms a single interconnected system.

This book examines systematically both the theoretical and practical issues that have characterized the discipline over the past two centuries. Some of the historically most consequential mistakes in archaeology are dissected and explained, together with the effects of the related controversies. The theoretical basis of the discipline is deliberated in some detail, leading to the diagnosis that there are in fact numerous archaeologies, all with different notions of commensurability, ideologies, and purposes. Their various perspectives of what archaeology is and does are considered and the range of views of the human past is illuminated in this book. How humans became what they are today is of profound importance to understanding ourselves, both as a species and individually. Our psychology, cognition, diseases, intellect, communication forms, physiology, predispositions, ideologies, culture, genetics, behavior, and, perhaps most importantly, our reality constructs are all the result of our evolutionary history. Therefore the models archaeology—especially Pleistocene archaeology—creates of our past are not just narratives of what happened in human history; they are fundamental to every aspect of our existence.

This book contains a series of selected papers presented at two symposia entitled ‘Scientific study of rock art’, one held in the IFRAO Congress of Rock Art in La Paz, Bolivia, in June 2012, the other held in the IFRAO Congress in Cáceres, Spain, in September 2015; as well as some invited papers from leading rock art scientists. The core topic of the book is the presentation of scientific approaches to the materiality of rock art, ranging from recording and sampling methods to data analyses. These share the fact that they provide means of testing hypotheses and/or of finding trends in the data which can be used as independent sources of evidence to support specific interpretations. The issue of the materiality of visual productions of the distant past, which in archaeological theory has attracted much attention recently and has stimulated much conceptual debate, is addressed through a variety of scientific approaches, including fieldwork methods, laboratory work techniques and/or data analysis protocols. These, in turn, will provide new insights into human agency and people-image engagements through the study of rock art production, display and use.

Rather than considering the myths supposedly depicted in the world’s rock art, this book examines the myths archaeologists and others have created about the meanings and significance of rock art. This vast body of opinions dominates our concepts of the principal surviving cultural manifestations of early worldviews. Here these constructs are subjected to detailed analysis and are found to consist largely of misinterpretations. From the misidentification of natural rock markings as rock art to mistaken interpretations, from sensationalist claims to pareidolic elucidations of iconographies, the book presents numerous examples of myths researchers have created about pre-Historic ‘art’. The claims about a connection between rock art and the neuropathologies of its producers are assessed, and the neuroscience of rock art interpretation is reviewed. The book presents a comprehensive catalogue of falsities claimed about palaeoart, and it endeavours to explain how these arose, and how they can be guarded against by recourse to basic principles of science. It therefore represents a key resource in the scientific study of rock art.

Gudenus Cave summarises the author's 60 years of research (1962 to 2021) at the earliest human occupation site known in Austria. The cave had been excavated in 1883-84 without separation of sediment layers, and subsequent endeavours to clarify its stratigraphy and dating have failed. The book describes the strategies and methods of studying a Pleistocene cave site that had been regarded as fully excavated, and their long-term applications. A significant part of the fieldwork was conducted before 1967, but the use of analytical processes and literature review continued for several decades after that. Through sustained interrogation of the site's clear palynology and lithic typology, the volume succeeds in clarifying the cave's stratigraphical sequence and placing its several Palaeolithic occupations chronologically. This has significant effects on our understanding of the local Palaeolithic sequence that has been the subject of various controversies. These are discussed in the concluding chapter, which places Gudenus Cave first within its Austrian context and then into the wider picture. The book thus shows that intensive archaeological research can reinstate the scientific importance of a site even after it has been declared bereft of all sediment.