Evolution -- Anthropology and Human Origins

and
Evolution

Links to our Past

News of the Present

Insight for the Future

Alfred R. Wallace
© Linnean Society of London

Cultural Anthropology and Archaeology
The Human Experience

Anthropology in the News : From Texas A&M.; Daily updates (during school year) in the Science of Anthropology.

U.K. Archaeology Data Service : You can't throw a pint glass in Great Britain without hitting a Roman mosaic, stone circle, tumbledown Norman church, or some other notable ruin. This site can help you track down information on these far-flung treasures.

Overviews of Anthropology

Cultural Anthropology Tutorials Menu : Addresses ten topics in Cultural (Social) Anthropology such as language and culture, and ethnicity and race. Also covers physical anthropology.

Creative Impulse - Prehistory : A tremendous web resource. Although the primary emphasis is on cultural anthropology, there are many fine links to pages about physical anthropology.

Formenti's Links to Anthropology :
Just about everything in Anthropology. Great reference website.

Anthropology from Minnesota : Presents a series of one-page summaries written on everything from Native American arrowhead styles to Egyptian chariots. Also lists museum Web sites, major archaeological sites, and rock art.

The Americas

Monte Verde Under Fire : The validity of the earliest site in the Americas is called into question.

Friend's of America's Past : Studying Human remains.

Vikings: The North American Saga : This exhibit now has an expanded presence online. The new Viking Voyage site contains archaeology, sagas, and environmental and genetics research.

Land Use History of the Colorado Plateau : Centered on the Four Corners of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona, the Colorado Plateau is 337,000 square kilometers of paradox. Learn about the Anasazi people, who built cliff dwellings and kivas before disappearing 800 years ago. Find out how scientists use fossilized garbage piles left by packrats to trace past vegetation and animal life.

Along the Amazon, an Advanced Society Before Columbus : New evidence of a "lost" landscape of ponds and zigzagging channels covering more than 300 square miles of seasonally flooded savanna in Bolivia's Baures region, which borders Brazil and is washed by tributaries of the Amazon River.

Teotihuacan Home Page : Long before Buckingham Palace and Trump Tower, the Mesoamerican city of Teotihuacan was building to impress. Tour this ancient site's spectacular pyramids and read about ongoing excavations by archaeologists from Arizona State University in Tempe, Aichi Provincial University in Japan, and the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History.

An Ancient Skull Challenges Long-Held Theories : After two decades in storage, a fossilized cranium has now been identified by Brazilian scientists as the oldest human remains ever recovered in the hemisphere. Her features appear to be Negroid, not Mongoloid.

Want Human Origins?

Human Genealogy : The Jones, Smiths, Macys and Darwins. An introduction to human evolution. A primer.

Becoming Human : The hominid fossil record. A bit about DNA, and books.

Timelines and Cladograms : Hominid family trees and graphics.

30,000 Years of Art

The Cave of Lascaux : Blow your mind.

The Cave of Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc
A fine addition to early art history.

Petroglyphs: African Rock Art & Links

Rock Art in Arkansas

Other Topics

The Center for Archaeoastronomy : Archaeoastronomers study ancient archaeological sites and try to understand how they may have been used to interpret the heavens in extinct cultures. But many claims made on the Web about alleged archaeoastronomy sites don't quite stand up to scientific scrutiny.

Theban Mapping Project : About the Valley of the Kings, where for more than 500 years the ancient Egyptians enshrined their illustrious dead in sumptuous tombs. Tour the valley with this multimedia atlas, an international effort to document geological and archaeological treasures.

Underwater Archaeology : A tour of more than 20 archaeological sites and shipwreck expeditions in the Mediterranean and along the Atlantic coastline of France shows artifacts from wrecks, such as 2024-year-old amphoras. Take a virtual spelunking tour of the now-submerged Cosquer Cave near Marseilles, which contains prehistoric Monets and Renoirs decorated with hundreds of images, such as penguins and pot-bellied horses.

Living Links : A Center for the Advanced Study of Ape and Human Evolution Instead of hunting for missing links, why not focus on the living links between humans and their primate relatives?

Stone Age Habitats : Backdating Human Shelters. The mammoth bone home building industry (no mortgages) began a long time ago.

Archaeology Channel: Up to half-hour long movies explore remarkable sites. See the unsolved mysteries of Machu Picchu: Was this Inca bastion in the Andes a fortress? Visit the cliff houses of Mesa Verde in Colorado and see Crump's Cave in Kentucky, where Native Americans carved exquisite glyphs into the mud floor.

Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative: Made by incising damp clay with a reed, cuneiform was used across the Near East for more than 3000 years. Available now are high-quality photos of some 3000 pieces belonging to the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin.

Nothing Is More Human Than Speech.: Our closest primate relatives, chimpanzees, use tools, have intricate social lives, and show signs of self-awareness. But they lack spoken language, and all the capacities it implies, from rapid and flexible manipulation of symbols to an ability to conceptualize things remote in time or space.