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Human Evolution: A Very Short Introduction traces the history of paleoanthropology from its beginnings in the eighteenth century to the latest fossil finds. Although concentrating on the fossil evidence for human evolution, it also covers the latest genetic evidence about regional variations in the modern human genome that relate to our evolutionary history. This VSI provides an insider's view of the field and some of the personalities in it, and demonstrates that our understanding of human evolution is critically dependent on advances in related sciences such as paleoclimatology, geochronology, systematics, genetics, and developmental biology.Less

What is unique about human beings? How are groups of people formed and what holds them together? What is the nature of belief, economic exchange, the self? Social and Cultural Anthropology: A Very Short Introduction provides an account of some of the discipline's guiding principles and methodology. It begins by discussing the most important contributions of anthropology to modern thought: its investigation of culture as a distinctively human characteristic, its doctrine of cultural relativism, and its methodology of fieldwork and ethnography. Drawing on fieldwork examples from Mexico and Indonesia, the specific ways in which social and cultural anthropology have advanced our understanding of human society and culture are examined.Less