As was made clear in the Introduction to this section on prehistoric maps, historians of cartography have had little to say on prehistoric cartography in the Old World. Neither Richard Andree nor Wolfgang Drober said anything at all. 1 In 1910 Bruno F. Adler discussed two decorated bone plaques that a German antiquarian, Fritz Rodiger, had suggested were maps, but he omitted both from his corpu...

Paleoanthropology emerged as a science during the late nineteenth century. The discovery of prehistoric artifacts in Pleistocene deposits soon led to the excavation of fossilized human bones. The archaeologists and geologists who unearthed them were primarily concerned with determining whether the human fossils and the artifacts found with them actually dated from the Pleistocene, thus offering...

Abstract The archaeological cultures from Neolithic Age to early Iron in the Southeast of China including south Jiangsu (江苏) and Anhui (安徽), Zhejiang (浙江), Jiangxi (江西), southeast Hunan (湖南), Fujian (福建), Guangdong (广东), Guangxi (广西), Hainan (海南), Taiwan (台湾) adjacent coast Vietnam, compose one special segment unity “Assimilation Integration Pluralistic Cultures” prehistoric history China. Thes...

Ancient mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) mainly from Jomon Period Sus scrofa bone specimens (6,100-1,700 years old) was examined to clarify the genetic relationships between prehistoric and contemporary S. scrofa on Hokkaido, Honshu, Sado, and Izu islands of the Japanese Archipelago. Phylogenetic analysis of the mtDNA control region (574 bp) and analysis of pairwise nucleotide differences between preh...

Intensive size-selective harvesting can drive evolution of sexual maturity at smaller body size. Conversely, prehistoric, low-intensity subsistence harvesting is not considered an effective agent of size-selective evolution. Uniting archaeological, palaeontological and contemporary material, we show that size at sexual maturity in the edible conch Strombus pugilis declined significantly from pr...

Monogenesis of language is widely accepted, but the conventional argument seems to be mistaken; a simple probabilistic model shows that polygenesis is likely. Other prehistoric inventions are discussed, as are problems in tracing linguistic lineages. Language is a system of representations; within such a system, words can evoke complex and systematic responses. Along with its social functions, ...