Settling the Earth : The Archaeology of Deep Human History

How and when did we become the only human species to settle the whole Earth? How did our brains become so large? This book sets out to answer these fundamental questions, digging deep into the archives of archaeology, fossil ancestors and human genetics.

In this worldwide survey, Clive Gamble explores the evolution of the human imagination, without which we would not have become a global species. He sets out to determine the cognitive and social basis for our imaginative capacity and traces the evidence back into deep human history. He argues that it was the imaginative ability to ''go beyond'' and to create societies where people lived apart yet stayed in touch that made us such effective world settlers. To make his case Gamble brings together information from a wide range of disciplines: psychology, cognitive science, archaeology, palaeoanthropology, archaeogenetics, geography, quaternary science and anthropology. He presents a novel deep history that combines the archaeological evidence for fossil hominins with the selective forces of Pleistocene climate change, engages with the archaeogeneticists'' models for population dispersal and displacement, and ends with the Europeans'' rediscovery of the deep history settlement of the Earth.