The first Americans : race, evolution, and the origin of Native Americans

Powell, Joseph F. (Joseph Frederick) 1964- (Author).

Summary: "Who were the first Americans? What is their relationship to living native peoples in the Americas? What do their remains tell us of the current concepts of racial variation, and short-term evolutionary change and adaptation. The First Americans explores these questions by using racial classifications and microevolutionary techniques to better understand who colonized the Americas and how. It will be required reading for all those interested in anthropology, and the history and archaeology of the earliest Americans."--Jacket.

Record details

ISBN: 0521823501 (hbk.)
ISBN: 9780521823500 (hbk.)
ISBN: 0521530350 (pbk.)
ISBN: 9780521530354 (pbk.)
Physical Description: print
viii, 268 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm.
Publisher: Cambridge, UK ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references (p. 237-264) and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

Prologue: the Kennewick controversy -- Part I. Race and variation. Debating the origins of Native Americans -- A brief history of race -- Evolutionary approaches to human variation -- Recent population variation in the Americas -- Part II. The Pleistocene peopling of America. The Pleistocene and ice-age environments -- Ancient cultures and migration to the Americas -- Kennewick Man and his contemporaries -- Human variation in the Pleistocene -- Part III. The first Americans, race and evolution. Racial models of Native American origins -- Evolutionary models of Native American origins -- The first Americans: Native American origins.