pt. 1. Prehistory -- 1. The study of world prehistory -- "In the beginning" -- Pseudoarchaeology -- Prehistory, archaeology, and world prehistory -- Major developments in human prehistory -- Linear and cyclical time -- Dating the past -- Space -- The present and the past -- 2. Explaining prehistory -- Culture, culture history, and cultural process -- The mechanisms of culture change -- Culture as adaptation -- Multilinear cultural evolution -- Stages of social development -- Multicausal culture change -- Analogy : the ethnographic present -- The meaning of the past -- Current theoretical approaches.
pt. 2. The world or archaic humans -- 3. Origins -- The great Ice Age -- Early primate evolution and adaptation -- The fossil evidence for human evolution -- Toolmaking and early human behavior -- Protohuman culture -- Archaeological evidence for early human behavior -- The early adaptive pattern -- 4. Out of Africa -- Ice Age background -- Homo erectus -- The radiation of Homo erectu -- The lifeway of Homo erectus -- Archaic Homo sapiens -- Tool technology -- The origins of Homo sapiens -- Homo sapiens in Africa -- Why did Homo sapiens evolve? -- The Neanderthals.
pt. 3. The birth of the modern world -- 5. Diaspora -- The late Ice Age world -- The peopling of Southeast Asia and Australia -- Late Ice Age Europe : the Cro-Magnons -- The mammoth hunters of Eurasia -- The Far East -- The first Americans -- The Clovis people -- 6. The first farmers -- The changed world of the Holocene -- Changes in forager society -- Social complexity among foragers -- The origins of food production -- Early food production in the Near East -- Egyptian farmers -- The spread of farming into Europe -- Early Chinese farmers -- Early farmers of the Americas -- 7. Ocean voyages, pueblos, and moundbuilders -- Reciprocity and big men -- The navigators : Polynesian chiefdoms -- Pueblo farmers in the North American Southwest -- The moundbuilders of Eastern North America.
pt. 4. Early civilizations -- 8. State-organized societies -- What is a state-organized society? -- Theories of the origin of states -- Environmental and social theories of state formation -- The collapse of civilizations -- 9. The Mediterranean world -- The Sumerians of Mesopotamia -- Ancient Egyptian civilization -- Hittites and sea traders -- Minoans and Mycenaeans -- Collapse and recovery : sea peoples and Phoenicians -- Assyrians and Babylonians -- 10. Asians and Africans -- South Asia : Harappan civilization -- China : Shang civilization -- China, India, and Southeast Asia -- Ancient African kingdoms -- 11. Mesoamerican civilizations -- Village farmers -- The Olmec -- Teotihuacán -- Mayan civilizations -- The Toltecs -- Aztec civilization -- 12. Andean civilizations -- The maritime foundations of Andean civilizations -- The rise of complex society -- Chavín de Huantar -- Irrigation agriculture -- Moche civilization -- Tiwanaku and Huari -- Chimu civilization -- Inca civilization -- 13. Epilog -- Guide to further reading -- Glossary of technical terms -- Glossary of archaeological sites and cultural terms -- Illustration acknowledgments -- Index.
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