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The scientific study of past material culture. The initial objective of archeology (often spelled archaeology) is to construct cultural chronologies that order past material culture into meaningful temporal segments. The intermediate objective is to…

The adaptation of an animal or plant through breeding in captivity to a life intimately associated with and advantageous to humans. Domesticated plants and animals differ genetically and morphologically from their wild counterparts, often in ways…

The earliest representatives of people anatomically similar to living humans that evolved from more archaic humans approximately 150,000–300,000 years ago. The general process by which early modern humans (Homo sapiens) emerged from late archaic…

A method of dating geological and archeological specimens by counting the radiation-damage tracks produced by spontaneous fission of uranium impurities in minerals and glasses. During fission two fragments of the uranium nucleus fly apart with high…

Fossil members of the group of primates constituting the apes. Apes and humans are closely related primates in the superfamily Hominoidea. The living hominoids are subdivided into the families Hylobatidae and Hominidae. The hylobatids, or lesser…

Extinct members of the order of mammals to which humans belong. All current classifications divide the living primates (order Primates) into two major groups (suborders) [Fig. 1]: the Strepsirhini (Strepsirrhini) or "lower" primates (lemurs,…

A species of fossil human from the Pleistocene representing a specialized side branch in human evolution in Africa and Eurasia. Homo erectus (Fig. 1) was a common, widespread, and long-surviving ancestor of modern humans (H. sapiens). Fossil remains…

The diversity of biological and genetic differences observed in the human population. Anthropologists study human biology to better understand the extent of human biological variability, to explain the mechanisms that create and pattern this…

The study of primate phylogeny and human evolution through the genetic information in the DNA of genomes and in the proteins that genes encode. The first studies in molecular anthropology used immunological and biochemical methods to obtain…

A group of late archaic humans (Homo neanderthalensis) from Europe, southwest Asia, and central Asia that immediately preceded the first modern humans in those regions. The closest evolutionary relatives of modern humans are the Neandertals (also…