The Quest for Origins

The Quest for Origins PDF Author: K. R. Howe
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824827502
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Get Book Here

Book Description
Did they come from space, from Egypt, from the Americas? From other ancient civilizations? These are some of today's most fanciful claims about the first settlers of the islands of the Pacific. But none of them correctly answer the question: Where did the Polynesians come from? This book is a thoughtful and devastating critique of such "new" learning, and a careful and accessible survey of modern archaeological, anthropological, genetic, and linguistics findings about the origins of Pacific Islanders. Professor Howe also examines the two-hundred-year-old history of Western ideas about Polynesian origins in the context of ever-changing fads and intellectual fashions.

The Quest for Origins

The Quest for Origins PDF Author: K. R. Howe
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824827502
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Get Book Here

Book Description
Did they come from space, from Egypt, from the Americas? From other ancient civilizations? These are some of today's most fanciful claims about the first settlers of the islands of the Pacific. But none of them correctly answer the question: Where did the Polynesians come from? This book is a thoughtful and devastating critique of such "new" learning, and a careful and accessible survey of modern archaeological, anthropological, genetic, and linguistics findings about the origins of Pacific Islanders. Professor Howe also examines the two-hundred-year-old history of Western ideas about Polynesian origins in the context of ever-changing fads and intellectual fashions.

Lucy's Legacy

Lucy's Legacy PDF Author: Dr. Donald Johanson
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307396401
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 346

Get Book Here

Book Description
“Lucy is a 3.2-million-year-old skeleton who has become the spokeswoman for human evolution. She is perhaps the best known and most studied fossil hominid of the twentieth century, the benchmark by which other discoveries of human ancestors are judged.”–From Lucy’s Legacy In his New York Times bestseller, Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind, renowned paleoanthropologist Donald Johanson told the incredible story of his discovery of a partial female skeleton that revolutionized the study of human origins. Lucy literally changed our understanding of our world and who we come from. Since that dramatic find in 1974, there has been heated debate and–most important–more groundbreaking discoveries that have further transformed our understanding of when and how humans evolved. In Lucy’s Legacy, Johanson takes readers on a fascinating tour of the last three decades of study–the most exciting period of paleoanthropologic investigation thus far. In that time, Johanson and his colleagues have uncovered a total of 363 specimens of Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy’s species, a transitional creature between apes and humans), spanning 400,000 years. As a result, we now have a unique fossil record of one branch of our family tree–that family being humanity–a tree that is believed to date back a staggering 7 million years. Focusing on dramatic new fossil finds and breakthrough advances in DNA research, Johanson provides the latest answers that post-Lucy paleoanthropologists are finding to questions such as: How did Homo sapiens evolve? When and where did our species originate? What separates hominids from the apes? What was the nature of Neandertal and modern human encounters? What mysteries about human evolution remain to be solved? Donald Johanson is a passionate guide on an extraordinary journey from the ancient landscape of Hadar, Ethiopia–where Lucy was unearthed and where many other exciting fossil discoveries have since been made–to a seaside cave in South Africa that once sheltered early members of our own species, and many other significant sites. Thirty-five years after Lucy, Johanson continues to enthusiastically probe the origins of our species and what it means to be human.

The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture

The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture PDF Author: Edwin Bryant
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195169476
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages : 400

Get Book Here

Book Description
This work studies how Indian scholars have rejected the idea of an external origin of the Indo-Aryans, by questioning the logic assumptions and methods upon which the theory is based.

Origins

Origins PDF Author: Tom Yulsman
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1420033727
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 402

Get Book Here

Book Description
With stunning regularity, the search for our cosmic roots has been yielding remarkable new discoveries about the universe and our place in it. In his compelling book, Origins: The Quest for Our Cosmic Roots, veteran science journalist Tom Yulsman chronicles the latest discoveries and describes in clear and engaging terms what they mean. From

Born in Africa

Born in Africa PDF Author: Martin Meredith
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0857206672
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297

Get Book Here

Book Description
Africa does not give up its secrets easily. Buried there lie answers about the origins of humankind and the dawn of civilisation. Through a century of archaeological investigation, scientists have transformed our understanding of the beginnings of human life, although vital clues still remain hidden. In Born in Africa, Martin Meredith follows the trail of discoveries about our human origins made by scientists over the last hundred years, as well as describing the history of scholarship in this incredibly exciting field. He relates the intense rivalries, personal feuds and fierce controversies that shaped the study and perception of Africa, and recounts the feats of skill and endurance that have illuminated thousands of years of human evolution. The results have been momentous. Scientists have identified more than twenty species of extinct humans and firmly established Africa as the birthplace not only of humankind, but also of our own species: homo sapiens, the modern human. Scientific study has revealed how early technology, language ability and artistic endeavour all originated in Africa, and scientists have shown how, in an exodus sixty thousand years ago, small groups of Africans left their birthplace to populate the rest of the world. We all have an African legacy, and in this fascinating and informative book Martin Meredith leads us back to the place where we have rediscovered our common human heritage.

The Genesis Quest

The Genesis Quest PDF Author: Michael Marshall
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022671537X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369

Get Book Here

Book Description
From the primordial soup to meteorite impact zones, the Manhattan Project to the latest research, this book is the first full history of the scientists who strive to explain the genesis of life. How did life begin? Why are we here? These are some of the most profound questions we can ask. For almost a century, a small band of eccentric scientists has struggled to answer these questions and explain one of the greatest mysteries of all: how and why life began on Earth. There are many different proposals, and each idea has attracted passionate believers who promote it with an almost religious fervor, as well as detractors who reject it with equal passion. But the quest to unravel life’s genesis is not just a story of big ideas. It is also a compelling human story, rich in personalities, conflicts, and surprising twists and turns. Along the way, the journey takes in some of the greatest discoveries in modern biology, from evolution and cells to DNA and life’s family tree. It is also a search whose end may finally be in sight. In The Genesis Quest, Michael Marshall shows how the quest to understand life’s beginning is also a journey to discover the true nature of life, and by extension our place in the universe.

The Quest

The Quest PDF Author: Mircea Eliade
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226203867
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 193

Get Book Here

Book Description
In The Quest Mircea Eliade stresses the cultural function that a study of the history of religions can play in a secularized society. He writes for the intelligent general reader in the hope that what he calls a new humanism "will be engendered by a confrontation of modern Western man with unknown or less familiar worlds of meaning." "Each of these essays contains insights which will be fruitful and challenging for professional students of religion, but at the same time they all retain the kind of cultural relevance and clarity of style which makes them accessible to anyone seriously concerned with man and his religious possibilities."—Joseph M. Kitagawa, Religious Education

The Quest for Kibi and the True Origins of Japan

The Quest for Kibi and the True Origins of Japan PDF Author: Michael S. F. Gorman
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 152

Get Book Here

Book Description
This study rediscovers the forgotten ancient kingdom of Kibi and reveals the true ancestry of the Japanese imperial family and the cultural roots of the Japanese people. It offers conclusions on the consequences of the migration to the Japanese archipelago by conquering peoples from Korea.

Genesis

Genesis PDF Author: Robert M. Hazen
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 9780309103107
Category : Electronic books
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
Scientist Robert Hazen attempts to offer a scientific explanation of how life on Earth began nearly four billion years ago, describing the sequence of events that caused non-living chemicals to become alive and create life.

Artificial Intelligence: A New Synthesis

Artificial Intelligence: A New Synthesis PDF Author: Nils J. Nilsson
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 0080948340
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 536

Get Book Here

Book Description
Intelligent agents are employed as the central characters in this introductory text. Beginning with elementary reactive agents, Nilsson gradually increases their cognitive horsepower to illustrate the most important and lasting ideas in AI. Neural networks, genetic programming, computer vision, heuristic search, knowledge representation and reasoning, Bayes networks, planning, and language understanding are each revealed through the growing capabilities of these agents. A distinguishing feature of this text is in its evolutionary approach to the study of AI. This book provides a refreshing and motivating synthesis of the field by one of AI's master expositors and leading researches. - An evolutionary approach provides a unifying theme - Thorough coverage of important AI ideas, old and new - Frequent use of examples and illustrative diagrams - Extensive coverage of machine learning methods throughout the text - Citations to over 500 references - Comprehensive index