Week 4           Archaeology

Our understanding of human origins is based on evidence. Available sources can be broken into two general categories: evidence from the living world (biology, including genetics, of living organisms) and evidence from the past (geology, paleontology, and paleoanthropology). The rare fossilized components of the past form an essential empirical anchor for understanding the course of our evolution after the split from the chimpanzee/bonobo lineage. The remains are limited to those preserved and later presented via geological processes. As of the early 21st Century, the human fossil and archaeological record is vast, and understanding it as a simple narrative is impossible. The only way to approach it is to understand know all of the hundreds of sites and thusands of fossils, a relatively intensive endeavor.