Human Biogeography

In this innovative, wide-ranging synthesis of anthropology and biogeography, Alexander Harcourt tells how and why our species came to be distributed around the world. He explains our current understanding of when and where humans originated, the extent to which climate determined our spread, and the barriers that delayed and directed migrating peoples. He discusses why our anatomy, physiology, cultural diversity, and population density vary from region to region, and how the areas we inhabit correlate with cultural diversity and population density. The book closes with chapters on how human cultures have affected each other's geographic distributions, how non-human species have influenced human distribution, and how humans have reduced the ranges of many other species while increasing the ranges of others. Throughout, Harcourt compares what we understand of human biogeography to non-human primate biogeography.