Mapping Our Ancestors: Phylogenetic Approaches in Anthropology and Prehistory

Much of what we are comes from our ancestors. Through cultural and biological inheritance mechanisms, our genetic composition, instructions for constructing artifacts, the structure and content of languages, and rules for behavior are passed from parents to children and from individual to individual. Mapping Our Ancestors demonstrates how various genealogical or 'phylogenetic' methods can be used both to answer questions about human history and to build evolutionary explanations for the shape of history.