show how today's diverse humanity developed biologically and culturally over millions of years and against a background of constant climatic change, it treats all areas of the world evenly, and covers all periods of prehistory from human origins to the appearance of literate civilizations. Recent discoveries, new archaeological methodologies, and the latest theories of human biological and cultural evolution add to the excitement of this adventure in archaeology. The tale begins with human origins and ends with the Spanish Conquest of Mexico and Peru in the fifteenth century A.D. It spans the origins of food production and the development of civilization—not only in classic areas of archaeological research like Europe, southwestern Asia, and Mesoamerica—but in such lesser known regions as southeast Asia, Africa, and the Pacific. For individuals who recognize the importance of knowing the past to understand the future—and our world today.

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