Over the last decade, Africa has taken a central position in the search for the timing and mechanisms leading to modern human origins, and the rich archaeological and human paleontological record of North Africa is critical to this search. In this volume, we bring together new research into the archaeology, human paleontology, chronology, and environmental context of modern human origins in North Africa. The result is a volume that better integrates the North African record into the modern human origins debate and at the same time highlights the research questions that are currently the focus of continued work in the area.

Author Biography

Jean-Jacques, Hublin, Ph.D. is the founder of the Department of Human Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig (Germany). He is a leading researcher in paleoanthropology and is renowned worldwide for his work on the origin and evolution of the Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans. He extensively developed the use of virtual imaging in the study of fossil hominids and has led field operations in North Africa and Europe. Shannon P. McPherron is an archaeologist in the Department of Human Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. He has published extensively on stone tool technologies and on methods of excavation and analysis in archaeology. McPherron has excavated a number of Lower and Middle Paleolithic sites in France, Egypt, and Ethiopia. Currently the authors are excavating two sites in Morocco together.