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What is Palaeoanthropology?
Palaeoanthropology is the study of human evolution (or human origins). The prefix 'palaeo-' (sometimes 'paleo-') is derived from the Greek term palaios meaning ancient or ancient times, 'anthropology' from the Latin anthropos meaning human and the suffix '-ology' which means to study or write about. So, palaeoanthropology literally means to study or write about ancient humans.
This field of science began in the 19th Century when anatomists, historians/archaeologists and geologists began to seriously ponder the biological origins of humans. The focus then was on examining human and other primate skeletons and soft tissue (comparative anatomy) to infer relationships and ancestry, as well as evidence for the behaviour of past humans in the form of stone tools. Once Wallace and Darwin had published their ideas about Natural Selection it became clear that humans had evolved according to the same rules (forces) which govern all of biological evolution. A small number of fossil humans were discovered during the later 19th Century. Many thousands have been discovered during the 20th and 21st Centuries, spanning a period of about 7.5 million years and from across the Old World (Africa, Europe and Asia) and New World (Americas and Australia). The prehistoric archaeological record coprises millions of tools from around 2.6 million years ago to recent, and spans the so-called early, middle and later stone ages (or palaeolithic).
Today, palaeoanthropology is a multidisciplinary field with strong threads of the natural sciences and humanities woven through it. It includes researchers from many disciplines such as biological anthropology, archaeology, palaeontology, anatomy, palaeoecology, geology, genetics, medical imaging and statistics (among others).
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