10 Best Physical Anthropology Books

In Unlocking the Past , Martin Jones, a leading expert at the forefront of bioarchaeology—the discipline that gave Michael Crichton the premise for Jurassic Park —explains how this pioneering science is rewriting human history and unlocking stories of the past that could never have been told before. For the first time, the building blocks of ancient life—DNA, proteins, and fats that have long been trapped in fossils and earth and rock—have become widely accessible to science. Working at the cutting edge of genetic and other molecular technologies, researchers have been probing the remains of these ancient biomolecules in human skeletons, sediments and fossilized plants, dinosaur bones, and insects trapped in amber. Their amazing discoveries have influenced the archaeological debate at almost every level and continue to reshape our understanding of the past. Devising a molecular clock from a certain area of DNA, scientists were able to determine that all humans descend from one common female ancestor, dubbed “Mitochondrial Eve,” who lived around 150,000 years ago. From molecules recovered from grinding stones and potsherds, they reconstructed ancient diets and posited when such practices as dairying and boiling water for cooking began. They have reconstituted the beer left in the burial chamber of pharaohs and know what the Iceman, the 5,000-year-old hunter found in the Alps in the early nineties, ate before his last journey. Conveying both the excitement of innovative research and the sometimes bruising rough-and-tumble of scientific debate, Jones has written a work of profound importance. Unlocking the Past is science at its most engaging.

Race is our age’s great taboo. Public intellectuals insist that it does not exist-that it’s a “social construct” and biological differences between races are trivial or “skin deep.” But as with taboos in other times, our attitude towards race seems delusional and schizophrenic. Racial differences in sports and culture are clear to everyone. Race is increasingly a factor in public health, especially in disease susceptibility and organ donation. And in a globalized world, ethnic nationalism-and ethnic conflict-are unavoidable political realities. Race is everywhere . . . and yet it’s nowhere, since the topic has been deemed “out of bounds” for frank discussion. Cutting through the contradictions, euphemisms, and misconceptions, Edward Dutton carefully and systematically refutes the arguments against the concept of “race,” demonstrating that it is as much a proper biological category as “species.” Making Sense of Race takes us on a journey through the fascinating world of evolved physical and mental racial differences, presenting us with the most up-to-date discoveries on the consistent ways in which races differ in significant traits as a result of being adapted to different ecologies. Intelligence, personality, genius, religiousness, sex appeal, puberty, menopause, ethnocentrism, ear-wax, and even the nature of dreams . . . Making Sense of Race will tell you everything you ever wanted to know about race, but might have been afraid to ask. — Edward Dutton is a prolific researcher and commentator, who has published widely in the field of evolutionary psychology. He is Editor at Washington Summit Publishers and Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at Asbiro University in Lodź, Poland. Dutton is the author of many books, including J. Philippe Rushton: A Life History Perspective (2018), Race Differences in Ethnocentrism (2019), and Islam: An Evolutionary Perspective (2020). —- Praise for Edward Dutton and Making Sense of Race “Edward Dutton’s new book, Making Sense of Race , is a godsend at a time when the university curriculum effectively censors human nature from much of the humanities and social sciences. This information, which comes wrapped in prodigious layers of data, is presented in a highly accessible, often funny, style. It should be required reading for all students of anthropology, sociology, gender studies, and politics. Those thirsting for knowledge about race-an inescapable and ever more destabilizing feature of our globalizing world -should dip into this Jolly Heretic of a book. Whether laughing out loud or marveling at new facts about human biodiversity, Making Sense of Race is a riveting read.” -Dr. Frank Salter Author of On Genetic Interests: Family, Ethnicity, and Humanity in an Age of Mass Migration “Edward Dutton is one of the liveliest and most engaging of this new generation of academic dissidents. . . . [He is] what Bill Nye the Science Guy would be, if that gentleman dared to present the human sciences with uninhibited objectivity.” -John Derbyshire