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Human Evolution: Theory and Progress

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Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology

Introduction

In one of the most remarkable understatements in the history of science, Charles Darwin wrote about his theory of evolution by natural selection that “light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history” (Darwin 1859: 488). That was practically all Darwin was prepared to share about the consequences for humankind of his theory in the Origin of Species, the seminal work on modern evolutionary ideas. But everybody around him immediately understood the implications, and as archaeological evidence and human fossil remains accumulated during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in combination with genetic data, theories of human origins eventually became the science of human evolution.

Often overlooked, but central to Darwin’s original method and the force of his argument, is the power of converging evidence from a number of different disciplines and bodies of knowledge. For the general theory of evolution, these originally included geology, paleontology, zoology,...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Culture and Society, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

    Djuke Veldhuis & Peter C. Kjærgaard

  2. Department of Geography, University College London, London, UK

    Mark Maslin

Authors
  1. Djuke Veldhuis
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  2. Peter C. Kjærgaard
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  3. Mark Maslin
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Djuke Veldhuis .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Archaeology, Flinders University, Adelaide, SA, Australia

    Claire Smith

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Veldhuis, D., Kjærgaard, P.C., Maslin, M. (2014). Human Evolution: Theory and Progress. In: Smith, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_642

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0465-2_642

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