The Evolution of the Human Head / / Daniel E. Lieberman.

• VerfasserIn: Lieberman, Daniel E.,
• Place / Publishing House: Cambridge, MA : : Harvard University Press, , [2011]; ©2011
• Year of Publication: 2011
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (768 p.)

Dan Lieberman has written an innovative, exhaustively researched and carefully argued book dealing with the evolution of the human head. In it he addresses three interrelated questions. First, why does the human head look the way it does? Second, why did these transformations occur? And third, how is something as complex and vital as the head so variable and evolvable? This book addresses these questions in three sections. The first set of chapters review how human and ape heads grow, both in terms of individual parts (organs and regions) and as an integrated whole. The second section reviews how the head performs its major functions: housing the brain, chewing, swallowing, breathing, vocalizing, thermoregulating, seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and balancing during locomotion. The final set of chapters review the fossil evidence for major transformations of the head during human evolution from the divergence of the human and ape lineages through the origins of Homo sapiens. These chapters use developmental and functional insights from the first two sections to speculate on the developmental and selective bases for these transformations.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface: Heads Up -- 1 A Tinkered Ape? -- 2 The Skeletal Tissues of the Head -- 3 Setting the Stage: Embryonic Development of the Head -- 4 Modular Growth of the Fetal and Postnatal Head -- 5 Integration of the Head during Fetal and Postnatal Growth -- 6 The Brain and the Skull -- 7 You Are How You Eat: Chewing and the Head -- 8 Pharynx, Larynx, Tongue, and Lung -- 9 Holding Up and Moving the Head -- 10 Sense and Sensitivity: Vision, Hearing, Olfaction, and Taste -- 11 Early Hominin Heads -- 12 Ecce Early Homo -- 13 The Evolution of the Head in Homo sapiens -- 14 Final Thoughts and Speculations 14 Final Thoughts and Speculations -- Glossary -- References -- Acknowledgments -- Index