This major interdisciplinary work developed from an international conference held at Cambridge University in 1987. Fifty-five of the world's leading authorities from the fields of anthropology, archaeology, human evolution, and genetics met for the first time to discuss all aspects of the biological and behavioural origins of modern human populations. The volume brings together their papers, revised and updated in the light of discussion at the conference itself.

The book features the results of new work by geneticists working on mitochondrial DNA, globin polymorphisms, and a Y-chromosome DNA phylogeny, and there are general reviews of the genetic evidence for the evolution of modern humans. Other topics covered include palaeoecological models of human origins; sophisticated modeling of population expansions and replacements; changes in technology, subsistence and social patterns; and the origins of human language and other unique aspects of human behaviour. This is the only book which integrates the remarkable new genetic evidence with the more conventional approaches of archaeologists and anthropologists. No other work provides such an exhaustive and wide-ranging account of modern human origins on a world-wide scale.