Asian Paleoanthropology: An Introduction

Abstract

In the days of Ernst Haeckel, Eugene Dubois, Henry Fairfield Osborn, and Roy Chapman Andrews, Asia was often considered the center where major events in human evolution occurred. Since the middle of the twentieth century, however, the focus of paleoanthropology shifted to Africa, due (at least in part) to the many significant hominin fossils found there (Dennell 2001). It is now generally accepted that most of the major human evolutionary events during the late Neogene and the early Early Pleistocene took place in Africa, rather than Asia.