"Who were the first humans to inhabit North America? According to the now familiar story, mammal hunters entered the continent some 12,000 years ago via a land bridge that spanned the Bering Sea and introduced the distinctive stone tools of the Clovis culture. Drawing from original archaeological analysis, paleoclimatic research, and genetic studies, noted archaeologists Dennis J. Stanford and Bruce A. Bradley challenge that narrative. Their hypothesis places the technological antecedents of Clovis technology in Europe, with the culture of Solutrean people in France and Spain more than 20,000 years ago, and posits that the first Americans crossed the Atlantic by boat and arrived earlier than previously thought."--Back cover.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1910.

2022 Choice Outstanding Academic Title The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere is a reclaimed history of the deep past of Indigenous people in North and South America during the Paleolithic. Paulette F. C. Steeves mines evidence from archaeology sites and Paleolithic environments, landscapes, and mammalian and human migrations to make the case that people have been in the Western Hemisphere not only just prior to Clovis sites (10,200 years ago) but for more than 60,000 years, and likely more than 100,000 years. Steeves discusses the political history of American anthropology to focus on why pre-Clovis sites have been dismissed by the field for nearly a century. She explores supporting evidence from genetics and linguistic anthropology regarding First Peoples and time frames of early migrations. Additionally, she highlights the work and struggles faced by a small yet vibrant group of American and European archaeologists who have excavated and reported on numerous pre-Clovis archaeology sites. In this first book on Paleolithic archaeology of the Americas written from an Indigenous perspective, The Indigenous Paleolithic of the Western Hemisphere includes Indigenous oral traditions, archaeological evidence, and a critical and decolonizing discussion of the development of archaeology in the Americas.

When did war begin? Standard military accounts tend to start with the Graeco-Persian wars, laying undue emphasis on the preeminence of Greek heavy infantry. But, as this strikingly original and entertaining book shows, the origins of war can be traced back not to the Iron Age, or even to the Bronze Age, but to the emergence of settled life itself nearly 10,000 years ago. The military revolution that occurred then?the invention of major new weapons, the massive fortifications, the creation of strategy and tactics?ultimately gave rise to the great war machines of ancient Egypt, Assyria, and Persia that dominated the Near East until the time of Alexander the Great.It is Arther Ferrill's thesis that in the period before Alexander there were two independent lines of military development?a Near Eastern one culminating in the expert integration of cavalry, skirmishers, and light infantry and a Greek one based on heavy infantry. When Philip and Alexander blended the two traditions in their crack Macedonian army, the result was a style of warfare that continued, despite technological changes, down to Napoleon.This newly revised edition presents detailed and copiously illustrated accounts of all the major battles on land and sea up to the fourth century b.c., analyzes weapons from the sling to the catapult, and discusses ancient strategy and tactics, making this a book for armchair historians everywhere.