ANTH 2320

This course will introduce the archaeology of Africa, Asia and Europe beginning with the appearance of modern humans approximately 200,000 years ago. We will study the movement of people from Africa into Asia and Europe and the development of densely populated communities and cities with organized political and social systems that depended on food production economies. The course will investigate the relationships between people and their environments to understand how, why and when these migrations took place from Africa to Asia and Europe and beyond. We will examine the human choices that led to the development of Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China, the early European states and Southeast Asia over the last 5,000 years using an archaeological perspective, which includes the related fields of bioanthropology, linguistics and genetics.