Ancestral images
Subtitle: the iconography of human origins
By: Stephanie Moser ; foreword by Clive Gamble.
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Ithaca, N.Y
Language: eng
Number of pages: 200
Subjects: Prehistoric peoples -- Pictorial works -- History; Human evolution -- Pictorial works -- History
Description: Pictorial reconstructions of ancient human ancestors have twin purposes: to make sense of shared ancestry and to bring prehistory to life. Stephanie Moser analyzes the close relationship between representations of the past and theories about human evolution, showing how this relationship existed even before a scientific understanding of human origins developed. How did mythological, religious, and historically inspired visions of the past, in existence for centuries, shape this understanding?

Moser treats images as primary documents, and her book is illustrated with more than a hundred engravings, paintings, photographs, and reconstructions.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 190-197) and index.