Contents List of Figures List of Tables List of Contributors Acknowledgements Section 1: Introduction Chapter 1 Interrogating and decolonising the deep human past Martin Porr and Jacqueline M Matthews Section 2: Definition of the human and its colonial legacy Chapter 2 IMHO: inventing modern human origins Iain Davidson Chapter 3 Modern ontologies of the 'more-than-animal' human: provincialising humanism for the present day Kay Anderson Chapter 4 Colonialism and narratives of human origins in Asia and Africa Sheela Athreya and Rebecca Rogers Ackermann Chapter 5 Primordialising Aboriginal Australians: colonialist tropes and Eurocentric views on behavioural markers of modern humans Ian J McNiven Section 3: Representation, temporality and narratives of human origins Chapter 6 Old Flames: rekindling ideas of fire, humanity and representation through creative art practice Ursula K Frederick Chapter 7 Orientalism and origins: the search for firsts in the 'Cradle of Civilization' Allison Mickel Chapter 8 The Beast Without. Becoming human in the science fiction of H.G. Wells John McNabb Chapter 9 The temporality of humanity and the colonial landscape of the deep human past Martin Porr Section 4: National, political and historical dimensions of human origins Chapter 10 The Far West from the Far East: decolonisation and human origins in East Asia: the legacy of 1937 and 1948 Robin Dennell Chapter 11 Interpretative shifts in understanding the prehistoric settlement of the Indian Subcontinent: comparing Western and Indian historical perspectives Parth R Chauhan Chapter 12 Our earliest ancestors: human and non-human primates of North America Paulette F Steeves Chapter 13 "If we are all African, then I am nothing", hominin evolution and the politics of identity in South Africa Amanda Esterhuysen Section 5: The construction of genetic facts Chapter 14 Naming the sacred ancestors: taxonomic reification and Pleistocene genomic narratives Jonathan Marks Chapter 15 Traditional owner participation in genetic research: a researcher perspective Craig Muller and Joe Dortch Index.