In the Footsteps of Our Ancestors details, through archaeological analysis, the dispersal of our species, Homo sapiens, out of Africa and into Asia and Oceania.

Peter Hiscock researches evolutionary processes operating in human social and economic life.

Glenn Summerhayes has worked on the archaeology of Papua New Guinea for the past 40 years. Since 2005 he has been Professor of Anthropology at Otago University.

Takeshi Ueki is a Professor Emeritus at Kyoritsu Women' s University System. He specializes in the Upper Palaeolithic Period of the Japanese Archipelago, and is Chairperson of the Japan Association for Archaeoinformatics.

Preface Takeshi Ueki; Chapter 1. Beginnings: Africa and beyond; Chapter 2. The Colonisation of South Asia y Homo sapiens: assessing alternative hypotheses through cladistic analyses of lithic assemblages; Chapter 3. The Settlement of Mainland Southeast Asia by Anatomically Modern Humans; Chapter 4. A Middle To Late Upper Pleistocene Lithic Industry from North Vietnam; Chapter 5. Early Modern Humans in Island Southeast Asia; Chapter 6. Northern Sahul and the Bismarck Archipelago; Chapter 7. Human Dispersals Across Southern and Central Sahul; Chapter 8. The peopling of East Asia: Perspectives from the Russian Far East; Chapter 9. Early Peopling in and around Taiwan: Pleistocene through Middle Holocene Groups before the Austronesian Era; Chapter 10. The Arrival of Modern Humans in North China during the Late Palaeolithic; Chapter 11. The Philippines: Origins to the End of the Pleistocene; Chapter 12. Emergence of Pleistocene Modernity and its Background in the Korean Peninsula; Chapter 13 Analyzing Japanese sites belonging to the Initial Period of the Upper Palaeolithic. Creating Macro-models; Chapter 14. Archaeological Materials from the Japanese Early Upper Palaeolithic and their Implications; Chapter 15. Pleistocene Okinawa: unique culture and lifeway in the Oceanic islands of the Western Pacific; Appendix A. Comparision of Radiocarbon and Calibrated Dates; Appendix B: Analyzing the Age and heating History of Archaeological Materials Using Remnant Magnetization; Index.