Glynn Llywelyn Isaac (19 November 1937 – 5 October 1985) was a South African
archaeologist
Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...
who specialised in the very early
prehistory
Prehistory, also called pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the first known use of stone tools by hominins million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use ...
of
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...
, and was one of twin sons born to botanists William Edwyn Isaac and
Frances Margaret Leighton. He has been called the most influential Africanist of the last half century, and his papers on human movement and behavior are still cited in studies a quarter of a century later.
[Jeanne Sept and David Pilbeam, Eds, "Casting the Net Wide," Oxbow Books, 2011.]
Biography
He took his first degree from the
University of Cape Town
The University of Cape Town (UCT) (, ) is a public university, public research university in Cape Town, South Africa.
Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university status in 1918, making it the oldest univer ...
in 1958 before studying for his
PhD at
Peterhouse, Cambridge which he completed in 1969. He was also Warden for Prehistoric Sites in
Kenya
Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country located in East Africa. With an estimated population of more than 52.4 million as of mid-2024, Kenya is the 27th-most-populous country in the world and the 7th most populous in Africa. ...
between 1961 and 1962 and deputy director of the Centre for Prehistory and
Palaeontology
Paleontology, also spelled as palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of the life of the past, mainly but not exclusively through the study of fossils. Paleontologists use fossils as a means to classify organisms, measure geo ...
at the
National Museums of Kenya from 1963 to 1965. Working with
Richard Leakey, he was co-director of the East African
Koobi Fora project.
In 1966 he joined the
anthropology
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, society, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including archaic humans. Social anthropology studies patterns of behav ...
department at the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...
and in 1983 he was appointed Professor of Anthropology at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...
where he was developing new research projects at the time of his death. He was survived by his twin brother,
Rhys Isaac, an historian, based at
La Trobe University.
He died in 1985 in
Yokosuka,
Japan
Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...
due to illness, at the age of 47.
[Dean R. Gerstein and R. Duncan Luce (1988)]
The Behavioral and Social Sciences
/ref>
Contributions
Glynn Isaac is best remembered for a series of papers and ideas which attempted to combine the available archeological record with models of both human behavior and a human activity from the standpoint of evolution
Evolution is the change in the heritable Phenotypic trait, characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, re ...
. In the early 1970s Isaac published on the effect of social networks, gathering, meat eating and other factors on human evolution, and proposed a series of models to examine how groups of humans in the Paleolithic
The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic ( years ago) ( ), also called the Old Stone Age (), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone tools, and which represents almost the entire period of human prehist ...
would have engaged in acquiring the necessities of life, and interacting with each other. Isaac's models focused on a "home base" and the importance of sexual division of labor on hominid social organization.
Works
*''The Archaeology of Human Origins'', Cambridge University Press.
*''Olorgesailie: Archaeological Studies of the Middle Lake Basin in Kenya'', University of Chicago Press, 1977.
*The food-sharing behavior of protohuman hominids. ''Scientific American'' 238:90-108, 1978.
*''Koobi Fora Research Project: Plio-Pleistocene Archaeology'', Glynn Ll. Isaac (Editor), ''et al.'', Clarendon Press, 1997.
*''Human Origins: Louis Leakey and the East African Evidence'', Glynn Ll. Isaac, Elizabeth Richards McCown, WA Benjamin, 1976.
See also
*Human evolution
''Homo sapiens'' is a distinct species of the hominid family of primates, which also includes all the great apes. Over their evolutionary history, humans gradually developed traits such as Human skeletal changes due to bipedalism, bipedalism, de ...
* Olorgesailie
* Koobi Fora
* David Pilbeam
References
*Darvill, T (ed.) (2003). ''Oxford Concise Dictionary of Archaeology'', Oxford: Oxford University Press. .
*Jeanne Sept and David Pilbeam, Eds., "Casting the Net Wide," Oxbow Books, 2011. .
Notes
External links
Online biography
National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution
{{DEFAULTSORT:Isaac, Glynn
1937 births
1985 deaths
South African archaeologists
Paleoanthropologists
Human evolution theorists
University of Cape Town alumni
Alumni of Peterhouse, Cambridge
Harvard University faculty
20th-century archaeologists