The city of Taxila, more properly Takṣaśilā, was one of the most important in ancient India. It is frequently mentioned as one of the two great cities of Gandhara (approximately the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan), along with its neighbour Puṣkalāvatī (modem Charsada north of Peshawar) some 80 miles (130 km) to the west. It was first identified in modern times by Major General Sir Alexander Cunningham in 1863, after he had visited the extensive series of mounds lying near the village of Shah Dheri, east of Hasan Abdul, in the Punjab province of Pakistan (Cunningham, 1871). His identification was soon confirmed by the discovery there of early inscriptions referring to Taxila by name.

When I became interested in the history of sheep 25 years ago, the paper by Hilzheimer (1936) was my chief source of inspiration, and in fact there had been few advances on his conclusions. Since then, however, there have been major advances, and the present account attempts to assess the extent to which these have added to the knowledge so ably summarized by Hilzheimer.

His conclusions were based mainly on ancient representations (an approach which reached its peak with the work of Zeuner, 1963) and the comparison of bone remains with those of a few primitive breeds that happened to be within the experience of the investigator.

The island has a fine series of surviving megalithic monuments with passage graves such as La Varde and outstanding examples of ornate statue-menhirs as at Câtel (Kinnes, 1981). There are distinctive local variants, as in the cellular elaboration of the Déhus tomb and the regional style of cist-in-circle monument. In terms of islands as laboratories of prehistory it is instructive to note that these structures survive only where protected from the ravages of agriculture, here on the sterile sand-drift of the north and the rocky promontories of the west coast. Sporadic records and the place-name evidence studied in detail by de Guérin (1921) indicate the extent and unevenness of destruction. Of some 70 monuments thus recorded only 12 survive in any recognizable state, and earlier density at about 1 per sq. km is an important corrective to attempts at territorial analysis based on extant distribution.

It is a truism to state that human evolution is a frighteningly complex subject. It is all too easy to yield to the temptation to construct ever more elaborate 'family trees' even though the fossil record is fragmentary and chronologically inexact. The supposed fate of Neanderthal man (Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) and the origin of modern man (Homo sapim sapim) have recently received a good deal of attention—most of which serves to emphasize the gaps in our knowledge without coming much nearer to a solution. This review presents some of the conflicting arguments which have been put forward, stressing a need to keep an open mind about the possibility of Neanderthal survival.

Like so many other great things, the Ancient Peoples and Places Series started as a result of a casual conversation between an author and a publisher, this one about a massive tome on the archaeology of Sardinia. Thames & Hudson decided not to translate the Sardinian book, but launched an entire series of archaeological books instead. The first, Geoffrey Bushnell's Peru, appeared in 1956 to enthusiastic reviews. Everyone admired the striking design and magnificent photographs, the clear exposition of an archaeological topic little known outside the narrow confines of Americanists. But few people realized they were witnessing a revolution in archaeological publishing. Now, 5,000,000 words and 15,000 illustrations later, we celebrate the hundredth 'A. P. & P,' appropriately A Short History of Archaeology by the General Editor himself.