biology

Paul Mellars

Paul Mellars is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Paul Mellars rather than just read about it. In short: Sir Paul Anthony Mellars (29 October 1939 – 7 May 2022) was a British archaeologist and professor of prehistory and human evolution at the University of Cambridge. Early life and academic career Paul Anthony Mellars was born on 29 October 1939 in the village of Swallownest, near Sheffield.

Key takeaways

Paul Mellars belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Paul Mellars to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Paul Mellars from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Sir Paul Anthony Mellars (29 October 1939 – 7 May 2022) was a British archaeologist and professor of prehistory and human evolution at the University of Cambridge.

Early life and academic career Paul Anthony Mellars was born on 29 October 1939 in the village of Swallownest, near Sheffield. His father, Herbert Mellars, was a miner and a member of the Plymouth Brethren. From the village school, he progressed to Woodhouse, a County Council Grammar School founded in 1909 in the West Riding of Yorkshire, which his mother Elaine (née Batty) had also attended. (Woodhouse has subsequently been incorporated into the newly built Aston Academy in Swallownest.) Mellars obtained his MA, PhD and ScD degrees at the University of Cambridge, where he was a student at Fitzwilliam College. He married his wife Anny in 1969, having first met in an archaeological field trip in the Dordogne in 1964. After his PhD, Mellars taught for ten years in the Archaeology Department at Sheffield University before returning to Cambridge in 1980, where he became a fellow of Corpus Christi College. He briefly served as acting master of the college in 2007, following the resignation of Sir Alan Wilson, but six months later lost the election to become the formal successor to Wilson to Oliver Rackham. He has held visiting positions at the Binghamton University and the Australian National University. He served as president of the Prehistoric Society. He was also a trustee of the ACE Foundation.

Research Mellars' later research concentrated on the behaviour and archaeology of Neanderthal populations in Europe, and their replacement by Homo sapiens 40,000 years ago. He contributed to the three-part BBC mini-series "Dawn of Man – The Story of Human Evolution" (2000). He also studied the way in which mesolithic hunter-gatherer populations in Britain adapted to climate changes following the last ice age. He carried out excavations on early Mesolithic sites at Oronsay in the Inner Hebrides in Scotland and published the results from work at Star Carr in North Yorkshire.

Death Mellars died from cancer at Hinchingbrooke Hospital, near Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, on 7 May 2022, aged 82.

Honours Mellars was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (FSA) in 1977, a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) in 1990 and a member of the Academia Europaea in 1999. In 2004, he was appointed an Officier of the Ordre des Palmes académiques by the French Government. In 2006, he was awarded the Grahame Clark Medal by the British Academy. He was knighted in the 2010 New Year Honours for services to scholarship.

Selected publications Mellars, Paul (2006). "Why did modern human populations disperse from Africa ca. 60,000 years ago?". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 103 (25): 9381–6. Bibcode:2006PNAS..103.9381M. doi:10.1073/pnas.0510792103. PMC 1480416. PMID 16772383. Mellars, Paul (2006). "Archeology and the Dispersal of Modern Humans in Europe: Deconstructing the "Aurignacian"" (PDF). Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews. 15 (5): 167–182. doi:10.1002/evan.20103. S2CID 85316570. Archived from the original (PDF) on 17 December 2008. Mellars, Paul; Dark, Petra (1998). Star Carr in Context: New Archaeological and Palaeoecological Investigations at the Early Mesolithic Site of Star Carr, North Yorkshire. McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. ISBN 0-9519420-4-2. Mellars, Paul (1996). The Neanderthal Legacy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-03493-1. Mellars, Paul (1990). The Emergence of Modern Humans. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-2614-6. Mellars, Paul; Andrews, Martha V. (1987). Excavations on Oronsay: Prehistoric Human Ecology on a Small Island. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 0-85224-544-0.

References

External links Bonner, Laure (9 May 2022). "Prof Sir Paul Mellars FBA (1939–2022)". Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge. Retrieved 11 May 2022. Project description of excavations at Starr Carr University of Cambridge home page Corpus Christi College home page Entry for Paul Mellars, British Academy

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Paul Mellars

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Paul Mellars claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Paul Mellars before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Paul Mellars ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Paul Mellars

In research: Paul Mellars appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Paul Mellars in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Paul Mellars is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1939 births, 2022 deaths, Academics of the University of Sheffield, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Paul Mellars outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Paul Mellars in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Paul Mellars means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Paul Mellars out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Paul Mellars in simple terms?

Sir Paul Anthony Mellars (29 October 1939 – 7 May 2022) was a British archaeologist and professor of prehistory and human evolution at the University of Cambridge. Early life and academic career Paul Anthony Mellars was born on 29 October 1939 in the village of Swallownest, near Sheffield.

Why does Paul Mellars matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Paul Mellars?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Paul Mellars.