These amazing ancient people. Ancestor bone. The most ancient human remains were found in Siberia. Where in the world were the remains of primitive people found?

This question has always worried both scientists and ordinary people. Many scientists still devote their entire lives to studying this question, without finding an exact answer. And although no one knows for sure yet, in the scientific world they accepted as a basis the theory of Darwin, who believed that man evolved from a monkey naturally. However, so far no one has found such evidence of the origin of man from animals that is completely irrefutable.

Darwin's theory

In the modern world, Darwin's theory no longer has the same power as before, but it is still the basis for understanding where man came from.

The question of the origin of animal species is considered by such a science as biology. The origin of man is also a question of concern to this science.

British biologist and geologist Charles Darwin published his book on the Origin of Species in 1859, which is one of the most famous works in the history of the science of biology.

In his book, Darwin outlined a theory on the basis of which he made an assumption about the evolution of living beings. He believed that living beings had evolved over billions of years through natural selection, that is, the strongest survived and adapted to new conditions.

Then, in the book “The Origin of Man and Sexual Selection,” he tried to substantiate the theory of Georges-Louis de Buffon, who suggested that the first people on Earth appeared due to evolutionary processes. After Darwin published this work, it was recognized by the entire scientific world.

Darwin's descendants, followers of his school - Darwinists, then declared that man descended from the monkey. This opinion is today considered to be the only correct scientific explanation of what the origin of man was. There is still no scientific refutation of this theory.

Scientists believe that the first people on Earth appeared about 7 million years ago from ancient monkeys. Of course, there are also antagonists to this statement. The further evolution of man took place in a very complex way, leaving the right to life only to more advanced species.

Australopithecus

Australopithecus is considered the first link in the human evolutionary chain. In the Republic of Chad, remains of this species were found that are more than 6 million years old. The youngest Australopithecus was found in South Africa. No more than 900 thousand years have passed since his death. Of all the links found in human evolution, this species existed for the longest period of time.

Australopithecines have distinct features of both human and ape-like creatures. Their height was up to one and a half meters, and their weight ranged from 30 to 50 kg. The absence of large fangs suggests that they could not use them as weapons, therefore, they ate more plant foods than meat. They would not be able to kill large animals, so they hunted small animals or picked up already dead creatures.

These primates were able to use primitive tools that did not need to be made: stones, branches, etc. Based on this, Australopithecus is called “a skilled man.”

Pithecanthropus

The life of the first people on Earth was clearly not easy, given their poor adaptability to simply survival.

The first remains of this species of ape were found on the island of Java, which is located in South Asia. This species existed on planet Earth approximately 1 million years ago. During the same period, Australopithecines completely disappeared. About 400 thousand years ago, Pithecanthropus also became extinct.

Thanks to the found remains, from which it was possible to determine the structure of the skeleton, scientists suggest that this species almost always walked on two legs, for which it was nicknamed “Homo erectus.” This was found out due to the fact that the femur of such a primate is very similar to a human one.

Their tools were also found during excavations. They cannot be described as masters of this craft, but the Pithecanthropes already at that time understood that sharp sticks and stones were more suitable for hunting and cutting food than untreated wood and cobblestones.

In addition, scientists believe that they managed to learn to coexist peacefully with fire. That is, they were not as afraid of it as other animals, but they still did not know how to get it on their own.

Pithecanthropus did not yet know how to speak and communicated with similar primates at the level of ordinary ancient monkeys.

They are often associated with another branch of evolution - synanthropes, which existed at the same time. Scientists believe that they were similar to each other and led a similar lifestyle.

Neanderthal

Neanderthals existed in Europe and Western Asia for hundreds of thousands of years, isolated from other lineages of great apes.

For the most part, Neanderthals were carnivores and ate meat. To do this, they had huge jaws, which did not protrude forward, like more ancient primates. They even hunted very large animals: mammoths, ancient rhinoceroses, etc.

The brain volume was the same as that of modern humans, although scientists suggest that in some groups of individuals it was even larger.

Due to the fact that they lived during the Ice Age, these apes were well adapted to survive in a cold environment. In addition, they had very broad shoulders, pelvis, and well-developed muscles.

About 40 thousand years ago, Neanderthals as a species of apes began to sharply die out. And 28 thousand years ago there was not a single living representative of this species left. Their extinction is associated with another link in human evolution - the Cro-Magnons, who could hunt and kill them.

Cro-Magnon

Representatives of this species are called “modern man.” Modern man, especially representatives of the Caucasian races, is considered completely identical to the late Cro-Magnons.

The found remains of Cro-Magnons tell us that representatives of the early species were as tall as a tall modern man (about 187 centimeters) and had a large skull.

Cro-Magnons already knew how to express their thoughts with characteristic sounds, which is associated with the appearance of speech. They were all divided into hunters and gatherers, each using stone tools.

Later representatives of the Cro-Magnons already skillfully used fire and built primitive kilns in which pottery was fired. Scientists also suggest that they could use coal for these purposes.

They also progressed quite far in creating clothing that both protected them from the bites of wild animals and helped them keep warm in the cold seasons.

The feature that distinguishes this species among all early apes is the emergence of such a concept as art. The Cro-Magnons lived in caves and left in them various drawings of animals or some life events.

Due to the fact that the number of different types of activities began to grow rapidly, more and more differences appeared between the arms and legs. For example, the thumb on the hand developed more and more, with which Cro-Magnons were able to hold heavy tools as easily as small objects.

Homo sapiens

This species is the prototype of modern humans. It appeared about 28 thousand years ago, as evidenced by the finds of the most ancient people.

Even then, our ancestors learned to express their emotions in coherent speech and increasingly improved their social relationships with each other.

Different climates and weather conditions entailed the formation of different traits of a particular race that lived on different continents. It was about 20 thousand years ago that three different races began to appear: Caucasian, Negroid and Mongoloid.

Thus, in a very condensed form, one can express the Darwinian evolutionary chain, which can describe the origin of man.

Thanks to scientific research, human genes are 91% similar to chimpanzees.

Refutations of Darwin's theory and the teachings of his followers

Despite the fact that this theory is the foundation for all modern science about man, there are also findings by various researchers that refute the generally accepted understanding of the scientific world about where the first people on Earth came from.

The found footprints, which are more than 3.5 million years old, prove that anthropoid individuals began to move on straight legs much earlier than primitive labor appeared.

The evolution of man, associated with descent from apes, is unclear if we ask the question about human limbs. Why are people's arms much weaker than their legs, while the opposite is true for monkeys? What contributed to the weakening of the limbs, since strong hands are clearly more useful for hunting and other work, is not clear.

To date, all the links that could completely unite the ancient monkey with modern man have not been found.

In addition, there is a whole series of incomprehensible questions and facts that cannot be answered using the well-known scientific theory of human origin.

Religious theory of human origins

Every religion that has survived to this day says that man appeared thanks to a higher being. Proponents of this theory do not believe in all the evidence of the origin of man from animals that exists today. For example, Christians say that man descended from Adam and Eve, the first people whom God created. Everyone also knows the phrase: “God created man in his own image.”

Regardless of the type of religion, they all claim that man was not born naturally, but is a creation of the Almighty. No one has yet found evidence of the origin of man from the Creator.

Creationism

There is such a science as creationism. Scientists who study it are looking for evidence of theories of the origin of man from God and confirmation of information from religious books.

To do this, they use almost sound scientific calculations. For example, they calculated that the ark that Noah built could really accommodate all the animals (about 20 thousand different species), excluding waterfowl.

In 1934, the remains of an ancient man were discovered in India. It was named Ramapithecus, after the Indian god Rama. A comparison of the teeth of anthropoid apes, Ramapithecus and humans shows that Ramapithecus has significantly smaller fangs than apes, and in general it is close in jaw structure to humans. The absence of large fangs means that they no longer served as weapons, which could be used as stones and sticks.

The terrestrial life of Ramapithecus was combined with life in the trees (like chimpanzees); they could partially move on their hind limbs.

The age of the remains is estimated at approximately 14 million years. The remains of Ramapithecus were subsequently also discovered in Africa.

In 1924, in South Africa, an English researcher of Australian origin discovered ancient remains that belong to the so-called ape people who lived 3.5 - 4 million years ago. They are called australopithecines (from the Latin australis - southern).

Australopithecus is not a monkey, but an intermediate creature between man and ape. A feature of Australopithecus and other related forms discovered later was the ability to walk upright and a dental structure similar to that of humans.

The ability to move on two legs arose as a result of natural selection during the transition to life on the plain, however, australopithecines could not yet overcome long distances in this way. At the same time, the upper limbs were freed from movement and could be used for touching and grasping food. Some indirect evidence confirms the gregarious lifestyle of Australopithecines. The hunting tools were stones and clubs.

In 1960, in Tanzania, an English anthropologist discovered the remains of ancient creatures whose age was 2 - 2.5 million years. These creatures differed from Australopithecus by a slightly larger brain volume and the development of the ability to make simple tools and dwellings and maintain fire. This type of creature was called homo habilis, or dexterous man, skillful man. The factor immediately before the formation of a person is a highly developed brain and the rational activity associated with it. “Rational activity” means the ability to foresee the result of a particular activity, that is, goal setting, in other words. A monkey is able to split and break a stone and even, perhaps, choose from these pieces the one that it likes. But she cannot plan the shape of the stone in advance. Australopithecines apparently could not make tools.

So, between Australopithecus and Homo habilis there is just that line when a creature is able to plan the result of its activities.

A huge achievement of the theory of anthropogenesis is the knowledge of the time of the appearance of the first human population - 2.5 million years ago. This happened in South Africa.

The mistake of the stage theory was that one link was built on top of another. In fact, this is a tree, and here both coexistence and competition are necessary.

A Dutch doctor on the island of Java discovered the remains of the creature: a skull cap, a femur and teeth. He named it Pithecanthropus. He was distinguished by his noticeable height and skull size, and had a skeleton close to that of a human. Its age is approximately 650 thousand years.

In 1927, in China, near Beijing, the remains of another fossil creature, more advanced than Pithecanthropus, were found. He was called Sinanthropus (from the Latin Sina – China), which means “Chinese man”. Similar remains of ancient people were found in Germany (Heidelberg man), Algeria and other places. They were strongly built, powerful people, excellent hunters.

The Heidelberg Man was the first to set foot on European soil.

Already the first Heidelberg man in Europe built very good dwellings, made of stone.

Further evolution led to the emergence of ancient people, the first remains of which were discovered in 1856 in Germany in the Neanderthal Valley. The person who owned them was named after the valley by a Neanderthal. Neanderthal man undoubtedly descended from Heidelberg man. Anatomically, modern man also descended from Heidelberg man. But it is believed that it occurred not in Europe, but in Africa.

The first Heidelberg man was in Africa. One branch of it went through Gibraltar to Europe and gave rise to Neanderthal man, and the other through the Bosporus, Dardanelles and gave rise to modern man.

Heidelberg man either supplanted or simply exterminated Neanderthal man.

An international team of German researcher Krings extracted DNA from Neanderthal bones and compared it with the DNA of modern humans. The scientists concluded:

Neanderthal was infinitely far from us genetically.

So distant that, apparently, the divergence of the branches of Neanderthal and modern man occurred approximately 500 thousand years ago, if not more. Moreover, again in Africa. But mainly Europe and Asia were populated by the descendants of immigrants from Africa, people of modern physical appearance, the so-called man of modern anatomical type.

In 1868, in France, in the Cro-Magnon cave, a human skeleton was discovered, whose development was significantly superior to all ancient people. He was called Cro-Magnon. Presumably, the first Cro-Magnons appeared 80 thousand years ago and coexisted with Neanderthals for some time.

Not only knives, arrowheads and other complex tools made by the Cro-Magnons have been preserved, but also examples of rock paintings, which indicate the development of abstract thinking among them.

The modern type of man finally began to form about 10 thousand years ago.

For a long time it was assumed that human evolution had stopped biologically, it did not go any further, and humanity was evolving further only in historical terms. Russian scientist, Professor Savelyev, a brain specialist, came to the conclusion:

Even such a system as the brain has continued to evolve, at least over the last century, and obviously continues to evolve and will continue to evolve.

10. Animal Thinking

Modern science shares Darwin's opinion:

“The difference between the psyche of higher animals and man, no matter how great it is, is a difference of degree, not of quality.”

Confirmation of this was obtained by various methods. For example, American scientists have been teaching monkeys simple analogues of human language for about 30 years.

Thinking is the operation of concrete sensory and conceptual images.

One of the definitions of thinking was given by the Soviet psychologist Alexander Romanovich Luria. He said that thinking arises in a situation where the subject does not have a ready-made solution, that is, a habitual one, formed through learning, or an instinctive one.

In the 60s, the Laboratory of Physiology, Genetics and Behavior was organized at Moscow University. One of the first objects of experiments was crows. Several elementary logic problems have been developed. The first of them is the most popular, this is the so-called task of extrapolating the direction of movement of a stimulus that disappears from the bird’s field of vision. Hungry birds stick their heads through the gap and see two feeders in front of them - one with food and the other empty. Then the feeders move away and hide behind opaque barriers. A new situation arises for the animal, which must be resolved at the first presentation. The animal must mentally imagine the trajectory of the direction of movement of the food after disappearing from the field of view and decide which side to go around the screen to get the food. By presenting this task, a broad comparative description of the ability of elementary rational activity of animals was obtained. The greatest successes are achieved by predatory mammals and dolphins. And some birds solve this problem perfectly.

A hungry jay in one of the American laboratories tore a strip from a newspaper placed in a cage, bent it in half with its beak, and through the bars scraped up pieces of food that were lying outside.

One of the most important manifestations of animal thinking is the ability to make and use tools.

Currently being studied at Cambridge are the New Caledonian crow, an endemic species that in nature obtains food by regularly making and using tools of various shapes. Two birds, raised in captivity, in isolation from their relatives, were brought to the laboratory and asked to solve a new problem for them. The experimental setup was a transparent cylinder, at the bottom of which a bucket of food was placed. Sticks, short and long, straight and curved, were laid out nearby. In a significant majority of cases, the birds chose the hook to pick up the bucket by the handle and remove it from this cylinder.

And one day a completely unexpected situation arose when there was no hook among the tools offered for selection. And then one of the crows, nicknamed Betty, grabbed the wire, wedged it in the crack of the table, bent it, made a hook and hooked this very notorious bucket.

It turned out that the ability of primates, especially apes, to generalize and abstract is extremely high.

To study the ability of crows to generalize the feature “more elements” and to symbolize, selection by sample was used. The bird is presented with two feeders on a special tray. The feeders are covered with lids - cards (stimuli for choice). During the learning process, the bird learns that food (worms) is only in one of the two feeders, and tries to find it. The animal can find out which feeder contains the reinforcement by comparing the image on the sample card, which is located between the feeders, with the images on the choice cards. If a bird sees a set of, for example, four elements on a sample card and discards the card covering the feeder, which also shows four elements, it will find the desired worm. The number of elements on the cards reached 25. A series of experiments was given in which birds were given the opportunity to freely choose between two feeders covered with cards with images of numbers. The bird could choose any card and received the number of hearts that corresponded to the symbol or combination of symbols depicted on the card. So, the ability to symbolize, at least its rudiments, is present in such a specific group of vertebrates as birds.

American researcher Irene Pepperberg has been working with a parrot named Alex since 1978. She trains him with a specific method 0 “rival model”. Alex learns words by competing and imitating a second experimenter, who receives rewards if he pronounces the correct word and answers questions better than Alex. The parrot has learned a small vocabulary and uses it to actively answer questions. Through this dialogue, Irene tries to characterize the essence of the parrot's cognitive abilities. That is, the questions that experimenters ask birds using cards and some other stimuli, Irene asks Alex directly. For example, she shows him a certain number of objects and asks: how many are there? He answers - 5. And he can explain: “Two green and three red, one round and four cubes,” etc. This research is very multifaceted. This is very valuable work. It coincides with the data of Russian scientists about the ability of birds to generalize and abstract.

Human brains predate humans
Hominid brains reorganized before the expansion in size that was thought to differentiate human and primate abilities began. The discovery was made based on the analysis of the remains of a small-brained hominid from South Africa. Researchers examined the inside of the skull of Stw 505, a member of the Australopithecus species. africanus, found in the Sterkfontein cave in the 80s. It is 2-3 million years old. Making allowances for changes in brain size, researchers from Columbia University showed that the brain of this primate and the brain of modern humans show remarkable similarities.

The most ancient hominid
(an erect primate) lived in northern Chad (Africa), and he lived 7 million years ago. Maybe, Sahelanthropus tchadensis was the earliest human ancestor. His discovery made it possible to consider Africa the cradle of humanity. The successor of this hominid was Australopithecus anamensis, who lived 4.2 million years ago. It is very similar to A. afarensis, who lived 3.5 million - the owner of a big face and small brains. The discovery of a female skull, which was dubbed Lucy, also belongs to this species. These hominids lived on the savannas of East Africa and walked upright, but they still had many similarities with apes.

Hominid without tools
southern ape, or Australopithecus was an upright, bipedal hominid, lacking the ability to make tools from stone. They used stones and bones as primitive tools, primarily as weapons. It was the making of tools and life in communities that helped hominids leave shelters in trees and survive in open space.

Black skull of Australopithecus ethiopicus Australopithecus aethiopicus
Black Australopithecus ethiopicus skull Australopithecus aethiopicus– a crude skull discovered in Lomekwi (West Turkana, Kenya). It dates back 2.5 million years. Its owner had a large face and a small brain. It is believed to be a primitive form of A. robustus.

Human ancestors stopped choosing partners based on smell
The development of color vision led to the fact that the primates who lived in the eastern hemisphere, and the people who then appeared as a result of their development, lost the ability to recognize pheromones. This happened about 23 million years ago, shortly before the superfamily of apes, from which humans eventually descended, split into several distinct groups. This period roughly coincides with the time when primates in the eastern hemisphere developed full-color vision.

Faces rough and graceful
U Australopithecus And robustus had broad, flat faces, whereas species afarensis and africanus had finer facial features. A. aethiopicus had a massive jaw, which this vegetarian used to grind hard plant foods.

The brain is similar, but the behavior is more complex
One of the few differences between humans and Australopithecus is the position of the primary visual cortex. Its border is marked by a depression in the surface of the brain. In an ancient hominid, this area is located closer to the front, and therefore larger. But in Australopithecus Stw 505 this area is located slightly behind - just like in humans. This means that the Australopithecus brain was already changing, turning into the brain of modern humans. In front is an area associated with various forms of complex behavior, such as the evaluation of objects and their qualities, facial recognition and social communication.

The last species of ape from which the great apes and modern humans evolved
The age of the skeleton found in the Spanish city of Barcelona is 13 million years. The new species is named in Latin Pierolapitecus catalaunicus. The height of the found specimen, a male, reached 120 centimeters. He weighed about 35 kilograms. Having studied the jaw and teeth, experts came to the conclusion that this creature ate mainly fruits, but on occasion it could easily eat insects or the meat of small animals. This monkey was well adapted to climbing trees. It required all four limbs to move, but some changes are visible in the skeletal structure that allowed later species of human ancestors to begin walking on two legs.

The one who began to use fire
Two million years ago a species appeared Homo lineage, who invented tools and fire. At the same time, migration from Africa began, which took place in four stages. In the process they became isolated australopithecus africanus, homo erectusHomo erectus And .

Homo erectus was the first to hunt
Homo erectus Homo erectus lived 1.7 million - 300,000 years ago and is considered the first of people to hunt large animals. The number of people has increased. And they began to spread over a wide range, left Africa a million years ago and began to colonize areas of the old world with a warm climate. His face was rugged with a massive lower jaw, massive brow ridges, and a long, low skull. The brain volume was 750 - 1225 cubic meters. see c (average 900). The discovery of a complete skeleton of Homo erectus under the name “Turkana boy” from Western Turkana (Kenya, 1984) is known.

A skilled man began to make tools
Brain of a Habilitated Man Homo habilis, who lived 2.2 - 1.6 million years ago in East Africa, had a volume of 500-800 cubic meters. cm, more than that of Australopithecus and approximately half the volume of the modern human brain. He was the first of the people who made tools by breaking long bones into long fragments that served him as knives.

Human mental abilities have increased
Over the past 2.5 million years, human mental abilities have increased many times over those of other primates. The human brain is now about three times the size of the brains of its “closest relatives,” chimpanzees and gorillas.

An ancient man became wiser due to a mutation
The human brain has evolved to a large size as a result of a mutation that occurred 2.4 million years ago. Our ancestors' bodies lost the ability to produce one of the main proteins that stimulate the growth of massive jaw muscles in primates. Unconstrained by the bulky chewing apparatus, the human skull was given the opportunity to grow freely: weak muscles put much less pressure on the skull, allowing the brain matter to grow and expand. A period around 2 million years ago, according to fossil evidence, shows rapid growth of the brain. By that time, our ancestors had begun to switch from chewing tough leaves all day long to eating meat, and they did not need very powerful jaws.

Goodbye Autralopithecus
Approximately two million years ago Homo habilis and developed a brain with a volume of over 500 cubic centimeters. Both of these species had significantly smaller jaw muscles compared to their ancestors, representatives of the genus Australopithecus.

Homo erectus managed without a brain
Early Homo erectus lived 1.8 million years ago and had a small brain. For several hundred thousand years, humanity lived without powerful jaws and without a developed brain. Homo erectus (upright people) lived from 2 million to 400 thousand years ago. According to one version, they appeared in Africa, but gradually settled throughout the Old World. The first fossil remains of Homo erectus were found by Eugene Dubois at the end of the 19th century in Java. Since then, many other remains have been found, but they nevertheless remain fragmentary.

There were ancient hobbits in Indonesia who built boats.
The remains of a new species of human, conventionally designated as “hobbits,” were unearthed on the Indonesian island of Flores. At first it was believed that these were the remains of a child, but analysis showed that these were the bones of an adult, one meter tall and with a skull the size of a grapefruit. These remains are 18 thousand years old. The scientific name of the new species of people is These people are Homo floresiensis - relatives of Homo erectus. They arrived on Flores one million years ago and, under conditions of isolation, developed their unusual appearance. Interestingly, there was no previous evidence of the ability of Homo erectus to build boats, but this is how the ancestors of floresiensis could get to the island. These people are not only interesting because of their short stature, but also because of their relatively long arms. Perhaps they were fleeing in the trees from Komodo dragons - giant lizards, the remains of which (of the same age) were discovered not far from the remains of Homo floresiensis. In addition to these bones, archaeologists unearthed on Flores the remains of an ancient dwarf elephant (Stegodon), which the “hobbits” probably hunted. Now we need to pay more attention to the legends about hobbits and dwarves.

160 thousand year old man
In June 2003, the oldest human remains in the world were found in Ethiopia - they are about 160 thousand years old. The largest number of remains of primitive people have been discovered in Africa, in particular in Tanzania and Kenya. But they are all scattered over a large area, so it is difficult for scientists to restore the primitive way of life of hominids.

Homo neanderthalensis - people from the Neander Valley
Neanderthals lived 230,000 – 28,000 years ago in Europe, central Asia and the Middle East. These people ate mainly meat. Men reached 166 cm and weighed 77 kg, women – 154 cm and 66 kg. Their brains were 12% larger than those of humans. As a species, Neanderthals formed during the Ice Age. The short, densely built body was adapted to conserve heat. Despite their small stature, they had strong, well-developed muscles. The brow ridge was wide and low, running down the middle of the face and hanging over the nose, which was vulnerable during snow storms and prolonged frosts

Neanderthals were skilled hunters and hunted cooperatively, breaking into separate groups that interacted during the hunt. They surrounded their prey and killed it at close range. Many remains of Neanderthals have been found with traces of severe injuries.

Neanderthals could speak, but their speech was not complex. They did not understand abstract concepts. Art was alien to them.

Rivals of the Neanderthals
Modern humans, who appeared in Europe 40,000 years ago, became rivals of Neanderthals. The researchers' data showed that by the time modern humans and Neanderthals interacted, mortality among the latter was 2% higher. In this competition for survival, the latter lost. Within 1,000 years, Neanderthals became extinct. 28,000 years ago the last Neanderthals disappeared. A number of scientists optimistically believe that they did not disappear, but assimilated, giving their genes to modern man. The data does not support this.

Sapiens supplanted Neanderthals
Currently, the most common theory of appearance in Europe states that Homo sapiens came to the continent from Africa about 200 thousand years ago and gradually replaced other species of anthropoids inhabiting it, including Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis). Scientists compared the preserved remains of four Neanderthals and five early modern humans from Western Europe. The DNA of these samples was so different that the hypothesis of widespread interbreeding between the two species could be unequivocally rejected.

Didn't mix with Neanderthals
Comparison of genomes and Neanderthals show that modern humans have virtually no genes characteristic of Neanderthals. In addition, the results of some molecular studies prove that Homo sapiens was fully formed in its modern form before the Neanderthals appeared.

Climate killed the Neanderthals
Neanderthals and the first humans to arrive in Europe struggled with falling temperatures, a new study involving more than 30 scientists has found. These two species of hominids coexisted in Europe approximately 45-28 thousand years ago, before the extinction of the Neanderthals. The cause of the death of Neanderthals was their inability to adapt to climate change. The problem was not only the cold snap itself - both species had fur clothing like robes. Rather, the researchers believe, Neanderthals were unable to change their hunting methods. Neanderthals, who once used forest cover to sneak up on herds of animals, turned out to be less effective hunters in conditions where they had to approach animals scattered across the steppe without any camouflage. Eating less well made Neanderthals weaker and more susceptible to disease and other threats. Although early humans also experienced similar problems, they eventually adapted to changing conditions.

Neanderthals led turbulent lives
Skeletons of Neanderthals show that they led turbulent lives - often breaking bones and being hit hard. They rarely lived past 40. Hunting in the new environment proved even more dangerous and much less successful. This is what made it impossible for the Neanderthals to survive. With food scarce, they became more susceptible to disease, reproduction slowed, starvation became common, and the population slowly but surely declined.

Europeans have Neanderthal teeth
The oldest remains of Homo sapiens have been found in Europe, the BBC reports. An analysis of the remains discovered in a cave in the Romanian Carpathians showed that they are between 34 and 36 thousand years old. This is the age of the male jaw found in the cave. These bones, without a doubt, belong to Homo sapiens, but they have features characteristic of more primitive species of anthropoids. In particular, the wisdom teeth on the found jaw are of such a huge size that have not been noted in any remains of Homo Sapiens, starting with those whose age is 200 thousand years.

Invention of the spear
The invention of such a useful tool for hunters and fishermen as a spear, which is now believed to have happened over a million years ago, served as a prologue to the great peace concluded between the tribes of the ancestors of people 985 thousand years ago. In addition, the appearance of such weapons also led to a decisive split in the behavioral patterns of chimpanzees and humans, which allowed us to stand out from the animal world.

Range expansion
People invented weapons that could be thrown from afar and thereby successfully hunt large mammals. The ability to kill at a distance also led to the spread of new tactics for conducting border battles between people - it was possible to set up ambushes. Circumstances forced the ancient people to come up with new ways to resolve their long-standing conflicts: in particular, to maintain friendly relations with their neighbors whenever possible.

Cooperation between tribes allowed a significant expansion of the area of early human settlements and even provoked their migration from Africa. All this also served as an impetus for the emergence of new types of social organization, which ultimately led to the organization of planned military actions and attacks on the first human settlements. The earliest archaeological evidence of the presence of such organized wars dates back to the 10th-12th millennia BC, they were found in Africa, in the territory of what is now Sudan.

Migration
The biological species that we call originated in eastern or southern Africa and from there gradually spread throughout the planet. However, experts do not yet have a consensus on how exactly this migration took place. Scientists from several countries have hypothesized that modern humans began their migration from their African homeland to other continents by crossing the Red Sea and then moving east along the Indian Ocean coast. The conclusions are based on the results of an analysis of the genetic information of the Malaysian aborigines, whose ancestors once first inhabited this part of the land.

Eurocentric theory
In the 1980s, the Eurocentric hypothesis of this process dominated. At that time, most anthropologists believed that man appeared quite late, about 50 thousand years before our time. According to this model, 45 thousand years ago our ancestors entered the Levant and Asia Minor through the Isthmus of Suez and the Sinai Peninsula. Over the next ten millennia, they colonized Europe, displacing the Neanderthals, and reached Australia around the same time.

African-centric theory
The results of excavations on the African continent have definitely shown that the age of Homo sapiens is significantly more than 100 thousand years. At the same time, it was proven that people have lived in Southeast Asia for at least 45 thousand years, and in Australia - from 50 to 60 thousand years. Gradually, among experts, the belief formed that Homo sapiens appeared in Africa somewhere around 200 thousand years ago, 100 thousand years later crossed the Sinai and entered the Asian expanses. Thus, the chronology of the emergence of man has undergone major adjustments, but the expected route of his exit from Africa has remained unchanged.

Sea route theory
In the mid-90s, that is, a decade ago, Italian and English anthropologists put forward another hypothesis. They came to the conclusion that some of the first settlers from Africa to Asia moved not by land, but by sea. First, these people penetrated the coast of the Horn of Africa, and then crossed the Red Sea in the area of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and entered the Arabian Peninsula. From there they moved east along the Indian Ocean and this way reached India, and then Australia. The authors of this theory estimate that this migration began at least 60 thousand years ago, but it is possible that as many as 75 thousand.

The oldest man in Europe was a Georgian
Georgian scientists have discovered in Eastern Georgia the skull of the oldest human on the European continent. According to preliminary estimates by scientists, the find in Dmanisi is 1 million 800 years old. The discovery in Dmanisi allows us to conduct research not only on individual individuals, but on an entire settlement. Along with the remains of the hominid discovered in Dmanisi, animal bones and stone tools were found. For example, the so-called “choping”, as well as hewn stone, which primitive man could use instead of a knife. "These earliest primitive stone tools are very similar to what was discovered in Africa."

Wars arose when the land began to be cultivated
Scholar Kelly attributes the emergence of the first wars to the development of agriculture, which exponentially increased the value of cultivated areas. Until this happened, the largest human conflicts resembled sporadic attacks by the same chimpanzees, because no one seriously planned such fights.

Farmers spoiled the prehistoric climate
Analysis of ancient air bubbles stored in Antarctic ice has provided evidence that humans began changing the global climate thousands of years before the Industrial Revolution. About eight thousand years ago, the content of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere began to rise - at the same time, people began to cut down forests, engage in agriculture and raise livestock. Forests in Europe and Asia began to replace cultivated fields. About five thousand years ago, as evidenced by ice samples, the methane content in the air began to increase.

Cattle have turned this world into a man's world
The earliest human societies, which were initially dominated by women (the times of matriarchy) were replaced by a patriarchal structure after the practice of acquiring cattle spread among tribes. The idea that early communities turned from matriarchal to patriarchal (when the status of men began to be considered higher than that of women and inheritance was already carried on in the male line) precisely when people started having cattle, appeared from the very beginning of modern anthropological research in the nineteenth century. However, at that time no one was able to convincingly demonstrate this cause-and-effect relationship.

The most ancient writings
Signs carved into turtle shells over 8,000 years ago may be the world's oldest words found to date. The results of their deciphering may also help us learn something about the rituals of Neolithic China. One of the graves contains a headless skeleton with 8 tortoiseshells placed where a skull would be.

All people were once cannibals
Cannibalism was probably much more widespread among our prehistoric ancestors than previously thought. A certain gene variation protects some Guinea Fore from prion disease caused by their former cannibalistic habits. Scientists have shown, after analyzing multiple DNA samples, that the same protective gene variant is found in people all over the world. Putting all their findings together, they concluded that such a feature could only have appeared if cannibalism had once been very widespread, and a protective form of the MV “prion” gene was required to protect the cannibals from the prion diseases lurking in the flesh of the victims.

The first wine was made in the Stone Age
It is possible that people of the Paleolithic era obtained a wine drink from naturally fermented juice of wild grapes. The idea of winemaking may have come to our smart and observant ancestors as a result of observations of birds fooling around after eating fermented fruits. During the Neolithic era, the eastern and southeastern part of Turkey was a good place for the emergence of agriculture. Among others, wheat was domesticated here - this event paved the way for the transition to a sedentary lifestyle. So, by all indications, the place is quite suitable for the initial domestication of grapes.

Humanity was created by old people
Researchers from the universities of Michigan and California found that a significant increase in human lifespan occurred at the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic, about 32 thousand years ago. A study of more than 750 remains showed that during this period the number of people reaching old age almost quadrupled. This, they say, is what gave humans an evolutionary advantage, determining the evolutionary success of the species. Representatives of the culture of late Australopithecines, people of the early and middle Pleistocene, Neanderthals from Europe and Western Asia and people of the early Upper Paleolithic were studied. By calculating the ratio of old to young adults for each period of human evolution, the researchers found a trend in the survival of older people over the course of human evolution.

The increase in the number of elderly allowed early modern people to accumulate more information and pass on specialized knowledge from one generation to the next. It could also strengthen social and kinship ties as grandparents could raise growing grandchildren and others outside the family. In addition, increasing life expectancy should have increased the number of offspring produced.

Ancient jewelry found in African cave
In the Stone Age, shells were in vogue. So say the archaeologists who dug up the oldest known pieces of costume jewelry. The beads from Blombos Cave in southern South Africa are possibly 75,000 years old. A team of researchers from the University of Bergen, Norway, discovered over 40 pearl-sized shells with drilled holes and signs of wear indicating that they had been collected into necklaces, bracelets or clothing patches. Such beads, sewn onto clothing or worn on the body, indicated high social status; and therefore they believe that representatives of a fairly modern culture lived in the cave.

Human ancestors created symbols
A series of parallel lines carved into animal bones 1.2-1.4 million years ago may serve as the oldest example of human symbolic behavior. Many other scientists believe that the ability for true symbolic thought appeared only in Homo sapiens. The 8cm bone that sparked the controversy was excavated from the Kozarnik cave in northwestern Bulgaria. Another bone found in the same place has 27 notches along its edge. The scientists who examined them claim that these cannot be cutting marks. A baby tooth of a similar age belonging to some early Homo was found next to the bones, but researchers find it difficult to name the specific species. Most likely this is Homo erectus. The carved bone belonged to an unknown ruminant.

Geologists decided to count the Quaternary period from the appearance of the first fossil remains of primitive people. But a serious problem has arisen: paleontologists continue to find more and more ancient traces of their existence. Thus, the beginning of the Quaternary period is pushed back further and further, which inevitably leads to a new question: do the discovered fossil remains already belong to humans or to a monkey similar to humans?

The first people - who are they?

Nowadays, scientists unanimously believe that the first who can no longer be considered monkeys, but almost humans, are australopithecines. These two-legged creatures, whose remains were first found in 1920 in South Africa, take us back to ancient times. Here the traces date back to 3.5 million years ago, there the skeleton is 3.1 million years old. There are finds that allow us to talk about an even more distant past: 5, 6 and even 7 million years ago... It seems that these humanoid creatures lived only in Africa. Some of them were undoubtedly the ancestors of the first true man, Homo labyns, who appeared a little over 2 million years ago, and was almost immediately followed by Homo erectus. The first species existed for about a million years. The second one, who is also called Pithecanthropus, turned out to be a real wanderer. Its traces are found almost everywhere in the Old World. The oldest of them are 150 thousand years old. But just some 100 thousand years ago, a more developed person appeared in Europe, possessing even the rudiments of culture: Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, or, as they more often say, “Neanderthal.” He disappeared from the face of the Earth about 35 thousand years ago, but our direct ancestor, Homo sapiens, was his contemporary. Recently, in a cave on Mount Qafzeh, in Israel, paleontologists discovered the fossil remains of this ancient “modern” man. Their age is about 90 thousand years. Thus, the man turned out to be much older than scientists had previously thought.

Australopithecus skull

Australopithecines are divided into four now extinct species. Most likely, they became victims of the increasingly dry climate in Southern and Eastern Africa.

Several large cemeteries with the remains of prehistoric man:

1. Olduvai

2. Omo

3. Swartkrans

4. Taung

5. Trinil

6. Zukoudian

7. Verteszselos

8. Tautavel

9. La Chapelle-aux-Saints

10. Cro-Magnon

11. Swanscombe

12. Neanderthal

13. Qafzeh

Humble Beginnings

According to researchers, less than a million people lived on Earth 40 thousand years ago. This figure may seem very modest, considering that their prehistory lasted millions of years... However, over time, these prehistoric people, some of whom did not yet belong to our species, settled Europe, the Middle East, India, China and even the island of Java - according to in fact, all the lands that we call the Old World.

Their ingenuity is impressive. They invented effective stone tools (the very first primitive ones are about 3 million years old). 400 or 500 thousand years ago, prehistoric people learned the wisdom of taming fire. They begin to bury their dead; The oldest of all the graves known to us is 60 thousand years old. Perhaps they also developed the initial forms of art: some drawings in Tanzania are more than 40 thousand years old and they may be the works of the predecessors of Homo sapiens sapiens. Finally, these people, certainly less developed than us, adapted to very diverse living conditions, which varied depending on both the region and the era. Some lived in tropical Africa, while others approached the boundaries of glaciers in Europe and in the spurs of the Himalayas. Of course, they would not be able to penetrate there if they were not already organized into communities and had a sufficiently inventive mind.

Taming the Fire

This is one of the greatest achievements of primitive man. The oldest remains of a hearth were discovered in Verteszselos, in what is now Hungary. It was ignited 450 thousand years ago by Homo erebus. However, more ancient people, of course, tried animal meat roasted on the fires of forest fires, and, quite possibly, even knew how to preserve this fire. In France, the oldest hearth was found near Nice (Terra Amata). It is 380 thousand years old.

People threw not only wood into the fire, but also bones and fat, which made the flame brighter. This tamed fire, attracting primitive people to itself, united them, gave them more peace of mind and allowed them to cook food.

First steps

The oldest footprints left by our ancestors, the Australopithecus, are 3,680,000 years old. They were discovered in the Olduvai Valley in Tanzania. Further north, in the Omo Valley in Ethiopia, Lucy's skeleton was found. This young female Australopithecus lived 3.1 million years ago.

Gallery of ancestors

At least 5-6 million years have passed from the first hominids, Australopithecines, to modern humans, who are often called Cro-Magnons. During this time, several species of prehistoric people changed: Australopithecus (southern ape); Homo (meaning “man”) is first habilis (skillful), then erectus (upright), then sapiens (intelligent). The most famous of all ancestors, Neanderthal man, also belongs to the latter species. Our immediate predecessor was Homo sapiens sapiens, or Cro-Magnon man.

Published the work of an international group of scientists, which included six Russians. It was thanks to their enthusiasm that the scientific community received at its disposal a unique find, and with it the most ancient genome of homo sapiens.

Nobody believed it!

This story is full of wonderful coincidences, and just plain luck. It started in 2008. Omsk artist Nikolai Peristov, specializing in bone carving, wandered along the banks of the Irtysh in search of working material - the remains of a bison, mammoth and other prehistoric animals. He organized such forays regularly: the banks of the river are destroyed, the earth reveals what has been hidden in it for centuries and millennia. That day, Peristov noticed a bone sticking out of the washed layer, threw it into a bag and brought it home. Yes, just in case.

The bone lay in the artist’s storage for two years until an acquaintance of his drew attention to it. Alexey Bondarev - forensic expert from the regional police department. He is a biologist by training, and paleontology is his hobby. Bondarev carefully examined the bone. From its appearance it was clear that this was not an animal or even a Neanderthal. 35 cm long, the bone most closely resembled a human femur. But how old is this person?

Alexey asked for help Yaroslav Kuzmin from the Institute of Geology and Mineralogy SB RAS, which is in Novosibirsk. He took the find unusually seriously. “Simply put, he believed that the bone could be very ancient, tens of thousands of years old,” Bondarev recalls. - The fact is that in our area the remains of a person from the Paleolithic era (over 10 thousand years ago) have never been found. And no one expected that they could be found at all. This never even occurred to scientists! Archaeologists knew only ancient sites of homo sapiens with stone tools and animal bones discovered on them. In general, it was believed that the first people came to the territory of the Omsk region no earlier than 14 thousand years ago.”

Yaroslav Kuzmin is a well-known specialist in radiocarbon dating (this is one of the methods for determining the age of biological remains). He sent the bone for examination to the University of Oxford, with which he has been collaborating for a long time. The British were delighted: the analysis showed that the bone material is 45 thousand years old! To date, these are the most ancient human remains, dated directly, and not by indirect signs (i.e., not by the environment in which they were found: tools, household items, etc.). The man from Ust-Ishim (he received his nickname from the name of the nearest village) is the oldest representative of the genus Homo sapiens discovered outside of Africa and the Middle East. And even in the north, at latitude 58! Scientists believe that it was the cold climate that helped preserve this bone.

Omsk artist Nikolai Peristov found a sensation on the river bank. Photo: From personal archive/ Alexey Bondarev

Cradle in Siberia

The discoveries didn't end there. Yaroslav Kuzmin involved geneticists in the case: the precious bone, accompanied by Russian scientists, went to Germany, to Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. They know firsthand about sensations from Siberia: it was at this institute that the DNA of the now famous “Denisovo” man from a cave in Altai was studied.

German anthropologists confirmed the conclusions of their colleagues about the age of the bone, and in addition, they discovered perfectly preserved DNA in it - the oldest at the moment. It took more than a year to assemble and read the genome. It turned out that Ust-Ishim man has 2.5% of Neanderthal genes - just like modern inhabitants of Eurasia. But the fragments of these genes are longer; foreign DNA is not as widely distributed throughout the genome as ours. Hence the conclusion: the Ust-Ishimets lived shortly after the crossing of humans with Neanderthals, and it happened somewhere 50-60 thousand years ago, along the road of Homo sapiens from Africa to Siberia.

“It is now clear that the history of the settlement of Asia was somewhat more complicated than previously thought,” emphasizes Yaroslav Kuzmin. - Coming out of Africa, some of our ancestors soon turned north - unlike those who settled in southern Asia. We also managed to find out the diet of the ancient Siberian. He was a hunter. His food was mainly ungulates - primitive bison, elk, wild horse, reindeer. But he also ate river fish.”

“I think this man looked almost the same as you and me,” adds Alexey Bondarev. - Dress him up, comb his hair, put him on a bus - no one will think that this is an ancestor who lived 45 thousand years ago. Well, maybe the skin will be darker.”

And most importantly, the man from Ust-Ishim turned out to be equally related to Europeans, Asians, and even residents of the Andaman Islands - aborigines who are hiding from the outside world and do not want to make contact with civilization. They, according to the theory of anthropologists, belonged to the early wave of migration from Africa. This means that, even if the Ust-Ishimite did not leave direct descendants (scientists do not exclude this), Siberia can safely be called one of the cradles of humanity.