Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons. The emergence of human races - Knowledge Hypermarket

They differed not only in physical features. The Cro-Magnons had a much more perfect culture. The technique of making tools has grown immeasurably. They began to be made from plates - specially prepared narrow and long blanks, which made it possible to manufacture much more elegant and diverse tools than the Mousterian pointed ones.

The Cro-Magnons also widely used animal bones for making tools. As a result, cultural diversity Upper Paleolithic disproportionately surpasses the Mousterian variations: if Mousterian tools in France and Altai are almost indistinguishable, then in the Upper Paleolithic era, even neighboring groups of people could have sharply different tools. rose technical equipment people - already at the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic era, a spear thrower appeared, and at the end - a bow and arrows. Much less is known about the population of Africa and Asia during the Upper Paleolithic than about the population of Europe. However, they were fundamentally similar both biologically and culturally.

The most significant phenomenon is the flowering of Upper Paleolithic art. In the caves of France, Spain, Italy and the Urals, excellent examples of rock art have been preserved; in the layers of sites from Brittany to Baikal, statuettes of people and animals made of bones, mammoth tusks and limestone have been found. The handles of knives and spear-throwers were decorated with intricate carvings. Clothes were decorated with beads and painted with ocher.

Art, apparently, had at that time magical meaning. Images of animals are accompanied by signs of arrows and spears, designed to facilitate the upcoming hunt. Judging by the traces of teenagers in the clay in front of the cave paintings, initiation into hunters was also carried out here. Of course, we can only assume the true meaning of these traces of the spiritual life of our ancestors, but its richness and the fundamental similarity of the psyche of people of those times with ours is undeniable.

The settlements of the Upper Paleolithic people were usually regularly visited hunting camps. Dwellings were built here, the life of society went on, rituals were performed, the dead were buried. Ritual practice has reached its peak. In the grave with the deceased, the Cro-Magnons put tools, spears, stone knives, and numerous decorations. At the same time, the burial was often covered with red ocher, sometimes covered with mammoth bones from above. Obviously, at this time, ideas about the afterlife arise.

In the Upper Paleolithic era, man tamed the wolf, turning it into a dog. So man himself began to actively influence the process of speciation in animals, through artificial selection.

BC e) they settled in Europe, and lived simultaneously with the last representatives of the Neanderthals.

The beginning of the Upper Paleolithic era includes the so-called Paleolithic revolution- the transition to a more advanced technology for the production and use of tools, which occurred about 40 thousand years BC. During this period there was an explosive flowering of intellectual and cultural activities associated with the wide spread of people of the modern physical type, who replaced the ancient types of people. Bones were first found in the Cro-Magnon Grotto in France.

It is surprising that for tens of thousands of years, pre-Cro-Magnon humanity has not undergone any changes. At the same time by modern ideas to form the features of the Cro-Magnon skeleton, isolation and a huge number of years are needed.

Evolutionary anthropologists believe that the Cro-Magnon population was between 1 and 10 million people, and in 100 thousand years they should have buried about 4 billion bodies with related artifacts. A significant part of the burials of these 4 billion should have been preserved. However, only a few thousand have been found.

Another ambiguity is the extinction of the Neanderthal. One of the dominant hypotheses about the causes of its extinction is its displacement (i.e., destruction) by Cro-Magnon, a competitor for an ecological niche, which occurred about 30 thousand years ago.

Cro-Magnon food

It has been established that the diet of a person of the late Paleolithic era (40-12 thousand years ago), who lived in Europe, consisted of wild fruits, vegetables, deciduous plants, roots, nuts, and lean meat. The results of anthropological studies unequivocally show that in the course of human evolution, a large role was played by a diet containing little fat, very little sugar, but including a large amount of fiber and polysaccharides. The cholesterol content of bushmeat approximates that of livestock meat, but bushmeat contains an almost ideal ratio of saturated and unsaturated fatty acids. Late Paleolithic people consumed a lot of animal protein at the expense of meat, which contributed to physical development and rapid puberty, but not longevity. An analysis of the remains of ancient people revealed characteristic diseases caused by malnutrition, in particular, beriberi, and their life expectancy averaged 30 years.

One way or another, due to the fact that meat food prevailed in the Cro-Magnon diet, they were more stately than their descendants (and ancestors), who preferred plant foods.

Cro-Magnon culture

Religion

From the end of 40 thousand BC. the heyday of the Matriarchy also began - associated with the Cro-Magnons and known mainly from excavations in Europe. The worship of the mother goddess was not just a local cult, but a global phenomenon. material from the site

Cave painting (rock)

During the life of the Cro-Magnons, there is a flourishing of cave (rock) painting, the peak of which was reached in 15-17 thousand BC. (gallery of cave drawings of Lascaux and Altamira).

A fresco in Altamira depicts a herd of bison and other

Where did the world so understandable to us come from, how did it fit in with the completely different world of the Neanderthals? Many biological features The oldest Upper Paleolithic people suggest that they came to Europe from tropical regions.

Long limbs, high stature, elongated body proportions, large jaws, elongated braincase are similar in modern tropical populations and Cro-Magnons. The latter differ only in the large size of the bones, the strong relief of the skull, and coarser features. But, if the Cro-Magnons were aliens, where did they come from? How did they interact with the natives - Neanderthals? According to the version most justified now, the modern human species was formed in Africa between 200-160-100 and 45 thousand years ago. Between 80 and 45 thousand years ago, a limited number of people emerged from East Africa in the area of ​​​​the Bab el-Mandeb Strait or, less likely, the Isthmus of Suez. They began to settle first along the southern shores of Eurasia - up to Australia - and then to the north, in areas inhabited by Neanderthals, whose possible fate was mentioned above.

From the era of the Upper Paleolithic to the present, evolutionary changes did not have time to accumulate in sufficient quantities (it is often said that biological evolution with the advent of modern look human has ceased, giving way to the social, but the facts indicate the continuation of biological evolution in our days, just the time scale is insufficient for the appearance of significant changes in morphology). Differences between groups of populations that have appeared since that time are usually called racial. A separate section of anthropology is devoted to them - race (cf.

Modern people

The earliest representatives of neoanthropes were called cro-magnons due to the fact that their bone remains (several skeletons) were first found in 1868 in a cave near the village of Cro-Magnon in France. The later neoanthropes are modern people that still exist today.

The generalized name of modern people who replaced all their predecessors in the period 40-30 thousand years ago - neoanthropes .

Scientists believe that neoanthrope, or a person modern type, arose in the Eastern Mediterranean, in Western Asia and in the southeast of Europe. It was here that numerous bone remains of intermediate forms between Neanderthals and early fossil forms were found. Homo sapiens - Cro-Magnons . In those days, all these territories were occupied by dense broad-leaved forests, rich in a variety of game, various fruits (nuts, berries) and succulent herbs. Under these conditions, it is believed that the last step on the way to Homo sapiens. New person began to actively and widely settle on the planet, making large migrations across all continents of the Earth.

Cro-Magnons are the first people, i.e. direct representativesHomo sapiens . They were characterized by rather high growth (about 180 cm), a skull with a large cranium (up to 1800 cm 3, more often about 1500 cm 3) , the presence of a pronounced chin, a straight forehead and the absence of brow ridges. The presence of a chin protrusion on the lower jaw indicated that the Cro-Magnons were capable of articulate speech.

Cro-Magnons lived in communities of 15-30 people. Caves, tents made of skins, dugouts served as their dwellings. They lived in a tribal society, began to tame animals and engage in agriculture.

The Cro-Magnons had a developed articulate speech, dressed in clothes made of skins, and were engaged in pottery. In Dolni Vestonice in Moravia, the world's oldest pottery kiln was found, which was used by the Cro-Magnons.

The Cro-Magnons had funeral rites. Household items, food, jewelry were placed in the grave. The dead were sprinkled with blood-red ocher, a net was put on their hair, bracelets were put on their hands, flat stones were placed on their faces and buried in a bent position (knees touching the chin).

The appearance of the Cro-Magnon was no different from the appearance modern man.

The Cro-Magnon man was characterized by a significant development of the parts of the brain associated with labor activity, speech and responsible for behavior in conditions public life. Along with stone tools, he widely used bone and horn, from which he made needles, drills, arrowheads and harpoons. The objects of hunting were horses, mammoths, rhinos, deer, bison, arctic foxes and many other animals. The Cro-Magnon also did fishing and gathering fruits, roots and herbs. He had a fairly high culture, as evidenced not only by tools and household items (he knew how to make leather, sew clothes and build housing from the skins of animals), but also various drawings on rocks, cave walls, stone and bone sculptures, made with great skill.

Wall painting in a Cro-Magnon cave (left) and his tools:
1 - horn harpoon; 2 - bone needle; 3 - flint scraper; 4-5 - horn and flint dart tips

By the time of the appearance Homo sapiens representatives of the genus Homo were already characteristic of almost all morphological features, characteristic for Homo sapiens: upright posture; development of hands as organs labor activity; proportionate, more a slim body; lack of hairline. Height increased, the front part of the skull decreased, and the brain part became very large. There was not only a powerful increase in the mass of the brain, but also its qualitative change: great development received the frontal lobes of the brain and areas associated with speech, social behavior and complex activities.

All these transformations were not purely biological aromorphoses, as in other animals. They are largely due to the creation of a special, cultural environment and the strongest action social factors. Among them are the development of a social way of life and the application of the accumulated life experience ancestors; labor activity and the creation of a hand as an organ of labor; the emergence of speech and the use of the word as a means of communication and education of a person; development of mental abilities that stimulate the improvement of labor and speech; the use of fire, which helped to scare away animals, protect themselves from the cold, cook food, and also spread around the globe. Social labor and the manufacture of labor tools provided a special, human path for the development of the species, distinguished by social (social) relations, the division of labor, the emergence on this basis of trade, art, religion, science and industrial production.

The emergence of man is the largest aromorphosis in evolution organic world, unparalleled in quality in the entire history of the Earth. It was characterized by special patterns and specific features that are unique to anthropogenesis.

Having mastered the culture of making perfect tools, the reproduction of food, the arrangement of dwellings, the creation of clothing, Homo sapiens, unlike all other types of organisms, has become special, biosocial being , protect yourself from adverse natural conditions creation of a special - cultural environment. As a result, there was no need for further evolution of man in the direction of transforming him into another, more perfect form. Thus stopped the evolution of modern man as species. It continues only within the already formed species (mainly along the path of polymorphism of morphophysiological characters in different groups and human populations).

The emergence of the neoanthrope did not occur through a simple accumulation of new properties in the body, but in close unity with the process of becoming of all mankind, and social existence(joint life, communication, speech, work, collective activity) was one of the essential properties of anthropogenesis. Under these conditions, a qualitatively new creature with biosocial properties appeared on Earth, which creatively transforms the world with the help of its mental and cultural abilities and social production. Outside of society, formation is unthinkable Homo sapiens How special kind. The specific stability of the neoanthrope is precisely due to the "transformation" of a person into a representative of humanity.

The appearance of man is an outstanding event in the development of wildlife. With the advent human society on the stage Homo sapiens about 40 thousand years ago creative role natural selection has lost its meaning

Archaeological finds indicate that the weapons and methods of making them among the Cro-Magnons were much more perfect than among the Neanderthals; this was of great importance for increasing food resources and population growth. Spear throwers gave the human hand a gain in strength, doubling the distance the hunter could throw his spear. Now he was able to hit the prey at a great distance even before it had time to be frightened and run away. Among the serrated tips was invented harpoon, which could catch salmon coming from the sea to the river to spawn. Fish became an important food item for the first time.

The Cro-Magnons caught birds with snares; they were the ones who came up with deadly traps for birds, wolves, foxes and much larger animals. Some experts believe that the hundreds of mammoths whose remains were found near Pavlov in Czechoslovakia fell into such a trap.

hallmark Cro-Magnons was hunting large herds of large animals. They learned to drive such herds to those areas where it was easier to kill the animals, and staged a mass slaughter. Cro-Magnons also moved in the wake of the seasonal migrations of large mammals. This is evidenced by their seasonal residence in selected areas. Late Stone Age Europe was teeming with large wild mammals from which much meat and furs could be obtained. After that, their number and variety have never been so great.

The main sources of food for the Cro-Magnons were such animals: reindeer and red deer, tour, horse and stone goat.

In construction, the Cro-Magnons basically followed the old traditions of the Neanderthals. They lived in the caves, they built tents from skins, built dwellings from stones or dug them out of the ground. New steel light summer tents, which were built by nomadic hunters (Fig. 2.18, Fig. 2.19).

Rice. 2.18. Reconstruction of a hut, Terra Amata Fig. 2.19. Reconstruction of dwellings, Mezin

Ability to live in ice age in addition to housing provided and new types of clothes. Bone needles and images of people dressed in fur suggest that they wore closely fitting trousers, jackets with hoods, shoes and mittens with well-stitched seams.

In the era from 35 to 10 thousand years ago, Europe experienced great period his prehistoric art.

The range of works was wide: engravings of animals and people made on small pieces of stone, bones, ivory and deer antlers; clay and stone sculptures and reliefs; drawings in ocher, manganese and charcoal, as well as images laid out on the walls of caves with moss or applied with paint blown through a straw (Fig. 2.20).

The study of skeletons from burials suggests that two-thirds of the Cro-Magnons reached the age of 20, while among their predecessors, the Neanderthals, the number of such people was not even half; one in ten Cro-Magnons lived to be 40, compared to one in twenty among Neanderthals. That is, Cro-Magnon life expectancy increased.

The burials of the Cro-Magnons can also be used to judge their symbolic rituals and the growth of wealth and social status.

Rice. 2.20. Drawing of a bison, Nyo, France Fig. 2.21. Fox teeth necklace, Moravia

Burialers often sprinkled the dead with red ocher, which is believed to symbolize blood and life, which may indicate that the Cro-Magnons believed in an afterlife. Some corpses were buried with rich decorations (Fig. 2.21); these are early indications that in hunter-gatherer communities rich and respected people began to appear.

Perhaps the most amazing things are found in the burial of hunters, made 23,000 years ago in Sungiri, east of Moscow. Here lay an old man in fur garments, skillfully decorated with beads.

Two boys were buried nearby, dressed in beaded furs, with ivory rings and bracelets; near them lay long spears made of mammoth tusks and two strange, carved from bone and scepter-like rods of the type called the "commander's baton" (Fig. 2.22).

10,000 years ago, the cold epoch of the Pleistocene gave way to the Holocene, or “completely new” epoch. This is the time of the mild climate in which we live now. As the climate in Europe warmed, the area occupied by forests expanded. Forests advanced, occupying vast areas of the former tundra, and the rising sea flooded low coasts and river valleys.

Rice. 2.22. Burial of a man, Sungir 1, Russia

Climate change and intensified hunting led to the disappearance of huge wild herds, at the expense of which the Cro-Magnons were fed. But on land, forest mammals remained in abundance, and in the water - fish and waterfowl.

The tools and weapons they made allowed the northern Europeans to use all these food sources. These specific hunter-gatherer groups created mesolithic culture, or " middle stone age". It was so named because it followed the ancient stone age, which was characterized by hunting huge herds of animals. Mesolithic culture laid the foundation for the emergence of agriculture V Northern Europe characteristic of the new stone age. The Mesolithic, which lasted only 10 to 5 thousand years ago, was only a brief moment of the prehistoric period. From the bones found at the Mesolithic sites, it can be seen that the prey of the Mesolithic hunters were red deer, roe deer, wild boar, wild bulls, beavers, foxes, ducks, geese and pikes. Huge heaps of mollusk shells indicate that they ate on the coast of the Atlantic and the North Sea. Mesolithic people were also engaged in the collection of roots, fruits and nuts. Groups of people apparently migrated from place to place, following seasonal changes food sources.

Archaeologists believe that Mesolithic people lived in smaller groups than their possible ancestors - the Cro-Magnons. But food production was now kept at a more stable level throughout the year, with the result that the number of camps and, consequently, the population increased. Life expectancy also seems to have increased.

New stone tools and weapons helped the Mesolithic people to master the forests and seas that occupied part of Northwestern Europe after the melting of the northern ice sheet.

One of the main types of hunting weapons were Bow and arrows, which were probably invented in the Late Paleolithic. A skilled archer could hit a stone goat at a distance of 32 m, and if his first arrow did not hit the target, he had time to send another one after it.

The arrows were usually serrated or tipped with small pieces of flint called microliths. Microliths were glued with resin to a deer bone shaft.

New examples of large stone tools helped Mesolithic people to make shuttles, paddles, skis and sleds. All this taken together made it possible to develop huge water areas for catching fish and facilitated movement through snow and wetlands.

Hominid triad

Since the only modern representative of the family is man, historically three most important systems have been identified from his features, which are considered truly hominid.

These systems have been called the hominid triad:

− upright posture (bipedia);

- a brush adapted for the manufacture of tools;

- highly developed brain.

1. Upright posture. Many hypotheses have been put forward regarding its origin. The two most important are the Miocene cooling and the labor concept.

Miocene cooling: in the middle and end of the Miocene, as a result of global climate cooling, there was a significant reduction in the areas of tropical forests and an increase in the area of ​​savannahs. This could be the reason for the transition of some hominoids to a terrestrial way of life. However, the earliest known upright primates are known to have lived in rainforests.

Labor concept: according to the well-known labor concept of F. Engels and its later versions, the emergence of upright walking is closely related to the specialization of the monkey's hand for labor activity - carrying objects, cubs, manipulating food and making tools. In the future, work led to the emergence of language and society. However, according to modern data, upright posture arose much earlier than the manufacture of tools. Bipedal locomotion arose at least 6 million years ago in Orrorin tugenensis, and the oldest tools from Gona in Ethiopia are dated only 2.7 million years ago.

Rice. 2.23. Human and gorilla skeleton

There are other versions of the origin of bipedalism. It could have arisen for orientation in the savannah, when it was necessary to look over tall grass. Also, human ancestors could stand up on their hind legs to cross water barriers or graze in swampy meadows, as modern gorillas do in the Congo.

According to the concept of C. Owen Lovejoy, upright posture arose in connection with a special breeding strategy, since hominids raise one or two cubs for a very long time. At the same time, caring for offspring reaches such complexity that it becomes necessary to free the forelimbs. Carrying helpless young and food over a distance becomes a vital element of behavior. According to Lovejoy, bipedalism originated in the rainforest, and already bipedal hominids moved to the savannas.

In addition, it has been experimentally and mathematically proven that moving over long distances at an average speed on two legs is energetically more beneficial than on four.

Most likely, not one reason acted in evolution, but a whole complex of them. To determine upright posture in fossil primates, scientists use the following main features:

· the position of the foramen magnum - in rectiformers it is located in the center of the length of the base of the skull, it opens down. Such a structure is already known about 4 - 7 million years ago. In tetrapods - in the back of the base of the skull, turned back (Fig. 2.23).

The structure of the pelvis - in upright walking the pelvis is wide and low (such a structure has been known since Australopithecus afarensis 3.2 million years ago), in tetrapods the pelvis is narrow, high and long (Fig. 2.25);

The structure of the long bones of the legs - in upright legs, the legs are long, the knee and ankle joints have a characteristic structure. This structure has been known since 6 million years ago. Quadrupedal primates have arms longer than their legs.

The structure of the foot - the arch (rise) of the foot is expressed in upright walkers, the fingers are straight, short, the thumb is not laid aside, inactive (the arch is already expressed in Australopithecus afarensis, but the fingers are long and curved in all Australopithecus, in Homo habilis the foot is flattened, but fingers are straight, short), in tetrapods the foot is flat, the fingers are long, curved, movable. In the foot of Australopithecus anamensis, the big toe was inactive. In the foot of Australopithecus afarensis, the big toe was opposed to the others, but much weaker than in modern monkeys, the arches of the foot are well developed, the footprint was almost like that of a modern person. In the foot of Australopithecus africanus and Australopithecus robustus, the big toe was strongly abducted from the others, the fingers were very mobile, the structure is intermediate between apes and humans. In the foot of Homo habilis, the big toe is fully adducted to the rest.

The structure of the hands - in fully upright hominids, the hands are short, not adapted for walking on the ground or climbing trees, the phalanges of the fingers are straight. Australopithecus afarensis, Australopithecus africanus, Australopithecus robustus and even Homo habilis have traits of adaptation for walking on the ground or climbing trees.

Thus, bipedal locomotion arose more than 6 million years ago, but for a long time differed from modern version. Some Australopithecus and Homo habilis also used other types of locomotion - climbing trees and walking on the phalanges of the fingers.

Fully modern bipedalism became only about 1.6-1.8 million years ago.

2. The origin of the hand adapted to the manufacture of tools. The hand capable of making tools is different from the hand of a monkey. Although the morphological features of the working hand are not completely reliable, the following labor complex can be distinguished:

Strong wrist. In Australopithecus, starting with Australopithecus afarensis, the structure of the wrist is intermediate between apes and humans. Almost modern structure is observed in Homo habilis 1.8 million years ago.

Opposition of the thumb. The feature was already known 3.2 million years ago in Australopithecus afarensis and Australopithecus africanus. It was fully developed in Australopithecus robustus and Homo habilis 1.8 million years ago. Finally, it was peculiar or limited in the Neanderthals of Europe about 40-100 thousand years ago.

Broad terminal phalanges. Australopithecus robustus, Homo habilis, and all later hominids had very wide phalanges.

Attachment of muscles that move the fingers of an almost modern type is noted in Australopithecus robustus and Homo habilis, but they also have primitive features.

The hand bones of the oldest upright hominoids (Australopithecus anamensis and Australopithecus afarensis) have a mixture of features of great apes and humans. Most likely, these species could use objects as tools, but not manufacture them. The first real tool makers were Homo habilis. Probably, South African massive australopithecines Australopithecus (Paranthropus) robustus also made tools.

So, the labor brush as a whole was formed about 1.8 million years ago.

3. Highly developed brain. The modern human brain is very different from the great ape brain (Figure 2.24) in size, shape, structure, and function, but many transitional variants can be found among fossil forms. Typical signs of the human brain are as follows:

Large overall brain size. Australopithecus had the same brain size as modern chimpanzees. A rapid growth in size occurred in Homo habilis about 2.5-1.8 million years ago, and in later hominids a gradual increase to modern values ​​is observed.

Specific fields of the brain - Broca's and Wernicke's areas and other fields began to develop in Homo habilis and archanthropes, but apparently reached a completely modern look only in modern man.

The structure of the lobes of the brain. In humans, the lower parietal and frontal lobes are significantly developed, sharp corner convergence of the temporal and frontal lobes, the temporal lobe is wide and rounded in front, the occipital lobe is relatively small, hanging over the cerebellum. In Australopithecus, the structure and size of the brain were the same as in the great apes.

Rice. 2.24. The brain of primates: a - tarsier, b - lemur, Fig. 2.25. Taz chimpanzee (a);