What is the origin of Homo sapiens. The emergence of "reasonable man"

Homo sapiens, or Homo sapiens, has undergone many changes since its inception, both in body structure and in social and spiritual development.

The emergence of people who had a modern physical appearance (type) and changed occurred in the late Paleolithic. Their skeletons were first discovered in the Cro-Magnon grotto in France, which is why people of this type were called Cro-Magnons. It was they who had a complex of all the basic physiological features that are characteristic of us. They, in comparison with that of the Neanderthals, reached high level. It is the Cro-Magnons that scientists consider our direct ancestors.

For some time, this type of people existed simultaneously with the Neanderthals, who later died, since only the Cro-Magnons were sufficiently adapted to environmental conditions. It is with them that stone tools go out of use, and they are replaced by more skillfully crafted from bone and horn. In addition, more types of these tools appear - all kinds of drills, scrapers, harpoons and needles appear. This makes people more independent of climatic conditions and allows them to explore new territories. A reasonable person also changes his behavior in relation to his elders, a connection between generations appears - the continuity of traditions, the transfer of experience, knowledge.

Summing up the above, we can highlight the main aspects of the formation of the species Homo sapiens:

1. spiritual and psychological development, which leads to self-knowledge and the development of abstract thinking. As a result, the emergence of art, as evidenced by cave drawings and painting;
2. pronunciation of articulate sounds (the origin of speech);
3. thirst for knowledge to pass it on to their fellow tribesmen;
4. the creation of new, more advanced tools of labor;
5. which allowed to tame (domesticate) wild animals and cultivate plants.

These events were an important milestone in the development of man. It was they who allowed him not to depend on the environment and

even exercise control over some of its aspects. Homo sapiens continues to undergo changes, the most important of which is

Taking advantage of the benefits modern civilization, progress, man is still trying to establish power over the forces of nature: changing the course of rivers, draining swamps, populating territories where life was previously impossible.

According to the modern classification, the species "Homo sapiens" is divided into 2 subspecies - "Human Idaltu" and "Human". Such a division into subspecies appeared after the discovery in 1997 of the remains, which had some similarities with the skeleton modern man anatomical features, in particular - the size of the skull.

According to scientific data, Homo sapiens appeared 70-60 thousand years ago, and during all this time of its existence as a species, it improved under the influence of only social forces, because no changes were found in the anatomical and physiological structure.

The final stage of human formation modern type passed 300-30 thousand years ago. The rates of evolution of populations of emerging people were different in different places. They were determined both by biological factors (migration, isolation of some populations, mixing of others), and by social factors that were gaining strength.

Neanderthal man. Neanderthals got their name from the place where their fossilized remains were first found in the Neandertal valley near Düsseldorf (Germany). The fossils were discovered in 1856, and at first they were treated as the remains of a modern man who suffered from rickets, arthritis and received several strong blows to the head during his lifetime (such was the conclusion of the pathologist). It was only after the publication of Darwin's work that fossils attracted the attention of scientists.

To date, the remains of about 200 Neanderthals have been found in Europe and Southwest Asia. The age of the fossils is 40-300 thousand years. The most well-studied are Western European Nepderthals, who are called classical. They lived 70-30 thousand years ago. Classical Neanderthals were muscular and stocky people with a height of 1.7 m and a mass of 70 kg. Their dense physique helped them keep warm in the cold climate of Europe. ice age. The discovered skulls of European Neanderthals have a sloping forehead. supraorbital ridges, occipital protuberance with large base. The volume of the brain averaged 1500 cm3 (Fig. 96). The skulls of the Neanderthals that lived in Southwest Asia are less massive, have a high forehead, a chin protrusion, and weakly pronounced supraorbital ridges.

European Neanderthals lived in caves as natural shelters from the cold of harsh winters. Asian Neanderthals built huts, covering them with animal skins. Traces of hearths indicate the use of fire to heat dwellings. Neanderthals knew how to make fire by striking sparks from pieces of pyrites.

In the era of the Neanderthals, the technology of stone processing became more complicated. By carefully working flakes, Neanderthals created more varied and more specialized tools than those of their predecessors. The presence of stone and bone needles among the tools indicates that. that Neanderthals sewed their clothes from skins. They used animal tendons as threads.

Neanderthals, apparently, were very clever hunters, since their existence during the cold period directly depended on the success of the hunt. The objects of hunting were both small (foxes, hares, birds) and rather large animals (reindeer, horses, bears, bison and even mammoths).

Neanderthals were the first among the representatives of the human race to systematically bury the dead. The graves were arranged in the iola of the caves. The dead were laid in the position of a person sleeping on their side and supplied with objects that, according to the Neanderthals, should have accompanied the deceased (weapons, tools, etc.). There was also a cult of animals that were hunted.

Very little is known about the art of the Neanderthals. A bone amulet, scratched pebbles, pieces of red iron oxide, powdered manganese, possibly used for body painting, were found.

Thus, physical data and advanced techniques for those times made possible the survival of Neanderthals in the conditions of the ice age. Burials, rituals, the beginnings of art and religious beliefs speak of the achievement by Neanderthals of a higher level of development of self-consciousness, emotions, abstract thinking compared to their predecessors.

The place of Neanderthals in human evolution. Neanderthals were a dead end in human evolution. In Europe, Africa, East Asia and Indonesia, skulls were found, large volume (1300 cm3), rounded nape, straightened front part, small even teeth of which allow us to consider them as belonging to the most ancient forms of Homo sapiens. The age of the found skulls is 100-300 thousand years, which indicates the existence of Homo sapiens long before the appearance of classical Neanderthals.

Apparently, Homo erectus, who lived about 500 thousand years ago in North Africa, gave rise to a person of a modern physical type (the oldest form of Homo sapiens), which, as a result of several waves of migrations, first settled Southwest Asia and then Europe. In Europe, the descendants of the first migration waves of Homo erectus were the classical Neanderthals. Scientists consider them as a highly specialized, cold-climate subspecies of Homo sapiens neanderthalensis. Classical Neanderthals reached their peak during the last glaciation and disappeared about 30 thousand years ago.

Several fragments of mitochondrial DNA have been isolated and deciphered from Neanderthal fossils. Comparison of the nucleotide sequence of the mitochondrial DNA of Neanderthals and modern humans confirmed the assumption that Neanderthals are a genetically separate branch, although closely related to modern humans.

By modern man and Neanderthals existed 500 thousand years ago.

Approximately 30 thousand years ago, the morphological changes of man were mostly completed, and the world was inhabited by people of the modern tin (subspecies II..shchi sapiens sapiens).

Cro-Magnons.

The Cro-Magnons were somewhat below the average of today's Europeans. The height of a man averaged 170 cm, weight - about 70 kg. Cro-Magnon skulls are characterized by a high forehead. straight (not projecting forward) facial part, absent or poorly developed supraorbital ridges, small jaws with small even teeth, well developed chin protrusion. The volume of the Cro-Magnon brain was on average 1400 cm3. According to linguists and anatomists, the location of the cavities of the nose and mouth, the elongated pharynx allowed the Cro-Magnons to make sounds much clearer and more diverse than the sounds available to their predecessors. In general, in their physical structure, the Cro-Magnons did not differ from modern people.

The Cro-Magnons lived during the last ice age. Like Neanderthals, they inhabited caves or built dwellings in the form of tents from animal skins. At the sites of the Cro-Magnons, various tools of labor, carefully made of stone and animal bones, were found. Eyed needles, fish hooks, harpoons, and bows were found.

Cro-Magnon man was the first creator of music (bone pipes have been found) and, most importantly, an artist. Rock paintings have been found in the caves, which depict individual animals and entire hunting scenes. Bone figurines of people and animals, various decorations were found. Cro-Magnons have reached the most important stage of intellectual development - the ability to operate with symbols. Together with the images of animals, the Kra-Magnons left incomprehensible patterns on the walls of the caves. The most ancient of these mysterious signs are the contours of human palms. Cro-Magnon man owns ancient map, carved on a mammoth tusk, as well as mysterious bone plates decorated with dots. Microscopic studies have shown that the one who carved the marks changed the tools, the force and the angle of pressure many times. Scientists believe that these plates may represent the lunar calendar.

Comparison of mitochondrial DNA obtained from representatives of various modern human populations showed that they all go back to the same ancestral nucleotide sequence. From the diversity of mitochondrial DNA of modern humans, it was found that the ancestral sequence existed somewhere played by cyclic climate changes that occurred at intervals of tens of thousands of years.

The general scheme of the history of the emergence and evolution of hominoids is shown in Figure 100. It shows that the lines leading to modern great apes and humans separated more than 6 million years ago. The path of development from animal to man was not direct and unambiguous. Some of the predecessors of man could not complete it and died out. Only one small group of prehistoric people, the development of intelligence, speech, social relations, labor activity allowed not only to successfully compete with other primates, but also to give rise to modern humanity.

In East Africa, about 200 thousand years ago. Thus, despite the fact that representatives of Australopithecus and people of the species Homo erectus, Homo sapiens and Homo sapiens, the Neanderthal subspecies had by this time been widely settled on the Earth, they did not become the ancestors of modern people. Cro-Magnons most likely descended from a small group ancient form Homo sapiens, who lived in Africa about 200 thousand years ago.

The resettlement of people of the modern type began about 100 thousand years ago. It went from Africa through the Isthmus of Suez in two directions. One branch of settlement was directed to Southeast, East and Northeast Asia, the other to West Asia and Europe. There were several waves of migrations of prehistoric people from Northeast Asia through the Bering Isthmus to North and further to South America (40 thousand, 14-12 thousand, 9 thousand years ago). In Australia and the islands of Oceania, man entered from South-East Asia about 50 thousand years ago. 40 thousand years ago, modern man settled in Europe. In the resettlement of man an essential role.

Where did Homo sapiens come from

We humans are so different! Black, yellow and white, tall and short, brunettes and blonds, smart and not very smart... But the blue-eyed Scandinavian giant, and the dark-skinned pygmy from the Andaman Islands, and the dark-skinned nomad from the African Sahara - they are all just part of one, united humanity. And this statement is not a poetic image, but a strictly established scientific fact supported by the latest data from molecular biology. But where to look for the origins of this many-sided living ocean? Where, when and how did the first human being appear on the planet? It is amazing, but even in our enlightened time, almost half of the inhabitants of the United States and a significant proportion of Europeans give their votes to the divine act of creation, and among the rest there are many supporters of alien intervention, which, in fact, is not much different from God's providence. However, even standing on firm scientific evolutionary positions, it is unambiguously impossible to answer this question.

"Man has no reason to be ashamed
ape-like ancestors. I'd rather be ashamed
come from a vain and talkative person,
who, not content with dubious success
in its own activities, intervenes
into scientific disputes about which he has no
representation".

T. Huxley (1869)

Not everyone knows that the roots of a version of the origin of man, different from the biblical one, in European science go back to the foggy 1600s, when the works of the Italian philosopher L. Vanini and the English lord, lawyer and theologian M. Hale with the eloquent titles “O the original origin of man" (1615) and "The original origin of the human race, examined and tested according to the light of nature" (1671).

The baton of thinkers who recognized the relationship of man and animals such as monkeys in the 18th century. was picked up by the French diplomat B. De Malier, and then by D. Burnett, Lord Monboddo, who proposed the idea of ​​a common origin of all anthropoids, including humans and chimpanzees. And the French naturalist J.-L. Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, in his multi-volume Natural History of Animals, published a century before Charles Darwin's scientific bestseller The Origin of Man and Sexual Selection (1871), directly stated that man descended from apes.

So, by the end of the XIX century. the idea of ​​man as a product of a long evolution of more primitive humanoid beings was fully formed and matured. Moreover, in 1863, the German evolutionary biologist E. Haeckel even christened a hypothetical creature that should serve as an intermediate link between man and ape, Pithecanthropus alatus, i.e., an ape-man, devoid of speech (from the Greek pitekos - monkey and anthropos - man). The only thing left was to find this Pithecanthropus "in the flesh", which was done in the early 1890s. Dutch anthropologist E. Dubois, who found on about. Java remains of a primitive hominin.

From that moment on, primitive man received an “official residence permit” on planet Earth, and the issue of geographical centers and the course of anthropogenesis became on the agenda - no less acute and debatable than the very origin of man from ape-like ancestors. Thanks to amazing discoveries recent decades made jointly by archaeologists, anthropologists and paleogenetics, the problem of the formation of a modern type of man again, as in the time of Darwin, received a huge public outcry, going beyond the scope of ordinary scientific discussion.

African cradle

The history of the search for the ancestral home of modern man, complete amazing discoveries and unexpected plot twists early stages was a chronicle of anthropological findings. The attention of naturalists was primarily attracted by the Asian continent, including Southeast Asia, where Dubois discovered the bone remains of the first hominin, later named Homo erectus (Homo erectus). Then in the 1920-1930s. in Central Asia, in the Zhoukoudian cave in Northern China, numerous fragments of the skeletons of 44 individuals that lived there 460-230 thousand years ago were found. These people named synanthropes, at one time was considered the oldest link in the human genealogy.

In the history of science, it is difficult to find a more exciting and controversial problem that attracts general interest than the problem of the origin of life and the formation of its intellectual peak - humanity.

Gradually, however, Africa emerged as the "cradle of mankind". In 1925, fossil remains of a hominin named australopithecine, and in the next 80 years, hundreds of similar remains were discovered in the south and east of this continent, "age" from 1.5 to 7 million years.

In the region of the East African Rift, stretching in the meridional direction from the depression Dead Sea across the Red Sea and further across the territory of Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania, the most ancient sites with stone products of the Olduvai type (choppers, choppings, roughly retouched flakes, etc.) were also found. including in the river basin. Over 3,000 primitive stone tools created by the first representative of the genus Homo- skillful person Homo habilis.

Mankind has drastically “aged”: it became obvious that no later than 6-7 million years ago, the common evolutionary trunk was divided into two separate “branches” - apes and Australopithecus, the latter of which laid the foundation for a new, “reasonable” path of development. In the same place, in Africa, the earliest fossil remains of people of the modern anatomical type were discovered - Homo sapiens Homo sapiens, which appeared about 200-150 thousand years ago. Thus, by the 1990s. the theory of the "African" origin of man, supported by the results of genetic studies of different human populations, is becoming generally accepted.

However, between two extreme points counting - the most ancient ancestors of man and modern mankind - lie at least six million years, during which man not only acquired his modern appearance, but also occupied almost the entire habitable territory of the planet. And if Homo sapiens appeared at first only in the African part of the world, then when and how did it populate other continents?

Three outcomes

About 1.8-2.0 million years ago, the distant ancestor of modern man - Homo erectus Homo erectus or close to him Homo ergaster first went beyond Africa and began to conquer Eurasia. This was the beginning of the first Great Migration - a long and gradual process that took hundreds of millennia, which can be traced by the finds of fossil remains and typical tools of the archaic stone industry.

In the first migration flow of the most ancient populations of hominins, two main directions can be outlined - to the north and to the east. The first direction went through the Middle East and the Iranian Plateau to the Caucasus (and, possibly, to Asia Minor) and further to Europe. Evidence of this is the oldest Paleolithic sites in Dmanisi (Eastern Georgia) and Atapuerca (Spain), dated at 1.7-1.6 and 1.2-1.1 million years ago, respectively.

To the east, the earliest evidence of human presence - pebble tools 1.65-1.35 million years old - were found in the caves of South Arabia. Further to the east of Asia, the most ancient people moved in two ways: the northern one went to Central Asia, the southern one went to East and Southeast Asia through the territory of modern Pakistan and India. Judging by the dating of quartzite tool sites in Pakistan (1.9 Ma) and China (1.8-1.5 Ma), as well as anthropological finds in Indonesia (1.8-1.6 Ma), early hominins settled the spaces of South, Southeast and East Asia no later than 1.5 million years ago. And on the border of Central and North Asia, in Southern Siberia on the territory of Altai, the Early Paleolithic Karama site was discovered, in the sediments of which four layers were distinguished with an archaic pebble industry 800-600 thousand years old.

At all the most ancient sites of Eurasia, left by the migrants of the first wave, pebble tools were found, characteristic of the most archaic Olduvai stone industry. At about the same time or somewhat later, representatives of other early hominins also came from Africa to Eurasia - carriers of the microlithic stone industry, characterized by the predominance of small-sized items that moved almost in the same ways as their predecessors. These two ancient technological traditions of stone processing played a key role in the formation of the tool activity of primitive mankind.

To date, relatively few bone remains of an ancient person have been found. The main material available to archaeologists is stone tools. According to them, one can trace how the methods of stone processing were improved, how the development of intellectual abilities human

The second global wave of migrants from Africa spread to the Middle East about 1.5 million years ago. Who were the new migrants? Probably, Homo heidelbergensis (Heidelberg man) - a new kind of people, combining both Neanderthaloid and sapiens traits. You can distinguish these "new Africans" by stone tools Acheulean industry made with the help of more advanced stone processing technologies - the so-called levallois splitting technique and methods of two-sided stone processing. Moving east, this migration wave in many territories met with the descendants of the first wave of hominins, which was accompanied by a mixture of two industrial traditions - pebble and late Acheulean.

At the turn of 600 thousand years ago, these immigrants from Africa reached Europe, where Neanderthals subsequently formed - the species closest to modern man. About 450-350 thousand years ago, the bearers of the Acheulean traditions penetrated the east of Eurasia, reaching India and Central Mongolia, but they never reached the eastern and southeastern regions of Asia.

The third exodus from Africa is already associated with a human of a modern anatomical species, which appeared there on the evolutionary arena, as mentioned above, 200-150 thousand years ago. It is assumed that approximately 80-60 thousand years ago Homo sapiens, traditionally considered the bearer of the cultural traditions of the Upper Paleolithic, began to populate other continents: first, the eastern part of Eurasia and Australia, and later - Central Asia and Europe.

And here we come to the most dramatic and controversial part of our history. As genetic studies have proven, today's humanity consists entirely of representatives of one species. Homo sapiens, if you do not take into account creatures such as the mythical yeti. But what happened to the ancient human populations - the descendants of the first and second migration waves from the African continent, who lived in the territories of Eurasia for tens or even hundreds of thousands of years? Have they left their mark on the evolutionary history of our species, and if so, how great was their contribution to modern humanity?

According to the answer to this question, researchers can be divided into two different groups - monocentrists And polycentrists.

Two models of anthropogenesis

At the end of the last century in anthropogenesis, the monocentric point of view on the process of the emergence of Homo sapiens- hypothesis African exodus”, according to which the only ancestral home of a reasonable person is the “black continent”, from where he settled throughout the world. Based on the results of the study of genetic variability in modern people, its supporters suggest that 80-60 thousand years ago a population explosion occurred in Africa, and as a result of a sharp increase in population and a lack of food resources, another migration wave “splashed” into Eurasia. Unable to withstand competition with a more evolutionarily perfect species, other modern hominins, such as Neanderthals, fell off the evolutionary distance about 30-25 thousand years ago.

The views of the monocentrists themselves on the course of this process differ. Some believe that the new human populations exterminated or forced out the natives to less convenient areas, where their mortality increased, especially in children, and the birth rate decreased. Others do not exclude the possibility of individual cases long coexistence of Neanderthals with modern humans (for example, in the south of the Pyrenees), which could have resulted in the diffusion of cultures, and sometimes hybridization. Finally, according to the third point of view, there was a process of acculturation and assimilation, as a result of which the aboriginal population simply dissolved in the alien.

It is difficult to fully accept all these conclusions without convincing archaeological and anthropological evidence. Even if we agree with the controversial assumption of rapid population growth, it still remains unclear why this migration flow first went not to neighboring territories, but far to the east, all the way to Australia. By the way, although on this path a reasonable person had to cover a distance of over 10 thousand km, no archaeological evidence of this has yet been found. Moreover, judging by the archaeological data, in the period of 80-30 thousand years ago, there were no changes in the appearance of the local stone industries in South, Southeast and East Asia, which would inevitably have happened if the aboriginal population was replaced by newcomers.

This lack of "road" evidence led to the version that Homo sapiens moved from Africa to the east of Asia along the sea coast, which has turned out to be under water by our time, along with all Paleolithic traces. But with such a development of events, the African stone industry should have appeared in an almost unchanged form on the islands of Southeast Asia, but archaeological materials aged 60-30 thousand years do not confirm this.

The monocentric hypothesis has not yet given satisfactory answers to many other questions. In particular, why did a person of a modern physical type arose at least 150 thousand years ago, and the culture of the Upper Paleolithic, which is traditionally associated only with Homo sapiens, 100 thousand years later? Why is this culture, which appeared almost simultaneously in very remote regions of Eurasia, not as homogeneous as one would expect in the case of a single carrier?

Another, polycentric concept is taken to explain the "dark spots" in the history of man. According to this hypothesis of interregional human evolution, the formation Homo sapiens could go with equal success both in Africa and in the vast territories of Eurasia inhabited at one time Homo erectus. It is precisely the continuous development of the ancient population in each region that, according to polycentrists, explains the fact that the cultures of the early stage of the Upper Paleolithic in Africa, Europe, East Asia and Australia differ so significantly from each other. And although from the point of view of modern biology, the formation of the same species (in the strict sense of the word) in such different, geographically distant territories of the same species is an unlikely event, there could have been an independent, parallel process of evolution. primitive man towards Homo sapiens with his developed material and spiritual culture.

Below we present a number of archaeological, anthropological and genetic evidence in favor of this thesis, related to the evolution of the primitive population of Eurasia.

Oriental man

Judging by the numerous archaeological finds, in East and Southeast Asia, the development of the stone industry about 1.5 million years ago went in a fundamentally different direction than in the rest of Eurasia and Africa. Surprisingly, for more than a million years, the technology of making tools in the Sino-Malay zone has not undergone significant changes. Moreover, as mentioned above, in this stone industry for the period of 80-30 thousand years ago, when people of the modern anatomical type should have appeared here, no radical innovations are revealed - neither new stone processing technologies, nor new types of tools.

In terms of anthropological evidence, the largest number of known skeletal remains Homo erectus has been found in China and Indonesia. Despite some differences, they form a fairly homogeneous group. Particularly noteworthy is the volume of the brain (1152-1123 cm 3) Homo erectus found in Yunxian, China. Significant progress in the morphology and culture of these ancient people, who lived about 1 million years ago, is demonstrated by the stone tools found next to them.

The next link in the evolution of Asian Homo erectus found in Northern China, in the caves of Zhoukoudian. This hominin, similar to the Javanese Pithecanthropus, was included in the genus Homo as a subspecies Homo erectus pekinensis. According to some anthropologists, all these fossil remains of early and later forms of primitive people line up in a fairly continuous evolutionary series, almost to Homo sapiens.

Thus, it can be considered proven that in East and Southeast Asia, for more than a million years, there was an independent evolutionary development of the Asian form. Homo erectus. Which, by the way, does not exclude the possibility of migration here of small populations from neighboring regions and, accordingly, the possibility of gene exchange. At the same time, due to the process of divergence, pronounced differences in morphology could appear among these primitive people themselves. An example is paleoanthropological finds from about. Java, which differ from similar Chinese finds of the same time: keeping the basic features Homo erectus, in a number of characteristics they are close to Homo sapiens.

As a result, at the beginning of the Upper Pleistocene in East and Southeast Asia, on the basis of the local form of erectus, a hominin was formed, anatomically close to humans of the modern physical type. This can be confirmed by the new dating obtained for Chinese paleoanthropological finds with features of "sapiens", according to which 100 thousand years ago people of modern appearance could have lived in this region.

Return of the Neanderthal

The first representative of archaic people to become known to science is the Neanderthal Homo neanderthalensis. Neanderthals lived mainly in Europe, but traces of their presence were also found in the Middle East, in the Front and Central Asia, in the south of Siberia. These short stocky people, possessing great physical strength and well adapted to the harsh climatic conditions of the northern latitudes, were not inferior to people of the modern physical type in terms of brain volume (1400 cm 3).

Over the century and a half that have passed since the discovery of the first remains of Neanderthals, hundreds of their sites, settlements and burials have been studied. It turned out that these archaic people not only created very advanced tools, but also demonstrated elements of behavior characteristic of Homo sapiens. Thus, the well-known archaeologist A.P. Okladnikov in 1949 discovered in the Teshik-Tash cave (Uzbekistan) a Neanderthal burial with possible traces of a funeral rite.

In the cave of Obi-Rakhmat (Uzbekistan), stone tools were found dating back to the turning point - the period of transition of the culture of the Middle Paleolithic to the Upper Paleolithic. Moreover, the fossil human remains discovered here provide a unique opportunity to restore appearance a man who made a technological and cultural revolution

Before early XXI V. many anthropologists attributed the Neanderthals to the ancestral form of modern man, but after the analysis of mitochondrial DNA from their remains, they began to be considered as a dead end branch. It was believed that the Neanderthals were supplanted and replaced by modern humans - a native of Africa. However, further anthropological and genetic studies have shown that the relationship between the Neanderthal and Homo sapiens was far from being so simple. According to recent data, up to 4% of the genome of modern humans (non-Africans) was borrowed from Homo neanderthalensis. Now there is no doubt that in the border regions of the habitat of these human populations, not only the diffusion of cultures took place, but also hybridization and assimilation.

Today, the Neanderthal is already considered to be a sister group of modern humans, having restored its status as the “human ancestor”.

In the rest of Eurasia, the formation of the Upper Paleolithic followed a different scenario. Let's trace this process on the example of the Altai region, which is associated with sensational results obtained with the help of paleogenetic analysis of anthropological finds from the Denisov and Okladnikov caves.

Our regiment has arrived!

As mentioned above, the initial human settlement of the territory of Altai occurred no later than 800 thousand years ago during the first migration wave from Africa. The uppermost cultural horizon of deposits of the oldest Paleolithic Karama site in the Asian part of Russia in the valley of the river. Anui was formed about 600 thousand years ago, and then there was a long break in the development of the Paleolithic culture in this territory. However, about 280 thousand years ago, carriers of more advanced stone processing techniques appeared in Altai, and since that time, as field studies show, there has been a continuous development of the culture of Paleolithic man.

Over the past quarter of a century, about 20 sites in caves and on the slopes of mountain valleys have been explored in this region, more than 70 cultural horizons of the early, middle and upper Paleolithic have been studied. For example, 13 Paleolithic layers have been identified in Denisova Cave alone. The most ancient finds relating to the early stage of the Middle Paleolithic were found in the layer aged 282-170 thousand years, to the Middle Paleolithic - 155-50 thousand years, to the upper - 50-20 thousand years. Such a long and "continuous" chronicle allows us to trace the dynamics of changes in the stone inventory over many tens of thousands of years. And it turned out that this process went quite smoothly, through gradual evolution, without external "disturbances" - innovations.

Archaeological data show that already 50-45 thousand years ago the time of the Upper Paleolithic began in Altai, and the origins of the Upper Paleolithic cultural traditions can be clearly traced on final stage Middle Paleolithic. Evidence of this are miniature bone needles with a drilled eye, pendants, beads and other non-utilitarian objects made of bone, ornamental stone and mollusk shells, as well as truly unique finds– fragments of a bracelet and a ring made of stone with traces of grinding, polishing and drilling.

Unfortunately, Paleolithic sites in Altai are relatively poor in anthropological finds. The most significant of them - teeth and fragments of skeletons from two caves, Okladnikov and Denisova, were studied at the Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology. Max Planck (Leipzig, Germany) by an international team of geneticists led by Professor S. Paabo.

stone age boy
“And that time, as usual, they called Okladnikov.
- Bone.
He approached, bent down and began to carefully clean it with a brush. And his hand trembled. The bone was not one, but many. Fragments of a human skull. Yes Yes! Human! A find he never even dared to dream of.
But maybe the person was buried recently? Bones decay over the years and hope that they can lie in the ground undecayed for tens of thousands of years ... It happens, but extremely rarely. Science knows only a few such finds in the history of mankind.
But what if?
He called softly:
- Verochka!
She approached and leaned over.
"It's a skull," she whispered. - Look, he's crushed.
The skull lay head down. It was crushed, apparently, by a fallen block of earth. Small skull! Boy or girl.
With a spatula and a brush, Okladnikov began to expand the excavation. The spatula poked into something hard. Bone. Another one. More… Skeleton. Small. Skeleton of a child. Apparently, some animal made its way into the cave and gnawed the bones. They were scattered, some gnawed, bitten.
But when did this child live? What years, centuries, millennia? If he was the young master of the cave when the people who worked the stones lived here… Oh! It's scary to even think about it. If so, then it's a Neanderthal. A man who lived tens, maybe a hundred thousand years ago. He should have brow ridges on his forehead and a sloping chin.
It was easiest to turn the skull over, take a look. But this would disrupt the excavation plan. We must complete the excavations around it, but do not touch it. Around the excavation will deepen, and the bones of the child will remain as if on a pedestal.
Okladnikov consulted with Vera Dmitrievna. She agreed with him...
... The bones of the child were not touched. They were even covered. They dug around them. The excavation deepened, and they lay on an earthen pedestal. Every day the pedestal became higher. It seemed to rise from the depths of the earth.
On the eve of that memorable day, Okladnikov could not sleep. He lay with his hands behind his head and looked up at the black southern sky. Far, far away were the stars. There were so many of them that it seemed they were cramped. And yet from this distant world, filled with trepidation, peace emanated. I wanted to think about life, about eternity, about the distant past and the distant future.
What did you think about ancient man when you looked at the sky? It was the same as it is now. And, perhaps, it happened that he could not sleep. He lay in a cave and looked up at the sky. Was he only able to remember, or was he already dreaming? What was this person? The stones told a lot. But they also kept silent about a lot.
Life buries its traces in the depths of the earth. New traces lie on them and also go deeper. And so century after century, millennium after millennium. Life deposits its past in the earth in layers. From them, as if flipping through the pages of history, the archaeologist could find out the deeds of the people who lived here. And to find out, almost unmistakably, by determining what time they lived here.
Raising the veil over the past, the earth was removed in layers, as time laid them aside.

An excerpt from the book by E. I. Derevyanko, A. B. Zakstelsky "The Path of Distant Millennia"

Paleogenetic studies have confirmed that the remains of Neanderthals were found in the Okladnikov cave. But the results of the deciphering of mitochondrial and then nuclear DNA from bone samples found in the Denisova Cave in the cultural layer of the initial stage of the Upper Paleolithic brought a surprise to the researchers. It turned out that this was a new unknown to science fossil hominin, which was named after the place of its discovery man Altai Homo sapiens altaiensis, or Denisovan.

The Denisovan genome differs from the reference genome of the modern African by 11.7% - in the Neanderthal from Vindia Cave in Croatia, this figure was 12.2%. This similarity indicates that Neanderthals and Denisovans are sister groups with a common ancestor that separated from the main human evolutionary trunk. These two groups diverged about 640 thousand years ago, embarking on the path self-development. This is also evidenced by the fact that Neanderthals have common genetic variants with modern people of Eurasia, while part of the genetic material of the Denisovans was borrowed by the Melanesians and the indigenous people of Australia, standing apart from other non-African human populations.

Judging by archaeological data, in the northwestern part of Altai, 50-40 thousand years ago, two different groups primitive people - Denisovans and the easternmost population of Neanderthals, who came here around the same time, most likely from the territory of modern Uzbekistan. And the roots of the culture, the bearers of which were the Denisovans, as already mentioned, can be traced in the most ancient horizons of the Denisova Cave. At the same time, judging by the many archaeological finds reflecting the development of the Upper Paleolithic culture, the Denisovans not only were not inferior, but in some respects even surpassed a person of modern physical appearance, who lived at the same time in other territories.

So, in Eurasia during the late Pleistocene, in addition to Homo sapiens there were at least two more forms of hominins: Neanderthal - in the western part of the mainland, and in the east - Denisovan. Given the drift of genes from Neanderthals to Eurasians, and from Denisovans to Melanesians, we can assume that both of these groups took part in the formation of a modern human anatomical type.

Taking into account all the currently available archaeological, anthropological and genetic materials from the most ancient locations of Africa and Eurasia, it can be assumed that there were several zones on the globe in which an independent process of population evolution took place. Homo erectus and development of stone processing technologies. Accordingly, each of these zones developed its own cultural traditions, its own models of the transition from the Middle to the Upper Paleolithic.

Thus, at the basis of the entire evolutionary sequence, the crown of which was the human of the modern anatomical type, lies the ancestral form Homo erectus sensu lato*. Probably, in the late Pleistocene, it eventually formed the type of human of the modern anatomical and genetic species. Homo sapiens, which included four forms that can be named Homo sapiens africaniensis(East and South Africa), Homo sapiens neanderthalensis(Europe), Homo sapiens orientalensis(Southeast and East Asia) and Homo sapiens altaiensis(Northern and Central Asia). Most likely, the proposal to combine all these primitive people into a single species Homo sapiens will cause doubts and objections among many researchers, but it is based on large volume analytical material, only a small part of which is given above.

Obviously, not all of these subspecies made an equal contribution to the formation of a human of the modern anatomical type: the greatest genetic diversity was possessed by Homo sapiens africaniensis, and it was he who became the basis of modern man. However, the latest data from paleogenetic studies regarding the presence of Neanderthal and Denisovan genes in the gene pool of modern mankind show that other groups of ancient people did not stand aside from this process.

To date, archaeologists, anthropologists, geneticists and other specialists dealing with the problem of human origin have accumulated a huge amount of new data, on the basis of which it is possible to put forward various hypotheses, sometimes diametrically opposed. The time has come to discuss them in detail under one indispensable condition: the problem of the origin of man is a multidisciplinary one, and new ideas should be based on a comprehensive analysis of the results obtained by specialists from various sciences. Only this path will ever lead us to the solution of one of the most controversial issues that has been exciting the minds of people for centuries - the formation of the mind. After all, according to the same Huxley, “each of our strongest convictions can be overturned or, in any case, changed further success knowledge".

*Homo erectus sensu lato - Homo erectus in the broadest sense

Literature

Derevianko A. P. The earliest human migrations in Eurasia in the early Paleolithic. Novosibirsk: IAET SO RAN, 2009.

Derevyanko A. P. The transition from the Middle to the Upper Paleolithic and the problem of the formation of Homo sapiens sapiens in East, Central and North Asia. Novosibirsk: IAET SO RAN, 2009.

Derevianko A. P. The Upper Paleolithic in Africa and Eurasia and the formation of a modern anatomical type. Novosibirsk: IAET SO RAN, 2011.

Derevyanko A. P., Shunkov M. V. The Early Paleolithic site of Karama in Altai: the first results of research // Archeology, Ethnography and Anthropology of Eurasia. 2005. No. 3.

Derevianko A. P., Shunkov M. V. A new model of the formation of a modern physical form human // Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences. 2012. V. 82. No. 3. S. 202-212.

Derevianko A. P., Shunkov M. V., Agadzhanyan A. K. and others. natural environment and man in the Paleolithic of Gorny Altai. Novosibirsk: IAET SO RAN, 2003.

Derevyanko A. P., Shunkov M. V. Volkov P. V. Paleolithic bracelet from Denisova Cave // ​​Archeology, Ethnography and Anthropology of Eurasia. 2008. No. 2.

Bolikhovskaya N. S., Derevianko A. P., Shunkov M. V. The fossil palynoflora, geological age, and dimatostratigraphy of the earliest deposits of the Karama site (Early Paleolithic, Altai Mountains) // Paleontological Journal. 2006. V. 40. R. 558–566.

Krause J., Orlando L., Serre D. et al. Neanderthals in Central Asia and Siberia // Nature. 2007. V. 449. R. 902-904.

Krause J., Fu Q., Good J. et al. The complete mitochondrial DNA genome of an unknown hominin from southern Siberia // Nature. 2010. V. 464. P. 894-897.

What are the driving forces, those factors that caused the restructuring of the morphology of Pithecanthropus in this, and not in any other direction, created the prerequisites for the displacement of Pithecanthropus by modern man and determined the success of this process? Since anthropologists thought about this process, and this happened relatively recently, the most diverse reasons for the change in the morphology of Pithecanthropus and its approximation to the morphology of modern man have been called.

Sinanthropus researcher F. Weindenreich considered the most significant difference between modern man and Pithecanthropus structurally perfect brain with more developed frontal lobes, increased in height, with a reduced occipital region. In general, the correctness of this view F. Weidenreich is beyond doubt. But from this correct statement, he could not move on to revealing its cause and answering the question: why did the brain itself improve by changing its structure?

Most a characteristic feature of modern man is a perfect brush, capable of a wide variety of labor operations. All other features of the morphology of modern man have developed in connection with the transformation of the hand. It can be thought, although it was not expounded by the supporters of this theory, that the brain improved under the influence of numerous stimuli coming from the hand, and the number of these stimuli constantly increased in the process of labor and mastery of new labor operations. But this hypothesis meets objections of both factual and theoretical nature. If we consider the restructuring of the brain only as a consequence of the evolution of the hand in the process of adaptation to labor operations, then it should have affected mainly the development of the motor areas of the cerebral cortex, and not the increase in the frontal lobes - the centers of associative thinking. And the morphological differences between Homo sapiens and Pithecanthropus are not only in the structure of the brain. It is not clear, for example, how the change in the proportions of the body of a modern person in comparison with the Neanderthal is associated with the restructuring of the hand. Thus, the hypothesis linking the originality of Homo sapiens primarily with the development of the hand in the process of mastering labor operations cannot be accepted either, just like the hypothesis outlined above, which sees the main reason for this originality in the development and improvement of the brain.

More acceptable is the hypothesis of the factors of formation of a person of a modern species, developed by I.I. Roginsky . He used numerous and widely known in the clinic of nervous diseases observations on subjects whose frontal lobes of the brain are damaged: in such subjects, social instincts are sharply inhibited or completely disappear, and their violent temper makes them dangerous to others. Thus, the frontal lobes of the brain are the concentration of not only higher mental, but also social functions. This conclusion was compared with the growth factor of the frontal lobes of the brain in modern man compared with Pithecanthropus and, in turn, led to the conclusion that not in general the development of the brain or the development of the hand, but the growth of the frontal lobes of the brain was the main morphological feature that distinguished people modern type from late Neanderthals. Pithecanthropus, by virtue of its morphology, was not social enough, not sufficiently adapted to life in society to enable this society to develop further: he did not know how to fully suppress his individualistic anti-social instincts, as, however, happens in animals, and his armament was much higher. Fights between individual representatives of the Pithecanthropus herd could result in serious injuries. Individual cases of such injuries have been noted on some skulls of a fossil man. The further development of society set tasks for the Pithecanthropus that he could not fulfill due to his limited morphological capabilities, therefore natural selection began to work towards the allocation and preservation of more social individuals. I.I. Roginsky pointed out the enormous social strength and viability of those collectives in which the number of social individuals was greatest. The growth of the frontal lobes of the brain expanded the scope of the areas of associative thinking, and with it contributed to the complication of social life, the diversity of labor activity, caused a further evolution of the body structure, physiological functions, and motor skills.

It should be noted that it is impossible to perceive this hypothesis, with all its indisputable persuasiveness, uncritically, as a hypothesis that solves all the problems and difficulties associated with the process of formation of a modern human species. The rather complex labor activity of Neanderthals and the origins of many social institutions and ideological phenomena in the Middle Paleolithic make one doubt the idea of ​​internal conflict in the Neanderthal herd. The increase in brain volume, the development of speech function and language, the complication of labor activity and economic life are the general trends in the evolution of hominids, especially hominids in the socio-cultural sphere. They would not be possible in the absence of social ties and directed group behavior. The origins of social behavior go back to animal world, and therefore, when interpreting the problem of factors in the formation of Homo sapiens, it is more expedient to talk about strengthening social ties that already existed at previous stages of anthropogenesis, and not about replacing them with conflict behavior. Otherwise, we return to the same hypothesis, already considered by us, of curbing zoological individualism, only at a lower stage in the evolution of hominids. The presented approach is closest to the old views V.M. ankylosing spondylitis , who specifically singled out the social form of selection and understood by it such a selection in which individuals were selected with behavior that was useful not to the individual himself, but to the group to which he belonged. Strictly speaking, at all stages of the evolution of hominids, this form of selection was obviously decisive; and its role, perhaps, only intensified during the formation of Homo sapiens.

Thus, sociality, the greatest adaptation to life in a team, while creating the most favorable morphophysiological and psychological type for it, which together led to the sharpest difference between man and other representatives of the animal world, determined, one might assume, the next stage of human evolution - the allocation modern man as the most perfect organism in terms of the requirements of social organization. By analogy with the labor theory of anthropogenesis, this hypothesis can be called social or social, thus emphasizing the leading role of collective social life precisely in the formation of the modern species within the genus Homo.

closest human relative was opened in 1856 in the town of Neandertal near Düsseldorf. The workers, who found a cave with strange skulls and large bones, decided that these were the remains of a cave bear, and did not even imagine what heated debate their find would cause. These bones, as well as those later found in northern England, eastern Uzbekistan, and southern Israel, were the remains of an ancestor of the man who was named Neanderthal, - a primitive man who lived from 200,000 to 27,000 years ago. The Neanderthal made primitive tools, painted the body with patterns, had religious ideas and funeral rituals.

Neanderthals are thought to have evolved from Homo erectus. Within the Neanderthal species, in our understanding, several groups can be distinguished that have morphological, geographical and chronological specifics. European Neanderthals, which make up a compact geographical group, fall into two types according to popular belief. The identified types are referred to by various researchers as "classical" (or "typical") and "atypical" Neanderthals. The first group belongs to a later period. The second group, according to established tradition, is supposedly earlier. Chronological differences are accompanied by morphological ones, but the latter, paradoxically, do not correspond to the expected ones and characterize both groups in reverse order compared to the geological age: later Neanderthals are more primitive, earlier ones are progressive. The brain of the latter, however, is somewhat smaller than that of late Neanderthals, but more progressive in structure, the skull is higher, the relief of the skull is smaller (the exception is the mastoid processes, which are more developed - a typical human sign), a chin triangle is outlined on the lower jaw , the size of the facial skeleton is smaller.

The origin and genealogical relationships of these two groups of European Neanderthals have been discussed many times from various angles. It has been hypothesized that the late Neanderthals acquired their distinctive features under the influence of a very cold, harsh glacial climate in Central Europe. Their role in the formation of modern man was less than the earlier, more progressive forms, which were the direct and main ancestors of modern people. However, against such an interpretation of the morphology and genealogical relationships of chronological groups in the composition of European Neanderthals, the consideration was put forward that they were geographically distributed in the same territory and early forms could also have been exposed to the cold climate in the glacial regions, as well as later ones.

The reason for the extinction of later Neanderthals could be too high specialization - Neanderthals were adapted to life in glacial Europe. When conditions changed, such specialization turned out to be a disaster for them. For many years, the question was discussed, where is the place of Neanderthals on the evolutionary tree and whether interbreeding between them and Homo sapiens during their coexistence for tens of millennia. If interbreeding was possible, then modern Europeans might have some Neanderthal genes. The answer - although not conclusive - was received very recently with Neanderthal DNA study. Geneticist Svante Pabo extracted DNA from Neanderthal remains that are tens of thousands of years old. Despite the fact that the DNA was highly fragmented, scientists were able to use the most modern DNA analysis method to establish the nucleotide sequence of a small section of mitochondrial DNA. Mitochondrial DNA was chosen for research because its molar concentration in cells is hundreds of times higher than the concentration of nuclear DNA.

DNA extraction was carried out under conditions of the highest sterility - scientists worked in suits resembling spacesuits in order to prevent accidental contamination of the studied samples with foreign, modern DNA. Under normal conditions, using the polymerase chain reaction method used by scientists, it is possible to “read” DNA fragments up to several thousand base pairs long. On the studied samples, the maximum length of the “read” fragments was about 20 base pairs.

Having received a set of such short fragments, the scientists restored the original nucleotide sequence of mitochondrial DNA from them. Comparing it with the DNA of a modern person showed that they are significantly different. The data obtained suggest that Neanderthals constituted a separate, albeit related to man, species.

More likely, crossing of these two species was impossible - the genetic differences between them are too great. Therefore, there are no genes derived from Neanderthals in the human gene pool. Based on the DNA sequence, the time of the divergence of the Neanderthal and modern human branches was estimated, which amounted to 550–690 thousand years. However, the data obtained can be considered preliminary, because. these are the results of a study of only one individual.

In addition to the listed main branches in human evolution, there have always been secondary, “blind”, “dead end” branches of evolutionary development. For example, huge great apes ( Gigantopithecus And meganthropes). The meeting with them is also described by Roni Sr. in his work: “A strong and flexible creature jumped out of the gray-green darkness into the clearing. No one could tell if it moved like an animal, on four legs, or two, like people and birds. His face was huge, his jaws were like those of a hyena, his skull was flattened, his chest was powerful, like that of a lion. ... Nao admired their strength, equal, perhaps, only to the strength of a bear, and thought that if they only wanted to, they could easily destroy both red dwarfs, and kzamms, and ulamrs ... ”(kzamms - so the writer named the Neanderthals; Ulamry - a tribe of modern people, to which the hero of the novel belongs.)

The writer points out that since these creatures "ate only plants, and their choice was more limited than that of deer or bison, the search for food required a lot of time and great care."

It must be said that meat food has played a very important role in the development of the human mind. The life of plant-eating great apes (like gorillas) is an almost continuous process of foraging. To get enough, the gorilla needs to absorb a huge amount of food. These animals are busy from morning to evening. Meat food in comparison with vegetarian food saves much more "free time".

One of the results (I must say, rather sad) of human preference for meat food was cannibalism(cannibalism), which persisted throughout almost the entire history of mankind. At the ancient Homo sapiens site excavated by archaeologists on the island of Java, for example, 11 skulls with broken bases were found that belonged to representatives of the Homo erectus species. This is evidence of cannibalism. This is how, it turns out, the relationship between representatives of various species of the Homo genus developed (although it should be noted that more often ancient people ate representatives of their own species, and not other species of the Homo genus).

But Neanderthals, and Pithecanthropes, and representatives of other species and subspecies of this genus, too, apparently, were far from harmless. Perhaps, the ideas about wild shaggy cannibals living in the forest, living in the folklore of many peoples, are a faint echo of those distant fights.

Why are people called people? For an adult, this question may seem somewhat "childish". However, it is often quite difficult for parents to answer it to a child. Let's find out how a reasonable person (homo sapiens) appeared and what is meant by this concept.

What is meant by the term "person"?

What is the meaning of the word "man"? According to encyclopedic data, a person is a living being endowed with reason, free will, the gift of thinking and speech. Based on the definition, only people have the ability to meaningfully create tools and use them in the course of organizing social labor. In addition, a person is subject to transmit his own thoughts to other individuals using a set of speech symbols.

The emergence of Homo sapiens

The first information about Homo sapiens dates back to the Stone Age (Paleolithic). It was during this period, according to scientists, that people learned to organize themselves into small groups in order to jointly search for food, protect themselves from wild animals, and raise offspring. The first economic activity of people was hunting and gathering. All kinds of sticks and stone axes were used as tools. Communication between people of the Stone Age took place through gestures.

At first, representatives of homo sapiens were guided in the organization of herd life solely by survival instincts. In this regard, the first people were more like animals. The physical and mental formation of Homo sapiens was completed in the late Paleolithic period, when the first rudiments of oral speech appeared, the distribution of roles began to occur in groups, and the tools of labor became more advanced.

Characteristic features of Homo sapiens

Why are people called people? Representatives of the species "reasonable man" differ from their primitive predecessors in the presence of abstract thinking, the ability to express their intentions in verbal form.

To understand why people are called people, let's start from the definition. Homo sapiens has learned to improve the tools of labor. At present, more than 100 separate items have been found, which were used in the organization of life in groups by people of the Late Paleolithic era. Homo sapiens knew how to build dwellings. Although at first they were quite primitive.

Gradually, herd life was replaced by tribal communities. Primitive people began to identify their relatives, to distinguish between representatives of the species that belong to hostile groups.

The organization of a primitive society with the distribution of roles, as well as the ability to analyze the situation, led to the elimination of complete dependence on environmental factors. Gathering was replaced by the cultivation of plant foods. Hunting was gradually replaced by cattle breeding. Thanks to such opportunistic activity, the indicators of the average life expectancy of Homo sapiens have increased significantly.

Speech awareness

Answering the question why people are called people, it is worth considering the speech aspect separately. Man is the only species on Earth that can form complex combinations of sounds, memorize them and identify messages from other individuals.

The rudiments of the above abilities are also noted in some representatives of the animal world. For example, some birds that are familiar with human speech can quite accurately reproduce individual phrases, but do not understand their meaning. In fact, these are just imitative possibilities.

To understand the meaning of words, to create meaningful combinations of sounds, a special signal system is required, which only a person has. Biologists have repeatedly tried to teach individual creatures, in particular primates and dolphins, the system of symbols used for human communication. However, such experiments gave little results.

Finally

Perhaps it was the ability of prehistoric man to organize life in groups, communicate, create tools, and distribute social roles that allowed modern people take the dominant place on the planet among all living beings. Thus, it is assumed that the presence of culture allows us to be called people.