Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons. The emergence of human races - Knowledge Hypermarket
Cro-Magnons - the origin of modern man
Cro-Magnons - the common name of the ancient representatives modern man, which appeared much later than the Neanderthals and coexisted with them for some time (40-30,000 years ago). Their appearance and physical development was virtually no different from modern man.
Approximately 40–30,000 years ago, the third greatest event in the life of our planet took place. The first, which happened several billion years ago, was the origin of life. The second is the beginning of humanization, the transition from ape to ape-man - about 2 million years ago. The third event is the appearance of man modern type, Homo sapiens- a reasonable person.
40-30,000 years ago, it appears and very quickly (quickly in this case, when a millennium is a trifle) takes the place of the Neanderthals.
Cro-Magnon skeletons found
As soon as an archaeologist from France Larte discovered 5 skeletons in the Cro-Magnon grotto under a thick layer of centuries-old deposits, he immediately guessed that he had met “acquaintances”. Shortly before this, the scientist became aware that, by order of the authorities of the Haute-Garonne department, 17 skeletons, accidentally found in the Orignac Pyrenean cave, were buried in the parish cemetery. Larte was able to prove without difficulty that the strict rules of Christian burial could be waived in relation to these people, and not only dug them back, but also established (using stone tools and animal bones from the Aurignac cave) that they were contemporaries of the same ice age where the classic Neanderthals lived. The tools of the Aurignacian man are in a slightly higher, i.e. late, layer than the tools of the Chapelles.
The two caves in which the most ancient people of the modern type were found gave them their names: the first person began to be called Cro-Magnon, and the first big period its history - period (culture) Aurignac.
Soon followed dozens of discoveries of Cro-Magnon skeletons and sites throughout Western Europe and North Africa, and the ancient "reasonable man" appeared in all splendor and splendor.
Parking lot Sungir
Sculptural portraits of a girl and a boy from the Sungir site
Sungir is an Upper Paleolithic Cro-Magnon site on the territory of the Vladimir region. There is a well-known paired burial of a boy aged 12–14 and a girl aged 9–10, lying with their heads to each other. What their bones could tell. As it turned out, the boy, despite his age, could throw a spear well with his right hand. The girl, judging by the development of her fingers and forearm, often made scrolling movements with her right hand. We know that the clothes of the Sungir people were covered with many beads made of mammoth bone, and there were holes in the beads. These holes, apparently, were drilled by a young Cro-Magnon woman.
The structure of the right humerus and cervical vertebrae show that the girl often raised her right arm up, and her head was constantly tilted to the left. In order for such features to appear on the skeleton already in childhood, the load must be very strong! According to anthropologists, the girl regularly wore weights on her head, and held them with her right hand. Perhaps during the transitions from camp to camp, which were made by nomadic groups of Cro-Magnons, the little Cro-Magnon was a carrier on an equal basis with adults.
What was a Cro-Magnon
Cro-Magnons evoked admiration from their discoverers, mixed with envy: the first people - and immediately what!
They were Caucasians, of enormous height (on average 187 cm), with an ideal straight bipedal gait and a very large head (from 1600 to 1900 cm³). Such a large skull could still be considered a "relic of Neanderthalism", but this head already had a straight forehead, a high cranial vault, and a sharply protruding chin.
Cro-Magnon man did not know what metal was, did not suspect either agriculture or cattle breeding, but if we could transfer him through 400 centuries, he, apparently, would easily understand everything and could draw up an equation, write a poem, work on the machine and compete in a chess tournament.
Where did the Cro-Magnon come from?
A Cro-Magnon man appeared - for archaeologists and anthropologists - somehow at once: just here, in the caves of France and Italy, squat, powerful, invincible people lived, and suddenly they quickly, abruptly disappear, and people of the modern type are already hunting in their area. The aliens are accompanied by an incredible technological revolution: instead of 3-4 primitive stone tools of the Neanderthals in the Aurignac period, about 20 stone and bone “devices” were used: awls, needles, tips, and so on. Immediately, as if from nothing, an amazing cave art appears.
This most powerful anthropological, technical and cultural upheaval now determines the entire human history. For billions of years, animals have existed only according to biological laws, improving, expanding the apparatus of adaptation, but not leaving the biological framework. But here comes major event: the development of a group of animals has reached such a stage that they include in the mechanism of their adaptation, in addition to their own teeth and paws, also an inanimate object that does not belong to the body: a stick, a stone.
According to one version, the Cro-Magnon is the ancestor of all modern people, having appeared in East Africa approximately 130-180,000 years ago. According to this theory, 50-60,000 years ago they migrated from Africa to the Arabian Peninsula and appeared in Eurasia. The first group was able to quickly populate the coast indian ocean, and the second migrated to the steppes of Central Asia. The second group is the ancestors of nomadic peoples and most of the Middle Eastern and North African population. Migration from the Black Sea to Europe began approximately 40-50,000 years ago, presumably through the Danube corridor. 20,000 years ago, all of Europe was already inhabited.
How has everything changed?
Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon
From now on, this creature no longer belongs entirely to biology, there is a gap in the “biological fence”. Oldowan pebbles, axe, stone ax, a locomotive, an electronic computing device - these are already phenomena of the same order: a living being uses and combines inanimate objects. "Who" dominates "what".
The breakthrough of biology that occurs in a social animal multiplies, intensifies in the pack, creates new relationships in this pack. But, apparently, the biological factor, that is, the physical structure of the creature, does not immediately get used to, is consistent with the new "organs" - tools: for about 2 million years, the first ape-men change not only their inventory, but also their physical structure. A hand squeezing a broken pebble makes the brain think hard and increase, but not remaining in debt, the brain sends its signals to the hand: it also improves.
Over thousands of centuries, tools go from rough stone, stick or bone to the Neanderthal axe, stone scraper and pointed point.
The brain during this period increases from 600–700 to 1500 cm³.
Gait - from semi-monkey to completely straight.
Hand - from a tenacious paw to a perfect tool.
The collective - from the animal flock to the first human social forms.
Some law of evolution, which we have not yet fully deciphered, causes the body of the ape-man to change along with his tools.
Comparison with modern man
Eventually there comes a point when biology and tools reach full agreement, a point from which brain and hand can do whatever work they want. The same brain and the same hand as a Cro-Magnon man will control a bow 20,000 years later, a plow 25,000 years later, and a few thousand years later, a locomotive, a car, an airplane, a rocket.
To move from a primitive ax to a more perfect one, it took from Pithecanthropus to become a Neanderthal. And in order to come from stone unpolished tips to the splitting of the atom, “nothing” was needed, that is, it seems that nothing fundamentally changed in the human body.
Instead of changing physically in the struggle for existence, man chose a different path. From now on, he began to improve "inanimate objects" and changed the structure of his society. Physical changes were replaced by faster and more painless - technical, social.
And how can we actually know that the biological development of man has stopped?
Discussions on this topic have been going on for a very long time. It has been noticed that there are secular, millennial fluctuations in the physical structure of a person: the Cro-Magnon man was taller than us, now, as you know, humanity is again growing quite rapidly. Several thousand years ago, human bones were more massive, then they became more elegant, tomorrow, perhaps, they will again become massive and bulky. Undoubtedly, "brachycephalization" is going on, an increase in the number of short-headed people compared to long-headed ones.
The reasons for these changes are cryptic: food, new look life? The seriousness of these changes is also conjectural: are these phenomena temporary, or tomorrow they will be covered by another change, or will a person still look different in a few tens or hundreds of millennia, not like now?
Guessing about the future, however, we have the right to declare: over the past 30-40 thousand years, gigantic changes in technology have occurred, but during the same time there have been no fundamental "corporeal" changes.
Obviously, the “thousand-great-grandfathers” laid a good foundation!
Cro-Magnon culture
The Cro-Magnon created a rich and varied Late Paleolithic culture. There are descriptions of more than 100 types of complex stone and bone tools made with great skill, made by new, more efficient processing of stone and bone. To a large extent, the Cro-Magnons also improved hunting methods (driven hunting), hunting deer, mammoths, woolly rhinos, cave bears, wolves and other animals. They began to manufacture spear throwers (a spear could fly 137 m), as well as devices for catching fish (harpoons, hooks), and bird snares.
Cro-Magnons usually lived in caves, but at the same time, they built various dwellings from stone and dugouts, tents from animal skins, and even entire villages. Early neoanthropes could make sewn clothes, often decorated. So, at the Sungir site (Vladimir region), more than 1000 beads were found on the fur clothes of a man, many other decorations were found - bracelets, rings.
The Cro-Magnon man was the creator of remarkable European primitive art, as evidenced by multi-color painting on the walls and ceilings of caves ( (Spain), Montespan, Lascaux (France), etc.), engravings on pieces of stone or bone, ornament, small stone and clay sculpture. Amazing images of horses, deer, bison, mammoths, female figurines, called “Venuses” by archaeologists for the splendor of their forms, various objects carved from bone, horns and tusks or molded from clay, no doubt can testify to a highly developed sense of beauty among Cro-Magnons. Cave art reached its peak approximately 19-15,000 years ago. Scientists believe that the Cro-Magnons could have existed magical rites and rituals.
Probably, the life expectancy of Cro-Magnons was longer than that of Neanderthals: about 10% already lived to be 40 years old. In this era, the primitive communal system was also formed.
Cro-Magnon cave with wall paintings
In the south-west of France, near the city of Villonaire, Charente department, speleologists and archaeologists have discovered a cave with ancient wall paintings.
Find a unique and extremely valuable for science underground hall with rock art cave explorers succeeded in December 2005, but the unique cave was reported much later. Such strong secrecy in Lately scientists are increasingly sticking to valuable finds to prevent unwanted visitors from destroying them.
Work in progress on dates rock paintings. Experts do not exclude that they may be older than those in the famous Lasko Cave and Altamira Cave. According to the first impressions of experts, we are talking about the Cro-Magnon site, that is, a period of 30,000 years ago. According to scientists, the find in Villonera could be a revolution in science - it used to be believed that in such ancient times people did not resort to painting the walls of their underground dwellings.
Where did the huge Cro-Magnon population come from and where did it disappear to? How did races come about? Whose descendants are we?
Why were Cro-Magnons distributed throughout the world? Could one population live on a huge area from Vladimir to Beijing? What archaeological finds support this theory? Why was the Cro-Magnon brain larger than the modern human brain? Why do the classical Neanderthals of Europe bear little resemblance to modern humans? Could they have lost their speech a second time? Was the Neanderthal a Bigfoot and a Cro-Magnon hunter? During what period did the geological and cultural catastrophe occur? What did the sudden and simultaneous melting of two large glaciers lead to? Where did the Cro-Magnons go? How did the major racial groups form? Why was the Negroid racial group the last to appear? Did the Cro-Magnons keep in touch with their space handlers? Paleoanthropologist Alexander Belov discusses whose descendants we are and who is watching us from space?
Alexander Belov: The Soviet anthropologist Debets, he believed that he even introduced the term "Cro-Magnons in the broadest sense of the word" into science. What does this mean? The people of the Upper Paleolithic are more or less similar to each other, regardless of where they lived, on the territory of the Russian Plain, in Europe, or in Australia, or in Indonesia, and even in America there are remains of the Cro-Magnons. In fact, they were distributed all over the world, and from this we conclude that the population was more or less homogeneous. And so Debets just introduced the concept of "Cro-Magnons in the broadest sense of the word" into science. He united in this population all the people of the Upper Paleolithic who lived regardless of where they lived, they were more or less similar to each other, and he called them this term, "Cro-Magnons in the broadest sense of the word." That is, it is not connected with the Cro-Magnon grotto in France or in some parts of Europe. They find, for example, the skull of Sungir 1, an old man according to Vladimir, he is very similar, Cro-Magnon, to a similar skull 101, which was found near Beijing in the Dragon Bones Cave, in fact, one to one just a skull. You can see on the map how large the distance between Vladimir and Beijing is, that is, approximately the same population lived for a huge distance. It was, of course, not numerous, that is, there are few remains of the Cro-Magnons, it must be said, that is, this population was not numerically numerous. And this is what is characteristic of Cro-Magnons, they are united not only by a single morphotype, they are also united by the presence of a large brain. If, on average, a modern person has 1350 average volume of cubic centimeters of the brain, then Cro-Magnons have an average of 1550, that is, 200-300 cubes, a modern person, alas, has lost. Moreover, he lost not just the cubes of the brain, as if abstractly, he lost just those zones, those representations of the associative and parietal frontal zones of the brain, that is, this is exactly the substrate by which we think, where the intellect itself is based. And in fact, the frontal lobes, they are responsible for inhibitory behavior, for the fact that, roughly speaking, we do not hold back emotions, we expose ourselves to some kind of unrestrained, emotional affects. And if these brakes are turned off, then, of course, a person can already switch to some affective behavioral reactions. This is very bad and detrimental to him. own fate and on the fate of the society in which he lives. And this is exactly what we see among the Neanderthals, the early Neanderthals, they are called atypical, they lived about 130 thousand years ago, they are found in Asia, mainly in Europe, Asia Minor, they were more or less still similar to modern people. And the classic Neanderthals of Europe, their chin protrusion actually disappears, they have a high larynx, they have a flat base of the skull. This suggests that the Neanderthals lost their speech for the second time, this is what it says. Alexander Zobov, our famous Russian and Soviet anthropologist, spoke and wrote a lot about this. And in fact, a paradoxical thing turns out, and their culture also becomes practically, so they dig a trench and accidentally discover the backbone of Neanderthals without any accompanying archaeological inventory or so on. This suggests that this is, if you like, roughly speaking, a Bigfoot of such an Upper Paleolithic. And they, apparently, were simply hunted by the Cro-Magnons. In Croatia, this massacre is known, when 20 bones and broken skulls of Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons were found, most likely such fights or battles in the Upper Paleolithic took place between Neanderthals, the predecessors of modern people, and Cro-Magnons.
And in this regard, the question arises, where did the Cro-Magnons go, in fact, and who are we, modern people? There are several versions on this subject, but if we follow the tradition of Soviet anthropology and Debets, in particular, then a completely clear and distinct picture is drawn that the classical Cro-Magnons, Cro-Magnon-like types, they spread throughout the Earth, created a rather high culture, it was, apparently, connected with some new unusual technologies that we have already lost, we don’t know, and with some knowledge that we, unfortunately, have also lost, and with a connection, perhaps, with our space predecessors, this also indicates , for example, and wands, some astronomical calendar carved circles and others different features, this is evidence of this. And somewhere in the region of the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary, about 10 thousand years ago, a geological cultural catastrophe occurs. But in historical terms, this Upper Paleolithic is actually replaced by the Mesolithic, the Middle Stone Age, that is, the Old Stone Age, it is replaced by the Mesolithic. And in fact, the Middle Stone Age, during this period of time, amazing things happen. Suddenly melt, suddenly melt, I would say, both glaciers, and the huge Scandinavian glacier, the thickness of which reached three kilometers in height, and it reached Smolensk, that's how it was, its epicenter over the Gulf of Bothnia. Simultaneously with it, the North American glacier is melting, which generally occupied in terms of power, in terms of its latitude, the dimensions of half North America, continent. And naturally, the level of the World Ocean in this period, 12-10 thousand years BC, it rises sharply to 130-150 meters. And it’s clear that people who find themselves in this situation, they will be divided, Africa is separated from Asia, Europe is also separated from Asia by water barriers, that is, on the site of the Russian Plain, seas are formed here that merge into the Caspian and Black Seas, and into the Mediterranean then. Many racial groups, future racial groups, being in isolation, in island isolation, so to speak, firstly, the population is sharply reduced, that is, anthropologists talk about the “bottleneck” that racial groups go through, all racial groups, this is exactly what is happening. at this point, and that, in general, they are geologically separated. And once in an isolate, in a geological isolate, such basic racial groups begin to form, Caucasoids in Europe, Mongoloids in Asia, this is the Far East, Asia, central Asia, and the Africans African continent. This is due to the fact that genetic exchange, it does not go between these groups for several millennia, at least.
Here, cultural isolation must also be added to this. Cultural isolation may even have done more negative than such purely geographical isolation. The Negroids are changing quite a lot, and it is the Negro race that appears at this moment. Negroids, they are very young, one might say, that is, this is the Neolithic, the end of the Mesolithic, the beginning of the Neolithic, at least 9-10 thousand years before the new era, blacks appear.
The comb-chapel type is attributed either to the Australoid group or to the group of Eur-African variants, which includes several ancient skulls of India, Asia Minor and East Africa(These will be discussed in the next chapter).
Indeed, there is some typological similarity between these variants: the Comb-Capella skull, in terms of a set of features, is closer to the Australoid or ancient EURAfrican variants than to the Negroid or any other. This conclusion has a rather specific content; it cannot be extended to other Upper Paleolithic skulls of Europe. In all likelihood, the combo-chapel type is related to the Eurafrican, and more distantly to the Australoid, unity of origin. Nevertheless, the emerging similarity is not such that the combo-chapel type could be included in the range of variants of the modern Australoid or even the Eur-African race. Neither one nor the other is peculiar big size nasion-prostion diameter, relatively high symotic index and other features.
The Cro-Magnon type is defined as Caucasoid. With such a definition, the complex of features of the brain box, jaws and nasal skeleton characteristic of Cro-Magnons is not consistent.
Among modern European populations, there is not one that is characterized by a combination of a small nasal index and a low nose bridge, a simotic index of about 46, a relatively wide face and a low skull. It is difficult to point out any non-European group that fully reproduces such a combination of features.
A more complete complex of Caucasoid features is presented in the Solutrean type. Nevertheless, a special place should be given to this option, given the high nasal index, the relatively large width of the face, the small height of the arch in combination with the mesocranial index.
The Oberkassel skull is sometimes called Mongoloid. The basis for such a diagnosis is a large zygomatic width, a small auricular height of the brain box. In other signs there are no features of Asian races. According to the degree of flattening foreground The facial skeleton of the Oberkassel skull almost does not differ from some Cro-Magnon skulls.
The Chancelad skull was originally identified as an Eskimo skull due to the combination of a narrow nose, a relatively wide face, and a high braincase. A. Keess and A. Vallois showed the fallacy of this opinion (Keith, 1931; Vallois, 1946). The skull of the Madeleine time from the Dordogne does not have the flattened cheekbones, flatness, alveolar prognathism and other features characteristic of the Eskimos. The Chancellade skull was brought closer to the Oberkassel skull (D. Montandon) and others. In fact, the similarity of these craniological variants is very small, and the sharp hypsicrania, large facial diameters, and other features exclude the possibility of including the Chancelad skull in the group of Caucasoid variants.
F. Weidenreich calls the Upper Paleolithic male skull from upper cave Zhou-Kou-Dian is proto-Mongoloid, the first female skull is Melanesoid, the second female skull is Eskimoid. Of course, these names express only a general impression and in no way establish a racial diagnosis. There are some similarities between all three skulls. As for the specific racial features, they are weakly expressed: the position of the eye sockets, the contour of the zygomatic arch in the male skull do not have signs of flattening specific to the Mongoloids. The symotic and nasoalveolar indices are not less than those of the Australoids or many of the upper pamolytic skulls of Europe. There is little specific similarity of female skulls with the types indicated by F. Weidenreich.
The Elmenteite skull is seen as one of the earliest variants of the East African (Ethiopian) race; the Oldowan type is brought closer to the modern Nilotic group, and the Boskop type to the South African and Hottentot. In the first case, there is only a limited similarity: the sloping forehead, the high height of the upper jaw and other features of the Elmenteite skull are not characteristic of the East African type. The Nilots, in contrast to the Oldowan variant, have a taller and more prognathous face, and a broader nose.
The Boskop type is similar to the Hottentot type in such specific features as a peculiar protrusion of the nape in combination with a straight forehead and an elongated flattened crown. Despite the incomplete coincidence of the craniometric characteristics of the Boskop and Middle Hottentot variants, these variants are so close in terms of a set of features that their genetic relationship should be recognized as quite probable.
The designation "proto-Australian" as applied to the skulls from Vadyak and Keilor also remains rather conditional, even if we mean not the Australians themselves, but the Indonesians of the Toala type. The latter are not characterized by large dimensions of the axes of the brain box and facial skeleton, a moderately developed superciliary. At the same time, the Keilor and Vadyak skulls have much in common with the large Upper Paleolithic skulls of Western Europe.
The Talgai skull is brought closer to the Australian one by some archaic features of the facial skeleton, i.e., features that are not specific enough to establish a genetic relationship between the variants.
Led short review leads to the following conclusions.
The Upper Paleolithic skulls differ from modern ones in the presence of certain features (Chapter 4) and therefore stand out in a special group - fossil neoanthropes. The craniological types of the Upper Paleolithic, along with the features included in the complex of features of one of the modern large anthropological groups, include features that are not characteristic of this group and are characteristic of other groups. Most often, the features of the Australoid, Negroid, Caucasoid types are combined.
Separate types of the Upper Paleolithic, according to craniological features (and probably also according to others), do not occupy a place within the limits of modern anthropological types, but between them.
Only a small number of Upper Paleolithic skulls show signs of one modern group have a predominance. Such, for example, are the Boscopian, Solutrean (not Cro-Magnon!), perhaps Grimaldian types. But even in these cases there are differences between modern types and Upper Paleolithic. These latter must be defined as specific subtypes of the group. The question of the extent to which ancient types constitute the original forms of later groups must be resolved in each case separately. Craniological types that fully correspond to the variants of subsequent epochs have not been established in the Upper Paleolithic.
To the previous considerations it is necessary to add data on the territorial distribution of the craniological types of the Upper Paleolithic. An essential criterion in establishing a race is the confinement of a given complex of features to a certain delimited territory. Fossil neoanthropes do not have such a connection with a geographical province.
In the small space of the Dordogne department in the Aurignacian time, such various options, like Cro-Magnon and combo-chapel. Moreover, in one locality, for example, in the Children's Grotto, in Monaco, skeletons of various types, Cro-Magnon and Grimaldian, were found, which gave rise to a number of little convincing hypotheses about the reasons for the diversity of types.
It has been suggested that the main population of Europe were tall "Caucasoid" Cro-Magnons, Grimaldian skeletons belonged to slaves, captives or concubines.
This kind of hypothesis is in clear contradiction with all known facts O material culture and social structure of the Upper Paleolithic.
Identical characters and even similar complexes of characters are found in remote areas of the ancient ecumene. Grimaldian type found on the Mediterranean coast and in the plains of Eastern Europe(Children's Grotto and Markina Gora on the Upper Don). A narrow nasal skeleton has been found in Europe and tropical Africa. In these territories, forms with a large and with a small relief of the eyebrows, with a large and small height of the nasal bones were found. Alveolar prognathism is widespread in the most diverse territories, but also in the southern regions of the ancient ecumene, there are forms that are weakly prognathous or almost orthognathic. If the craniological variants of the Upper Paleolithic belong to different races, i.e., groups of people formed in different geographical zones, under different conditions natural environment, then one should allow the unlimited movement of individual tribes in different, even opposite directions throughout entire continents. In this case, it must be recognized that tropical broad-nosed and prognathous groups moved north to the 50th parallel, while narrow-nosed orthognathic Caucasoid types penetrated into tropical Africa.
All these assumptions have such a low probability that they cast doubt on the possibility of attributing the craniological variants of the Upper Paleolithic to different races in the proper sense of the word.
Bunak V.V. The human skull and stages of its formation in fossil humans and modern races. Moscow, Academy of Sciences Publishing House, 1959, p. 165-167.
Cro-Magnons are considered to be the ancestors of modern man, who lived on our planet in the era of the late (or upper) Paleolithic (40-12 thousand years ago). The name of this species comes from the Cro-Magnon cave, located in the southwestern part of France. It was there that in 1868 the archaeologist Louis Larte, during excavations, stumbled upon the remains of ancient people, which in their own way differed from the previously discovered Neanderthal skeletons and resembled Homo sapiens. The find, whose age was about 30 thousand years, immediately attracted the attention of scientists who studied the history of that period, because then nothing was known about the way of life of the Cro-Magnons. In subsequent years, their remains, along with tools, were also found in other territories (Mladech and Dolni-Vestonice in the Czech Republic, Payviland in England, Peshtera-cu-Oase in Romania, Murzak-Koba in the Crimea, Sungir in Russia, Mezhirech in Ukraine, Fish Hook, Cape Flats in Africa, etc.).
Emergence and migration
Origin of Cro-Magnons before today not fully explored. Previously, historians and anthropologists adhered to the Marxist theory of the emergence of this type of ancient man. According to her, the Cro-Magnon is a direct descendant of the Neanderthal. Many modern researchers question this theory. They are inclined to the version that Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons descended from a common ancestor, after which each of them began to develop separately.
Modern scientists have not been able to reach a consensus about in which part of the planet the first ancestors of modern man appeared and when exactly it happened. The most common version says that the Cro-Magnons formed in separate view about 200 thousand years ago, and it happened in the eastern part of Africa. After 70 thousand years, they began migrating to the Middle East in search of new lands for life. From here, one part of the Cro-Magnons settled on the coast of the Indian Ocean, while the other moved north and reached the lands of Asia Minor and the Northern Black Sea region. Homo sapiens appeared in Europe approximately 40-45 thousand years ago.
Appearance
What did the Cro-Magnons look like? Ancient man, fossil man, differed from modern individuals in the structure of the body and the size of the brain. In contrast, representatives of Homo sapiens resembled today's people, but were larger. Archaeological finds made it possible to find out that the Cro-Magnon men who inhabited ancient Europe, reached a height of 180 cm (women were shorter), had wide faces and deep-set eyes. reasonable was 1400-1900 cubic centimeters, which corresponds to this indicator in modern people. The way of life of the Cro-Magnons, who had to survive in the harsh conditions of antiquity, contributed to the formation of their well-developed muscle mass.
Life
They lived in communities, the number of which reached 100 people. Their main occupations were hunting and gathering plant foods. They were the first to make tools from bones and horns. Along with this, the use of stone tools remained widespread among them. Lighter and more advanced products allowed them to get more food, sew clothes, invent devices aimed at facilitating their existence. Scientists are convinced that the ancient people of this era had a well-developed speech.
dwelling
The Cro-Magnons still continued to settle in the caves, but new types of housing had already begun to appear. They learned how to build reliable tents from animal skins, wood and bones. Such houses could be moved, thanks to which the lifestyle of the Cro-Magnons ceased to be sedentary. Wandering from place to place in order to develop new lands, they carried housing and households with them. Cro-Magnons were the first prehistoric people who managed to domesticate a dog and use it as an assistant.
The ancestors of mankind had a widespread cult of hunting. This is evidenced by numerous finds of animal figurines pierced by arrows found during excavations of their settlements. Its walls were decorated with images of animals and hunting scenes.
Food extraction
Hunting has firmly entered the life of the Cro-Magnon. The realities of the Stone Age were such that in order to feed themselves, it was necessary to kill. The ancient inhabitants of our planet hunted well organized groups for 10-20 people. The objects of their persecution were large animals (mammoths, wolves, woolly rhinos, bears, red deer, bison). Destroying the beast, they provided their communities with a large amount of skin and meat. The main tools for killing animals among the Cro-Magnons were spear throwers and bows. In addition to hunting, they were engaged in catching birds and fish (snares were used for the first lesson, and harpoons and hooks for the second).
In addition to meat and fish, the descendants of modern man ate wild plants. The food of Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons was very similar. They ate everything that nature gave them (bark, leaves and fruits of trees, stems, flowers and roots of plants, cereals, mushrooms, nuts, algae, etc.).
Burials
The Cro-Magnons had interesting burial customs. They laid the deceased relatives in the grave in a half-bent position. Their hair was decorated with a net, their hands with bracelets, and their faces were covered with flat stones. The bodies of the dead were sprinkled with color on top. Ancient people believed in the afterlife, so they buried their relatives along with household items, jewelry and food, being sure that they would need them after death.
Cro-Magnon Cultural Revolution
People who lived during the late Paleolithic period made a number of discoveries that allowed them to significantly surpass cultural development their predecessors. Their main achievement is the invention of a new method of processing flint, which went down in history under the name "knife plate method". This discovery made a real revolution in the manufacture of tools. The method consisted in the fact that separate plates were beaten off or squeezed out of the stone nodule (nucleus), from which various products were subsequently made. Thanks to new technology prehistoric people learned how to get up to 250 cm of working edge from one kilogram of flint (for Neanderthals this figure did not exceed 220 cm, and for their predecessors it barely reached 45 cm).
An equally important discovery of the Cro-Magnons was the production of tools from animal raw materials. Spending a lot of time hunting ancient man noticed that the bones, horns and tusks of animals are distinguished by increased strength. He began to make qualitatively new products from them, which made his life easier. Bone needles and awls appeared, making it easier to sew clothes from skins. Animal raw materials began to be used in the construction of new dwellings, as well as to make jewelry and figurines from it. The development of new materials led to the invention of more advanced hunting tools - spear throwers and bows. These devices allowed the Cro-Magnons to kill animals that were many times their size and strength.
The lifestyle of the Cro-Magnons was not only about survival among the wild. Prehistoric people strove for beauty. They left many works of art to their descendants. These are wall paintings in caves, and tools of labor decorated with unique ornaments, and figurines of bison, horses, deer and other animals made of flint, clay, bones and tusks. The ancient Cro-Magnons worshiped female beauty. Among the finds discovered by archaeologists, there are many figurines of the fair sex. For the splendor of forms, modern historians called them "Venuses".
The first scientific discovery of a modern human was a headless skeleton found in Wells (England) in 1823. It was a burial: the deceased was decorated with shells and sprinkled with red ocher, which subsequently settled on the bones. The skeleton was considered female and was nicknamed the "Red Lady" (a hundred years later it was recognized as male). But the most famous are later finds (1868) in the grotto of Cro-Magnon (France), according to which all ancient people are often not quite called Cro-Magnons.
They were people of high (170-180 cm) height, practically no different from us, with large, coarse-looking features of broad faces. A similar anthropological type is still found among living people in the Balkans and the Caucasus. Subsequently, the remains of people of this type were found in many places in Europe, in our country from the Crimean caves to Sungir near the city of Vladimir.
In ancient times, humanity was no less diverse than it is now. Along with the Cro-Magnons, sometimes next to them, representatives of other forms lived in Europe and Asia.
Neoanthropes lived in the era of the so-called upper paleotype. Like the Neanderthals, they used more than just caves for housing. From tree trunks, mammoth bones and skins, and in Siberia even from stone slabs, they built huts. Their tools become more perfect, in addition to stone, horn and bone are used in their dressing. A modern man painted magnificent frescoes on the walls of caves depicting game animals: horses, mammoths, bison (probably for some magical rites), decorated himself with necklaces, bracelets and rings made of shells and mammoth bone; domesticated the first animal, the dog.
The Cro-Magnons lived in caves or huts at the very end of the last of the ice ages. At the same time, the climate was cold, and winters were snowy, only low grasses and shrubs could grow in such conditions. The Cro-Magnons hunted reindeer and woolly mammoths. The Cro-Magnons learned how to make many new types of weapons. To their spears they tied sharp tips made of deer antler with teeth pointing backwards so that the spear would get stuck deep in the side of the wounded animal. In order to throw the spear as far as possible, they used special throwing devices. These devices were made of deer antler, and some of them were decorated with different designs.
They fished with harpoons carved from deer antlers, with tips and teeth curved back. Harpoons were tied to spears, and fishermen pierced fish with them right in the water.
Cro-Magnons built huts from long tibia bones and mammoth tusks, covering the frame with animal skins. The ends of the bones were inserted into the skulls, since the builders could not stick them into the frozen ground. In the earthen floor of the huts and caves of the Cro-Magnons, many burials were discovered. This skeleton was covered with beads of stones and shells, previously attached to his rotten clothes. The dead, as a rule, were laid in a grave in a bent position, with their knees pressed to their chin. Sometimes various tools and weapons are also found in the graves.
These Cro-Magnons cut deer antlers with a chisel-shaped stone tool - a chisel.
They were probably the first people to learn how to make needles and sew. From one end of the needle they made a hole that served as an eye. Then they cleaned the edges and the point of the needle by rubbing it against a special stone. Perhaps they pierced the skin with a stone drill so that they could pass the needle through the holes that had formed. Instead of thread, they used thin strips of animal skin or intestines. Cro-Magnon people often sewed small beads made of multi-colored pebbles to their clothes to look more elegant. Sometimes for these purposes they also used shells with holes in the middle.
Apparently, the Cro-Magnons and other people who lived at that time were practically no different from us in terms of the development of higher nervous activity. At this level, the biological evolution of man was completed. The old mechanisms of anthropogenesis ceased to operate.
What were these mechanisms? Recall that the genus Homo originates from Australopithecus - actually monkeys, but with a bipedal gait. Not a single monkey that passed from the trees to the ground did this, but not a single one, except for our ancestors, made the main weapon of defense and attack, first picked up in nature, and then artificially made tools. That is why the main factor of anthropogenesis is considered natural selection for the best weaponry. This is exactly what F. Engels had in mind when he noted that man was created by labor.
As a result of the cruel selection of the most skilled craftsmen and skilful hunters, such achievements of anthropogenesis as a large and complexly arranged brain, a hand suitable for the most delicate labor operations, a perfect two-legged gait and articulate speech have developed. It is also important to emphasize the fact that from the very beginning man was a social animal - already Australopithecus, apparently, lived in packs and only because of this were able, for example, to finish off a weakened and wounded animal and fight off the attack of large predators.
All this led to the fact that at the stage of neoanthropes such powerful factors of evolution as natural selection and intraspecific struggle lost their significance and were replaced by social ones. As a result, the biological evolution of man almost stopped.
