When did Neanderthals appear on earth? The time and place of the appearance of Homo sapiens have been revised. The history of Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons with a romantic touch

The first finds of Neanderthals were made about 150 years ago. In 1856, in the Feldhofer Grotto in the valley of the Neander (Neandertal) River in Germany, a school teacher and lover of antiquities, Johann Karl Fulrott, during excavations discovered a skullcap and parts of the skeleton of some interesting creature. But at that time, Charles Darwin's work had not yet been released into the light, and scientists did not believe in the existence of human fossil ancestors. The well-known pathologist Rudolf Wierhof declared this find to be the skeleton of an old man who suffered from rickets in childhood and gout in old age.

In 1865, information was published about the skull of a similar individual, found in a quarry on the rock of Gibraltar back in 1848. And only then did scientists recognize that such remains did not belong to a "freak", but to some previously unknown fossil human species. The name of this species was given at the place of discovery in 1856 - Neanderthal.

Today, more than 200 locations of the remains of Neanderthals are known in the territory of modern England, Belgium, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, in the Crimea, in different parts of the African continent, in Central Asia, Palestine, Iran, Iraq, China; in a word, everywhere in the Old World.

For the most part, Neanderthals were of medium height and powerful physique - physically they were superior to modern man in almost all respects. Judging by the fact that the Neanderthal hunted very fast and agile animals, his strength was combined with mobility. He completely mastered bipedalism, and in this sense was no different from us. He had a well-developed hand, but it was somewhat wider and shorter than that of a modern person, and apparently not as dexterous.

The size of the Neanderthal brain ranged from 1200 to 1600 cm3, sometimes even exceeding the average brain size of a modern person, but the structure of the brain was still largely primitive. In particular, Neanderthals had poorly developed frontal lobes responsible for logical thinking and inhibition processes. From this we can assume that these creatures "did not grab stars from the sky", were extremely excitable, and their behavior was distinguished by aggressiveness. Many archaic features have been preserved in the structure of the skull bones. So, Neanderthals are characterized by a low sloping forehead, a massive superciliary ridge, a weakly pronounced chin protrusion - all this suggests that, apparently, Neanderthals did not have a developed form of speech.

This was the general appearance of the Neanderthal, however, in the vast territory that they inhabited, there were several different types. Some of them had more archaic features, bringing them closer to Pithecanthropes; others, on the contrary, were closer in their development to modern man.

Tools of labor and housing

The tools of labor of the first Neanderthals differed little from the tools of their predecessors. But over time, new, more complex forms of tools appeared, and the old ones disappeared. This new complex finally took shape in the so-called Mousterian era. Tools, as before, were made of flint, but their forms became much more diverse, and the manufacturing technique became more complex. The main blank of the tool was a flake, which was obtained by chipping from a core (a piece of flint, which, as a rule, has a specially prepared platform or platforms from which chipping is performed). In total, about 60 different types of tools are characteristic of the Mousterian era, many of them, however, can be reduced to variations of the three main types: a handkerchief, a side-scraper, and a point.

The hand axes are a smaller version of the Pithecanthropus hand axes already known to us. If the dimensions of hand axes were 15-20 cm in length, then the dimensions of the hand axes were about 5-8 cm.

The points could be used as knives for cutting meat, leather, wood, as daggers, as well as spearheads and darts. Scrapers were used in butchering animal carcasses, dressing skins and processing wood.

In addition to the listed types, tools such as piercers, scrapers, incisors, serrated and notched tools, etc., are also found at Neanderthal sites.

Neanderthals used to make tools and bones. True, for the most part only fragments of bone artifacts reach us, but there are cases when almost complete tools fall into the hands of archaeologists. As a rule, these are primitive points, awls, spatulas. Sometimes larger weapons are also found. So, at one of the sites in Germany, scientists found a fragment of a dagger (or maybe a spear), reaching 70 cm in length; a club made of deer antler was also found there.

Tools throughout the territory of the Neanderthals varied among themselves and largely depended on who their owners hunted, and therefore on the climate and geographical region. It is clear that the African set of tools should be very different from the European one.

As far as climate is concerned, European Neanderthals were not particularly lucky in this regard. The fact is that it is during their time that a very strong cooling and the formation of glaciers occur. If Noto erectus (Pithecanthropus) lived in an area reminiscent of the African savannah, then the landscape that surrounded the Neanderthals, at least European ones, resembled rather a forest-steppe or tundra.

People, as before, mastered the caves - mostly small sheds or shallow grottoes. But during this period there are already buildings in open spaces. So, at the site of Molodov on the Dniester, the remains of a dwelling made of bones and teeth of mammoths were discovered.

You can ask the question: how do we know the purpose of this or that type of guns? First, peoples still live on Earth who still use tools made of flint to this day. These peoples include some natives of Siberia, the indigenous inhabitants of Australia, etc. And secondly, there is a special science - traceology, which deals with

The study of traces left on the tools from contact with one or another material. Based on these traces, it is possible to establish what and how they processed with this tool. Specialists also set up direct experiments: they themselves beat pebbles with a hand axe, try to cut different things with a pointed tip, throw wooden spears, etc.

Who did the Neanderthals hunt?

The mammoth was the main object of hunting for the Neanderthals. This animal did not survive to our time, but we have a fairly accurate idea of ​​​​it from realistic images left on the walls of caves by people of the Upper Paleolithic. In addition, the remains (and sometimes whole carcasses) of these animals are found from time to time in Siberia and Alaska in the permafrost layer, where they are very well preserved, thanks to which we have the opportunity not only to see the mammoth “almost as if alive”, but also find out what he ate (by examining the contents of the stomach).

Mammoths were close in size to elephants (their height reached 3.5 m), but, unlike elephants, they were covered with thick long hair of brown, reddish or black color, which formed a long hanging mane on the shoulders and chest. A thick layer of subcutaneous fat also protected the mammoth from the cold. The tusks of some animals reached a length of 3 m and weighed up to 150 kg. Most likely, the mammoths raked the snow with their tusks in search of food: grass, mosses, ferns and small shrubs. In one day, this animal consumed up to 100 kg of coarse plant food, which he had to grind with four huge molars - each weighed about 8 kg. Mammoths lived in the tundra, grassy steppes and forest steppes.

To catch such a huge beast, the ancient hunters had to work hard. Apparently, they set up various pit traps, or they drove the beast into a swamp, where it got bogged down, and finished it off there. But in general it is difficult to imagine how a Neanderthal man with his primitive weapons could kill a mammoth.

An important game animal was the cave bear - an animal about one and a half times larger than the modern brown bear. Large males, having risen on their hind legs, reached a height of 2.5 m.

These animals, as their name implies, lived mainly in caves, so they were not only an object of hunting, but also competitors: after all, Neanderthals also preferred to settle in caves, because it was dry, warm and cozy there. The struggle with such a serious opponent as a cave bear was extremely dangerous, and far from always ended in the victory of the hunter.

Neanderthals also hunted bison or bison, horses and reindeer. All these animals gave not only meat, but also fat, bones, and skins. In general, they provided a person with everything necessary.

Mammoths were not found in southern Asia and Africa, and the main game animals there were elephants and rhinos, antelopes, gazelles, mountain goats, and buffaloes.

It must be said that Neanderthals, apparently, did not disdain their own kind either - this is evidenced by the large number of crushed human bones found at the Krapina site in Yugoslavia. (It is known that in this way - by crushing KOC ~ tey - our ancestors obtained nutritious bone marrow.) The inhabitants of this site received the name "Krapinsky cannibals" in the literature. Similar finds were made in several other caves of that time.

Taming Fire

We have already said that Sinanthropes (and most likely, all Pithecanthropes in general) began to use natural fire - obtained as a result of a lightning strike on a tree or a volcanic eruption. The fire obtained in this way was continuously maintained, transferred from place to place and carefully stored, because people did not yet know how to make fire artificially. However, Neanderthals seem to have already learned this. How did they do it?

There are 5 known ways of making fire, which existed among primitive peoples back in the 19th century: 1) scraping fire (fire plow), 2) sawing fire (fire saw), 3) drilling fire (fire drill), 4) carving fire and 5) obtaining fire with compressed air (fire pump). The fire pump is an uncommon method, although it is quite perfect.

Scraping fire (fire plow). This method is not particularly common among backward peoples (and how it was in antiquity - we are unlikely to ever know). It is quite fast, but requires a lot of physical effort. They take a wooden stick and drive it, pressing hard, along a wooden plank lying on the ground. As a result, thin shavings or wood powder are obtained, which, due to the friction of wood against wood, heat up and then begin to smolder. Then they are combined with flammable tinder and fan the fire.

Sawing fire (fire saw). This method is similar to the previous one, but the wooden plank was sawn or scraped not along the fibers, but across. The result was also wood powder, which began to smolder.

Fire drilling (fire drill). This is the most common way to make fire. A fire drill consists of a wooden stick, which is used to drill a wooden plank (or other stick) lying on the ground. As a result, smoking or smoldering wood powder appears rather quickly in the depression on the bottom board; it is poured onto tinder and blown into a flame. Ancient people rotated the drill with the palms of both hands, but later they began to do it differently: the drill rested on something with its upper end and covered with a belt, and then they pulled alternately at both ends of the belt, causing it to rotate.

Fire carving. Fire can be struck by hitting a stone against a stone, hitting a stone against a piece of iron ore (sulfur pyrites, or pyrite), or hitting iron against a stone. As a result of the impact, sparks are obtained, which should fall on the tinder and ignite it.

"The Neanderthal Problem"

From the 1920s to the end of the 20th century, scientists from different countries were heatedly debating whether the Neanderthal was the direct ancestor of modern humans. Many foreign scientists believed that the ancestor of modern man - the so-called "presapiens" - lived almost simultaneously with the Neanderthals and gradually forced them "into oblivion". In domestic anthropology, it was generally accepted that it was Neanderthals that eventually “turned” into Hoto sapiens, and one of the main arguments was that all known remains of modern humans date back to a much later time than the bones of Neanderthals found.

But at the end of the 80s, important finds of Homo sapiens were made in Africa and the Middle East, dating back to a very early time (the heyday of the Neanderthals), and the position of the Neanderthal as our ancestor was greatly shaken. In addition, due to the improvement of methods of dating the finds, the age of some of them was revised and turned out to be more ancient.

To date, in two geographical areas of our planet, the remains of a modern human have been found, whose age exceeds 100 thousand years. These are Africa and the Middle East. On the African continent, in the town of Omo Kibish in southern Ethiopia, a jaw was found that is similar in structure to the jaw of Noto sapiens, whose age is about 130 thousand years. The finds of skull fragments from the territory of the Republic of South Africa have an age of about 100 thousand years, and finds from Tanzania and Kenya are up to 120 thousand years old.

Finds are known from the Skhul cave on Mount Karmel, near Haifa, as well as from the Jabel Kafzeh cave, in southern Israel (this is all the territory of the Middle East). In both caves, the bones of people were found, which, by most signs, are much closer to modern people than to Neanderthals. (True, this applies only to two individuals.) All these finds are 90-100 thousand years old. Thus, it turns out that a modern man for many millennia (at least in the Middle East) lived side by side with the Neanderthal.

The data obtained by the methods of genetics, which has been rapidly developing in recent times, also indicate that the Neanderthal is not our ancestor and that modern man arose and settled on the planet completely independently. And besides, living side by side for a long time, our ancestors and Neanderthals did not mix, because they do not have common genes that would inevitably arise from mixing. Although this issue has not yet been finally resolved.

So, on the territory of Europe, Neanderthals reigned supreme for almost 400 thousand years, being the only representatives of the Noto genus. But about 40 thousand years ago, modern people invaded their possessions - Noto sapiens, who are also called "Upper Paleolithic people" or (according to one of the sites in France) Cro-Magnons. And this is in the truest sense of the word our ancestors - our great-great-great... (and so on) -grandparents.

Briefly - Neanderthal, Neanderthal man (lat. Homo neanderthalensis or Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) is a fossil species of people who lived 300-24 thousand years ago.
Text -Early Neanderthals lived about 150,000 years ago, during the last interglacial period. Their appearance was close to the appearance of a modern person: a vertically elongated face, a round nape, the supraorbital ridge is somewhat softened, the forehead is convex, there are fewer primitive features in the dental system, the brain volume is very significant (1400-1450 cm3) and close to the value characteristic of a modern person ( 1350-1500 cm3). At the same time, numerous finds testify to the great variability of traits in different populations of early Neanderthals.
The age of classical Neanderthals is the last glaciation, i.e. 80-35 thousand years. In contrast to the early Neanderthal, the classical type has a strongly developed superciliary, a wide nose, a flattened nape from above, an angular contour of the occiput, and an occipital ridge. The chin protrusion is either absent altogether, or poorly marked. The size of the brain of a classic Neanderthal ranges from 1350-1700 cm3. There is no doubt that the Neanderthal man had great mental abilities, but it does not at all follow that he was more intelligent than modern man.
They were strong, massively built people, their average height was 155-165 cm. The lower limbs were shorter than those of modern people. A characteristic feature of the classical Neanderthal is the femur, which is strongly curved. This feature is unknown neither in modern man nor in the species Homo erectus, and some experts believe that this is a consequence of unfavorable living conditions: in contrast to the early non-! dertalz, the classic had to live in a harsh climate. Studies have shown that it was well adapted to the cold.
The most curious thing in this whole story is that it is the early Neanderthal that stands on the evolutionary ladder closest to modern man - Homo sapiens sapiens (representatives of this latter species first appeared only during the last glaciation). But at the same time, the bone remains of early Neanderthals also testify to their family ties with classical Neanderthals!

The “Neanderthal Age,” known to archaeologists as the Middle Paleolithic, began about 200,000 years ago and ended about 40,000 years ago. The classic Neanderthal reached its peak during the last glaciation. Scientists determine the maximum number of this species at 1 million individuals. Judging by numerous finds, Neanderthals quite densely populated Europe and western Asia, their habitat extended far to the east - to Uzbekistan. It is likely that some groups of Neanderthals came to America through the “land bridge” across the Bering Strait that existed at that time. Neanderthals came to Europe from the Middle East 45-40 thousand years ago, and this movement was directly related to changing climatic conditions.! Archaeologists and anthropologists have found numerous evidence that between 100 thousand and 50 thousand years. BC. significant climatic fluctuations were observed in the region of the Middle East and the Mediterranean. Average annual temperatures here began to rise, and the cold-loving Neanderthal began to gradually move to Europe.
With the Neanderthal, archaeologists confidently associate the culture of the so-called Mousterian type, which is characterized by a fairly large development.

1. Origin of the name

1.1 The time and place of the appearance of Homo sapiens have been revised

3. Features of physiology

6. Culture

6.1 Dwellings

6.2 Customs

6.3 Art

6.4 Science (medicine)

7. Settlement of Europe by the Cro-Magnons. The displacement of Neanderthals from the lowlands to the middle and highlands

8. Disappearance

9. The emergence and development of speech. Linguistics

10. Notes

11. Literature

Neanderthal man (lat. Homo neanderthalensis or Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) is a fossil species of people who lived 300-24 thousand years ago. Due to assimilation with the Cro-Magnons, it is partly the ancestor of modern man.

1. Origin of the name

The name comes from a skull found in 1856 in the Neandertal Gorge near Düsseldorf and Erkrath (West Germany). The gorge was named after Joachim Neander, a German theologian and composer. Two years later (in 1858), Schaaffhausen introduced the term "Neanderthal" into scientific use.

1.1 The time and place of the appearance of Homo sapiens have been revised

An international team of paleontologists has revised the time and place of the origin of Homo sapiens. The corresponding study was published in the journal Nature, briefly reported by Science News.
Experts have discovered on the territory of modern Morocco the remains of the oldest representative of Homo sapiens known to science. Homo sapiens lived in northwestern Africa 300,000 years ago.
In total, the authors examined 22 fragments of the skulls, jaws, teeth, legs and arms of five people, including at least one child. From modern representatives of Homo sapiens, the remains found in Morocco are distinguished by an elongated back of the skull and large teeth, which makes them look like Neanderthals.
Previously, samples found on the territory of modern Ethiopia, whose age was estimated at 200 thousand years, were considered the oldest remains of Homo sapiens.
Experts agree that the find will advance the understanding of how and when Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons appeared.

2. The most important fossil finds

Fossil sites of typical Neanderthals

Neanderthals inhabited:

Europe: Neanderthal in Germany, La Chapelle-aux-Seine in France, Kiik-Koba in Crimea, Peloponnese in Greece

Caucasus: Mezmayskaya cave in the Krasnodar Territory

Central Asia (Teshik-Tash) and Altai (Okladnikov cave)

Near and Middle East: Carmel in Israel, Shanidar in Iraqi Kurdistan.

3. Features of physiology

Neanderthals had an average height (about 165 cm), a massive physique and a large head of an unusual shape. In terms of the volume of the skull (1400-1740 cm3), they even surpassed modern people. They were distinguished by powerful superciliary arches, a protruding wide nose and a very small chin. The neck is short and, as if under the weight of the head, is tilted forward, the arms are short and paw-shaped.

Neanderthals were red and fair-skinned. Neanderthals have a mutation in the MC1R receptor gene. The red hair color and white skin color of modern Europeans are also associated with mutations in this gene.

The average life expectancy was 22.9 years. The identity of the FOXP2 gene (associated with speech) in modern humans and Neanderthals, as well as the structure of the vocal apparatus and the brain of Neanderthals, allows us to conclude that they could have speech.

The muscle mass of the Neanderthal was 30-40% more than that of the Cro-Magnon, the skeleton is heavier. Also, Neanderthals adapted better to the subarctic climate, since the large nasal cavity warmed up the cold air better, thereby reducing the risk of colds.

Karen Steudel-Numbers of the University of Wisconsin-Madison determined that due to the dense build and shortened tibia, shortening the stride, the energy costs of movement in Neanderthals were 32% higher than in modern humans. Using the model of Andrew W. Froehle from the University of California at San Diego and Steven E. Churchill from Duke University, it was clarified that the daily food requirement of a Neanderthal compared to a Cro-Magnon living in those the same climatic conditions, it was more by 100-350 kilocalories. And special chemical studies of bone tissue showed that Neanderthals constantly ate meat.

Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig (Germany) have discovered a gene in Neanderthals that prevents the absorption of milk (lactose) in adulthood. Also, during the research, it turned out that Neanderthals were unfamiliar with many hereditary diseases of modern people - autism, Alzheimer's disease, Down syndrome, schizophrenia.

4. Reconstruction of appearance

Reconstruction of a Neanderthal man and woman, Neanderthal Museum, Mettmann, Germany

How were they different from us?

5. Kinship with modern man

In 2010, Neanderthal genes were found in the genomes of a number of modern peoples. "Those of us who live outside of Africa carry some Neanderthal DNA," Professor Paabo said. “The genetic material inherited from Neanderthals is between 1 and 4%. It's not much, but it's enough to argue that a significant part of the traits are reliably inherited in all of us, except for Africans, ”said Dr. David Reich from Harvard, who also participated in the work. The study compared the Neanderthal genome with the genomes of five of our contemporaries from China, France, Africa and Papua New Guinea.

PS

Just a joke

The son of a learned linguist, looking up from a textbook where it is stated: they say that language is a separate module in the brain - a virtual, or something, a textbook of this language into which this person is born, ”asks his father:
- My younger brother babbles and babbles, but nothing is clear. Was he not born Russian?

Stanislav DROBYSHEVSKY,
anthropologist, Candidate of Biological Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Biology, Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov, scientific editor of ANTROPOGENEZ.RU:

“Many people ask themselves: how are Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons related to their ancestors? Where did they come from?

Many people know that there were some australopithecines, then early Homo (Habilis, Rudolphensis), then there were Homo erectus, then bam - Neanderthals and sapiens appear. And, on the one hand, it turns out that, if you look from afar, the culture of sapiens and Neanderthals is somewhat similar, while the erectus have some kind of Acheulian axes, cleavers, and they are completely different. And how this, on the one hand, is culturally interconnected, and, on the other hand, biologically, eludes many.

In fact, the opposition of erectus on the one hand and everyone else on the other is completely artificial. That is, this is a legacy of the times when Fulroth found a Neanderthal, Dubois found a Pithecanthropus, and others found a Cro-Magnon man. And there were three points: the erectus were older, then later - the Ice Age - with mammoths and Neanderthals, then also the Ice Age with the same mammoths, but with the Cro-Magnons. And there is a hole between them. 150 years have passed since these finds, and now it is known that there were many more interesting things in between.

Eugène Dubois, Dutch anthropologist who discovered and described the remains of Pithecanthropus in 1891

And, in fact, probably in the middle was the most interesting. And in the middle between erectus and all other late people were Homo heidelbergensis. The name is arbitrary, because the specific name Homo heidelbergensis refers to a specific jaw from the village of Mauer in Germany, which, by the way, is generally not clear who it is, since it is a jaw.

In a broad sense, Homo heidelbergensis or paleoanthropes, or postarchanthropes are the descendants of erectus, on the one hand, the ancestors of the Neanderthals. This is a European line, which then settled in Asia. And African ones are also conditionally Heidelbergensis - they are called Homo rhodesiensis or Homo helmei, they are all the same. These are the ancestors of the sapiens that originated in Africa. At some point, they crawled out of this Africa and began to interact with the Neanderthals. Knowing that there were Homo Heidelbergensis with their cultures, we see that there is a direct, completely immediate succession between erectus and later hominids.

That is, erectors came out of Africa several times. The first exit was, strictly speaking, even before the erectus. These are people in Dmanisi in Georgia. According to their physical type, if they look like someone, then they are like rudolfensis (Homo rudolfensis), who lived in Africa a little earlier. But this line, with a high probability, was a dead end and ended in nothing.

Then, probably, the descendants of these Dmanisians or, perhaps, some kind of their own line once again left Africa, reached Asia, settled there right up to Java, and from there even reached the island of Flores (Indonesia), where hobbits (Homo floresiensis) arose) . In Java, evolution went its own way: people from Ngandong or Solo (river) arose there. Some branches went to Sulawesi - who was there is unknown, only guns were found there. Someone got to the Philippines: there is a dwarf metatarsal bone from the foot, which belonged to a dwarf man.

Someone evolved in Asia, east to south at least Altai. The most famous are the Denisovans, they have their own branch, but very little is known about them. During this entire eastern part of history is still covered in darkness.

It is well known what happened in Europe and Africa. In Europe, these erectus descendants were called Homo heidelbergensis. Scientists have a beautiful chain: Sima del Elefante (Spain), Gran Atapuerca Valley (Spain) and a lot of other finds: Sima de los Huesos (Spain), Stenheim (Germany), Swanscombe (England) and much more . Between these people of Europe probably there were separate specific groups. More archaic - guys with huge eyebrows and scary nape. Or people from Ceprano (Italy) and others - there were quite massive citizens there. There were also quite gracile ones, for example, from the same Swanscombe, they are a little simpler. There were slightly larger ones and slightly smaller ones, but anyway, they were all Homo Heidelbergensis. A lot of interesting things happened to them because, on the one hand, in terms of culture, this is also Ashel, that is, the heritage of African erectus in direct form.

But Ashel is quite beautiful, because if the Acheulean cuts in Africa are all crooked, slanting and clumsy, then the European late Ashel is beautiful. There, the hacks were of perfect symmetry, even and perfectly made. That is, typologically, this is also Ashel, but it is clear that this is a new level. It's like a cart and a normal car - it also seems to have wheels and drives along the road, but this one is all crooked, slanting and dried up, and this one shines and you want to ride it. And these European Heidelbergensis have many wonderful innovations, and they have been actively burning fire since about 350,000 years ago or a little earlier. They have a lot of use of fire, that is, before that, somewhere, somehow, they burned it 20 times in a million years, and then suddenly they begin to actively use it. They start building normal dwellings. True, here many archaeologists argue: many of their traces have been found. They have composite tools, where several elements are interconnected and the idea arises of attaching the tip to the shaft, smearing it there with resin, tying it with ropes, etc. They have some kind of rituals, complexes arise, where it is clear that something was going on in their head, that they were wiser, stalactites were folded in circles, bear skulls were burned and something else was wiser. In the end, they have children's toys when a small tool is also made using Acheulean technology.

And so, slowly, by the time 150,000 years ago, all this flows into the Neanderthals. A couple more ice ages - and now ready-made Neanderthals are already on the way. They are improving the tools that go to a new level Mustier. Everything is completely new, there are decorations, normal burials and many other interesting things. But all this is a direct legacy of these very European Heidelbergensis. And then they “cook” in Europe, go to the Middle East, reach Altai and then start having fun.

At the same time that the Heidelbergensis lived in Europe, in Africa, their closest relatives, who looked almost the same, slowly evolved into sapiens. This is the culture of the so-called Middle Stone Age of Africa, which is not the Middle Paleolithic, but the Middle Stone Age. Oddly enough, these are different words. These are cultures that are also the heirs of Ashel, and they also sometimes have quite beautiful axes, but at the same time they begin to make a lot of arrowheads, actively use ocher, somehow more actively use the resources of the environment: there are plants, almost to hunt seals with whales etc. They massively appear bone tools, at some point individual decorations.

And in the interval from 200,000 years ago, when the influence of Ashel was still quite felt, to 50,000 years ago, when it disappeared completely, sapiens appears. From these very erectoid initial forms: muzzy, with terrible eyebrows, with huge napes, with large jaws without a chin, and the face became smaller, the back of the head was rounder, the brow was weaker, the forehead was more prominent, the jaw began to protrude ... And 50,000 thousand years back already quite a sapiens, maybe even a little earlier, already with a chin and teeth have become smaller. And the weapons change.

Then, when they move to the Middle East, the Pre-Aurignacian culture emerges. Here, however, the story is also a bit obscure, because there are different ideas about it, but in a broad sense it remains pre-Aurignac. And, characteristically, there are transitional cultures from the Middle Stone Age in Africa to the Classical Paleolithic in Europe. For example, in the Middle East there is an Acheulean-Yabrudo culture. It is, as it were, Acheulean - Ashelo-Yabrud, and, on the other hand, Yabrud, and there are already plates there. That is, on the one hand, these are axes - terrible and quite erectoid, and, on the other hand, plates, although clumsy, but plates, and the plate technique is the basis of the culture of the Upper Paleolithic. That is, quite sapient. Then these axes disappear completely, only the plates remain. That's it - here we have a beautiful wonderful transition from the classical Acheulean to the classical Upper Paleolithic. Plus 150,000 years of the Middle Stone Age in between where something else was changing. Moreover, there were many different cultures, and they were not always alike.

There is a transition in morphology and there is a transition in culture. They're in the Middle East - these come out sapiens meet the Neanderthals. Neanderthals disappear quite quickly, in just 10,000 years, and only sapiens remain on the entire planet. That's all interaction."

Neanderthal (lat. Homo neanderthalensis) is a species of the human genus that inhabited Europe and western Asia in the period from 230 thousand to 29 thousand years ago. The growth of the Neanderthal averaged 165 centimeters. Neanderthals were well adapted to the cold, were more muscular than modern weightlifters and had a brain volume 10% larger than the average modern human. There is no information about the color of their skin or hair.

As it turned out in 1983, they were able to speak, their speech was higher and slower than that of modern people. The earliest known musical instrument, the 4-hole bone flute, belongs to the Neanderthals. Neanderthals knew how to use homemade tools and weapons, but apparently they did not have any throwing weapons.

Neanderthals were engaged in gathering and hunting. They lived in small tribal communities, the size of 2-4 families, in which there was a clear division of work according to age and gender. Neanderthals buried their dead. In the grotto of La Chapelle-aux-Seine in France, a shallow burial was discovered with a skeleton in a fetal position, covered with a red cape. Tools, flowers, eggs and meat were left next to the body, which testifies to the belief in the afterlife and the existence of religious and magical practices.

The skull of a Neanderthal was first found in 1856 in the Neandertal Gorge near Düsseldorf.

Relationship with modern man

According to the most common point of view, the Neanderthal died out, unable to withstand the competition with modern man. It was possible to recognize a small part of the DNA of the Neanderthal, it differs from the DNA of a modern person. This does not put an end to the studies - the data from the same analysis showed that the people whose DNA was compared had the same amount of differences between themselves.

According to another point of view, many millennia ago, the variability in human populations was much higher than it is now. Skeletons have been found that have mixed features of Neanderthal and modern humans. They are still not enough to draw any conclusions.

A critical assessment of these two opposing points of view is complicated by the fact that modern man considers himself the "king of nature" and is not going to descend from anyone. Only further research will answer all questions.

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NEANDERTHALS. ALMOST LIKE PEOPLE...

...It happened around 300,000 B.C. Then came the Neanderthals.

It has already been said here that in the middle of the 19th century, the remains of strange creatures were found. They were found in the German Neandertal Valley (where the name of the creatures comes from). Then similar remains were found throughout Eurasia and Africa. Those. in the habitats of pithecanthropes. Pithecanthropes gave way to newcomers, finally disappearing around 200,000 BC. Neanderthals, having occupied their lands, began to expand their possessions. They advanced to Central Asia and Kazakhstan, to the south of Siberia, the Far East, to Korea, Japan. In the north, Neanderthals reached the Chusovaya River. In addition, they mastered the highlands and tropical forests.

Neanderthals (or paleoanthropes - "ancient people", as they are often called) are difficult to distinguish from people. The volume of their brain reaches 1500 cc. - a little more than ours. Any district police officer would have identified any Neanderthal by characteristic features - large teeth, a bulging jaw, a low forehead and large brow ridges. Other special features are a low head position, a slightly different shape of the shoulder blades, and longer thumbs. The expression on the faces of Neanderthals would have seemed ferocious to us, although they were hardly more ferocious creatures than we are. In general, their resemblance to humans is so great that some anthropologists classify Neanderthals as our own species, Homo sapiens.

Neanderthals made better tools. Their carefully crafted axes seem like masterpieces compared to those of the Pithecanthropus. In addition, Neanderthals learned to split flint into thin plates and make skin scrapers, stone knives, chisels, gimlets, etc. out of them. - in total, archaeologists count at least 60 types of Neanderthal tools. The new stone processing technique makes it possible to single out the times of the Neanderthals in a special era - the Middle Paleolithic (or the Mousterian era).

The technology innovations are not limited to this. Neanderthals learned how to tie stone knives to long straight sticks using animal sinews. That. spears turned out - the first tools consisting of more than one part. For us, compound weapons are nothing special. But the one who first created them, without having ready-made samples in front of him, was certainly a genius. Not later than 55,000 B.C. Neanderthals also developed axes. The wooden handle of such an ax was a lever that increased the impact force of stone axes.

So, Neanderthals got improved materiel for successful hunting. The tactics of hunting have also changed. Neanderthals began to specialize in one type of animal. Thanks to this, the hunters got to know the habits of the animals better. In the Mousterian era, they also learned to set traps for animals. For example, heavy logs were installed on the animal path. One of them fixed a stone. As soon as it was slightly moved, the whole structure collapsed, crushing the animal. Neanderthals also had other traps - the first automata of mankind.

New ways of hunting gave more food, which contributed to the growth of the population. According to the calculations of E. Divi, the population in the Mousterian era exceeded 1 million.

It was not a problem for Neanderthals to light a fire and cook food on it. They learned to cook on fire not only meat, but also previously inedible things - cereal grains, for example. And from the skins they already made real clothes, cut from separate pieces of skins fastened together.

Another important achievement of the Neanderthals is that they learned how to build artificial dwellings. Of course, animals also know how to build dwellings - beehives, nests, anthills and burrows. But they do it instinctively. An ant cannot build a hive, but a bee cannot build an anthill. Among Neanderthals, the act of creating a dwelling was conscious. Dwellings turned out to be diverse, depending on the natural environment and improvised materials. The oldest dwelling was found in France, on the Cote d'Azur, near Nice. According to the reconstruction of archaeologists, it was an oval hut made of poles dug into the ground, tied together from above and covered with animal skins. Inside the hut there was a hearth made of flat stones. Such a dwelling was not durable - it was used for only 10 days. Another type of dwelling was at the Molodovo-1 site near the Moldavian city of Soroca (the frame was made of mammoth bones).

The Neanderthals still used caves. But even here we see a higher level of improvement. An example of this is the cave of Monte Circeo, Italy, in which the floor is lined with stones to avoid dampness.

Technological advances allowed the Neanderthals to survive the Ris Ice Age (250,000 - 110,000 BC). It was the most severe cold snap in human history. Glaciers in Europe reached the Kyiv-Dresden-Amsterdam line, and in North America, all of Canada was under the ice. Then many heat-loving animals died out, others went south. But armed with fire, the Neanderthals moved even further north.

Along with material achievements, the Neanderthals also had spiritual ones. They had art and religion. If previous discoveries were necessary for survival, these were not vital. Why did they happen? There are different opinions on this matter. Believers believe that the ability to express themselves and faith were sent down to the ancestors from above. Rationalists have a different opinion - art has become a kind of outlet for psychic energy in creatures who have reached a certain level of intelligence.

Rationalists explain the emergence of religion in the following way. Animals have the instinct of self-preservation, but they live in the current moment, remembering the danger only at the moment of danger. The Neanderthals knew that they were mortal and that each of them would die. For any rational being, such a thought is quite unpleasant (to say the least). And the Neanderthals found a way out of the situation into which they were led by a high mind. They developed transcendental (otherworldly) ideas that gave them psychological stability in the face of an inevitable end.

Let's not judge who is right - believers or rationalists. Still no one knows how it really happened. Let's let the reader accept the view that is closer to him, and let's get back to the facts.

The art of the Neanderthals was very primitive - repeating signs on stones, a very imperfect ornament (for example, in the cave de L "Aze, France). The presence of religious beliefs is evidenced by the burial rites that appeared among the Neanderthals. So near the Shanidar cave, in the mountains of Northern Iraq, a grave of a Neanderthal was found (60.000 BC), strewn with bouquets of flowers.

The advent of religion is no less important than the advent of new technology. Many of the hallmarks of human civilization - art, politics, philosophies, social and even technological advances - are in one way or another connected with religion. It has always been of no less importance to people than rational knowledge. (However, in ancient times, both were inseparable.)

Initially, religion was expressed in the form of totemism - the worship of any animal. Most likely, the one that the Neanderthals hunted. Such animals could be bears, deer, buffaloes, mammoths, lions. The cult of bears was especially widespread. This is evidenced by bear skulls found in many places, lined with stones or enclosed in limestone chambers (for example, in the Drachenlon cave, Switzerland, or in the Ilyinka cave, Odessa region). Such structures are very reminiscent of places of worship. On many skulls, notches and primitive ornamentation are noticeable. Perhaps the hunters associated these animals with their kind, as they gave people meat, while transferring their strength and their blood.

Totem animals became a symbol of the clan. Their skulls (possibly stuffed) were carried from camp to camp. The tradition of decorating the coats of arms of states with images of various animals, perhaps, goes back to the time of the Neanderthals who professed totemism. With a high degree of certainty, it can be argued that the names of some constellations come from that time. So now the constellation Ursa Major does not look like a bear. Rather, it resembles a bucket. However, 90,000 years ago, the position of its constituent stars really resembled the pointed muzzle of a bear.

There are suggestions that the Neanderthals also had a cult of ancestors and magic - the idea of ​​\u200b\u200binfluencing people and objects with the help of spells and manipulations. Although there is no evidence of the existence of magic among Neanderthals.

A being who developed religion and art had to have a speech close to human. If Australopithecus most likely made a set of sounds, like chimpanzees, and Pithecanthropes could exchange words on purely specific matters (the so-called dialogue speech), then Neanderthals could already express themselves (that is, they had monologue speech).

Neanderthals were also characterized by the rudiments of humanism - they protected and preserved the lives of the elderly and the disabled. In the already mentioned Shanidar cave, the remains of a one-armed Neanderthal (45,000 BC) were found, who, after losing his upper limb, lived for many more years, thanks to the care of his fellow tribesmen. In short, not only externally, but also spiritually, they were almost like people.

The increased complexity of life led to the fact that Neanderthals had different cultures. (This is what archaeologists call communities of archaeological sites that are similar to each other, created at the same time and occupying a certain territory.) Differences can also be found among Pithecanthropes - in some places they were dominated by choppers, in others by axes. And not all of them knew fire (it appeared in Africa only 60,000 years ago). However, the differences were not very significant - axes and choppers in China or in Spain differed from each other no more than the Coca-Cola released in these countries. Among Neanderthals, differences in tool processing are striking. For the period 50,000 B.C. distinguish at least 5 different archaeological cultures, and Mousterian (from which the entire period is named) is only one of them. Everyone already knew fire at that time, but the technique for making tools varied. The Mousterian culture dominated Europe. She was the most advanced. But there were places where the technique still resembled the Acheulean or even more primitive.

We know something about the differences in the material culture of the Neanderthals, but nothing about the spiritual differences. However, we can assume that beings with the beginnings of religion and a developed language could have different ethnic groups.

Neanderthals lived from 300,000 to 30,000 BC. Why did they, with all their abilities, not live up to our time? Much of what has already been said applies to Neanderthals who lived from 75,000 to 35,000 BC. They are called classical Neanderthals (before there were early Neanderthals). However, in the next few thousand years, for some unknown reason, they began to reduce the frontal lobes of the brain, where the centers of inhibition are located. A person with damage to these centers has inadequate behavior, he is extremely quick-tempered. For any slightest reason, he can have an outbreak of wild aggression. A society of such people cannot exist for very long. Perhaps the cause of the extinction of the Neanderthals was an unknown disease, such as AIDS. Or they were exterminated.

True, there is an opinion that Neanderthals survived to our time. And that they hide from people high in the mountains and in forest thickets. Supporters of this opinion believe that reports of the so-called "Bigfoot" are nothing more than a description of the meetings of people with Neanderthals. However, there is no convincing evidence of the reality of these meetings. And the latest remains of Neanderthals are 33,150 years old. Be that as it may, but the baton of reason was picked up by people of a modern look. But that's a completely different story....

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