About 40 thousand years ago, appeared on Earth neoanthropes- people of the current appearance, but more massive than modern people. Neoanthropes, or new people (from the Greek peos. newest man) is a generalized name for people of the current species (Home sapiens), fossils and living ones.
The inhabitants of Europe, who are often referred to as the current species, who lived during the Upper Paleolithic era (from 50 to 20 thousand years ago) are called Cro-Magnons. These people were named after a discovery in the Cro-Magnon grotto in the valley of the river. Veser in France. There, in 1868, scientists discovered 6 human skeletons, ancient coals from fire pits, flint tools and sea shells with holes made in them. The discovery that was found in the Cro-Magnon Grotto was the first after which serious study of ancient people began modern type, therefore all fossil neoanthropes are called Cro-Magnons.
The physical type of Cro-Magnons is characterized by the following characteristics:
- tall height (for men - above 180 cm);
- skull with large brain section;
- elevated, rounded cranial vault;
- extensive straight broad forehead without a continuous supraorbital ridge;
- less developed face than most fossil hominids;
- protruding chin.
The Cro-Magnons had a perfect culture called the Upper Paleolithic. In Europe, the most famous Upper Paleolithic cultures are called Aurignacian, Solutre and Madeleine, after the names of the places in France where the main finds were made.
The Cro-Magnons made a real technological revolution in stone processing. Long and narrow plates were broken off from the prismatic core, from which various tools were then made. The Cro-Magnons began to develop and study new materials and fossils - bones and horns, which are sometimes called Stone Age plastics. They had huge differences, for example, they were light, ductile and easy to process. With the advent of bone needles, awls and piercings, fundamentally new possibilities appeared in the processing of skins and in the manufacture of clothing. Impressive animal bones also served as material for the dwellings of ancient hunters and fuel for hearths. The technical equipment of people increased - spear throwers, bows and arrows appeared.
Cro-Magnons almost ceased to depend on natural shelters such as caves and rock overhangs, as well as other structures. They actively developed, engaged in extensive construction of housing where they needed it - this created additional opportunities for long-distance migrations and the development of new lands. It was only among the Cro-Magnons that art first appeared - rock painting, figurines made of bone and stone. The first drawings on the walls of caves depicted animals, and only later did scenes appear in ancient painting and sculpture in which humans became participants.
At that time, such a direction as Art was actively studied and developed, apparently magical meaning. Images of animals are accompanied by signs of arrows and spears, designed to facilitate the upcoming hunt. As a result, we can say that modern man, in the guise that he has in modern world, largely acquired all the qualities and experience from Cro-Magnon. Even in ancient times, this species was actively searching for food, housing, studying new fossils, and developing. It was this active development that contributed to the further improvement of civilization.
It is no coincidence that the CRO-MANNON man is also unanimously called “modern man.” (Referring, of course, to the modern Caucasian.) The name “Cro-Magnon” is conventional: it comes from the site of Cro-Magnon in France, where the first such skeleton was found. There is no biological reason not to call a Cro-Magnon an early Caucasian - or you and I, a late Cro-Magnon. If the question about the direct origin of blacks from Neanderthals is not yet raised very confidently (more confidently about the origin of the Australoids from them; we are personally confident in both), then there is no doubt here. Each representative European peoples and even some others (later) can say: Cro-Magnon is my great-great-great-great-grandfather.
This was understood already at the dawn of anthropology. The prominent German anthropologist Alexander Ecker (1818-1887) in the 60s of the 19th century discovered skulls of the “northern type” in the graves of Southern Germany and established their identity with the skulls of modern Germans. Skulls of the pure “northern type” were also discovered throughout Scandinavia and Northern Germany by the leading Swedish anthropologist Anders Retzius (1796-1860). It was on the basis of these numerous craniological series that it was suggested that the modern “northern type” in its structure goes back to the Cro-Magnon type of Paleolithic Europe. The classic of the French anthropological school, Armand de Quatrefage (1810-1892), even called ancient Cro-Magnon man blond in modern sense this word. Ideally upright, very tall (average height 187 cm) and large-headed (brain volume from 1600 to 1900 cm?), they, like us, had a straight forehead, a high cranial vault, and a sharply protruding chin. Over time, having discovered the fingerprints of ancient sculptors on clay figurines of the Paleolithic era, scientists established their complete racial identity with modern Caucasians.
Craniology data is a very serious argument, as much has already been said above. Therefore, scientific data on the distribution of the Cro-Magnon skull across the globe deserve not only trust, but also special attention and reflection.
As Eugen Fischer wrote in his work “Race and the Origin of Races in Man” (1927): “One of the most substantiated hypotheses is this: from the Cro-Magnon race came the Nordic race, the builders of megaliths, dolmen burials of Scandinavia, Denmark, etc. According to this hypothesis , the Nordic race arose as a result of modification of the Late Paleolithic race in the North as the currently inhabited places were freed from ice. The Nordic race arose here, and then it acquired its typical qualities. This best explanation origin of the Nordic race." Let us leave in this passage the question of the place of Cro-Magnon ethnogenesis for further discussion (as it is still beyond the competence of anthropologists) and accept the main thing: Caucasians settled the North precisely as Cro-Magnon modifications.
Were they already divided into racial subtypes? Did the subtypes begin to develop linguistic isolation even then? There is no doubt that sooner or later this happened. Darwin's teachings state this quite convincingly: the consequence of natural selection is the divergence of characters. This means that one parent species can give rise to several new species. This is precisely what the waves of migrations from North to South, which were carried out by the Cro-Magnons periodically throughout the foreseeable historical and prehistoric retrospective, speak of. Figuratively speaking, Cro-Magnons, right up to the 20th century AD, were sprayed out in “quanta” to the South, East and West from their northern ecological niche as it overflowed.
But, of course, they did not call themselves Cro-Magnons. What were the names of the expansive “quanta”? They are called differently by different sources, and we will omit the names of many forgotten ones today. In the Middle Ages, New and Modern times these, for example, were Germans, Spaniards, English, French, Dutch, Belgians, Russians. In more distant times - Franks, Vikings, Goths, Normans, Lombards. Before them - the Germans, Celts, Huns, Scythians, Slavs. Before them - the Etruscans, Proto-Hellenes, Proto-Italics. Before them, the Indo-Aryans, before them - the Proto-Iranians, before them - the Hittites... All of them spoke languages of the Indo-European group, but during the time that elapsed from “quantum” to “quantum”, they managed to mutate to the point of complete impossibility of mutual understanding.
Always “from top to bottom,” always from North to South, waves of mass migrations (“invasions”), represented by ever new descendants of the Cro-Magnon man, rolled one after another. At the same time, the late wave often rolled onto the earlier one; A fratricidal war broke out, all the more terrible because the combatants no longer saw each other as brothers, because time and miscegenation with opposing races and peoples sometimes changed their appearance and language beyond recognition. The brother did not recognize or understand his brother. One “quantum” spoke Hittite, another - in Sanskrit, a third in Zend and Avestan languages, a fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh - in Greek, Latin, Finnish, Slavic... Language barriers have already become rigid, and racial subtypes are the result of miscegenation - already established: how was it possible to restore the relationship? In those days, no one had ever thought of measuring skulls to solve this problem!
The skulls were measured in modern times - and they gasped: the descendants of the Cro-Magnon man, it turns out (judging by the proto-Nordic skulls in the burials), reached Central Africa, India, Oceania and Polynesia, not to mention Siberia, the Urals, Altai, Kazakhstan, China, Central Asia, the Pamirs and the entire Mediterranean, including North Africa and Western Asia. Etc.
Today these descendants have a variety of names, speak different languages, do not understand each other and are not considered kinship. But they all came out of the Great Northern Platform, they all have a common ancestor - the Cro-Magnon man.
WHERE DID THE NEANDERTHALS GO?
AS EVERYONE knows, Neanderthals once inhabited all of Europe, except Scandinavia and northern Russia: their remains are found in England, Germany, France, Italy, Yugoslavia, southern Russia (in Scythian mounds), etc. These are autochthons, old-timers of Europe. They were found in Central and Southeast Asia, and in Southern Siberia, in China, in the Crimea, in Palestine, in Africa (all the way to distant Rhodesia) and on the island of Java. Let's not touch on the question of how they got there or where they came from for now. Different experts date the age of the Neanderthal in different ways: according to some data, he is 50-100 thousand years old, according to others, less reliable, as much as 200, 250 and even 300 thousand years old. For now, it is enough for us to take note of the thesis: “Anthropologists have established the presence of three variants of fossil people in Europe during the mentioned period of anthropogenesis: 1) Neanderthals; 2) modern people; 3) intermediate forms,” clarifying that by modern man we mean a Cro-Magnon man, and by intermediate forms a hybrid of the first two, and by no means a “transitional link.”
The first Neanderthal was found near Düsseldorf in 1856. In 1997, researchers from the University of Munich analyzed the DNA of the remains of this very first Neanderthal. The age of the find was determined to be 50 thousand years. A study of 328 identified nucleotide chains led paleontologist S. Paabo to the conclusion: the differences in genes between Neanderthals and modern humans are too great to consider them relatives. This idea was confirmed by studies by M. Ponce de Leon and K. Zollikofer (University of Zurich), who compared the skulls of a two-year-old Neanderthal and an age-matched little Cro-Magnon. The conclusion was clear: these skulls were formed in completely different ways.
The appearance of the Neanderthals had features that were very different from the Cro-Magnon ones, but which are still characteristic of the Negroid and Australoid races today: a depressed chin, large brow ridges, very massive jaws. Neanderthal man had a larger brain than Cro-Magnon man, but a different configuration. Imperfection and small size frontal lobes brain was brightened by the presence of convolutions indicating a certain development mental abilities. In interspecies struggle, such a brain did not become an advantage compared to the Cro-Magnon one, but there is hardly any reason to oppose Neanderthals species homo sapiens in general, since they undoubtedly had intelligence. And the structure of their palate, lower jaw, and lower left frontal lobe of the brain (the speech area of modern humans) is such that it allowed Neanderthals to speak, although not very phonetically rich, due to the absence of a chin protrusion. The average height of men was 1.65 m, women were 10 cm lower. At the same time, the men weighed about 90 kg due to very highly developed muscles and heavy, strong bones.
Whole corpses of Neanderthals (like the corpses of mammoths) were not preserved, since they were not found in permafrost soils. There are only skeletons. Therefore, today we cannot judge for sure the color of their skin. In popular pictures and school textbooks, Neanderthals are usually depicted as white-skinned, upright creatures covered with sparse hair. But this coloring is not based on anything. A number of scientists today have put forward a much more plausible hypothesis that Neanderthals were black. This is evidenced by the geographical localization of the Neanderthals closest to us in time, who lived mainly in Central and South Africa and in Java, as well as the color of those modern races that are reasonably considered to be the descendants of the Neanderthal: Negroids, Australoids, Dravidians, etc. It is enough to “repaint” the Neanderthal from the school table in black - and a creature extremely similar in appearance will appear before us with all conviction with the named races. Not only the skin and appearance, but also much more, for example, the structure of the tibia and ankle bones (whose articular planes indicate the habit of squatting for a long time, which is not typical for Caucasians) makes Neanderthals similar to modern inhabitants of the South of the Earth. It is very characteristic that among the remains of Cro-Magnons found in the grottoes of Grimaldi (Italy), the so-called “Grimaldians,” there are two skeletons, characterized by some scientists as Negroid, by others as Neanderthal.
Neanderthals, like Cro-Magnons, were people, they were radically different from the animal world. Although they are biologically completely different people, much inferior to Cro-Magnon man. But nevertheless, the Neanderthals created their own culture, called Mousterian (Chelian and Acheulean): stone and bone axes, scrapers, pointed points, although not in such a wide range as the Cro-Magnons, who created about two dozen stone and bone “devices”. Neanderthals also knew fire; already 40 thousand years ago they buried their dead with honor according to a primitive ritual, honored the afterlife, and practiced hunting magic. At the same time, they began to develop primitive jewelry: pendants made from animal teeth. Scientists believe, however, that they could have adopted the custom of decorating themselves from the Cro-Magnons. In any case, this is no longer characteristic of anyone in the animal kingdom. But the Neanderthals, unlike the Cro-Magnons, did not leave works of art (rock paintings, sculptures made of bone and baked clay).
The relationship between Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons was not idyllic. At Neanderthal sites, carefully crushed and gnawed bones are found not only of large game, but also bones of Cro-Magnons, that is, ancestors, processed in exactly the same way modern people. And vice versa: crushed bones of Neanderthals were found at Cro-Magnon sites. The two protoraces waged an irreconcilable war among themselves, a war of destruction, “to be devoured,” as the Bible would put it. Which war was accompanied, as fossil skeletons irrefutably testify, by racial mixing, most likely violent.
For approximately ten thousand years, a brutal confrontation between two proto-races lasted on the same territory; but by the end of this period (about 40 thousand years ago), the Cro-Magnons displaced the Neanderthals from Europe almost completely. Thirty thousand years ago, their remains still survived in the Gibraltar region, in the Pyrenees and the Dalmatian mountains. But in general, the “race of the vanquished” rolled further south, to Western Asia and the Mediterranean, where the confrontation continued for many millennia.
As has already been quite reliably established, Cro-Magnons did not and could not descend from Neanderthals. But they could mix with them (we emphasize and confirm this once again) “improving the breed.” Moreover, both on their own initiative and in addition to it, depending on the outcome of a particular interracial skirmish. If men who were captured were in danger of being eaten, the fate of women could be completely different. A study of the Tasmanians, who were “stuck” in the Stone Age until their disappearance in the 19th century, showed that inter-tribal relations of Paleolithic people, in addition to diplomacy, trade and war, certainly included the abduction of women. The Neanderthal breed definitely improved during crossbreeding, the Cro-Magnon breed just as definitely worsened, but one way or another, the process was so intense, long-lasting and reciprocal that it led, as already mentioned, to the formation of new ethnic groups and even races of the second order.
A prominent domestic scientist, Yu. D. Benevolenskaya, in her article “The problem of identifying the sapient and Neanderthal lines in the early stages of evolution” (Courier of the Petrovskaya Kunstkamera. Issue 8-9, St. Petersburg, 1999) writes: “The hypothesis of the evolutionary transformation of Neanderthals into a neoanthrope is increasingly giving way to the idea of the displacement of the first by modern people, which was accompanied by crossbreeding between them.”
Another outstanding Russian anthropologist A. A. Zubov in the article “Problems of intraspecific taxonomy of the genus homo in connection with modern ideas about the biological differentiation of mankind (Modern anthropology and genetics and the problem of races in humans. M., 1995) also points out: “We can talk about the “network-like” nature of the evolution of the genus Homo at all stages of its evolution. It is important to note that the “network” could include different evolutionary “floors” that interacted with each other and made their genetic contribution to the general, unified fund of diversity of the evolving genus homo.”
In other words, representatives of the “higher” human levels entered into sexual intercourse with representatives of the “lower”, Neanderthal, levels, as a result of which they gave birth to mestizos, then numerically isolated to the level of entire peoples and races, which gave rise to the general evolutionary diversity of the genus homo.
The famous American biologist Anthony Barnett in his book “The Human Race” (M., 1968) also testifies that “modern people appeared at about the same time, if not earlier, as Neanderthal man, and developed in parallel. Intermediate types between modern humans and Neanderthals could have been the result of either interbreeding or early phases of Neanderthal divergence from the lineage that led to modern humans."
In all likelihood, all territories, including Europe, where at one time or another both proto-races—Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons—lived simultaneously as a zone of crossbreeding. Hybrid forms then continued to exist everywhere there and produce offspring, interbreeding more and more with the dominant type - in Europe the Cro-Magnon became such already 40 thousand years ago. At the same time, according to Darwin's theory, the characteristics of mixed forms, as not provided for by natural selection (nature), in each generation were increasingly replaced by the dominant characteristics of the Caucasian, being perceived over time as an atavism. As a result, Neanderthal traits among white Caucasians, although still found today, are only rare. The closer to the south, the more frequent they are, and in the zone of Western Asia and the Mediterranean they either become dominant or appear in the form of hybrid ethnic groups, which can be considered, for example, Semites, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Maghrebians, etc. Crossbreeding is whimsically selective: if Ethiopians have black skin and Caucasian facial features, while Semites, on the contrary, often have Negroid (Neanderthaloid) facial features with white or olive (“mulatto”) skin, etc.
It is not surprising that entire hybrid peoples arose in this zone, because it was here that the finale of the Great Neanderthal War played out for at least ten thousand years, and the two protoraces locked between Mediterranean Sea and the Atlas Mountains, continued to sort things out until they completely dissolved into each other and broke up into bizarrely combined, but rather homogeneous secondary races and ethnic groups. (The dominant type disappeared as such and the possibility of returning to it - reversion - became generally excluded, although from time to time both initial types necessarily appear, but only sporadically and fragmentarily.)
This is, in particular, narrated by the finds of archaeologists D. Garrod and T. McCone, made at the beginning of the twentieth century in Palestine on Mount Carmel in the Goat (Skhul) and Pechnaya (Tabun) caves. The remains of ancient people were discovered there, separated in time by about ten thousand years: ancient ash in the Pechnaya Cave is 40 thousand years old, and in Kozya Cave - 30 thousand years old. Over these ten thousand years, enormous changes occurred with the population inhabiting this area: the purely Neanderthal appearance gradually accumulated an increasing number of characteristic Cro-Magnon features. The inhabitants of the Skhul cave closest to us in time have the greatest number of Cro-Magnon characteristics (including an average height of 175 cm), while still remaining a hybrid.
Later, the conclusions drawn from the study of the Skhul and Tabun caves were fully confirmed by new finds in the same geographical area and in the same temporary soil layers. Namely: in the 1930s. on Mount Kafeh near Nazareth, the remains of six Neanderthals were found with such characteristic Cro-Magnon differences as a high cranial vault, a rounded back of the head, etc. Similar finds were then made in the caves of Yabrud (Syria), Haoua Fteah (Libya), Jebel Irhoud (Morocco) , Shanidar (Iraq). In 1963, a Japanese expedition found in Israel the skeleton of an entire Neanderthal, but... the height of a Cro-Magnon man (170 cm). And so on.
As we already know for sure, the Cro-Magnon man did not descend from the Neanderthal man. He fought with him to the death, completely cleared Europe of him (partially mingling with the enemy, but then squeezing out his residual features drop by drop for tens of thousands of years), but was unable to repeat this feat in Western Asia and the Mediterranean. Here, precisely in this region, the first “melting pot” in history arose, in which they found their death and new life both the “south-sweeping” echelons of Cro-Magnons, and the Neanderthals who fled from them but were unable to escape.
Does this mean that today only hybrid, intermediate or secondary forms remain of the ancient Neanderthals, that they all completely dissolved into a stronger race of winners or simply died out, giving way to other races?
No, there is no reason for such pessimism.
The Atlas Mountains stopped the weary pursuers, who had found in the blessed climate of the Mediterranean their cherished ideal, bequeathed by genes and tribal legends: they had nowhere and no need to strive further. But the persecuted, fleeing for their lives, filtered through the mountain barrier and gradually populated all of Africa and not only it. As a result, each proto-race became entrenched in its own area: the Cro-Magnons, who became Caucasians, at home, mainly in Europe; Neanderthals, who became Negroids and Australoids, - at home, mainly in Africa, then in the south of India (where they were forced out in the 2nd millennium BC by the descendants of the Cro-Magnons, the so-called “Andronovians” - the future “Indo-Aryans”), in Australia, Tasmania etc.; and the world's first mixed race - at home, in Western Asia and the Mediterranean. This happened approximately 30 thousand years ago.
Cro-Magnons - the origin of modern man
Cro-Magnons - common name ancient representatives of modern humans, who appeared much later than the Neanderthals and coexisted with them for some time (40-30,000 years ago). Their appearance and physical development were virtually no different from modern humans.
About 40–30,000 years ago, the third greatest event in the life of our planet occurred. The first, which occurred 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 emergence of a modern type of man, Homo sapiens - Homo sapiens.
40–30,000 years ago he appears and very quickly (quickly in this case, when a millennium is a trifle) takes the place of the Neanderthals.
Skeletons of Cro-Magnons found
As soon as the archaeologist from France Larte discovered 5 skeletons in the Cro-Magnon grotto under a thick layer of centuries-old sediments, he immediately guessed that he had met “acquaintances”. Shortly before this, the scientist learned that, by order of the authorities of the Haute-Garonne department, 17 skeletons, accidentally found in the Pyrenees cave of Aurignac, were buried in the parish cemetery. Larte was able to easily prove that the strict rules of Christian burial could be waived in relation to these people, and not only dug them back up, but also established (using stone tools and animal bones from the Aurignac cave) that these were contemporaries of the same Ice Age, in which classical Neanderthals lived. The tools of Aurignacian man are found in a slightly higher, that is, later, layer than the tools of the Chapellellians.
The two caves in which the most ancient people of the modern type were found gave them their names: the first man began to be called the Cro-Magnon man, and the first large period of his history - the Aurignac period (culture).
Soon followed by dozens of discoveries of Cro-Magnon skeletons and sites throughout Western Europe and North Africa, and the ancient “homo sapiens” appeared in all its splendor and splendor.
Sungir parking lot
Sculptural portraits of a girl and a boy from the Sungir site
Sungir is an Upper Paleolithic site of the Cro-Magnons on the territory of the Vladimir region. There is a well-known paired burial - a boy 12–14 years old and a girl 9–10 years old, lying with their heads facing each other. What could their bones tell us? As it turned out, the boy, despite his age, could throw a javelin well 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 the young Cro-Magnon woman.
The structure of the right humerus and cervical vertebrae indicate that the girl often raised her right arm up, and her head was constantly tilted to the left. So that such features can appear on the skeleton already in childhood, the load must be very strong! According to anthropologists, the girl regularly carried weights on her head and held them with her right hand. Perhaps, during the transitions from site to site, which were made by nomadic groups of Cro-Magnons, the little Cro-Magnon was a carrier along with adults.
What was the Cro-Magnon like?
The Cro-Magnons aroused admiration from their discoverers, mixed with envy: the first people - and what kind of people they were!
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 take him through 400 centuries, he, apparently, would have easily figured everything out and could have drawn up an equation, written a poem, worked on the machine and perform in a chess tournament.
Where did the Cro-Magnon man come from?
The Cro-Magnon man appeared - for archaeologists and anthropologists - somehow immediately: 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 lands. The newcomers were accompanied by an incredible technical revolution: instead of 3-4 primitive stone tools of the Neanderthals, about 20 stone and bone “devices” were used during the Aurignac period: awls, needles, tips, and so on. Immediately, as if out of nowhere, amazing cave art appears.
This powerful anthropological, technical and cultural revolution now determines the entire human history. For billions of years, animals existed only according to biological laws, improving, expanding the apparatus of adaptation, but not leaving the biological framework. But here it happens most important 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 organism: a stick, a stone.
According to one version, the Cro-Magnon man is the ancestor of all modern people, appearing 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 Indian Ocean coast, while 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 populations. 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 have things changed?
Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon
From now on, this creature no longer belongs entirely to biology; there is a gap in the “biological fence”. An Oldowan pebble, a chopper, a stone axe, a steam locomotive, an electronic computing device - these are already phenomena of the same order: a living creature uses and combines inanimate objects. “Who” subordinates “what”.
The breakthrough in biology that occurs in a social animal multiplies, intensifies in the pack, and 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 and agree with the new “organs” - tools: about 2 million years, the first ape-people change not only their equipment, but also their physical structure. A hand squeezing a beaten pebble causes the brain to think intensely and grow larger, but without remaining in debt, the brain sends its signals to the hand: it too improves.
Over thousands of centuries, tools go from rough stone, stick or bone to Neanderthal axes, stone scrapers and points.
During this period, the brain increases from 600–700 to 1500 cm³.
The gait ranges from semi-apelike to completely straight.
The hand - from a tenacious paw to the most perfect tool.
The collective - from the animal pack to the first human social forms.
Some law of evolution that we have not yet fully deciphered forces the ape-man’s body 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 any work. The same brain and the same hand as the Cro-Magnon man will control a bow after 20,000 years, a plow after 25,000, and after another several thousand years - a steam locomotive, a car, an airplane, a rocket.
To move from a primitive ax to a more advanced one, it was necessary to become a Neanderthal from Pithecanthropus. And in order to come from unpolished stone 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 ones - technical and social ones.
How can we actually know that human biological development has stopped?
Discussions on this topic have been going on for a very long time. It has been noticed that centuries-long, thousand-year fluctuations in the physical structure of man occur: the Cro-Magnon man was taller than us, now, as we know, humanity is growing quite quickly again. Several thousand years ago, human bones were more massive, then they became more elegant, tomorrow, perhaps, they will again become massive and bulky. Undoubtedly, there is “brachycephalization”, an increase in the number of short-headed people compared to long-headed ones.
The reasons for such changes are guesswork: food, new image life? The seriousness of these changes is also speculative: are these temporary phenomena, or tomorrow they will be covered by another change, or after several tens or hundreds of thousands of years a person will look different, not like now?
Guessing about the future, we have, however, the right to say: over the last 30-40 thousand years there have been gigantic changes in technology, but during this same time no fundamental “bodily” changes have occurred.
Obviously, the “thousand-great-grandfathers” laid a good foundation!
Cro-Magnon culture
Cro-Magnon created a rich and diverse culture of the Late Paleolithic. 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. The Cro-Magnons also significantly improved hunting methods (driven hunting), catching deer, mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, cave bears, wolves and other animals. They began to produce spear throwers (a spear could fly 137 m), as well as devices for catching fish (harpoons, hooks), and bird snares.
The Cro-Magnons lived, as a rule, in caves, but at the same time, they built various stone dwellings and dugouts, tents made of animal skins and even entire villages. Early neoanthropes could produce sewn clothing, often decorated. Thus, at the Sungir site (Vladimir region), more than 1000 beads were found on a man’s fur clothing, and many other decorations were found - bracelets, rings.
Cro-Magnon 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, ornaments, small stone and clay sculpture. Amazing images of horses, deer, bison, mammoths, female figurines, called “Venuses” by archaeologists for their splendor of forms, various objects carved from bone, horns and tusks or sculpted from clay, can undoubtedly testify to the highly developed sense of beauty among the Cro-Magnons. Cave art reached its peak approximately 19-15,000 years ago. Scientists believe that the Cro-Magnons could have had magical rites and rituals.
The life expectancy of Cro-Magnons was probably longer than that of Neanderthals: about 10% already lived to be 40 years old. During this era, the primitive communal system was formed.
Cro-Magnon cave with wall paintings
In the southwest of France, near the city of Villoner, Charente department, speleologists and archaeologists discovered a cave with ancient wall paintings.
Cave researchers managed to find a unique and extremely valuable for science underground hall with rock paintings back in December 2005, but it was reported unique cave much later. Such strong secrecy in Lately Scientists are increasingly guarding valuable finds to prevent them from being destroyed by unwanted visitors.
Work is underway to date the rock paintings. Experts do not rule out that they may be more ancient than those in the famous Lascaux cave and Altamira cave. According to the first impressions of experts, we are talking about a Cro-Magnon site, that is, a period of 30,000 years ago. According to scientists, the discovery in Villonere could be a revolution in science - previously it was believed that in such ancient times people did not resort to painting the walls of their underground dwellings.
Cro-Magnons- the general name of the early representatives of modern humans, who appeared much later than the Neanderthals and coexisted with them for some time (40-30 thousand years ago). In appearance and physical development they were practically no different from modern humans.
The term "Cro-Magnon" can mean in a narrow sense only the people discovered in the Cro-Magnon Grotto and living nearby 30 thousand years ago; in a broad sense, this is the entire population of Europe or the entire world of the Upper Paleolithic era.
The number of achievements and changes in the social organization of Cro-Magnon life was so great that it was several times greater than the number of achievements of Pithecanthropus and Neanderthal combined. The Cro-Magnons inherited from their ancestors a large active brain and quite practical technology, thanks to which they took an unprecedented step forward in a relatively short period of time. This manifested itself in aesthetics, the development of communication and symbol systems, tool-making technology and active adaptation to external conditions, as well as in new forms of social organization and a more complex approach to one's own kind.
Etymology
The name comes from the rock grotto of Cro-Magnon in France (the town of Les Eyzy de Taillac-Sireuil in the Dordogne department), where in 1868 the French paleontologist Louis Larte discovered and described several human skeletons along with tools from the Late Paleolithic. The age of this population is estimated at 30 thousand years.
Geography
The most important fossil finds: in France - Cro-Magnon, in Great Britain - the Red Lady of Pavyland, in the Czech Republic - Dolni Vestonice and Mladeč, Serbia - Lepenski Vir, in Romania - Peshtera ku Oase, in Russia - Markina Gora, Sungir , Denisova Cave and Oleneostrovsky burial ground, in the Southern Crimea - Murzak-Koba.
Culture
The Cro-Magnons were the carriers of a number of cultures of the Upper Paleolithic (Gravettian culture) and Mesolithic (Tardenoise culture, Maglemose, Ertebølle) eras. Subsequently, their habitats experienced migration flows of other representatives of the Homo sapiens species (for example, the Linear Band Ceramics Culture). These people made tools not only from stone, but also from horn and bone. On the walls of their caves they left drawings depicting people, animals, and hunting scenes. The Cro-Magnons made various decorations. They got their first pet - a dog.
Numerous finds indicate the presence of a cult of hunting. The animal figures were pierced with arrows, thus killing the animal.
The Cro-Magnons had funeral rites. Household items, food, and jewelry were placed in the grave. The dead were sprinkled with blood-red ochre, hair nets were put on, bracelets were put on the hands, flat stones were placed on the face, and they were buried in a bent position (fetal position).
According to another version, modern representatives of the Negroid and Mongoloid races formed autonomously, and the Cro-Magnons spread for the most part only in the area of the Neanderthals (North Africa, the Middle East, middle Asia, Europe). The first humans with Cromanoid features appeared 160,000 years ago in East Africa (Ethiopia). They left it 100,000 years ago. They entered Europe through the Caucasus to the Don River basin. Migration to the West began approximately 40,000 years ago, and 6 thousand years later cave paintings appeared in caves in France.
Genetics
see also
- The Guanches are an extinct indigenous people of the Canary Islands, representatives of the afalu-mechtoid subrace, considered close to the Cro-Magnons in their anthropological type.
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Literature
- P.I. Boriskovsky. pp. 15-24 // STRATUM plus. 2001-2002. No. 1. In the beginning there was a stone;
- Roginsky Ya. Ya., Levin M. G., Anthropology, M., 1963;
- Nesturkh M.F., Origin of Man, M., 1958, p. 321-38.
Popular science literature
- Eduard Storch - "Mammoth Hunters". A book with links to real archaeological sources
- B. Bayer, U. Birstein and others. History of mankind, 2002, ISBN 5-17-012785-5
Notes
Links
- - Upper Paleolithic site ancient man near Vladimir, 192 km from Moscow
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An excerpt characterizing Cro-Magnons
- Why, it’s possible.Likhachev stood up, rummaged through his packs, and Petya soon heard the warlike sound of steel on a block. He climbed onto the truck and sat on the edge of it. The Cossack was sharpening his saber under the truck.
- Well, are the fellows sleeping? - said Petya.
- Some are sleeping, and some are like this.
- Well, what about the boy?
- Is it spring? He collapsed there in the entryway. He sleeps with fear. I was really glad.
For a long time after this, Petya was silent, listening to the sounds. Footsteps were heard in the darkness and a black figure appeared.
- What are you sharpening? – the man asked, approaching the truck.
- But sharpen the master’s saber.
“Good job,” said the man who seemed to Petya to be a hussar. - Do you still have a cup?
- And over there by the wheel.
The hussar took the cup.
“It’ll probably be light soon,” he said, yawning, and walked off somewhere.
Petya should have known that he was in the forest, in Denisov’s party, a mile from the road, that he was sitting on a wagon captured from the French, around which the horses were tied, that the Cossack Likhachev was sitting under him and sharpening his saber, that there was a big black spot to the right is a guardhouse, and a bright red spot below to the left is a dying fire, that the man who came for a cup is a hussar who was thirsty; but he knew nothing and did not want to know it. He was in a magical kingdom in which there was nothing like reality. A large black spot, perhaps there was definitely a guardhouse, or perhaps there was a cave that led into the very depths of the earth. The red spot might have been fire, or maybe the eye of a huge monster. Maybe he is definitely sitting on a wagon now, but it may very well be that he is sitting not on a wagon, but on a terribly high tower, from which if he fell, he would fly to the ground for a whole day, a whole month - keep flying and never reach it . It may be that just a Cossack Likhachev is sitting under the truck, but it may very well be that this is the kindest, bravest, most wonderful, most excellent person in the world, whom no one knows. Maybe it was just a hussar passing for water and going into the ravine, or maybe he just disappeared from sight and completely disappeared, and he was not there.
Whatever Petya saw now, nothing would surprise him. He was in a magical kingdom where everything was possible.
He looked at the sky. And the sky was as magical as the earth. The sky was clearing, and clouds were moving quickly over the tops of the trees, as if revealing the stars. Sometimes it seemed that the sky cleared and a black, clear sky appeared. Sometimes it seemed that these black spots were clouds. Sometimes it seemed as if the sky was rising high, high above your head; sometimes the sky dropped completely, so that you could reach it with your hand.
Petya began to close his eyes and sway.
Drops were dripping. There was a quiet conversation. The horses neighed and fought. Someone was snoring.
“Ozhig, zhig, zhig, zhig...” the saber being sharpened whistled. And suddenly Petya heard a harmonious choir of music playing some unknown, solemnly sweet hymn. Petya was musical, just like Natasha, and more than Nikolai, but he had never studied music, did not think about music, and therefore the motives that unexpectedly came to his mind were especially new and attractive to him. The music played louder and louder. The melody grew, moving from one instrument to another. What was called a fugue was happening, although Petya did not have the slightest idea what a fugue was. Each instrument, sometimes similar to a violin, sometimes like trumpets - but better and cleaner than violins and trumpets - each instrument played its own and, not yet finishing the tune, merged with another, which started almost the same, and with the third, and with the fourth , and they all merged into one and scattered again, and again merged, now into the solemn church, now into the brightly brilliant and victorious.
“Oh, yes, it’s me in a dream,” Petya said to himself, swaying forward. - It's in my ears. Or maybe it's my music. Well, again. Go ahead my music! Well!.."
He closed his eyes. And from different sides, as if from afar, sounds began to tremble, began to harmonize, scatter, merge, and again everything united into the same sweet and solemn hymn. “Oh, what a delight this is! As much as I want and how I want,” Petya said to himself. He tried to lead this huge choir of instruments.
“Well, hush, hush, freeze now. – And the sounds obeyed him. - Well, now it’s fuller, more fun. More, even more joyful. – And from an unknown depth arose intensifying, solemn sounds. “Well, voices, pester!” - Petya ordered. And first, male voices were heard from afar, then female voices. The voices grew, grew in uniform, solemn effort. Petya was scared and joyful to listen to their extraordinary beauty.
The song merged with the solemn victory march, and drops fell, and burn, burn, burn... the saber whistled, and again the horses fought and neighed, not breaking the choir, but entering into it.
Petya didn’t know how long this lasted: he enjoyed himself, was constantly surprised by his pleasure and regretted that there was no one to tell it to. He was awakened by Likhachev's gentle voice.
- Ready, your honor, you will split the guard in two.
Petya woke up.
- It’s already dawn, really, it’s dawning! - he screamed.
The previously invisible horses became visible up to their tails, and a watery light was visible through the bare branches. Petya shook himself, jumped up, took a ruble from his pocket and gave it to Likhachev, waved, tried the saber and put it in the sheath. The Cossacks untied the horses and tightened the girths.
“Here is the commander,” said Likhachev. Denisov came out of the guardhouse and, calling out to Petya, ordered them to get ready.
Quickly in the semi-darkness they dismantled the horses, tightened the girths and sorted out the teams. Denisov stood at the guardhouse, giving the last orders. The party's infantry, slapping a hundred feet, marched forward along the road and quickly disappeared between the trees in the predawn fog. Esaul ordered something to the Cossacks. Petya held his horse on the reins, impatiently awaiting the order to mount. Washed cold water, his face, especially his eyes, burned with fire, a chill ran down his back, and something in his whole body was trembling quickly and evenly.
- Well, is everything ready for you? - Denisov said. - Give us the horses.
The horses were brought in. Denisov became angry with the Cossack because the girths were weak, and, scolding him, sat down. Petya took hold of the stirrup. The horse, out of habit, wanted to bite his leg, but Petya, not feeling his weight, quickly jumped into the saddle and, looking back at the hussars who were moving behind in the darkness, rode up to Denisov.
- Vasily Fedorovich, will you entrust me with something? Please... for God's sake... - he said. Denisov seemed to have forgotten about Petya’s existence. He looked back at him.
“I ask you about one thing,” he said sternly, “to obey me and not to interfere anywhere.”
During the entire journey, Denisov did not speak a word to Petya and rode in silence. When we arrived at the edge of the forest, the field was noticeably getting lighter. Denisov spoke in a whisper with the esaul, and the Cossacks began to drive past Petya and Denisov. When they had all passed, Denisov started his horse and rode downhill. Sitting on their hindquarters and sliding, the horses descended with their riders into the ravine. Petya rode next to Denisov. The trembling throughout his body intensified. It became lighter and lighter, only the fog hid distant objects. Moving down and looking back, Denisov nodded his head to the Cossack standing next to him.
- Signal! - he said.
The Cossack raised his hand and a shot rang out. And at the same instant, the tramp of galloping horses was heard in front, screams from different sides and more shots.
At the same moment as the first sounds of stomping and screaming were heard, Petya, hitting his horse and releasing the reins, not listening to Denisov, who was shouting at him, galloped forward. It seemed to Petya that it suddenly dawned as brightly as the middle of the day at that moment when the shot was heard. He galloped towards the bridge. Cossacks galloped along the road ahead. On the bridge he encountered a lagging Cossack and rode on. Some people ahead - they must have been French - were running with right side roads to the left. One fell into the mud under the feet of Petya's horse.
Cro-Magnons are the common name for the ancestors of people who existed 40-10 thousand years ago (). Cro-Magnons are a sharp leap in the development of human evolution, which became decisive not only in the survival of the human race, but also in the formation of Homo sapiens.
Cro-Magnons appeared much later, about 40-50 thousand years ago. According to some estimates, the earliest Cro-Magnons could have existed more than 100 thousand years ago. Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons are species of the genus Homo.
Neanderthals supposedly evolved from humans, who in turn were a species of Homo erectus (), and were not the ancestors of humans. Cro-Magnons descended from Homo erectus and are the direct ancestors of modern humans. The name "Cro-Magnon" refers to the discovery of several human skeletons with Late Paleolithic tools in the rock grotto of Cro-Magnon, France. Later, the remains of Cro-Magnons and their cultures were found in many parts of the world - in Great Britain, the Czech Republic, Serbia, Romania, and Russia.
Scientists offer different versions of the appearance and spread of Cro-Magnons, the ancestors of humans. Judging by one version, the first representatives of the ancestors of people with the Cro-Magnon type of development (a species of Homo erectus) appeared in East Africa 130-180 thousand years ago. About 50-60 thousand years ago, Cro-Magnons began to migrate from Africa to Eurasia. Initially, one group settled on the coast of the Indian Ocean, and the second settled in the steppes of Central Asia. A little later, migration began to Europe, which was settled by Cro-Magnons about 20 thousand years ago. There are also other versions about the spread of Cro-Magnons.
Cro-Magnons had a huge advantage over the Neanderthals that existed at the same time in Europe. Although the Neanderthals were more adapted to northern conditions, they were more powerful and stronger, they could not resist the Cro-Magnons. The direct ancestors of people were carriers of such a high culture for that time that the Neanderthals were clearly inferior to them in development, although, according to some studies, the Neanderthal brain was larger, he knew how to create tools for labor and hunting, used fire, created clothes and homes, and knew how to make jewelry , had speech, and so on. By that time, the Cro-Magnon man had already made quite complex jewelry from stone, horn and bone, as well as cave drawings. The Cro-Magnons were the first to come up with human settlements and lived in communities (tribal communities) that included up to 100 people. As dwellings in different parts The Cro-Magnons used caves, tents made of animal skins, dugouts, and houses made of stone slabs. The Cro-Magnons created clothing from skins and made more modern tools for labor and hunting than their ancestors and Neanderthals. Cro-Magnons also domesticated the dog for the first time.
As researchers suggest, migrating Cro-Magnons who arrived in Europe met here with Neanderthals, who long before them had already mastered the best territories, populated the most convenient caves, and settled in advantageous areas near rivers or in places where there was a lot of prey. Probably, in 1960, the Cro-Magnons, who had a higher development, simply exterminated the Neanderthals. Archaeologists find bones of Neanderthals at Cro-Magnon sites that have obvious traces of eating them, that is, Neanderthals were not only exterminated, but also eaten. There is also a version that only part of the Neanderthals were destroyed, the rest were able to assimilate with the Cro-Magnons.
The findings of the Cro-Magnons clearly indicate the existence of religious ideas among them. The beginnings of religion are also observed among Neanderthals, but many scientists express great doubts about this. Among the Cro-Magnons, cult rituals can be traced very clearly. Tens of thousands of years ago, the ancestors of people performed complex funeral rites, buried their relatives in a bent position in the fetal position (belief in the transmigration of the soul, rebirth), decorated the dead with various products, placed household items and food in the grave (belief in afterlife soul, in which she will need the same things as during earthly life - plates, food, weapons, etc.).