Introduction 3

1. Characteristics of the settlement of Cro-Magnons 4

2. Cro-Magnon lifestyle 9

Conclusion 28

References 29

Introduction

The origin of man and subsequent raceogenesis are quite mysterious. Nevertheless scientific discoveries The past two centuries have helped to slightly lift the veil on the mystery. It is now firmly established that in the conventionally called “prehistoric” era, two species of people lived on the earth in parallel - homo neanderthalensis (Neanderthal man) and homo cromagnonis, who is also commonly called homo sapiens-sapiens (Cro-Magnon man or homo sapiens). Neanderthal man was first discovered in 1857 in the Neander Valley near Düsseldorf. Cro-Magnon man - in 1868 in the Cro-Magnon grotto in the French province of Dordogne. Since the first discoveries of the two types of ancient people mentioned, numerous more discoveries have been made, which have given new material for scientific developments.

Preliminary conclusions from scientific discoveries. Judging by basic anthropometric characteristics and genetic analysis, Cro-Magnon man is almost identical to the modern species Homo sapiens-sapiens and is believed to be the direct ancestor of the Caucasian race.

This work aims to give a general description of the Cro-Magnon lifestyle.

For this purpose the following tasks are set:

Describe the settlement of Cro-Magnons.

Consider the Cro-Magnon lifestyle.

The work consists of an introduction, two chapters, a conclusion and a list of references.

Characteristics of the settlement of Cro-Magnons

By 30 thousand BC e. groups of Cro-Magnons had already begun moving east and north in search of new hunting lands. By 20 thousand BC. e. resettlement to Europe and Asia reached such proportions that in the newly developed areas the amount of game began to gradually decline.

People were desperately looking for new sources of food. Under the pressure of circumstances, our distant ancestors could well have become omnivores again, eating both plant and animal foods. It is known that it was then that people first turned to the sea in search of food.

The Cro-Magnons became more inventive and creative, creating more complex homes and clothing. Innovations allowed groups of Cro-Magnons to hunt new types of game in the northern regions. By 10 thousand BC e. Cro-Magnons spread across all continents, with the exception of Antarctica. Australia was inhabited 40 - 30 thousand years ago. After 5-15 thousand years, groups of hunters crossed the Bering Strait, coming from Asia to America. These later and more complex societies hunted primarily large animals. Cro-Magnon hunting methods gradually improved, as evidenced by large number animal bones discovered by archaeologists. In particular, in Solutre, a place in France, the remains of more than 10,000 horses were found. In Dolni Vestonic in the Czech Republic, archaeologists have unearthed a large number of mammoth bones. According to a number of archaeologists, since the migration of people to America, which occurred about 15 thousand years ago, most of the animal world of North and South America was destroyed in less than one millennium. The ease with which the Aztec civilization was defeated by the Spanish conquistadors is explained by the horror that gripped the Aztec foot soldiers at the sight of mounted warriors. The Aztecs had never seen horses before: even during the period of early migrations from the northern to central America their ancestors, in search of food, exterminated all the wild horses that lived on the American prairies. They did not even imagine that these animals could be used not only as a source of food.

The settlement of Cro-Magnons throughout the globe was called the “period of unconditional success of mankind.” The influence of the carnivorous lifestyle on human development turned out to be very significant. The migration of ancient peoples to areas with a more temperate climate stimulated genetic changes. The settlers had lighter skin, less massive bone structure and straighter hair. The skeleton, especially among the Caucasian peoples, formed slowly, and their light skin was more resistant to frost than dark skin. Fairer skin was also better at absorbing vitamin D, vital for deficiencies. sunlight(in areas where the days are shorter and the nights are longer).

By the time the modern type of man was finally formed, the vast geographical spaces of the Earth had already been mastered. They were also inhabited by archanthropes and paleoanthropes, so the Cro-Magnon man had only two empty continents left to explore - America and Australia. True, in relation to Australia the question remains open. It is possible that it was also inhabited by paleoanthropes, who contributed to the formation of the Australian neoanthrope. Most ancient skull in Australia found in the lake area. Mungo, 900 km west of Sydney. The antiquity of this skull is 27-35 thousand years. Obviously, the beginning of human settlement in Australia should be attributed to this time. Although the skull from Mungo does not have a supraorbital ridge, it is very archaic - it has a sloping forehead and a sharp bend in the occipital bone. Perhaps the skull from Mungo represents a local version of the paleoanthropus, and there is no reason to deny its participation in the further formation of Homo sapiens on the Australian continent.

As for America, from time to time information appears about the discovery of very ancient skeletons on its territory, but all these finds belong morphologically to Homo sapiens. Thus, scientists argue about the time of settlement of the American continent, but they are unanimous that America was settled by a modern type of man. Most likely, the settlement of the American continent occurred approximately 25-20 thousand years ago along the Bering Sea Isthmus, which existed at that time on the site of the present Bering Strait.

Cro-Magnon lived at the end of the Ice Age, or more precisely, at the end of the Würm glaciation. Warming and cooling followed each other quite often (of course, on a geological time scale), and glaciers either retreated or advanced. If at that time the surface of the Earth could be observed from a spaceship, it would resemble the multi-colored surface of a colossal soap bubble. Scroll this period so that millennia fit into minutes, and silvery-white ice fields creep forward like spilled mercury, only to be immediately thrown back by an unfolding carpet of green vegetation. Coastlines will waver like pennants in the wind as the blue of the ocean expands and contracts. Islands will rise from this blue and disappear again into it, like stones along which a stream is crossed, and natural dams and dams will block it, forming new routes for human migration. Along one of these ancient routes, the Cro-Magnon man traveled from what is now China north to the cold expanses of Siberia. And from there he probably traveled overland through Beringia to North America. 1

Over many generations, people gradually moved into northeast Asia. They could go in two ways - from the depths of the Asian continent, from the territory of present-day Siberia, and along the Pacific coast, skirting the Asian continent from the east. Obviously, there were several waves of “migrants” from Asia to America. The earliest of them moved along the coast, and their origin is associated with areas of East and Southeast Asia. Later Asian migrants moved from the interior of the Asian continent.

In America, people were greeted by the harsh expanses of Greenland and the sharply continental climate North America, tropical forests of the South American continent and cold winds of Tierra del Fuego. By settling in new areas, people adapted to new conditions, and as a result, local anthropological variants were formed. 2

The population density in the Cro-Magnon era was low - only 0.01-0.5 people per 1 sq. km, the number of groups was about 25-30 people. The entire population of the Earth at that time is estimated from several tens of thousands to half a million people. The territory of Western Europe was somewhat more densely populated. Here the population density was about 10 people per 1 km, and the entire population of Europe at the time of the Cro-Magnons’ residence there was approximately 50 thousand people.

It would seem that population densities were very low and human populations would not have to compete for food and water sources. However, in those days, man lived by hunting and gathering, and the orbit of his “vital interests” included vast territories over which herds of ungulates roamed - the main object of hunting for ancient man. The need to preserve and increase their hunting grounds forced man to move further and further into uninhabited areas of the planet.

The more advanced technology of Cro-Magnon man made available to him those food sources that were unfamiliar to his predecessors. Hunting tools have improved, and this has expanded the capabilities of the Cro-Magnon man in hunting new species. With meat food, people received new sources of energy. Eating nomadic herbivores, migrating birds, sea pinnipeds and fish, people, along with their meat, gained access to a very wide range of food resources.

The use of grains of wild cereals for food opened up even greater opportunities for Cro-Magnon man. In North Africa, in the upper reaches of the Nile, 17 thousand years ago there lived people in whose diet, apparently, cereals played a significant role. Stone sickles and primitive grain grinders have been preserved - limestone slabs with a shallow recess in the middle for grain and a recess in the form wide gutter, over which flour was probably poured. Obviously, these people were already making bread - in the form of simple unleavened cakes baked on hot stones.

Thus, Cro-Magnon man ate much better than his predecessors. This could not but affect his health and overall life expectancy. If for a Neanderthal the average life expectancy was about 25 years, then for a Cro-Magnon man it increased to 30-35 years, remaining at this level until the Middle Ages.

The dominance of the Cro-Magnons became the cause of their own downfall. They fell victim to their own success. Overpopulation soon led to the depletion of hunting areas. Long before this, herds of large animals in densely populated areas were almost completely destroyed. The result was competition for limited food sources. The rivalry in turn led to war, and the war to subsequent migrations.

Cro-Magnon lifestyle

For modern researchers, the most striking difference between the Cro-Magnon culture seems to be a technological revolution in stone processing. The meaning of this revolution was a much more rational use of stone raw materials. Its economical use was of fundamental importance for ancient people, since it allowed them not to depend on natural sources of flint, carrying a small supply of it with them. If you compare the total length of the working edge of the product that a person obtained from one kilogram of flint, you can see how much longer it is for the Cro-Magnon master compared to the Neanderthal and Archanthrope. The most ancient man could make only from 10 to 45 cm of the working edge of a tool from a kilogram of flint; the Neanderthal culture made it possible to obtain 220 cm of the working edge from the same amount of flint. As for the Cro-Magnon man, his technology turned out to be many times more effective - he obtained 25 m of working edge from a kilogram of flint.

The secret of the Cro-Magnon man was the emergence of a new method of processing flint - the method of knife-shaped plates. The point was that from the main piece of flint - the core - long and narrow plates were broken off, from which various tools were then made. The cores themselves had a prismatic shape with a flat top edge. The plates were broken off with a precise blow along the edge of the upper edge of the core, or pressed out using bone or horn squeezers. The length of the plates was equal to the length of the core - 25-30 cm, and their thickness was several millimeters. 3

The knife-blade method was probably of great help to hunters who went on multi-day expeditions into areas where not only flints, but also other fine-grained rocks were scarcely found. They could take with them a supply of cores or plates so that they would have something to replace spear tips that broke off during an unsuccessful throw or remained in the wound of an animal that managed to escape. And the edges of the flint knives, which were used to cut joints and tendons, broke off and became dull. Thanks to the knife-plate method, new tools could be made on the spot.

The second important achievement of the Cro-Magnon man was the development of new materials - bone and horn. These materials are sometimes called stone age plastics. They are durable, ductile and do not have the disadvantage of fragility, which is characteristic of wood products. Obviously, the aesthetic appeal of bone products from which beads, jewelry and figurines were made also played an important role. In addition, the source of these materials was practically inexhaustible - these were the bones of the same animals that Cro-Magnon man hunted.

The ratio of stone and bone tools immediately distinguishes between the inventory of Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon sites. Among Neanderthals, for every thousand stone tools there were, at best, 25 bone objects. At Cro-Magnon sites, bone and flint are equally represented, or even bone tools predominate.

With the advent of bone needles, awls and piercings, fundamentally new possibilities appeared in the processing of skins and in the manufacture of clothing. Large animal bones also served as building material for the homes of ancient hunters and fuel for hearths. 4

Cro-Magnon no longer depended on natural shelters such as caves and rock overhangs. He built houses where he needed them, and this created additional opportunities for long-distance migrations and the development of new lands.

The third achievement of the Cro-Magnons was the invention of fundamentally new hunting tools, unknown to his predecessors. These include, first of all, the bow and spear thrower. Spear throwers increased the range of the spears of ancient hunters, almost tripling their flight range and impact power, and played a large role in the life of ancient hunters. They were made, as a rule, from deer antlers, decorated with carved figures and patterns and often represented real works of art.

However, spear throwing involved hunting in open spaces, where it was easy to scare away prey and where the hunter himself remained unprotected in front of a wounded animal. The invention of the bow made it possible to hunt from cover, and the arrow flew further and faster than the spear.

No less important for Cro-Magnon man were devices for catching fish - a spear and a fish cross, which is an analogue of a fish hook. In South Africa, archaeologists have found small cylindrical stones with grooves that could have been used as sinkers for fishing nets.

Further progressive development of culture in the Upper Paleolithic was expressed primarily in the improvement of methods for their manufacture. The finishing of the tools has become more advanced, as the retouching technique is now also improving. Pressing forcefully with the end of an elastic bone stick or a flint squeezer on the edge of the stone, the person quickly and deftly chipped off (as if whittling away) long and narrow flakes of flint one after another. A new plate manufacturing technique is emerging. Previously, the plates were chipped from the disc-shaped core. Such a core was essentially a simple round pebble from which flakes were removed by beating it in a circle from the edges to the center. Now the plates were cleaved from the prismatic core.

Accordingly, the direction of the blows that separated the plates also changed. These blows were no longer applied obliquely, not obliquely, but vertically, from one end of the core to the other. Narrow and long plates of a new type obtained from prismatic cores made it possible to dramatically change and expand the range of small stone tools that were required in conditions of a way of life that was incomparably more developed than before: scrapers various types, points, piercings, various cutting tools. For the first time, flint tools appeared, the working edges of which were, in principle, designed in the same way as those of modern steel cutters. This is usually a massive cutting edge formed by chipping planes converging at an acute angle. With such a flint cutter it was possible to more easily cut wood, bone and horn, cut deep grooves into them and make cuts, sequentially removing one shaving after another.

In the Upper Paleolithic, a variety of bone spearheads and projectile weapons, including composite harpoons with barbs, first appeared. During excavations at the Meyendorf site, near Hamburg (Germany), harpoons and deer shoulder blades, pierced by such harpoons, were found.

The most important event in the development of hunting weapons was the invention of the first mechanical device for throwing darts - a spear thrower (throwing board), which is a rod with a hook at the end. By lengthening the swing of the arm, the spear thrower greatly increased the force of the blow and the flight range of the dart.

A variety of stone tools appeared for butchering carcasses and processing the skins of hunted animals, and for making wooden and bone products.

In the Upper Paleolithic, the way of life of people became significantly more complicated, and the structure of a primitive community developed. Certain groups of Neanderthals were, in all likelihood, alien and even hostile to each other. Great value for rapprochement different groups there should have been the emergence of exogamy, that is, the prohibition of marriage relations within the clan and the establishment of a permanent marriage relationship between representatives of different clans. The establishment of exogamy as a social institution, indicating the increasing development and complexity of social relations, can be attributed to the Upper Paleolithic time.

The increased productivity of hunting in the Upper Paleolithic contributed to an even clearer division of labor between men and women. Some were constantly busy hunting, others, with the development of relative sedentarism (due to the same greater productivity of hunting), spent more time in camps, managing the increasingly complex economy of the group. Women, in a more or less settled life, made clothes, various utensils, collected edible and technical plants, for example, those used for weaving, and prepared food. It is also extremely important that it was women who were the mistresses in public housing, while their husbands were strangers here.

Under the dominance of group marriage, characteristic of this stage of the clan system, when the father is precisely unknown, the children, of course, belonged to women, which strengthened the social role and influence on public affairs of the woman-mother.

All this served as the basis for a new form of primitive communal relations - the maternal clan community.

Direct indications of the formation of the maternal line at this time are, on the one hand, communal dwellings, and on the other, widespread images of women, in which one can see images of female ancestors, known from folklore, for example, among the Eskimos and Aleuts.

Based on the further complication of the social life of the Cro-Magnons, significant changes occur in all areas of their culture: a fairly developed art emerges, and in work practice a person accumulates experience and positive knowledge.

Thus, it was necessary to significantly change the general view of the life of the Cro-Magnon inhabitants not only of the Russian Plain, but of all of Europe. The Cro-Magnons used to be seen as wandering, pitiful savages, constantly moving from place to place, without knowing peace and more or less permanent settlement. Now the general way of life and their social system were revealed in a new way.

A picture of the dwelling of ancient mammoth hunters, absolutely exceptional in its expressiveness and scale, was revealed, for example, in one of the many Kostenki settlements - in Kostenki I. Studying this place, archaeologists found out that fire pits, animal bones and flints processed by human hands filled the foundation of the ancient dwelling here, beyond which finds were found only occasionally.

The ancient dwelling, discovered in Kostenki I by excavations in 1931-1936, had an oval outline in plan. Its length was 35 m, width - 15-16 m. The living area thus reached almost 600 square meters. m. With such a large size, the dwelling, naturally, could not be heated by one fireplace. In the center of the living area, along its long axis, there were hearth pits located symmetrically, at intervals of 2 m. There were 9 outbreaks, each about 1 m in diameter. These hearths were covered on top with a thick layer of bone ash and charred bones, which were used as fuel. Obviously, the inhabitants of the home, before leaving it, started their fires and did not clean them for a long time. They also left unused fuel reserves in the form of mammoth bones located near the hearths.

One of the hearths served not for heating, but for a completely different song. Pieces of brown iron ore and spherosiderite were burned in it, thus extracting mineral paint - bloodstone. This paint was used by the inhabitants of the settlement in such large quantities that the layer of earth that filled the recess of the dwelling was in some places completely painted red in various shades.

Another characteristic feature of the internal structure of a large dwelling in Kostenki I was also discovered. Large tubular mammoth bones, vertically dug into the ground, were found next to the hearths or somewhat to the side of them. Judging by the fact that the bones were covered with notches and notches, they served as a kind of “workbenches” for ancient craftsmen.

The main living area was bordered by additional rooms - dugouts, located along its contour in the form of a ring. Two of them stood out among the others due to their larger sizes and were located almost symmetrically on the right and left sides of the main dwelling. On the floor of both dugouts, the remains of fires that heated these rooms were seen. The roof of the dugouts had a frame made of large bones and mammoth tusks. The third large dugout was located at the opposite, far end of the living area and, obviously, served as a storage room for parts of the mammoth carcass. 5

A curious household touch is also the special pits - storage areas for especially valuable things. In such pits, sculptural images of women, animals, including a mammoth, a bear, a cave lion, and jewelry made from molars and fangs of predators, mainly the Arctic fox, were found. In addition, in a number of cases, selected flint blades were found, lying several pieces together, large tips of excellent quality, apparently deliberately hidden in specially dug recesses. Taking all this into account and noting that the figurines of women were broken, and that mostly unimportant things were found on the floor of the dwelling, one of the researchers of the Kostenki sites, P. P. Efimenko, believes that the large dwelling of Kostenki I was abandoned “under extraordinary circumstances.” In his opinion, the residents left their home, taking all the most valuable things. They left in place only what had been hidden in advance, including the figurines. The enemies, having discovered the figurines of women, smashed them, thereby destroying the ancestral “patrons” of the Kostenki community and causing even greater damage to it.

Excavations in Kostenki thus revealed a picture of the domestic life of an entire community, which included dozens, and maybe hundreds of people who lived in a vast, already quite well-arranged common dwelling of a complex design for that time. This complex and at the same time harmonious picture of the ancient settlement clearly shows that in the life of its inhabitants there was a certain internal routine, which was built on traditions inherited from previous generations, on rules of behavior of its members strictly defined by necessity and custom. These traditions were based on the experience of collective labor activity. The entire life of the Paleolithic community was based on the joint work of its members, on their common struggle with nature.

The most they have in terms of clothing is a more or less wide belt on the hips or something like a wide triangular tail descending at the back, as can be seen in the famous figurine from Lespugues (France). Sometimes it looks like a tattoo. Women paid much attention to their hairstyle, sometimes very complex and voluminous. The hair either falls down in a continuous mass, or is collected in concentric circles. Sometimes they are arranged in zigzag vertical rows.

Inside their low and cramped semi-underground winter home, people of Cro-Magnon times apparently remained naked or semi-naked. Only outside their homes did they appear in clothes made of skins and a fur hood. This is how they are presented in the works of Paleolithic sculptors - in fur clothes or naked with only a belt on the body.

Paleolithic figurines are interesting not only because they truthfully convey the appearance of Cro-Magnons, but also because they represent the art of the Ice Age.

In work, a person developed speech and thinking, learned to reproduce the forms of things he needed according to a previously worked out plan, which was the main precondition for creative activity in the field of art. In the course of the development of social and labor activity, specific needs finally arose, causing the emergence of art as a special sphere of social consciousness and human activity.

In the Upper Paleolithic, as we see, hunting techniques became more complex. House-building is emerging, a new way of life is taking shape. As the clan system matures, the primitive community becomes stronger and more complex in its structure. Thinking and speech develop. A person’s mental horizons expand immeasurably and become enriched. spiritual world. Along with these general achievements in the development of culture, the specifically important circumstance that the Upper Cro-Magnon man now began to widely use the bright colors of natural mineral paints was of great importance for the emergence and further growth of art. He also mastered new methods of processing soft stone and bone, which opened up previously unknown possibilities for him to convey phenomena of the surrounding reality in plastic form - in sculpture and carving.

Without these preconditions, without these technical achievements, born of direct labor practice in the manufacture of tools, neither painting nor the artistic processing of bones, which mainly represents the art of the Cro-Magnons known to us, could have arisen.

The most remarkable and most important thing in the history of primitive art is that from its first steps it followed mainly the path of truthful transmission of reality. The art of the Upper Cro-Magnon, taken in its best examples, is distinguished by amazing fidelity to nature and accuracy in conveying vital, most significant features. Already in the early times of the Upper Cro-Magnon, in the Aurignacian monuments of Europe, examples of truthful drawing and sculpture, as well as cave paintings identical in spirit, are found. Their appearance, of course, was preceded by a certain preparatory period. 6

The deep archaism of the earliest cave images is reflected in the fact that the emergence of the most ancient of them, the early Aurignacian ones, was caused at first glance by seemingly accidental associations in the minds of primitive man, who noticed the similarity in the outlines of stones or rocks with the appearance of certain animals. But already in Aurignacian times, next to examples of archaic art in which natural resemblance and human creativity are intricately combined, images were also widespread that owe their appearance entirely to the creative imagination of primitive people.

All these archaic examples of ancient art are characterized by a pronounced simplicity of form and the same dryness of color. Paleolithic man at first limited himself to only coloring his outline drawings with strong and bright tones of mineral paints. This was quite natural in dark caves, dimly lit by barely burning wicks or the fire of a smoky fire, where the undertones would simply be invisible. Cave paintings of that time are usually figures of animals, made with only one linear outline, outlined with red or yellow stripes, sometimes completely filled inside with round spots or filled with paint.

At the Magdalenian stage, new progressive changes took place in the art of the Cro-Magnons, mainly in cave paintings. They are expressed in the transition from the simplest contour and smoothly filled with paint drawings to multi-color paintings, from a line and a smooth monochromatic field of paint to a spot that conveys the volume and shape of an object with different thicknesses of paint, changing the strength of tone. Simple, although colorful drawings of that time are now growing, therefore, into real cave painting with the transfer of the forms of the living body of the depicted animals, characteristic of its best examples, for example in Altamira.

The vital, realistic nature of Cro-Magnon art is not limited to mastery of static depiction of animal body shapes. He found his most complete expression in the transfer of their dynamics, in the ability to capture movements, to convey instantly changing specific poses and positions.

Despite all its truthfulness and vitality, the art of the Cro-Magnons remains completely primitive, truly infantile. It is fundamentally different from the modern one, where the artistic story is strictly limited in space. The art of Cro-Magnons does not know air and perspective in the real sense of the word; in these drawings, the ground is not visible under the figures’ feet. There is no composition in it in our sense of the word, as the intentional distribution of individual figures on a plane. The best Cro-Magnon drawings are nothing more than instantly captured and frozen single impressions with their characteristic amazing liveliness in conveying movements.

Even in those cases where large accumulations of drawings are observed, no logical sequence, no definite semantic connection is found in them. Such, for example, is the mass of bulls in the Altamira painting. The accumulation of these bulls is the result of repeated drawing of figures, their simple accumulation over a long time. The random nature of such combinations of figures is emphasized by the piling of drawings on top of each other. Bulls, mammoths, deer and horses randomly lean on each other. Earlier drawings overlap with subsequent ones, barely visible underneath. This is not the result of a single creative effort of thought of one artist, but the fruits of the uncoordinated spontaneous work of a number of generations, connected only by tradition.

Nevertheless, in some exceptional cases, especially in miniature works, in bone engravings, and sometimes also in cave paintings, the beginnings of narrative art and, at the same time, a unique semantic composition of figures are discovered. These are primarily group images of animals, meaning a herd or herd. The appearance of such group patterns is understandable. The ancient hunter constantly dealt with herds of bulls, herds of wild horses, and groups of mammoths, which for him were the object of a collective hunt - a corral. This is exactly how they were depicted in a number of cases, in the form of a herd.

There are also the beginnings of a perspective image in the art of the Cro-Magnons, however, it is very peculiar and primitive. As a rule, animals are shown from the side, in profile, and people are shown from the front. But there were certain techniques that made it possible to revive the drawing and bring it even closer to reality. So, for example, the bodies of animals are sometimes shown in profile, and the head in front, with eyes towards the viewer. In images of a person, on the contrary, the body was shown in front, and the face in profile. There are cases when the animal is depicted from the front, schematically, but in such a way that only the legs and chest, branched deer antlers are visible, and the back part is missing, covered by the front half of the body. Along with plastic images of women, Upper Cro-Magnon art is also characterized by sculptural images of animals made from mammoth tusk, bone, and even clay mixed with bone ash, equally true to nature. These are the figures of mammoth, bison, horses and other animals, including predators.

Cro-Magnon art grew on a certain social basis. It served the needs of society and was inextricably linked with a certain level of development of productive forces and production relations. With the change in this economic basis, society changed, the superstructure changed, including art. Therefore, Cro-Magnon art can in no way be identical to realistic art. later eras. It is as unique in its originality, in its primitive realism, as the entire era of the Cro-Magnons that gave birth to it - this true “childhood of humanity.” 7

The vitality and truthfulness of the best examples of Cro-Magnon art were determined primarily by the peculiarities of working life and the worldview of Paleolithic people that grew out of it. The accuracy and sharpness of observations reflected in the images of animals were determined by the daily work experience of ancient hunters, whose entire life and well-being depended on knowledge of the lifestyle and character of animals, on the ability to track them down and master them. Such knowledge of the animal world was a matter of life and death for primitive hunters, and penetration into the life of animals was such a characteristic and important part of the psychology of people that it colored their entire spiritual culture, starting, judging by ethnographic data, with animal epics and fairy tales where animals perform the only or main characters, ending with rituals and myths, in which people and animals represent one inseparable whole.

Cro-Magnon art gave people of that time satisfaction with the correspondence of images to nature, the clarity and symmetrical arrangement of lines, and the strength of the color scheme of these images.

Abundant and carefully executed decorations delighted the human eye. The custom arose of covering the simplest everyday things with ornaments and often giving them sculptural forms. Such are, for example, daggers, the handle of which is turned into a figurine of a deer or a goat, and a spear winder with the image of a partridge. The aesthetic character of these decorations cannot be denied even in those cases when such decorations acquired a certain religious meaning and magical character.

The art of Cro-Magnons had a huge positive significance in the history of ancient mankind. Consolidating your labor in living images of art life experience, primitive man deepened and expanded his ideas about reality and gained a deeper, more comprehensive knowledge of it, and at the same time enriched his spiritual world. The emergence of art, which meant a huge step forward in human cognitive activity, at the same time greatly contributed to the strengthening of social ties.

Monuments of primitive art testify to the development of human consciousness, about his life at that distant time. They also talk about the beliefs of primitive man. The fantastic ideas from which the most ancient religious beliefs of Stone Age hunters arose include the beginnings of the veneration of the forces of nature and, above all, the cult of the beast.

The origin of the crude cult of the beast and hunting witchcraft was due to the importance of hunting as the main source of existence for the ancient people of this period, the real role that the beast played in their everyday life. From the very beginning, animals occupied an important place in the consciousness of primitive man and in primitive religion. 8

Transferring to the animal world the relationships characteristic of primitive tribal communities, inextricably linked to each other by marriage unions and exogamous norms, primitive man He also thought of this animal world as if in the form of a second and completely equal half of his own community. From here totemism developed, i.e. the idea that all members of a given genus come from a certain animal, plant or other “totem” and are connected with a given type of animal by an indissoluble bond. The very word totem, which has entered science, is borrowed from the language of one of the North American Indian tribes - the Algonquins, for whom it means “his clan”. Animals and people, according to totemic ideas, had common ancestors. Animals, if they wanted, could take off their skin and become people. Providing people with their meat of their own free will, they died. But if people saved their bones and performed the necessary rituals, the animals returned to life again, thus “ensuring” an abundance of food and the well-being of the primitive community.

The first weak beginnings of such a primitive cult of the beast can be discovered, judging by the finds in Teshik-Tash and in Alpine caves, perhaps already at the end of the Mousterian time. Its development is clearly evidenced by the monuments of cave art of the Upper Cro-Magnons, the content of which is almost exclusively images of animals: mammoths, rhinoceroses, bulls, horses, deer, predators such as the cave lion and bear. In the first place, naturally, are those animals whose hunting was the main source of food: ungulates.

To understand the meaning of these cave paintings, the conditions in which they are located are also important. Security itself cave paintings is determined by a stable hygroscopic regime inside caves, which are also isolated from the influence of temperature fluctuations that took place on the surface of the earth. The drawings are usually located at a considerable distance from the entrance, for example in Nio (France) - at a distance of 800 m. Constant human life at such a distance from the entrance to the caves, in the depths where eternal darkness and dampness reigned, was, of course, impossible. To get to the most wonderful repositories of cave art, sometimes even now you have to make your way into the dark depths of caves through narrow wells and crevices, often crawling, even swim across underground rivers and lakes blocking the further path.

What thoughts and feelings guided the primitive sculptors and painters of the Old Stone Age is no less clearly shown by their drawings. Here are depicted bison with darts or harpoons stuck into them, animals covered with wounds, dying predators with blood pouring out of their wide-open mouth. The figurines of mammoths show schematic drawings that may depict trapping pits, which, as some researchers believe, served to catch these giants of ice age.

The specific purpose of cave drawings is also evidenced by the characteristic overlap of some drawings on others, their multiplicity, which shows that the images of animals were apparently not made forever, but only for one time, for one or another separate rite. This is even more clearly visible on small smooth tiles, where overlapping patterns often form a continuous grid of intersecting and completely intricate lines. Such pebbles must have been re-coated each time with red paint, on which the design was scratched. Thus, these drawings were made only for one specific moment, “lived” only once.

It is believed that the female figurines of the Upper Cro-Magnons were also largely associated with hunting witchcraft rituals. Their significance is determined, according to these views, by the ideas of ancient hunters, who believed in a kind of “division of labor” between men who killed animals, and women who, with their witchcraft, were supposed to “attract” animals to the blows of hunters’ spears. This assumption is well justified by ethnographic analogies.

Female figurines are, at the same time, invisible evidence of the existence of a cult of female spirits, characteristic of ancient communities with a maternal line. This cult is well known from the beliefs of various tribes, including not only agricultural, but also purely hunting ones, such as the Aleuts and Eskimos of the 17th-18th centuries. n. e., whose way of life, conditioned by the harsh Arctic nature and hunting, showed the greatest similarity with the way of life of Cro-Magnon hunters in the periglacial regions of Europe and Asia. 9

The culture of these Aleut and Eskimo tribes in its overall development has, of course, gone far ahead in comparison with the culture of the Upper Cro-Magnons, but what is even more interesting is that in their religious beliefs much has been preserved that helps to understand the ideas that brought to life the female Paleolithic figurines.

The development and nature of primitive religious ideas and rituals that developed among the Cro-Magnons can also be judged from Upper Paleolithic burials. The earliest burials of the Upper Cro-Magnons were discovered in the vicinity of Menton (Italy); they belong to the Aurignacian time. People who buried their dead relatives in the Menton grottoes buried them in clothes lavishly decorated with sea shells, necklaces and bracelets made of shells, animal teeth and fish vertebrae. Flint blades and bone dagger-shaped points were found among the tools found in the skeletons of Menton. The dead were covered with red mineral paint. Thus, in the Grimaldi caves in the vicinity of Menton, two skeletons were found - young men 15-17 years old and old women, laid on a cooled fire in a crouched position. On the young man’s skull, decorations from his headdress, consisting of four rows of drilled sea shells, survived. On the old woman's left hand were bracelets made of the same shells. There were also flint plates near the young man’s body. Above, but also still in the Aurignacian layer, lay two children's skeletons, in the pelvic area of ​​which about a thousand drilled shells were found, apparently decorating the front of the clothing.

Cro-Magnon burials show that by that time the custom had developed to bury the dead with jewelry and tools that they used during life, with food supplies, and sometimes even with materials for making tools and weapons. From this we can conclude that at this time ideas about the soul are already emerging, as well as about the “land of the dead”, where the deceased will hunt and lead the same life as he led in this world.

According to these ideas, death usually meant a simple departure of the soul from the human body to the “world of ancestors.” The “land of the dead” was often imagined to be located in the upper or lower reaches of the river where a given tribal community lived, sometimes underground, in the “underworld,” or in the sky, or on an island surrounded by water. Once there, the souls of people obtained food for themselves by hunting and fishing, built houses and lived a life similar to that on earth.

Something similar to these beliefs should have existed, judging by the archaeological monuments noted above, among Paleolithic people. From that era, such views have reached our time. They are also at the basis of modern religions, which developed in a class society.

A characteristic feature of Cro-Magnon burials that deserves attention is the sprinkling of bloodstone over the dead in their graves. According to the views described by ethnographers on the role of red paint in various rituals among many tribes of recent times, red paint - bloodstone - was supposed to replace blood - source vitality and the seat of the soul. Judging by their wide distribution and obvious connection with the hunting way of life, such views go back to the distant primitive past.

Conclusion

So, in conclusion, we can say the following: Cro-Magnon archaeological cultures differ significantly from each other in some specific features of flint and bone products. This is one of the ways in which the Cro-Magnon culture as a whole differs from the Neanderthal culture: the tools of Neanderthals from various regions have a very high degree of similarity. Perhaps such differentiation of Cro-Magnon products means real cultural differences between individual tribes of ancient people. On the other hand, a certain style in the manufacture of tools could reflect the individual style of some ancient master, a manifestation of his personal aesthetic preferences.

Cro-Magnon culture includes another phenomenon that arose only among modern humans. We are talking about the art of the Stone Age, art, the works of which can be considered not only the wall paintings of Ancient caves, but also the very tools of Cro-Magnon man, tools, sometimes so perfect in their lines and forms that they can hardly be reproduced by anyone living today people.

Thus, the problems have been solved, the goal of the work has been fulfilled.

References

1. Boriskovsky P.I. The most ancient past of mankind. M., 2001.

2. Ancient civilizations. Under the general editorship of G. M. Bongard-Levin. M., 2009.

3. Ancient civilizations: from Egypt to China. M., 2007.

4. Ibraev L. I. Origin of man. M., 2004

5. History of the ancient world. Ed. D. Redera et al. - M., 2001. - Parts 1-2.

6. History primitive society. In 3 vols. M., 2000.

7. Mongait A.L. Archeology of Western Europe / Stone Age. M., 2003.

Abstract >> Culture and art

In Neanderthal cultures, in cultures Cro-Magnons the Late Paleolithic was dominated by stone tools... similar techniques and tools, Cro-Magnons received an almost inexhaustible source... and clothing in construction Cro-Magnons basically followed the old ones...

Origin and evolution of man (4)

Abstract >> Biology

What Neanderthals in different regions evolved into Cro-Magnons. Consequently, the racial characteristics of modern people...: their extermination by more developed Cro-Magnons; mixing of Neanderthals with Cro-Magnons; self-destruction of Neanderthals in skirmishes with...

Human evolution (4)

Abstract >> Biology

Years ago Neoanthropus stage ( Cro-Magnon). Homo sapiens Formation of appearance... Mousterian and Upper Paleolithic. Cro-Magnons sometimes called all fossil people... and onions. High level culture Cro-Magnons This is also confirmed by art monuments: rock...

Problems of the origin of man and his early history

Abstract >> Sociology

Years ago - it's called Cro-Magnons. Note that Cro-Magnons in Europe 5 thousand ... than Mousterian points. Cro-Magnons widely used for manufacturing..., and the coexistence of Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons has already been proven. Some scientists believe...

Physiological characteristics of a person

Abstract >> Medicine, health

Which differ in Negroid features. Cro-Magnons led a sedentary lifestyle... fishing- various patterns. Cro-Magnons they buried the dead, which indicates... religious beliefs. After the occurrence Cro-Magnon the person has not changed biologically. ...

Where did the huge Cro-Magnon population come from on Earth and where did it disappear to? How did races appear? Whose descendants are we?

Why were Cro-Magnons distributed throughout the world? Could one population live in a huge area from Vladimir to Beijing? What archaeological finds support this theory? Why was the Cro-Magnon brain more brain modern man? Why do the classic Neanderthals of Europe bear little resemblance to modern humans? Could they have lost their speech a second time? Was Neanderthal Bigfoot and hunted by Cro-Magnon man? During what period did the geological and cultural catastrophe occur? What did the sudden and simultaneous melting of two large glaciers lead to? Where did the Cro-Magnons disappear to? How were the major racial groups formed? Why was the Negroid racial group the last to appear? Did the Cro-Magnons maintain contact with their cosmic curators? Paleoanthropologist Alexander Belov discusses whose descendants we are and who is watching us from space?

Alexander Belov: Soviet anthropologist Debets, he believed that he even introduced into science the term “Cro-Magnons in in a broad sense this word." What does this mean? People of the Upper Paleolithic are more or less similar to each other, regardless of where they lived, on the Russian Plain, in Europe, or in Australia, or in Indonesia, and even in America there are remains of Cro-Magnons. In fact, they were distributed throughout the world, and from this we conclude that the population was more or less homogeneous. And so Debets just introduced into science the concept of “Cro-Magnons in the broad sense of the word.” He united into this population all the people of the Upper Paleolithic who lived regardless of where they lived, they were more or less similar to each other, and he called them with this term, “Cro-Magnons in the broad sense of the word.” That is, it is not associated with the Cro-Magnon Grotto in France or in some parts of Europe. They find, for example, the skull of Sungir 1, an old man according to Vladimir, he is very similar, a Cro-Magnon, to a similar skull 101, which was found near Beijing in the Cave of Dragon Bones, in fact, just one skull. You can see on the map how great the distance is between Vladimir and Beijing, that is, approximately the same population lived over a huge distance. It was, of course, not numerous, that is, there are few remains of Cro-Magnons, it must be said, that is, this population was numerically small. And this is what is characteristic of Cro-Magnons: they are united not only by a single morphotype, they are also united by the presence of a large brain. If on average a modern person has an average brain volume of 1350 cubic centimeters, then Cro-Magnons have an average of 1550, that is, a modern person, alas, has lost 200-300 cubic centimeters. Moreover, he lost not just brain cubes, as if in the abstract, he lost precisely those zones, those representations of the associative and parietal frontal zones of the brain, that is, this is precisely the substrate with which we think, where the intellect itself is based. And in fact, the frontal lobes are responsible for inhibitory behavior, for the fact that, roughly speaking, we do not restrain our emotions, we expose ourselves to some kind of unrestrained, emotional affects. And if these brakes are turned off, then, of course, a person can already switch to some affective behavioral reactions. This is very bad and has a detrimental effect on his own fate and on the fate of the society in which he lives. And this is exactly what we see among the Neanderthals, the early Neanderthals, they are called atypical, they lived about 130 thousand years ago, they are found in Asia, mainly in Europe, Asia Minor, they were more or less similar to modern people. And the classic Neanderthals of Europe, their chin protrusion actually disappears, their larynx becomes high, they have a flat base of the skull. This suggests that Neanderthals lost speech for the second time, this is what this suggests. Alexander Zobov, our famous Russian and Soviet anthropologist, spoke and wrote a lot about this. And in fact, a paradoxical thing turns out, and their culture also becomes practical, so they dig a trench and accidentally discover the skeleton of Neanderthals without any accompaniment of archaeological equipment or so on. This suggests that this is, if you like, roughly speaking, a Bigfoot of the Upper Paleolithic era. And, apparently, they were simply hunted by Cro-Magnons. In Croatia, this massacre is known, when 20 bones and broken skulls of Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons were found; most likely, such fights or battles in the Upper Paleolithic took place between Neanderthals, the predecessors of modern people, and Cro-Magnons.

And in this regard, the question arises, where did the Cro-Magnons go, strictly speaking, and who are we? modern people? There are several versions on this matter, but if you follow the tradition of Soviet anthropology and Debets, in particular, then a completely clear and distinct picture is drawn that the classical Cro-Magnons, Cro-Magnon-like types, they spread throughout the entire Earth, created a rather high culture, it was, apparently, connected with some new unusual technologies that we have already lost, we don’t know, and with some knowledge that we, unfortunately, also lost, and with a connection, perhaps, with our cosmic predecessors, this also indicates , for example, wands, some astronomical calendar carved circles and others different features, this is evidence of this. And somewhere around the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary, about 10 thousand years ago, a geological cultural catastrophe occurs. But in historical terms, this Upper Paleolithic is actually replaced by the Mesolithic, Middle stone age, that is, the ancient Stone Age, is being replaced by the Mesolithic. And in fact, the Middle Stone Age, during this period of time amazing things happen. Suddenly, I would say, both glaciers melt, suddenly melt, and the Scandinavian glacier is huge, the thickness of which reached three kilometers in height, and it reached Smolensk, that’s what it was, its epicenter over the Gulf of Bothnia. At the same time, the North American glacier, which generally occupied the size of half of North America, the continent, in terms of thickness and breadth, is also melting. And naturally, the level of the World Ocean during this period, 12-10 thousand years before new era, it rises sharply to 130-150 meters. And it is clear that people who find themselves in this situation will be divided, Africa is separated from Asia, Europe is also separated from Asia by water barriers, that is, in place of the Russian Plain, seas are formed here, which merge into the Caspian and the Black Sea, and into the Mediterranean then. Many racial groups, future racial groups, finding themselves in isolation, in island isolation, so to speak, firstly, the population size decreases sharply, that is, anthropologists talk about a “bottleneck” that racial groups, all racial groups go through, this is exactly what is happening at this moment, and that, in general, they are geologically separated. And once in isolation, in geological isolation, the following basic racial groups begin to form: Caucasians in Europe, Mongoloids in Asia, the Far East, Asia, Central Asia, and Africans on the African continent. This is due to the fact that genetic exchange does not take place between these groups for several thousand years, at least.

Here we must add cultural isolation to this. Cultural isolation may have done even more negative things than such purely geographical isolation. Negroids are changing quite a lot, and it is the Negro race that appears at this moment. Negroids, they are very young, one might say, that is, this is the Neolithic, the end of the Mesolithic, the beginning of the Neolithic, at least 9-10 thousand years before the new era, blacks appear.

Cro-Magnon lifestyle.

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

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

A distinctive feature of the Cro-Magnons was hunting large herds of large animals. They learned to drive such herds to areas where it was easier to slaughter the animals, and carried out mass slaughter. Cro-Magnons also followed the seasonal migrations of large mammals. This is evidenced by their seasonal residence in selected areas. Late Stone Age Europe was teeming with large wild mammals from which much meat and fur could be obtained. After that, their number and variety were never so great.

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

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

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

The opportunity to live in conditions of the Ice Age, in addition to housing, was provided by new types of clothes. Bone needles and images of people dressed in fur indicate that they wore tight-fitting pants, jackets with hoods, shoes and mittens with well-stitched seams.

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

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

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

Cro-Magnon burials also provide evidence of their symbolic rituals and growth in wealth and social status.

Rice. 2.20. Drawing of a bison, Niaux, France Fig. 2.21. Necklace of arctic fox teeth, Moravia

Buriers often sprinkled red ocher on the dead, which is believed to symbolize blood and life, perhaps indicating that the Cro-Magnons believed in an afterlife. Some corpses were buried with rich decorations (Fig. 2.21); these are early signs that in hunter-gatherer societies Rich and respected people began to appear.

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

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

10 thousand years ago, the cold Pleistocene era gave way to the Holocene, or “entirely new” era. This is the time of the mild climate in which we live now. As Europe's climate warmed, the area occupied by forests expanded. Forests were advancing, occupying vast areas of the former tundra, and the sea, whose level was rising, flooded low coasts and river valleys.

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

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

The tools and weapons they made allowed the northern Europeans to use all these food sources. These specific groups of hunters and gatherers created Mesolithic culture, or " middle stone age" It was so named because it followed the ancient Stone Age, which was characterized by the hunting of huge herds of animals. Mesolithic culture laid the foundation for the emergence of agriculture in Northern Europe, characteristic of the New Stone Age. Lasting only from 10 to 5 thousand years ago, the Mesolithic was only a brief moment of the prehistoric period. From the bones found at Mesolithic sites, it is clear that the prey of Mesolithic hunters were red deer, roe deer, wild boar, wild bulls, beavers, foxes, ducks, geese and pike. Huge piles of mollusk shells indicate that they were fed on the coasts of the Atlantic and North Sea. Mesolithic people also collected roots, fruits and nuts. Groups of people apparently migrated from place to place following seasonal changes in food sources.

Archaeologists believe that Mesolithic people lived in smaller groups than their possible ancestors - the Cro-Magnons. But food production now remained at a more stable level during all year round, as a result of which the number of sites and, consequently, the population increased. Life expectancy also appears to have increased.

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

One of the main types of hunting weapons were bow and arrows, which were probably invented in the Late Paleolithic. A skilled archer could hit a stone goat at a distance of 32 m, and if his first arrow missed the target, he had time to send another after it.

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

New examples of large stone tools helped Mesolithic people make shuttles, oars, skis and sleighs. All this taken together made it possible to develop huge areas of water for fishing and made it easier to move through snow and wetlands.

Hominid triad

Since the only modern representative of the family is man, three most important systems, considered truly hominid, have historically been identified from its characteristics.

These systems were called the hominid triad:

− upright walking (bipedia);

− a hand adapted for making tools;

− highly developed brain.

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

Miocene cooling: in the middle and end of the Miocene, as a result of global climate cooling, there was a significant reduction in the area of ​​tropical forests and an increase in the area of ​​savannas. This could have caused the transition of some hominoids to a terrestrial lifestyle. However, it is known that the oldest known erect walking primates lived in tropical forests.

Labor concept: according to the well-known labor concept of F. Engels and its later variants, the emergence of upright walking is closely related to the specialization of the monkey’s hand for labor activity - carrying objects, cubs, manipulating food and making tools. Subsequently, labor led to the emergence of language and society. However, according to modern data, upright walking arose much earlier than the manufacture of tools. Upright walking arose at least 6 million years ago in Orrorin tugenensis, and the oldest tools from Gona in Ethiopia date back to only 2.7 million years ago.

Rice. 2.23. Human and gorilla skeleton

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

According to C. Owen Lovejoy's concept, upright walking arose due to a special reproductive strategy, since hominids raised one or two young for a very long time. In this case, caring for the offspring reaches such complexity that it becomes necessary to free the forelimbs. Carrying helpless young and food over a distance becomes a vital element of behavior. According to Lovejoy, upright walking arose in tropical forest, and bipedal hominids moved to the savannas.

In addition, it has been proven experimentally and using mathematical models that moving long distances with average speed It is energetically more beneficial to walk on two legs than on four.

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

· position of the foramen magnum - in erect walkers it is located in the center of the length of the base of the skull, opening downwards. This structure has been known for about 4 - 7 million years ago. In tetrapods - in the back of the base of the skull, turned back (Fig. 2.23).

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

· the structure of the long bones of the legs - upright walkers have long legs, knee and ankle joints have characteristic structure. This structure has been known since 6 million years ago. In quadrupedal primates, the arms are longer than the legs.

· structure of the foot - in upright walkers the arch (instep) of the foot is pronounced, the toes are straight, short, the big toe is not laid aside, is inactive (the arch is already expressed in Australopithecus afarensis, but the toes are long and curved in all australopithecines, in Homo habilis the foot is flattened, but the toes are straight, short), in quadrupeds the foot is flat, the toes are long, curved, and mobile. In the foot of Australopithecus anamensis, the big toe was inactive. In the foot of Australopithecus afarensis the big toe was opposed to the others, but much weaker than in modern monkeys, the arches of the feet were well developed, the footprint was almost like that of a modern person. In the foot of Australopithecus africanus and Australopithecus robustus, the big toe was strongly set apart from the others, the toes were very mobile, the structure was intermediate between apes and humans. In the Homo habilis foot, the big toe is completely adducted to the rest.

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

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

Upright walking became fully modern only about 1.6-1.8 million years ago.

2. The origin of the hand, adapted for the manufacture of tools. The hand that can make tools is different from the hand of a monkey. Although the morphological characteristics of the working hand are not completely reliable, the following labor complex can be distinguished:

Strong wrist. Australopithecus, starting with Australopithecus afarensis, has a wrist structure intermediate between apes and humans. An almost modern structure is observed in Homo habilis 1.8 million years ago.

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

Wide terminal phalanges of the fingers. Australopithecus robustus, Homo habilis and all later hominids had very wide phalanges.

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

The hand bones of the oldest upright hominoids (Australopithecus anamensis and Australopithecus afarensis) have a mixture of ape and human features. Most likely, these species could use objects as tools, but not make them. The first makers of real tools were Homo habilis. The tools were probably also made by the massive South African australopithecus Australopithecus (Paranthropus) robustus.

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

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

Large overall brain size. Australopithecus had a brain size similar to that of modern chimpanzees. A rapid increase in size occurred in Homo habilis about 2.5-1.8 million years ago, and in later hominids there is a gradual increase to modern values.

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

The structure of the lobes of the brain. In humans, the inferior parietal and frontal lobe, acute angle convergence of the temporal and frontal lobes, the temporal lobe is wide and rounded in front, the occipital lobe is relatively small, hanging over the cerebellum. Australopithecines had the same structure and size of the brain as those of apes.

Rice. 2.24. Primate brain: a – tarsier, b – lemur, Fig. 2.25. Chimpanzee pelvis (a);

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

The so-called paleolithic revolution- the transition to more advanced technology of production and use of tools, which occurred about 40 thousand years BC. During this period, there was an explosive flowering of human intellectual and cultural activity associated with the widespread spread of people of the modern physical type, replacing the ancient species of people. Bony remains were first found in the Cro-Magnon Grotto in France.

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

Evolutionary anthropologists believe that the population of Cro-Magnons ranged between 1 and 10 million people, and over 100 thousand years they must have buried about 4 billion bodies with accompanying artifacts. A significant portion of these 4 billion burials should have been preserved. However, only a few thousand have been found.

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

Nutrition of Cro-Magnons

It has been established that the diet of people of the Late Paleolithic era (40-12 thousand years ago), who lived in Europe, consisted of wild fruits, vegetables, leafy plants, roots, nuts, and lean meat. The results of anthropological studies clearly indicate that in the course of human evolution, a large role was played by a diet containing little fat, very little sugar, but including a large amount of fiber and polysaccharides. The cholesterol content of wild game meat is approximately the same as that of livestock meat, but wild game meat contains an almost ideal ratio of saturated and unsaturated fatty acids. Late Paleolithic people consumed a lot of animal protein through meat, which contributed to physical development and rapid puberty, but not longevity. An analysis of the remains of ancient people revealed characteristic diseases caused by poor nutrition, in particular vitamin deficiencies, and their life expectancy was on average 30 years.

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

Cro-Magnon culture

Religion

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

Cave painting (rock)

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

The fresco in Altamira depicts a herd of bison and other animals of the Upper Paleolithic fauna (the length of the figures is up to 2.25 m). It is noteworthy that in 1880, at an international congress in Lisbon, this find, without any discussion, was declared a fake to discredit evolutionary science.

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. Cro-Magnons made various jewelry. 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, Middle East, Central 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 after 6 thousand years it appeared rock painting in the caves of France.

Migration of Cro-Magnons to Europe

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 of an ancient man near Vladimir, 192 km from Moscow

Extinct genera Hominini/Hominina People (genus Homo) Hominid finds Origin Spreading

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 spread 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 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 instant 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.