I would never have thought that there was so much controversy surrounding the discovery of the most ancient person. Basically, they are of a purely technical nature, that is, the question is raised: can a humanoid creature that did not fully possess the necessary qualities be attributed to the most ancient person? For example, the creature walked upright, made tools, but it did not speak yet.
The first discovery of ancient man
First of all, you need to figure out who is considered a person? A reasonable person must meet at least three characteristics:
- Upright walking.
- The presence of speech.
- The ability to think.
The third characteristic includes the ability to handle fire, the ability to make tools, and the use of hunting skills, etc. Based on these features, scientists single out the highest stage in human evolution and call it Homo sapiens sapiens (reasonable reasonable man ).
It was previously believed that the oldest remains of this species were discovered in 1947 in the Sterkfontein caves of South Africa and this place was called the "Cradle of Humankind".
The latest data on ancient man
In 2011, a group of archaeologists from Germany and Morocco analyzed the remains of humanoid creatures found back in the 60s. The bones were discovered in northern Africa (Morocco) at the paleontological site of Jebel Irhud in one of the caves. The remains found belonged to five individuals, including a child and a teenager. The technology of the time did not allow scientists to thoroughly study the bones, so they thought they had found the skeletons of Neanderthals. With the help of computed tomography, modern archaeologists have reconstructed and created three-dimensional models of the skulls of the discovered people. When comparing them with previously found samples of the skulls of Neanderthals, Australopithecus and erectus, it turned out that the front part is more similar to a modern person.
Thus, their belonging to the genus Homo sapiens sapiens was proved. These relics have been dated to 300,000 years ago. BC e. The finds in southern Africa date back to 195,000 years ago. BC e.
On the territory of Russia, many discoveries have been made that contribute to understanding how a person developed in ancient times, how his development took place. The most interesting ancient burials that were found on the territory of the Russian Federation helped develop hypotheses about evolution, but some only added questions.
These include, for example, a find in the Chagyrskaya cave in Altai. An analysis of the remains found there showed that during their lifetime these ancient people had similarities with both Neanderthals and sapiens. Presumably, they were mestizos of Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons. They also have very specific features, such as an elongated coronoid process on the ulna, which leads researchers to some confusion regarding the migration of these representatives of the ancient people.
Another oddity was discovered during excavations of ancient burials in the Chelyabinsk region. The woman, who belonged, presumably to the people of the Sarmatians, turned out to have an elongated skull. It is known that such an operation was achieved by winding two tablets to the head, similar procedures were carried out in Egypt and some Indian tribes. However, it is still not known why this was done. The Chelyabinsk burial ground is dated to the 2nd-3rd centuries AD, among which some burial grounds had a horseshoe shape.
Quite a long time ago, the Shulgan-Tash burl cave was discovered in Bashkiria, in which researchers found rock paintings that clarified some points regarding the life of people of the Paleolithic era, but the find in the Rostov region confuses researchers. The carts found in the burial grounds of the Manych Catacomb culture were left there for completely obscure purposes. It is assumed that in the 23rd century BC. they were placed in burial grounds for ritual purposes: to provide comfort to the dead in the other world.
A considerable mystery was the discovery in the Omsk region near the village of Ust-Ishim of a femur, the age of which was estimated at 45 thousand years. This was evidence of the earliest human penetration into the northern part of Eurasia. This time corresponds to the period that came after the crossing of Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons, about which not much is known. But the study of the remains allows you to establish a connection with other types of hominids.
Separately, it is worth mentioning the discovery of the remains in the Denisova Cave, which is located on the border of the Altai Territory. Analysis of body parts showed that their owner lived about 40 thousand years ago. At the same time, the differences in the genome from modern humans are much greater than those of Neanderthals, which allows us to assert an unknown branch of evolution. These people developed in parallel with the Neanderthals, and broke away from a common ancestor more than 1 million years ago.
In the Voronezh region, on the territory of the Kostenkovskaya Stone Age site, remains of 37 thousand years old were found, which indicate a genome related to modern Europeans. This showed that there was a metapopulation that occupied territory from Europe and northern Asia.
Human brains predate humans
Hominid brains reorganized before the size increase that was thought to draw the line between human and primate brains. The discovery was made based on analysis of the remains of a small-brained hominid from South Africa. The researchers studied the inside of the skull Stw 505, belonging to the species Australopithecus Africanus, found in the Sterkfontein cave in the 80s. He is 2-3 million years old. Making allowances for changes in brain size, researchers at Columbia University showed that the brains of this primate and the brain of modern humans show a surprising similarity.
The most ancient hominin
(upright primate) lived in the territory of northern Chad (Africa), and he lived 7 million years ago. Maybe, Sahelanthropus tchadensis was the earliest human ancestor. His discovery made it possible to consider Africa the cradle of mankind. The heir of this hominid was Australopithecus anamensis who lived 4.2 million years ago. He is very similar to A. afarensis, who lived 3.5 million - the owner of a big face and small brains. The discovery of a female skull, which was christened Lucy, also belongs to this species. These hominins lived in the savannas of East Africa and were upright, but they still had much in common with apes.
Hominid without tools
Southern Great Ape, or australopithecine was an upright, bipedal hominid lacking the ability to make stone tools. They used stones and bones as primitive tools, primarily as weapons. It was the making of tools and life in communities that helped hominids leave their shelters in trees and survive in open space.
Black skull of the Ethiopian Australopithecus aethiopicus
Black skull of Australopithecus Ethiopian Australopithecus aethiopicus- a rough skull was found in Lomekwi (Western Turkana, Kenya). It dates back to 2.5 million years. Its owner had a large face and a small brain. This is thought to be a primitive form of A. robustus.
Human ancestors stopped choosing partners based on smell
The development of color vision led to the fact that the primates that lived in the Eastern Hemisphere, and then appeared as a result of their development, people lost the ability to recognize pheromones. This happened about 23 million years ago, shortly before the superfamily of great apes, from which humans eventually evolved, broke up into several distinct groups. This period roughly coincides with the time when primates in the eastern hemisphere developed full-color vision.
Faces rough and graceful
At australopithecines and robustus had broad, flat faces, while the afarensis and africanus species had finer features. A. aethiopicus had a massive jaw, which this vegetarian used to grind solid plant food.
The brain is similar, but the behavior is more complex
One of the few differences between humans and Australopithecus is the position of the primary visual cortex. Its border is indicated by a depression in the surface of the brain. In the ancient hominid, this area is located closer to the front, and therefore larger. But in Australopithecus Stw 505, this area is located slightly behind - just like in humans. This means that the brain of Australopithecus was already changing, turning into the brain of a modern person. In front, there is an area associated with various forms of complex behavior, such as the evaluation of objects and their qualities, face recognition and social communication.
The last species of ape from which the great apes and modern man descended
The age of the skeleton found in the Spanish city of Barcelona is 13 million years. New species named in Latin Pierolapitecus catalaunicus. The growth of the found specimen - male, reached 120 centimeters. He weighed about 35 kilograms. After examining the jaw and teeth, experts came to the conclusion that this creature ate mainly fruits, but on occasion it could well have eaten insects or the meat of small animals. This monkey was well adapted to climbing trees. She needed all four limbs to move, but some changes are visible in the structure of the skeleton that allowed later species of human ancestors to start walking on two legs.
The one who began to use fire
Appeared two million years ago homo lineage who invented tools and fire. At the same time, migration from Africa begins, which took place in four stages. In the process, they separated african australopithecines, Homo erectusHomo erectus and .
Homo erectus was the first to hunt
Homo erectus Homo erectus lived 1.7 million - 300,000 years ago and is considered the first of the people who hunted large animals. The number of people has increased. And they began to spread over a wide range, left Africa a million years ago and began to colonize areas of the old world with a warm climate. His face was coarse due to a massive lower jaw, massive brow ridges, and a long, low skull. The volume of the brain was 750 - 1225 cubic meters. see c (average 900). The discovery of a complete skeleton of Homo erectus under the name "Turkan boy" from Western Turkana is known (Kenya, 1984)
A skilled man began to make tools
The brain of a skilled man Homo habilis, who lived 2.2 - 1.6 million years ago in East Africa, had a volume of 500-800 cubic meters. cm, larger than that of Australopithecus and approximately half the volume of the brain of a modern person. He was the first of the people who made tools, breaking long bones into long fragments that served him as knives.
Human mental faculties have grown
Over the past 2.5 million years, human intelligence has increased many times over that of other primates. The human brain is now about three times the size of the brains of its "closest relatives" - chimpanzees and gorillas.
Ancient man became wiser due to mutation
The human brain in the course of evolution has developed to a large size as a result of a mutation that occurred 2.4 million years ago. The body of our ancestors lost the ability to produce one of the main proteins that stimulate the growth of massive jaw muscles in primates. Unconstrained by a bulky chewing apparatus, the human skull was given the opportunity for free growth: weak muscles squeezed the skull much less, allowing the medulla to grow and expand. In the period of about 2 million years ago, judging by the fossil remains, is the rapid growth of the brain. By then, our ancestors had moved from chewing tough leaves all day to eating meat, and they didn't need overly powerful jaws.
Goodbye Autralopithecines
Approximately two million years ago, Homo habilis and developed brains in excess of 500 cubic centimeters. Both of these varieties had significantly smaller jaw muscles compared to their ancestors, representatives of the genus Australopithecus.
Homo erectus did without a brain
Early Homo erectus lived 1.8 million years ago and had a small brain. For several hundred thousand years, humanity has lived without powerful jaws and without a developed brain. Homo erectus (upright people) lived from 2 million to 400 thousand years ago. According to one version, they appeared in Africa, but gradually settled throughout the Old World. The first fossil remains of Homo erectus were found by Eugène Dubois at the end of the 19th century in Java. Since then, many other remains have been found, but they remain fragmentary nonetheless.
In Indonesia, there lived ancient hobbits who built boats
The remains of a new species of man, tentatively designated as "hobbits", unearthed on the Indonesian island of Flores. At first they believed that these were the remains of a child, but the analysis showed that these were the bones of an adult, one meter tall and with a skull the size of a grapefruit. These remains are 18 thousand years old. The scientific name for the new species of humans is Homo floresiensis, a relative of Homo erectus. They came to Flores one million years ago and developed their unusual appearance under conditions of isolation. Interestingly, there was no earlier evidence of Homo erectus' ability to build boats, but this is how the ancestors of floresiensis could have got to the island. These people are not only interesting for their short stature, but also for their relatively long arms. Perhaps they fled in the trees from Komodo dragons - giant lizards, the remains of which (of the same age) were found near the remains of Homo floresiensis. In addition to these bones, archaeologists unearthed on Flores the remains of an ancient pygmy elephant (Stegodon), which the "hobbits" probably hunted. Now you need to pay more attention to the legends of hobbits and gnomes.
160 thousand year old man
In June 2003, the oldest human remains in the world were found in Ethiopia - they are about 160 thousand years old. The largest number of remains of primitive people was found in Africa, in particular in Tanzania and Kenya. But they are all scattered over a large area, so it is difficult for scientists to restore the primitive way of life of hominids.
Homo neanderthalensis - people from the Neander Valley
Neanderthals lived 230,000 - 28,000 years ago in Europe, central Asia and the Middle East. These people ate mostly meat. Men reached 166 cm and weighed 77 kg, women - 154 cm and 66 kg. Their brains were 12% larger than those of a human. As a species, Neanderthals formed during the Ice Age. The short body of a dense addition was adapted to the preservation of heat. Despite their small stature, they had strong, well-developed muscles. The superciliary arch was wide and low, passed in the middle of the face and hung over the nose, which was vulnerable during snowstorms and prolonged frosts
Neanderthals were skilled hunters and hunted cooperatively, breaking into separate groups that interacted while hunting. They surrounded the prey and killed it at close range. Many remains of Neanderthals with traces of severe mutilations have been found.
Neanderthals could speak, but their speech was not complex. They did not understand abstract concepts. They were alien to art.
Neanderthal Rivals
Modern humans, who appeared in Europe 40,000 years ago, became rivals of the Neanderthals. The data of the researchers showed that by the time of the interaction of modern humans and Neanderthals, the mortality rate among the latter was 2% higher. In this competition for survival, the latter lost. Within 1,000 years, the Neanderthals died out. 28,000 years ago, the last Neanderthals disappeared. A number of scientists optimistically believe that they did not disappear, but assimilated, giving their genes to modern man. This is not supported by the data.
Intelligent supplanted the Neanderthals
Currently, the most common theory of appearance in Europe says that Homo sapiens came to the continent from Africa about 200 thousand years ago and gradually replaced other species of anthropoids inhabiting it, including Neanderthals. (Homo neanderthalensis). Scientists compared the preserved remains of four Neanderthals and five early modern humans from Western Europe. The DNA of these samples differed so much that it was possible to unequivocally reject the hypothesis of large-scale interbreeding between the two species.
Didn't mix with Neanderthals
Comparison of genomes and Neanderthals shows that modern man has practically no genes characteristic of Neanderthals. In addition, the results of some molecular studies prove that Homo sapiens fully developed into its modern form before the appearance of Neanderthals.
The climate killed the Neanderthals
Neanderthals and the first humans to arrive in Europe struggled with falling temperatures, a new study involving more than 30 scientists has found. These two types of hominids coexisted in Europe approximately 45-28 thousand years ago, before the extinction of the Neanderthals. The reason for the death of Neanderthals was their inability to adapt to climate change. The problem was not only in the cold snap itself - both species had fur clothes like robes. Rather, the researchers believe, Neanderthals were unable to change their hunting methods. Neanderthals, who once used the forest cover to sneak up on herds of animals unnoticed, proved to be less effective hunters in conditions when animals scattered across the steppe had to be approached without any camouflage. Feeding worse, Neanderthals became weaker, more prone to disease and other threats. Although early humans also experienced similar problems, they eventually adapted to the changing environment.
Neanderthals led a hectic life
Skeletons of Neanderthals show that they led a tumultuous life - often breaking bones and receiving strong blows. They rarely lived past 40 years of age. Hunting in the new environment proved even more dangerous and far less successful. This is what made it impossible for the Neanderthals to survive. With a shortage of food, they became more susceptible to disease, reproduction slowed down, starvation became a frequent occurrence, and the population was slowly but surely declining.
Europeans have Neanderthal teeth
Oldest remains of Homo sapiens found in Europe Analysis of the remains found in the Romanian Carpathians in a cave showed that they are from 34 to 36 thousand years old. This is the age of the male jaw found in the cave. These bones, without a doubt, belong to Homo sapiens, however, they have features characteristic of more primitive species of anthropoids. In particular, the wisdom teeth on the found jaw are of such a huge size that they have not been noted in any of the remains of Homo Sapiens, starting from those whose age is 200 thousand years.
invention of the spear
The invention of such a useful tool for hunters and fishermen as a spear, which happened, as is now believed, over a million years ago, served as a prologue to the great peace concluded between the tribes of the ancestors of people 985 thousand years ago. In addition, the advent of such weapons led to a decisive split in the behavioral patterns of chimpanzees and humans, which allowed us to stand out from the animal world.
Range expansion
People invented weapons that could be thrown from a distance and thus successfully hunt large mammals. The ability to kill at a distance also led to the spread of new tactics for border fighting between people - it was possible to set up ambushes. Circumstances forced the most ancient people to come up with new ways to resolve their long-standing conflicts: in particular, to maintain friendly relations with neighbors as much as possible.
Collaboration between the tribes made it possible to seriously expand the range of early human settlements and even provoked their migration from Africa. All this also served as an impetus for the emergence of new types of social organization, which ultimately led to the organization of planned military actions and the attack on the first human settlements. The earliest archaeological evidence of such organized wars dates back to the 10th-12th millennium BC, they were found in Africa, on the territory of present-day Sudan.
Migration
The biological species that we call originated in the east or south of Africa and from there gradually spread throughout the planet. However, experts do not yet have a consensus on how exactly this migration took place. Scientists from several countries have put forward a hypothesis according to which modern humans began migrating from their African ancestral home to other continents by crossing the Red Sea and then moving east along the coast of the Indian Ocean. The conclusions are based on the results of the analysis of the genetic information of the aborigines of Malaysia, whose ancestors once first settled this part of the land.
Eurocentric theory
In the 1980s, the Eurocentric hypothesis of this process dominated. At that time, most anthropologists believed that man appeared rather late, about 50 thousand years before our time. According to this model, 45,000 years ago, our ancestors entered the Levant and Asia Minor through the Isthmus of Suez and the Sinai Peninsula. Over the next ten thousand years, they colonized Europe, displacing the Neanderthals from there, and at about the same time they reached Australia.
Africanocentric theory
The results of excavations on the African continent have definitely shown that the age of Homo sapiens significantly exceeds 100 thousand years. At the same time, it was proved that people have lived in Southeast Asia for at least 45 thousand years, and in Australia - from 50 to 60 thousand years. Gradually, among specialists, the belief was formed that Homo sapiens appeared in Africa about 200 thousand years ago, after 100 thousand years he crossed the Sinai and entered the Asian expanses. Thus, the chronology of the emergence of man has undergone a strong adjustment, but the alleged path of his exit from Africa has remained unchanged.
sea route theory
In the mid-90s, that is, a decade ago, Italian and British anthropologists put forward another hypothesis. They came to the conclusion that some of the first settlers from Africa to Asia did not move by land, but by sea. First, these people penetrated the coast of the Horn of Africa, and then crossed the Red Sea in the area of Bab el-Mandeb and entered the Arabian Peninsula. From there they moved east along the coast of the Indian Ocean and by this route they reached India, and then Australia. The authors of this theory have calculated that this migration began at least 60 thousand years ago, but it is possible that all 75 thousand.
The oldest man in Europe was a Georgian
Georgian scientists discovered in Eastern Georgia the skull of the oldest human on the European continent. According to preliminary estimates of scientists, the discovery in Dmanisi is 1 million 800 years old. The discovery in Dmanisi allows research not only of individual individuals, but of the whole settlement. Together with the remains of the hominid discovered in Dmanisi, animal bones and stone tools were found. For example, the so-called "choping", as well as a hewn stone that a primitive man could use instead of a knife. "These oldest primitive stone tools are very similar to what was found in Africa"
Wars arose when they began to cultivate the land
Scholar Kelly attributes the emergence of the first wars to the development of agriculture, which exponentially increased the value of cultivated areas. Until this happened, the largest human conflicts were like sporadic attacks by the same chimpanzees, because no one seriously planned such fights.
The prehistoric climate was spoiled by farmers
Analysis of ancient air bubbles stored in Antarctic ice has provided evidence that humans began to change the global climate thousands of years before the industrial revolution. About eight thousand years ago, the carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere began to rise - at the same time, people began to cut down forests, engage in agriculture and raise livestock. Forests in Europe and Asia began to replace cultivated fields. About five thousand years ago, as evidenced by ice samples, an increase in the content of methane in the air began.
Cattle turned this world into a world of men
The earliest female-dominated human societies (during matriarchy) were replaced by a patriarchal way of life after the practice of acquiring cattle spread among the tribes was already conducted through the male line) just when people got cattle, appeared from the very beginning of modern anthropological research in the nineteenth century. However, at that time no one was able to convincingly demonstrate this causal relationship.
The most ancient writings
Signs carved into turtle shells over 8,000 years ago could be the world's oldest words found to date. The results of their deciphering may also help to learn something about the rituals of Neolithic China. One of the graves contains a headless skeleton with 8 tortoise shells placed where the skull should have been.
All humans were once cannibals
Cannibalism was probably much more common among our prehistoric ancestors than previously thought. A certain gene variation protects some Guinea Fore from prion disease caused by their former cannibalistic habits. Scientists after analyzing many DNA samples showed that the same protective gene variant is found in people around the world. Putting all the findings together, they concluded that such a feature could only appear if cannibalism was once very widespread, and a protective form of the MV "prion" gene was required to protect cannibals from prion diseases lurking in the flesh of the victims.
The first wine was made in the Stone Age
It is possible that Paleolithic people obtained a wine drink from naturally fermented juice of wild grapes. The idea of winemaking may have come to our quick-witted and observant ancestors as a result of observing birds goofing off after eating fermented fruit. During the Neolithic era, the eastern and southeastern part of Turkey was a good place for the emergence of agriculture. Among others, wheat was domesticated here - this event paved the way for the transition to a sedentary lifestyle. So by all indications - the place is quite suitable for the initial domestication of grapes.
Mankind was created by old people
Researchers from the Universities of Michigan and California found that a significant increase in human lifespan occurred at the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic, about 32,000 years ago. A study of more than 750 remains showed that the number of people reaching old age almost quadrupled during this period. It is this, they say, that gave humans an evolutionary advantage, determining the evolutionary success of the species. Representatives of the culture of the late Australopithecus, people of the early and middle Pleistocene, Neanderthals from Europe and Western Asia, and people of the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic were studied. By calculating the ratio of old to young adults for each period of human evolution, the researchers found a trend of increasing survival for older people over the course of human evolution.
The increase in the number of older people allowed early modern humans to accumulate more information and pass on specialized knowledge from one generation to the next. It could also strengthen social and family ties, as grandparents could raise growing grandchildren and other non-family people. In addition, the increase in life expectancy should have increased the number of offspring produced.
Ancient jewelry found in African cave
In the Stone Age, shells were in vogue. So say the archaeologists who dug up the oldest known pieces of costume jewelry. The beads from Blombos Cave in southern South Africa are possibly 75,000 years old. A team of researchers from the University of Bergen (Norway) found over 40 pearl-sized shells with holes drilled and worn showing that they were collected in a necklace, bracelets or patches on clothes. Such beads, sewn on clothes or worn on the body, indicated a high social status; and therefore they believe that representatives of a fairly modern culture lived in the cave.
Human ancestors created symbols
A series of parallel lines carved into the bones of an animal 1.2-1.4 million years ago may be the oldest example of human symbolic behavior. Many other scientists believe that the ability for genuine symbolic thinking appeared only in Homo sapiens. The 8 cm bone that caused these disputes was excavated from the Kozarnik cave in northwestern Bulgaria. Another bone, found in the same place, has 27 notches along the edge. The scientists who studied them claim that these cannot be traces of butchering. Near the bones was found a milk tooth of a similar age, which belonged to some early Homo, but the researchers find it difficult to name a specific species. It is most likely Homo erectus. The carved bone belonged to an unknown ruminant.
The bones found near the Jebel Irhud cave belong to people who lived here about three hundred thousand years ago.
On the left is a high and rounded skull of a modern human, on the right is a complete reconstruction of a human skull from Jebel Irhud: a modern face is combined with an archaic flattened and elongated brain region. (Illustration: Philipp Gunz / MPI-EVA, Leipzig.)
Fragments of tools found in Jebel Irhud. (Photo: Mohammed Kamal / MPI-EVA, Leipzig.)
There is no need to prove once again that people came out of Africa: both archaeological finds and the results of genetic research lead to it. But Africa is very big. There is some place in it that modern people, Homo sapiens can call their very first home?
Until now, Ethiopia was considered such a place - it was here that the remains of a reasonable man aged 160 and 195 thousand years were once found; so we had every reason to believe that all modern humans descended from a population that lived in the east of the African continent somewhere around 200,000 years ago.
However, judging by the finds in the Moroccan cave of Jebel Irhud, H. sapiens appeared and settled in Africa much earlier than previously thought. Jebel Irhud has long been known for human remains and artifacts from the Middle Paleolithic (about 200 thousand years ago - 50-25 thousand years ago). However, in the past, experts were not always able to accurately determine the exact age of what was found here.
Until recently, it was believed that six human fragments, discovered back in the 60s of the last century, belong to Neanderthals who lived here about 40,000 years ago. In 2007, one of the bone fragments (a child's jaw) was "aged" to 160,000 years. And now in an article in Nature archaeologists from the Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology of the Max Planck Society, together with colleagues from Morocco, the USA, Great Britain and Italy, describe a new portion of bones about 300 thousand years old.
These remains were found during the next large-scale excavations that have been going on in Jebel Irhud since 2004. The skulls, teeth and limb bones found belonged to at least five people: three adults, a teenager and a child. The age of the remains was determined more or less precisely thanks to quartz tools, which were found right there and which were dated using the thermoluminescent method, when the age of an object is estimated by its luminosity when heated. The aforementioned jaw of a child from a previous set of remains has aged again, so that its age is now estimated between 350,000 and 220,000 years ago. In general, it turned out that all the bones, both old and new, belong to a reasonable person, and not to a Neanderthal man.
Using computed tomography and 3D reconstruction techniques, the researchers compared the finds from Jebel Irhud with the known remains of different types of people who lived between 1.8 million and 150 thousand years ago, as well as with different remains H. sapiens age from 130 thousand years and younger. It turned out that the face and teeth of the "Dzhebel-Irkhudovites" are quite close to today's people. At the same time, three skulls - two from the old series and one from the new - with their flattened and elongated shape look more archaic compared to the more rounded and tall skulls of modern people. According to the authors of the article, the features of the face and teeth were formed in H. sapiens quite early and then changed little, while the brain part of the skull continued to adapt to the evolving brain.
It is worth adding that the tools found with the new remains are similar to those found in different places on the continent and which also belong to the Middle Paleolithic period. You can also recall the 260 thousand year old skull from South Africa - some experts believe that it also belongs to H. sapiens. (We emphasize that we are talking specifically about a reasonable person, and not in general about the genus Homo.)
In general, everything indicates that Homo sapiens evolved, so to speak, throughout Africa, and it is hardly worth saying that any particular population in the east or west was the main one.
However, one way or another, the conclusions regarding the Moroccan finds will still need to be repeatedly confirmed, since now not all archaeologists and anthropologists are ready to recognize the remains of Homo sapiens in new bones.
Despite the impressive number of important discoveries made on the territory of Russia, scientists continue to find more and more remains of ancient people that attract the attention of researchers. A little over a week ago, on July 18, on the territory of the Chelyabinsk region, archaeologists found the skeleton of an ancient woman with an unusually elongated skull. The burial ground, where the excavations were carried out, dates back to the II-III centuries AD, and on its territory there are 15 barrows of an unusual horseshoe shape.
Scientists believe that the woman belonged to the late Sarmatians, an ancient tribe that roamed the territories of modern Ukraine, Kazakhstan and southern Russia.
The unusual shape of the woman's skull is explained by ancient traditions, when the heads of children were tightly tied up with ropes and planks, after which the bones took on an elongated shape.
Historians have not yet given an unambiguous answer to the question of why exactly the nomads changed the shape of the heads of their tribe members in this way. It is known that the ancient Egyptians, as well as the Indians, had a custom of pulling out skulls.
As practice shows, excavations of graves, in addition to unusual remains, can present scientists with many other surprises: for example, when studying the burial grounds of people who belonged to the Manych catacomb culture (they are located in the Rostov region, and date back to the 23rd century BC), scientists discovered perfectly preserved wooden carts.
There is an active debate about why people put the wagons in the burial grounds: some scholars believe that these were vehicles used in people's daily lives and placed in burials in order to provide a person with the possibility of comfortable movement after death. Other researchers divide wagons into ritual ones, made especially for burial, and household ones:
the first carriages were supposed to serve to give the highest military honors to the deceased, and the second were placed in the graves of the tribal aristocracy or heads of large families.
Speaking about the most famous ancient inhabitants of Russia, first of all it is worth remembering the Denisov man. Its fragmentary remains - the little finger of a small child's hand - were discovered in 2008 in Denisova Cave in Eastern Siberia, on the border of the Republic of Altai and the Altai Territory, by Russian archaeologists Anatoly Derevyanko and Mikhail Shunkov.
Radiocarbon analysis of the bones showed that the Denisovan man lived about 40 thousand years ago. The genome of the ancient inhabitant of Altai was completely sequenced by an international team of scientists led by the Swedish geneticist Svante Paabo. As a result of the work, it turned out that Denisovan man is very different from modern people: even Neanderthals turned out to be closer relatives of modern man than Denisovans. It means that
the man from Denisova cave separated from our common ancestor before the Neanderthals and modern humans - more than a million years ago.
In addition, it turned out that the Denisovans coexisted simultaneously with the Neanderthals, and sometimes even interbred with them. By the way, Svante Paabo studied the genome of the Altai Neanderthals, who lived in the Okladnikov Cave (Southern Siberia). As a result of the work, it turned out that the “Okladnikovsky” Neanderthal was the only representative of his species who managed to conquer Siberia.
A little over a year ago, Gazeta.Ru wrote about another unique find that was made on the banks of the Irtysh near the village of Ust-Ishim in the Omsk Region. In 2008, local historian Nikolai Peristov exhibited in his studio a large collection of bones and teeth of mammals that lived in the Irtysh valley about 20-50 thousand years ago and even earlier. In 2010, a paleontologist and forensic expert took up the study of this collection, who paid particular attention to a bone that resembled a human femur.
A little later, other Russian and foreign researchers were involved in the work, it was found that the bone really belongs to a modern type of person, and its age is about 45 thousand years - so far there has been no direct evidence of such an early human penetration into the north of Eurasia. The find turned out to be extremely valuable for scientists and for one more reason: DNA was very well preserved in the bone, which allowed geneticists to establish that the admixture of Neanderthal genes in the DNA of the Ust-Ishim man was greater than that of the modern population of Eurasia. It means that
The Ust-Ishim man lived shortly after the accidental crossing of Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons. This fact in itself is of great importance for studying the history of the evolution of modern man and his possible genetic relationship with other hominin species.
2014 brought another discovery regarding the DNA of the ancient "Russians". Thus, a research team led by Danish professor Eske Villerslev managed to study the DNA of a person whose remains were found in the Voronezh region, namely, on the territory of the Kostenkovsko-Borshchevo complex of Stone Age sites. Last year, Eske Villerslev told Gazeta.Ru that the age of the ancient inhabitant of the Voronezh region is about 37 thousand years, in addition, he was a relative of his European contemporaries.
Thanks to the DNA analysis of the remains, the researchers were able to find out new facts about the migrations of ancient people, as well as confirm the existence of a metapopulation that occupied territories from Europe to Central Asia, within which a complex genetic exchange took place.
Be that as it may, the study of ancient burials always presents scientists with new surprises and discoveries, the flow of which, apparently, will not dry up for a long time. For example, in the near future, specialists will have to analyze the genetic material of the remains man from the Chagyrskaya cave, which is also located in Altai.
