Man has always been interested in his origin. Who he is, where he came from and how he appeared - for a long time these were one of the main questions. In ancient Greece, during the period of the birth of the first sciences, the problem was fundamental in the emerging philosophy. And now this topic has not lost its relevance. Although over the past centuries, scientists have managed to move far ahead in the problem of the appearance of man, there are more and more questions.
None of the researchers can be completely sure that the accepted hypotheses of the origin of life, including the appearance of man, are correct. Moreover, both centuries ago and today, anthropologists are waging real wars of scientists, defending their ideas and refuting the theories of opponents.
One of the most well-studied ancient humans is the Neanderthal. This is an extinct representative of the human race, who lived 130 - 20 thousand years ago.
History of the origin of the name
In the west of Germany, near Düsseldorf, is the Neandertal Gorge. It got its name from the German pastor and composer Neander. In the middle of the 19th century, the skull of an ancient man was found here. Two years later, the anthropologist Schaafhausen, who was involved in his research, introduced the term "Neanderthal" into scientific circulation. Thanks to him, the found bones were not sold, and they are now in the Rhineland Museum.
The term "Neanderthal" (photos obtained as a result of the reconstruction of his appearance can be seen below) does not have clear boundaries due to the vastness and heterogeneity of this group of hominids. The status of this ancient man is also not precisely defined. Some of the scientists classify it as a subspecies of Homo sapiens, some distinguish it as a separate species and even genus. Now the ancient Neanderthal man is the most studied species of fossil hominids. Moreover, bones belonging to this species are still being found.
How it was discovered
The remains of these representatives were found the first of the hominids. Ancient people (Neanderthals) were discovered in 1829 in Belgium. Then this find was not given any importance, and its importance was proved much later. Then their remains were found in England. And only the third discovery in 1856 near Düsseldorf gave the name to the Neanderthal and proved the importance of all previous fossils found.
The quarry workers opened a grotto filled with silt. After clearing it, they found a part of a human skull and several massive bones near the entrance. The ancient remains were acquired by the German paleontologist Johann Fulroth, who later described them.
Neanderthal - structural features and classification
The found bones of fossil people were carefully studied, and on the basis of research, scientists were able to recreate an approximate appearance. The Neanderthal is undoubtedly one of the first people, since his resemblance to is obvious. However, there are also a huge number of differences.
The average height of an ancient person was 165 centimeters. He had a dense physique and, moreover, in terms of the volume of the cranium, the ancient people, the Neanderthals, surpassed the modern man. The arms were short, more like paws. Broad shoulders and a barrel-shaped chest indicate great strength.
Powerful very small chin, short neck - another feature of the Neanderthals. Most likely, these features were formed under the influence of the difficult conditions of the Ice Age, in which ancient people lived 100 - 50 thousand years ago.
The structure of the Neanderthals suggests that they had a large muscle mass, a heavy skeleton, ate mainly meat and were better adapted to the subarctic climate than the Cro-Magnons.
They had a primitive speech, most likely consisting of a large number of consonants.
Since these ancient people lived on a vast territory, there were several types of them. Some had features closer to the animal-like appearance, others looked like a modern person.
Habitat of Homo neanderthalensis
From the remains found today, it is known that the Neanderthal (an ancient man who lived millennia ago) lived in Europe, Central Asia and the East. They were not found in Africa. Later, this fact became one of the proofs that Homo neanderthalensis is not the ancestor of modern man, but his closest relative.
How did you manage to reconstruct the appearance of an ancient person
Beginning with Schaaffhausen, the "godfather" of the Neanderthal, many attempts have been made to recreate the appearance of this ancient hominid from fragments of its skull and skeleton. The Soviet anthropologist and sculptor Mikhail Gerasimov achieved great success in this. He created his own method of restoring the appearance of a person using skeletal remains. He made more than two hundred sculptural portraits of historical figures. Gerasimov also reconstructed the appearance of the late Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon. The laboratory of anthropological reconstruction created by him continues to successfully restore the appearance of ancient people even now.
Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons - is there anything in common between them?
These two representatives of the human race lived for some time in the same era and existed side by side for twenty thousand years. Scientists attribute the Cro-Magnons to the early representatives of modern man. They appeared in Europe 40 - 50 thousand years ago and were very different from the Neanderthals physically and mentally. They were tall (180 cm), had a straight forehead without protruding brow ridges, a narrow nose and a more clearly defined chin. In appearance, these people were very close to modern man.
The cultural achievements of the Cro-Magnons surpass all the successes of their predecessors. Having inherited a large developed brain and primitive technologies from their ancestors, they made a giant leap forward in their development in a short time. Their discoveries are amazing. For example, Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons lived in small groups in caves and tents made of skins. But it was the latter who created the first settlements and finally formed. They tamed the dog, performed funeral rites, painted hunting scenes on the walls of caves, knew how to make tools not only from stone, but also from horn and bones. Cro-Magnons had articulate speech.
Thus, the differences between these two types of ancient man were significant.
Homo neanderthalensis and modern man
For a long time, there were disputes in scientific circles about which of the representatives of ancient people should be considered. Now it is known for sure that the Neanderthal (photos taken on the basis of the reconstruction of the remains of their bones clearly confirm this) is physically and externally very different from Homo sapiens and is not ancestor of modern man.
Previously, there was a different point of view on this. But recent studies have given reason to believe that the ancestors of Homo sapiens lived in Africa, which lay outside the habitat of Homo neanderthalensis. In the entire long history of studying the remains of their bones, they have never been found on the African continent. But this issue was finally resolved in 1997, when Neanderthal DNA was deciphered at the University of Munich. The differences in genes found by scientists were too great.
The study of the Homo neanderthalensis genome continued in 2006. It has been scientifically proven that the divergence in the genes of this type of ancient person from the modern one began about 500 thousand years ago. To decipher the DNA, bones found in Croatia, Russia, Germany and Spain were used.
Therefore, we can say with confidence that the Neanderthal is an extinct species close to us, which is not a direct ancestor of Homo sapiens. This is another branch of the vast family of hominids, which includes, in addition to humans and their extinct ancestors, progressive primates.
In 2010, in the course of ongoing research, Neanderthal genes were found in many modern peoples. This suggests that there was mixing between Homo neanderthalensis and Cro-Magnons.
Life and life of ancient people
The Neanderthal man (an ancient man who lived in the Middle Paleolithic) first used the most primitive tools that he inherited from his predecessors. Gradually, new, more advanced forms of guns began to appear. They were still made of stone, but became more diverse and complex in processing techniques. In total, about sixty types of products were found, which are actually variations of three main types: axes, side-scrapers and pointed points.
During the excavations of Neanderthal sites, chisels, piercers, scrapers and serrated tools were also found.
Scrapers helped in the dressing and dressing of animals and their skins, the pointed ones had an even wider scope. They were used as daggers, knives for butchering carcasses, as spearheads and arrowheads. Ancient Neanderthals used bone to make tools. These were mainly awls and points, but larger items were also found - daggers and clubs made of horn.
As for the weapons, they were still extremely primitive. Its main type, apparently, was a spear. This conclusion was made on the basis of studies of animal bones found at the Neanderthal site.
These ancient people were not lucky with the climate. If their predecessors lived in a warm period, then by the time Homo neanderthalensis appeared, a severe cooling began, glaciers began to form. The landscape was like a tundra. Therefore, the life of the Neanderthals was extremely harsh and full of dangers.
As before, caves served as their dwelling, but buildings gradually began to appear in the open - tents made of animal skins and structures made of mammoth bones.
Lessons
Most of the time of the ancient man was occupied by the search for food. According to various studies, they were not scavengers, but hunters, and this activity suggests consistency in actions. According to scientists, the main commercial species for Neanderthals were large mammals. Since the ancient man lived on a vast territory, the victims were different: mammoths, wild bulls and horses, woolly rhinos, deer. An important game animal was the cave bear.
Despite the fact that hunting for large animals became their main occupation, Neanderthals continued to be engaged in gathering. According to studies, they were not completely carnivorous, and their diet included roots, nuts and berries.
culture
The Neanderthal is not a primitive creature, as was thought in the 19th century. The ancient man, who lived in the Middle Paleolithic era, formed a cultural direction, which was called the Mousterian culture. At this time, the birth of a new form of social life begins - the tribal community. Neanderthals took care of the members of their kind. The hunters did not eat the prey on the spot, but carried it home, to the cave to the rest of the tribesmen.
Homo neanderthalensis did not yet know how to draw or create animal figures from stone or clay. But at the site of his camps, stones with skillfully made recesses were found. Ancient people also knew how to apply parallel scratches to bone tools and make jewelry from drilled animal teeth and shells.
The high cultural development of the Neanderthals is also evidenced by their funeral rite. More than twenty graves have been found. The bodies were located in shallow pits in the pose of a sleeping person with bent arms and legs.
Ancient people also possessed the rudiments of medical knowledge. They knew how to heal fractures and dislocations. Some finds indicate that primitive people took care of the wounded.
Homo neanderthalensis - the mystery of the extinction of ancient man
When and why did the last Neanderthal disappear? This mystery has occupied the minds of scientists for many years. There is no definitively proven answer to this question. Modern man does not know why the dinosaurs disappeared, and cannot say what led to the extinction of his closest fossil relative.
For a long time there was an opinion that the Neanderthals were supplanted by their more adapted and developed rival, the Cro-Magnon. And there is a lot of evidence for this theory. It is known that it appeared in Europe in the range of Homo neanderthalensis about 50 thousand years ago, and after 30 thousand years the last Neanderthal disappeared. It is believed that these twenty centuries of existence side by side in a small area became a time of fierce competition between the two species for resources. Cro-Magnon won thanks to the numerical superiority and better adaptability.
Not all scientists agree with this theory. Some put forward their own, no less interesting hypotheses. Many hold the view that the Neanderthals were killed by climate change. The fact is that 30 thousand years ago Europe began a long period of cold and dry weather. Perhaps this led to the disappearance of the ancient man, who could not adapt to the changed conditions of life.
A rather unusual theory was put forward by Simon Underdown, a specialist at Oxford University. He believes that the Neanderthals were struck down by a disease that is characteristic of cannibals. As you know, eating a person was not uncommon at that time.
Another version of the disappearance of this ancient man is assimilation with the Cro-Magnons.
The extinction of Homo neanderthalensis occurred unevenly in time. On the Iberian Peninsula, representatives of this type of fossil people lived a millennium after the disappearance of the rest in Europe.
Neanderthals in modern culture
The appearance of an ancient man, his dramatic struggle for existence and the mystery of his disappearance have repeatedly become topics for literary works and films. Joseph Henri Roni Sr. wrote the novel Fight for the Fire, which was highly acclaimed by critics and was filmed in 1981. The film of the same name received a prestigious award - the Oscar. In 1985, the painting “The Tribe of the Cave Bear” was created, which told about how a girl from the Cro-Magnon family, after the death of her tribe, began to be brought up by Neanderthals.
A new feature film dedicated to ancient people was created in 2010. This is "The Last Neanderthal" - the story of Eo, the only survivor of his kind. In this picture, the cause of the death of Homo neanderthalensis was not only the Cro-Magnons, who attacked their camps and killed, but also an unknown disease. It also considers the possibility of assimilation of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. The film was shot in a supposedly documentary style and on a good scientific basis.
In addition, a large number of films are devoted to Neanderthals, telling about their life, occupations, culture, and considering theories of extinction.
Neanderthal (lat. Homo neanderthalensis or Homo sapiens neanderthalensis; in Soviet literature also called paleoanthrope) is an extinct species of the genus Homo, possibly a subspecies of Homo sapiens. It is closely related to modern man, the composition of DNA differs by only 0.3%. The remains of the life of Neanderthals, including bones and stone tools, are found from Western Europe to Central Asia. The first humans with proto-Neanderthal features are believed to have existed in Europe as early as 600,000 to 350,000 years ago.
The exact date of the disappearance of the Neanderthals remains unclear. Fossils found in the Vindija Cave in Croatia are dated between 33,000 and 32,000 years old. But a recent study of fossils from two Spanish sites gives a date of 45,000 years ago, which is 10,000 years older than previously thought, and may cast doubt on the latest dating of other artifacts found.
The name Neanderthal comes from a skull found in 1856 in the Neandertal Gorge near Düsseldorf and Erkrath (West Germany). The gorge was named after Joachim Neander, a German theologian and composer. Two years later (in 1858) Schaaffhausen introduced the term "Neanderthal" into scientific use. The first skull of a Neanderthal was found in Belgium as early as 1829. The second find in 1848 is associated with an English military base in Gibraltar. But these first finds were recognized as Neanderthal later, in 1836 and 1864, respectively.
The discovery of the skull, which gave the name to the new species of fossil people, is already the third in the chronology of discovery.
The brain of Neanderthals was larger than that of Cro-Magnons (Homo sapiens). They were also much stronger than modern humans, having particularly strong arms. The growth of Neanderthals men was 164-168 cm, and women were approximately 152-156 cm.
According to the latest data, the Neanderthals had the beginnings of art (cave drawings in Spain), the beginnings of magic ("cults of bear skulls") and funeral rites (they put flowers, eggs, meat in the grave of their fellow tribesmen).
The main version of the death of the Neanderthals is that they were forced out of their inhabited places and exterminated by the Cro-Magnons. The latter came to Europe about 40 thousand years ago, and after 5 thousand years the Neanderthals completely died out. These 5,000 years of coexistence between the two species was a period of intense competition for food and other resources, in which the Cro-Magnons won, thanks to a tenfold superiority in numbers and more intensive land development.
The Mousterian culture of making tools is also associated with the Neanderthals.
Map of the settlement of Neanderthals approximately 100-55 thousand years ago, after the end of the ice age.
Head of a Neanderthal from Shanidar 1, reconstruction.
Corrected and expanded version of the article "Details about the Neanderthal found in the ice of the Alps. Man really did not descend from the Neanderthal." Evidence of the statements from the book "Russia in Crooked Mirrors".
“Homo sapiens - modern man - appeared immediately and everywhere. Moreover, he appeared naked, hairless, weak (compared to the Neanderthal) and simultaneously on all continents. SEVERAL RACES appeared at the behest, at someone’s will, which were quite different from each other, both in skin color and in the structure of the skull, skeleton, type of metabolic processes, but with all this, all these races had one thing in common property - they were compatible with each other and gave viable offspring. By definition, a new species CANNOT appear overnight, without transitional forms and a long process of accumulation and strengthening of positive mutations. Nothing like this in modern man is SIMPLY NOT OBSERVED. The Homo sapiens took and "materialized" FROM NOWHERE. Not a single skeleton has been found older than forty thousand years, although, from that moment to the present, human skeletons are found everywhere.
But according to the skeletons found, the RACES are clearly defined - WHITE, YELLOW, RED AND BLACK. And, at the same time, the “older” the skeletons, the more clearly their racial signs are expressed, which indicates the initial “purity” of these races, which (purity) was preserved until these races began to actively mix with each other. Thus, there could not be any one race (according to orthodox science - BLACK), which, settling from the Center of its appearance - Africa, changed, and as a result, new races arose on its basis - WHITE, YELLOW and RED. The facts say otherwise.
What happened and is happening is not the appearance of new races, but on the contrary - the mixing of these races, the emergence of sub-races and their gradual convergence. In practice, it is already very difficult to find representatives of an absolutely pure nationality or nationality, due to the fact that there has been and is a process of mixing people, both different nationalities within one race, and mixing different races. What this led to and leads to, we will consider further, and now let's return to the question of the appearance of modern man and different races on the planet ...
So, by virtue of these data, there should be AT LEAST FOUR TRANSITIONAL HUMANOID SPECIES and, accordingly, four species that have developed the necessary positive mutations. And the most interesting thing is that these positive mutations, and the same ones, should have arisen in these ancestors of modern man SIMULTANEOUSLY, pass SYNCHRONOUSLY in FOUR DIFFERENT HUMANOID SPECIES and SIMULTANEOUSLY END ON DIFFERENT CONTINENTS AND PROVIDE IDENTICAL RESULTS...
This is BOTH PRACTICALLY AND THEORETICALLY SIMPLY IMPOSSIBLE, but this question is delicately hushed up by the “scientists” and even DOES NOT CONFUSE them in any way. Not embarrassed by the fact that so far not a single skeleton of transitional forms has been found. And the alleged ancestors - Neanderthals, moreover, the only humanoid species preceding modern man, WAS NOT AND COULD NOT BE AN ANCESTOR OF MODERN MAN. And this is not an assumption, but a “bare” fact - STUDIES OF THE DNA OF A FOUND NEANDERTHAL, frozen into an alpine glacier, gave a sensational result - MODERN HUMANS AND NEANDERTHAL ARE GENETICALLY INCOMPATIBLE, just as a horse and a zebra are genetically incompatible, although both species belong to the same order of equids, class of mammals. These humanoid species are not only incompatible, they have not even been able to produce sterile hybrids, as occurs, for example, when crossing a horse and a donkey. »
I wrote this article due to the fact that I met people who doubt the veracity of this statement, because they could not find in other sources confirmation of the existence of the discovery of the body of a Neanderthal in the Alps, which is mentioned in the above excerpt from the book “Russia in Crooked mirrors." At the same time, they believe that Nikolai Viktorovich not only lied, but changed the facts! Wait a second ... What kind of substitution of facts are we talking about? It turned out that this idea was directed to them by one interesting piece of news that they discovered during their search:
On September 19, 1991, on the border of Italy and Austria, in the Tyrolean Alps, after an extreme melting of ice on the Similaun glacier at an altitude of 10,500 feet, the body of an ancient man (called him “Otzi”). The amazingly preserved mummy is still fraught with many mysteries, although enough time has passed since the discovery. Dozens of scientists have studied the remains, but prehistoric man continues to hide secrets from modern researchers. (Illustration 1).
It turns out that indeed in the Alps they found the body of a humanoid, but not a Neanderthal, but a Cro-Magnon! That is, N.V. Levashov took this discovery as a basis, replaced one word, and it turned out to be an excellent confirmation of his concept of the past of mankind, but it only seems so at first glance! In fact, there is no change here.
P.S. Further, I will call Otzi not a Cro-Magnon, but a man or a sapiens, since the Cro-Magnon is the Homo sapiens, just a more primitive stage of development. reasonable man - Cro-Magnon, so named at the place of the first find (Cave of Cro-Magnon in France).
Let's take it in order:
I.) Age of find.
Neanderthal, Neanderthal man (lat. Homo neanderthalensis or Homo sapiens neanderthalensis; in Soviet literature it was also called a paleoanthrope) is a fossil human species that lived 140-24 thousand years ago, and which, according to modern scientific data, is partly the ancestor of modern man. [ one]
The “Ice Man”, Ötzi or Otzi, is an ice mummy of an ancient man, discovered in 1991 in the Tyrolean Alps on the Similaun glacier in the Ötztal valley at an altitude of 3,200 meters. The age of the mummy, determined by radiocarbon dating, is approximately 5300 years. Currently, scientists continue to study the mummy.
Here critics say that Levashov is lying, there were no Neanderthals 5300 years ago, so this is not a Neanderthal. But is it? Let's not believe the word "scientists", but ask the question: Did they correctly determine the age of Otzi's body and in general how?
So, the main problem that archaeologists faced when studying Otzi was the presence of objects with him that should not have ended up together, because they belonged to different eras. It would seem that everything is normal at first glance: leather shoes with grass for insulation; loincloth made of chamois, mountain goat and deer skins; leather shirt, belt, fur hat, gaiters, straw cape, grass net. With clothes, everything seems to be logical and correct, but with a combination of guns ...
For example, a scraper, arrowheads, a flint knife with a wooden handle belong to three periods of the Paleolithic (Ancient Paleolithic (200 million years ago), Middle Acheulean (200 thousand years ago), Upper Paleolithic (~12 thousand years ago)). In addition, Otzi had an ax and a yew bow! The ax is very reminiscent of products dating from the period 4500-5000 years ago, and the bow seems to be taken from the Middle Ages! (illustrations 2, 3, 4, 5)
Harm Paulsen (German Harm Paulsen), an archaeologist, after making 9 bows on the model of the Ötzi bow and testing them, concluded that the Ötzi bow in its technical characteristics is close to modern sports bows, and that with such a bow you can easily shoot wild animals accurately at a distance of 30-50 m. With such a bow, you can shoot at a distance of 180 m. When pulling the string by 72 cm, the fingers feel a force of 28 kgf.
It turns out that the age of the “ice man” ranges from 200 thousand years ago to 800 years ago. In general - a wide choice! But the “scientists” easily put a verdict in the form of a date exactly “5300 years ago“, they didn’t even take the AVERAGE age (!!!), but simply decided to take an ax from all his outfit and assigned the age of the body according to it.
It turns out that their logic is to choose any item from the “wardrobe” of the mummy and assign this particular date as the moment of the life of the mummy itself. Well then, let's take a bow and say that Otzi lived 800 years ago. Such is our science.
In addition, I want to tell for those who do not know that the question of recognition (fake or original) of any find is solved in the “scientific” environment very simply - VOTING!
And since science is a sub-governmental institution in our country, they will naturally vote as they say, otherwise they will lose their homes, but this is another story and any adequate resident of Russia knows what lawlessness is happening in the labor market.
I also want to immediately preempt possible criticism regarding the alleged discrepancy between the anthropometric characteristics of Otzi's skull and those officially recognized for Neanderthal skulls. The official description of the Neanderthal skull cannot be unambiguous, since there are significant variations in the various parameters of the skull INSIDE THE SPECIES, and this is noticeable even to those who do not “fumble” in anthropometry. If we take the “classic” Neanderthal skull, we see strongly protruding jaws, large brow ridges, a low forehead and a long skull, compared to the sapiens skull (Figure 6). Firstly, Otzi has a long skull, like that of a Neanderthal, compare yourself with the length of the skull of a modern person (illustrations 7, 8, 9). Someone rightly notes that Otzi has a high forehead and the jaw does not protrude far forward, which means that he is a sapiens. But that doesn't mean! Take a look at other classic Neanderthal skulls such as Skhul 5 (Figure 10), Qafzeh 9 (Figure 11), and Amud 1 (Figure 12).
“Amud I is often regarded as a classic Neanderthal, but in a number of ways, especially the facial skeleton, it turns out to be much more sapient than the hominids from the Skhul and Qafzeh caves. For example, the relative size of the upper jaw is much smaller than that of the Neanderthals of Europe, and the shape of the alveolar arch does not differ from the modern one, although the alveolar process is noticeably flattened in front. Sapient form of the alveolar arch and the ratio of the condylar and angular width of the mandible. Unlike the Schuls, Amud I's pelvis is comparatively small, with a fairly short pubic bone. »
The skulls of Skhul 5 and Kafhez 9 have high foreheads, like most sapiens. The jaws of Amud 1 protrude forward like that of a sapiens, the teeth are the same size as ours. So it’s fair to say that Otzi’s skull can be mistaken for both a Neanderthal skull and a sapiens skull. BUT the fact that the skull is long suggests that Otzi still belongs to the Neanderthals.
As a result, according to the anthropometric parameters of the skull, with a margin of one point (the length of the skull), the version that OTCI is a NEANDERTHAL wins.
II.) Analysis of Neanderthal reconstructions.
Let's compare Otzi's reconstruction and the reconstructions of Neanderthals attached to the article, which anyone can see EVEN on Wikipedia or even on the Internet. But all of them have one gross mistake - the lack of a thick woolen cover, more on that below.
Names of reconstructions:
1) An old man from La Chapelle-aux-Seine. Graphic reconstruction by John Hawkes(Illustration 13);
2) Reconstruction from La Ferrassie(Illustration 14);
3) Reconstruction of Shanidar burial(Illustration 15).
So based on the above, it is clear that Otzi, more than possibly, could have lived 25 thousand years ago, this is only 20 thousand years older than announced. And if we take into account the “reserve” of 175 thousand years, based on the maximum age of the find (200 thousand years ago), then this version is more likely than the official one. And since there is no other more probable hypothesis (at least I have not met it), you will have to accept it in order to move forward in the study. We figured out what kind of species Otzi still belongs to.
Note: Like the Otzi reconstruction, the rest of the Neanderthal reconstructions lack the very thick coat they should have (Figures 16 and 17).
The fact is that there are two views of the scientific world on the hairline of Neanderthals:
1) Sparse hair on the chest, back and partly on the arms and legs.
2) Thick hair covering almost the entire body.
Why did they choose the first option for reconstruction?
The answer is simple: this option is more convenient to use for evolutionary theory, where a person comes from primates, they say, gradually, species by species, the hair disappeared. Australopithecus were completely hairy, after them the Neanderthals already had a partial hairline, and finally a reasonable man - almost naked. So this is just a guess, and even more ordered. The second option is much more logical, because earlier the climate was much more severe and the hairline of the whole body would be better suited for the survival of the species. Moreover, Neanderthals naturally did not immediately know how to make themselves a semblance of clothing and would simply die out until they learned. After all, until they thought of it and made the first cape, more than one millennium passed, and did they really manage without thick wool all this time? Of course not! This is the kind of absurdity that orthodox science offers us.
In any case, even she admits that Neanderthal hair was much thicker than that of humans. I also want to note that the muscle mass of the Neanderthal was basically 30-40% more than that of the Cro-Magnon and the skeleton is heavier. Also, Neanderthals adapted better to the subarctic climate, since the large nasal cavity warmed up the cold air better, thereby reducing the risk of colds.
« Before entering the evolutionary arenaHomoSapiens - modern man - his ecological apartment was occupied by a humanoid species called by anthropologistsNeanderthalMan (Neanderthal), who thoroughly mastered this "ecological apartment" for several hundred thousand years of its development. Moreover, Neanderthals ousted all other humanoid species from this ecological niche and the only ones reigned on Earth, and at the same time, they populated the WHOLE EARTH, all its climatic zones, but, nevertheless, for all these millennia, different races of Neanderthals did not appear . Only ONE RACE OF NEANDERTHALS reigned on the whole earth, each of which physically significantly exceeded
Cro-Magnon man, was covered with thick hair, which they never got rid of, and most likely did not even try. The saber-toothed tiger was the only serious enemy that gave them some trouble. Neanderthals ate their own kind.
Moreover, for them prey, food was everyone who was not a member of their clan, herd or tribe. Of course, it is difficult to judge the intelligence of the Neanderthals, but there is also no evidence that they were smarter than the Cro-Magnon. And so, they reigned calmly for hundreds of thousands of years, until, about forty thousand years ago (according to anthropology), no one knows where, suddenly take and appear a modern man in person ... Homo Sapiens - modern man
- appeared immediately and everywhere. Moreover, he appeared naked, hairless, weak (compared to the Neanderthal) and simultaneously on all continents. »
A quote from the book of the scientist - Rus, Nikolai Levashov "Russia in Crooked Mirrors, Volume 1. From Star Russ to Defiled Russians."
Therefore, it is most likely that Otzi, like other Neanderthals, looked in accordance with the reconstruction of František Kupka under the direction of M. Buhl (Figure 18). The only drawback of this reconstruction is that it depicts too primate features of the muzzle; in this aspect of appearance, the three above reconstructions are more realistic. In general, to imagine a complete picture of Otzi's appearance, “stick” thick wool from the reconstruction of František Kupka to the Neanderthal man from La Ferrassie. You get what Zdenek Burian drew (Figure 19), his reconstruction is the most realistic .
III.) Neanderthals were far from stupid.
American and Italian anthropologists dispelled the myth about the low intellectual level of the Neanderthals who inhabited Europe 40-50 thousand years ago. It turned out that they were able to adapt to environmental conditions and invent new weapons.
American and Italian archaeologists during excavations of Neanderthal sites in South and Central Italy noticed that the objects found at one of them differ sharply both in the quality of processing and in type from artifacts from other sites. Anthropologists have found that the Neanderthal tribe that lived in these places made weapons from stone, which differed from the products of other Neanderthal tribes.
According to scientists, the reason for this difference could be that as a result of a cold snap 42-44 thousand years ago, in southern Italy, the number of reservoirs and, accordingly, large game decreased sharply. The Neanderthals who lived here had to hunt smaller prey. In order to increase the efficiency of hunting, they came up with a new technique for processing flintlock weapons, and also made them more elegant.
So the bow and copper ax found at Otzi, based on the latest data on the mind of Neanderthals, are not particularly surprising. Otzi may have made these tools himself, or maybe he stole them from people or simply simply found what was lost by a person. He would definitely have had enough sense to use a copper ax, since the Neanderthals used stone weapons with a bang, and the mechanism of use is similar - to chop, cut and hollow. As for the bow, he could see how people use it and, having stolen one, just carry it with him, knowing that it is a useful thing, and maybe even learned how to use it at a primitive level.
IV.) Genetic incompatibility between Neanderthal and modern man.
Here is what the famous Russian scientist L.N. writes about this. Gumilyov:
« Under circumstances unknown to us, the Neanderthals disappeared and were replaced by people of the modern type - "reasonable people." In Palestine, material traces of the collision of two types of people have been preserved: intelligent and Neanderthal. In the caves of Skhil and Tabun on Mount Carmel, the remains of crossbreeds of two species were found. It is difficult to imagine the conditions for this hybrid, especially considering that Neanderthals were cannibals. In any case, the new mixed species proved to be UNSUSTAINABLE.»
The offspring of Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons were NOT SUSTAINABLE, which means that the Neanderthal could not have been the previous link in human evolution. The official theory contradicts the laws of nature, namely, the laws of genetic compatibility of species!!!
For a long time, the evolutionist choir sang everywhere about how genetically similar humans and chimpanzees are. In every work of the followers of the theory of evolution, one could read such lines as "we are 99 percent identical to chimpanzees" or "only 1% of DNA humanized chimpanzees."
Analyzes of certain types of proteins have shown that humans share characteristics not only with chimpanzee molecules, but with even more diverse living organisms. The structure of proteins of all these species is similar to human ones. For example, according to the results of a genetic analysis published in the journal New Scientist, it turned out that the DNA of roundworms and humans coincide by 75%. But this does not mean that a human and a worm differ from each other by only 25%!
The fact is that modern scientists say that only 5% of our DNA is used to process proteins. It is this part of DNA that is of interest to European and American geneticists. These 5% are subjected to study and cataloging in scientific institutions. The remaining 95% have not yet been studied by geneticists and are considered "empty, junk DNA." That is, it is the DNA that is used in digestion that is being studied (more on this later) and it makes up only 5%!!! But on the basis of these, affirmative conclusions are drawn, of course, this is an absurd method and it will not give anything intelligible.
It is quite natural that the human body in its structure has molecules similar to those of other living organisms, because they were all created from the same material, and use the same water and the same air, as well as food consisting of the same smallest particles of atoms. . Of course, their metabolic processes and, accordingly, their genetic structure resemble each other. And yet, this fact does not indicate their evolution from a common ancestor. This "single material" arose from "general design", a single plan according to which all living things were created and has nothing to do with evolutionary processes. This question can be easily explained by the following example: all buildings on Earth are built from the same materials - brick, iron, cement, etc. However, we are not saying that these buildings "evolved" one from the other. They are built separately using common materials. The same thing happened with living organisms. However, the complexity of the structure of living organisms cannot be compared with the design of the bridge.
Also, the external coincidence of DNA of different species cannot be a criterion for assessing their genetic similarity (genetic distance).
Genetic distance (GD) is a measure of genetic difference (divergence) between species, subspecies, or populations of the same species. A small genetic distance means genetic similarity, a larger genetic distance means less genetic similarity.
But there is another way, this is a comparison of halogroups (it is this method that gives a REAL idea of \u200b\u200bcompatibility of species), in this case, Neanderthal and man:
Deciphering the genetic code of the world-famous "Tyrolean ice man" or Otzi, frozen several thousand years ago in the Alpine glaciers and found in 1991, showed that he is not an ancestor of any modern people.
In October 2008, Italian and British scientists, based on data obtained from the analysis of Otzi's mitochondrial genome, concluded that he is not an ancestor of any of modern humans. In 2000, for the first time, scientists thawed the body and took from its intestines samples of DNA contained in mitochondria - a kind of energy stations of cells. Preliminary analysis showed that the ice man belonged to the so-called K1 subhaplogroup. About 8% of modern Europeans belong to haplogroup K, which is divided into sub-haplogroups K1 and K2. K1, in turn, is divided into three clusters.
It turned out that the iceman genome does not fit into any of the three known K1 clusters. For now, this means that no one can claim to be a descendant of Otzi. It is very important to understand that DNA was taken not from bones, as in other cases, but from soft tissues, so this analysis is an order of magnitude more important in determining the genetics of the Neanderthal.
That is, a modern person cannot be a descendant of a Neanderthal, however, some still do not know that dolphins are not fish, but mammals.
Back in 1997, based on the analysis of the DNA of the first Neanderthal, scientists at the University of Munich concluded that the differences in genes are too great to consider Neanderthals the ancestors of Cro-Magnons (that is, modern people). The genetic divergence between modern humans and Neanderthals occurred about 500 thousand years ago, that is, even before the spread of the current human races. These conclusions were confirmed by leading experts from Zurich, and later from all over Europe and America. For a long time (15-35 thousand years), Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons coexisted and were at enmity. In particular, at the sites of both Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons, gnawed bones of a different species were found. In particular, Jean-Jacques Hublen, a professor at the University of Bordeaux, holds this opinion.
This article is another confirmation that man could not appear on this planet, where did he come from then? Perhaps it is worth thinking about it. How much of what we know and have been sure of since childhood is true?
“There is a difference between knowing facts and understanding their full meaning”
A.T. Mahan.
The article was written by Kalachev VecheSlav, 2013.
http://vk.com/vecheslav_k
P.S. Distribution of articles is welcome.
I answer questions about the article only in my group.
List of used literature:
J. L. Bischoff et al. (2003). "The Sima de los Huesos Hominids Date to Beyond U/Th Equilibrium (>350 kyr) and Perhaps to 400–500 kyr: New Radiometric Dates".J. Archaeol. sci.
The first finds of Neanderthals were made about 150 years ago. In 1856, in the Feldhofer Grotto in the valley of the Neander (Neandertal) River in Germany, a school teacher and lover of antiquities, Johann Karl Fulrott, during excavations discovered a skullcap and parts of the skeleton of some interesting creature. But at that time, Charles Darwin's work had not yet been released into the light, and scientists did not believe in the existence of human fossil ancestors. The well-known pathologist Rudolf Wierhof declared this discovery to be the skeleton of an old man who suffered from rickets in childhood and gout in old age.
In 1865, information was published about the skull of a similar individual, found in a quarry on the rock of Gibraltar back in 1848. And only then did scientists recognize that such remains did not belong to a "freak", but to some previously unknown fossil human species. The name of this species was given at the place of discovery in 1856 - Neanderthal.
Today, more than 200 locations of the remains of Neanderthals are known in the territory of modern England, Belgium, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, in the Crimea, in different parts of the African continent, in Central Asia, Palestine, Iran, Iraq, China; in a word, everywhere in the Old World.
For the most part, Neanderthals were of medium height and powerful physique - physically they were superior to modern man in almost all respects. Judging by the fact that the Neanderthal hunted very fast and agile animals, his strength was combined with mobility. He completely mastered bipedalism, and in this sense was no different from us. He had a well-developed hand, but it was somewhat wider and shorter than that of a modern person, and apparently not as dexterous.
The size of the Neanderthal brain ranged from 1200 to 1600 cm3, sometimes even exceeding the average brain size of a modern person, but the structure of the brain was still largely primitive. In particular, Neanderthals had poorly developed frontal lobes responsible for logical thinking and inhibition processes. From this we can assume that these creatures "did not grab stars from the sky", were extremely excitable, and their behavior was distinguished by aggressiveness. Many archaic features have been preserved in the structure of the skull bones. So, Neanderthals are characterized by a low sloping forehead, a massive superciliary ridge, a weakly pronounced chin protrusion - all this suggests that, apparently, Neanderthals did not have a developed form of speech.
This was the general appearance of the Neanderthal, however, in the vast territory that they inhabited, there were several different types. Some of them had more archaic features, bringing them closer to Pithecanthropes; others, on the contrary, were closer in their development to modern man.
Tools of labor and housing
The tools of labor of the first Neanderthals differed little from the tools of their predecessors. But over time, new, more complex forms of tools appeared, and the old ones disappeared. This new complex finally took shape in the so-called Mousterian era. Tools, as before, were made of flint, but their forms became much more diverse, and the manufacturing technique became more complex. The main blank of the tool was a flake, which was obtained by chipping from a core (a piece of flint, which, as a rule, has a specially prepared platform or platforms from which chipping is performed). In total, about 60 different types of tools are characteristic of the Mousterian era, many of them, however, can be reduced to variations of the three main types: a handkerchief, a side-scraper, and a point.
The hand axes are a smaller version of the Pithecanthropus hand axes already known to us. If the dimensions of hand axes were 15-20 cm in length, then the dimensions of the hand axes were about 5-8 cm.
The points could be used as knives for cutting meat, leather, wood, as daggers, as well as spearheads and darts. Scrapers were used in butchering animal carcasses, dressing skins and processing wood.
In addition to the listed types, tools such as piercers, scrapers, incisors, serrated and notched tools, etc., are also found at Neanderthal sites.
Neanderthals used to make tools and bones. True, for the most part only fragments of bone artifacts reach us, but there are cases when almost complete tools fall into the hands of archaeologists. As a rule, these are primitive points, awls, spatulas. Sometimes larger weapons are also found. So, at one of the sites in Germany, scientists found a fragment of a dagger (or maybe a spear), reaching 70 cm in length; a club made of deer antler was also found there.
Tools throughout the territory of the Neanderthals varied among themselves and largely depended on who their owners hunted, and therefore on the climate and geographical region. It is clear that the African set of tools should be very different from the European one.
As far as climate is concerned, European Neanderthals were not particularly lucky in this regard. The fact is that it is during their time that a very strong cooling and the formation of glaciers occur. If Noto erectus (Pithecanthropus) lived in an area reminiscent of the African savannah, then the landscape that surrounded the Neanderthals, at least European ones, resembled rather a forest-steppe or tundra.
People, as before, mastered the caves - mostly small sheds or shallow grottoes. But during this period there are already buildings in open spaces. So, at the site of Molodov on the Dniester, the remains of a dwelling made of bones and teeth of mammoths were discovered.
You can ask the question: how do we know the purpose of this or that type of guns? Firstly, peoples still live on Earth, who to this day use tools made of flint. These peoples include some natives of Siberia, the indigenous people of Australia, etc. And secondly, there is a special science - traceology, which deals with
The study of traces left on the tools from contact with one or another material. Based on these traces, it is possible to establish what and how they processed with this tool. Specialists also set up direct experiments: they themselves beat pebbles with a hand axe, try to cut different things with a pointed tip, throw wooden spears, etc.
Who did the Neanderthals hunt?
The mammoth was the main object of hunting for the Neanderthals. This animal did not survive to our time, but we have a fairly accurate idea of it from realistic images left on the walls of caves by people of the Upper Paleolithic. In addition, the remains (and sometimes whole carcasses) of these animals are found from time to time in Siberia and Alaska in the permafrost layer, where they are very well preserved, thanks to which we have the opportunity not only to see the mammoth “almost as if alive”, but also find out what he ate (by examining the contents of the stomach).
Mammoths were close in size to elephants (their height reached 3.5 m), but, unlike elephants, they were covered with thick long hair of brown, reddish or black color, which formed a long hanging mane on the shoulders and chest. A thick layer of subcutaneous fat also protected the mammoth from the cold. The tusks of some animals reached a length of 3 m and weighed up to 150 kg. Most likely, the mammoths raked the snow with their tusks in search of food: grass, mosses, ferns and small shrubs. In one day, this animal consumed up to 100 kg of coarse plant food, which he had to grind with four huge molars - each weighed about 8 kg. Mammoths lived in the tundra, grassy steppes and forest steppes.
To catch such a huge beast, the ancient hunters had to work hard. Apparently, they set up various pit traps, or they drove the beast into a swamp, where it got bogged down, and finished it off there. But in general it is difficult to imagine how a Neanderthal man with his primitive weapons could kill a mammoth.
An important game animal was the cave bear - an animal about one and a half times larger than the modern brown bear. Large males, having risen on their hind legs, reached a height of 2.5 m.
These animals, as their name implies, lived mainly in caves, so they were not only an object of hunting, but also competitors: after all, Neanderthals also preferred to settle in caves, because it was dry, warm and cozy there. The struggle with such a serious opponent as a cave bear was extremely dangerous, and far from always ended in the victory of the hunter.
Neanderthals also hunted bison or bison, horses and reindeer. All these animals gave not only meat, but also fat, bones, and skins. In general, they provided a person with everything necessary.
Mammoths were not found in southern Asia and Africa, and the main game animals there were elephants and rhinos, antelopes, gazelles, mountain goats, and buffaloes.
It must be said that Neanderthals, apparently, did not disdain their own kind either - this is evidenced by the large number of crushed human bones found at the Krapina site in Yugoslavia. (It is known that in this way - by crushing KOC ~ tey - our ancestors obtained nutritious bone marrow.) The inhabitants of this site received the name "Krapinsky cannibals" in the literature. Similar finds were made in several other caves of that time.
Taming Fire
We have already said that Sinanthropus (and most likely, all Pithecanthropes in general) began to use natural fire - obtained as a result of a lightning strike on a tree or a volcanic eruption. The fire obtained in this way was continuously maintained, transferred from place to place and carefully stored, because people did not yet know how to make fire artificially. However, Neanderthals seem to have already learned this. How did they do it?
There are 5 known ways of making fire, which existed among primitive peoples back in the 19th century: 1) scraping fire (fire plow), 2) sawing fire (fire saw), 3) drilling fire (fire drill), 4) carving fire and 5) obtaining fire with compressed air (fire pump). The fire pump is an uncommon method, although it is quite perfect.
Scraping fire (fire plow). This method is not particularly common among backward peoples (and how it was in antiquity - we are unlikely to ever know). It is quite fast, but requires a lot of physical effort. They take a wooden stick and drive it, pressing hard, along a wooden plank lying on the ground. As a result, thin shavings or wood powder are obtained, which, due to the friction of wood against wood, heat up and then begin to smolder. Then they are combined with flammable tinder and fan the fire.
Sawing fire (fire saw). This method is similar to the previous one, but the wooden plank was sawn or scraped not along the fibers, but across. The result was also wood powder, which began to smolder.
Fire drilling (fire drill). This is the most common way to make fire. A fire drill consists of a wooden stick, which is used to drill a wooden plank (or other stick) lying on the ground. As a result, smoking or smoldering wood powder appears rather quickly in the depression on the bottom board; it is poured onto tinder and blown into a flame. Ancient people rotated the drill with the palms of both hands, but later they began to do it differently: the drill rested on something with its upper end and covered with a belt, and then they pulled alternately at both ends of the belt, causing it to rotate.
Fire carving. Fire can be struck by hitting a stone against a stone, hitting a stone against a piece of iron ore (sulfur pyrites, or pyrite), or hitting iron against a stone. As a result of the impact, sparks are obtained, which should fall on the tinder and ignite it.
"The Neanderthal Problem"
From the 1920s to the end of the 20th century, scientists from different countries were heatedly debating whether the Neanderthal was the direct ancestor of modern humans. Many foreign scientists believed that the ancestor of modern man - the so-called "presapiens" - lived almost simultaneously with the Neanderthals and gradually forced them "into oblivion". In domestic anthropology, it was generally accepted that it was Neanderthals that eventually “turned” into Hoto sapiens, and one of the main arguments was that all known remains of modern humans date back to a much later time than the bones of Neanderthals found.
But at the end of the 80s, important finds of Homo sapiens were made in Africa and the Middle East, dating back to a very early time (the heyday of the Neanderthals), and the position of the Neanderthal as our ancestor was greatly shaken. In addition, due to the improvement of methods of dating the finds, the age of some of them was revised and turned out to be more ancient.
To date, in two geographical areas of our planet, the remains of a modern human have been found, whose age exceeds 100 thousand years. These are Africa and the Middle East. On the African continent, in the town of Omo Kibish in southern Ethiopia, a jaw was found that is similar in structure to the jaw of Noto sapiens, whose age is about 130 thousand years. The finds of skull fragments from the territory of the Republic of South Africa have an age of about 100 thousand years, and finds from Tanzania and Kenya are up to 120 thousand years old.
Finds are known from the Skhul cave on Mount Karmel, near Haifa, as well as from the Jabel Kafzeh cave, in southern Israel (this is all the territory of the Middle East). In both caves, the bones of people were found, which, by most signs, are much closer to modern people than to Neanderthals. (True, this applies only to two individuals.) All these finds are 90-100 thousand years old. Thus, it turns out that a modern man for many millennia (at least in the Middle East) lived side by side with the Neanderthal.
The data obtained by the methods of genetics, which has been rapidly developing in recent times, also indicate that the Neanderthal is not our ancestor and that modern man arose and settled on the planet completely independently. And besides, living side by side for a long time, our ancestors and Neanderthals did not mix, because they do not have common genes that would inevitably arise from mixing. Although this issue has not yet been finally resolved.
So, on the territory of Europe, Neanderthals reigned supreme for almost 400 thousand years, being the only representatives of the Noto genus. But about 40 thousand years ago, modern people invaded their possessions - Noto sapiens, who are also called "Upper Paleolithic people" or (according to one of the sites in France) Cro-Magnons. And this is in the truest sense of the word our ancestors - our great-great-great... (and so on) -grandparents.
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Spanish scientist Juan Luis Arsuaga decided to find the answer to the question of how Neanderthals appeared
The scientific journal Science has published a detailed description of 17 skulls found in the Cleft of Bones (Sima de los Huesos) burial ground.
The description was prepared by the Spanish scientist Juan Luis Arsuaga, who decided to find an answer to the question of how Neanderthals appeared.
A small population of humans split off from East Asians and Africans about 500,000 years ago. This group moved to Western Eurasia, and from that time their anatomy began to acquire features that eventually made it possible to separate them into a separate species, which was called Homo neanderthalensis.
After another few hundred thousand years, the Cro-Magnons, our closest ancestors, came to Eurasia. Despite the existence of facts confirming their crossing, these two populations "dispersed" too far for a successful "merger", and, as a result, Neanderthals disappeared from the face of our planet.
At present, scientists do not know exactly why the two groups of hominids became so different from each other in such a short time. By comparison, average-sized mammals need at least one and a half million years for reproductive isolation.
According to leading Neanderthal researcher Jean-Jacques Hublen, genetic drift and population isolation played a major role here. Periodic advances of glaciers led to the fact that the inhabitants of Europe were dispersed in small groups across the continent and had almost no contact with each other, and low genetic diversity caused the newly acquired mutations to quickly consolidate.
Scientists are still arguing about exactly how the evolution of Neanderthals went. In particular, the question remains whether the so-called Neanderthalization affected all areas of the skull simultaneously or whether this process took place in several stages.
The difficulty in answering this question lies in the fact that at the disposal of scientists there are only separate and far from each other remains, and the finds in the Atapuerca mountains, due to the exceptional concentration of remains in one place, are of great value to researchers.
In total, over 1,600 remains from at least 32 different individuals have been found in this world's largest repository of hominid bones. In 2000, this archaeological complex received the status of a World Heritage Site of mankind, and scientists have been studying it since the middle of the last century.
The work carried out in the Cleft of Bones allowed researchers to describe a new species of Homo antecessor hominids, as well as to find evidence of the presence of the spiritual life of the Heidelberg man - stone tools, which could probably be funeral offerings.
Cleft of bones. Photo courtesy of scientificfilms.tv
According to scientists, the remains of people and animals are localized only on the 6th and 7th floors of the 12 lithostratigraphic levels of the burial ground. Level 6 remains date back 430,000 years to the beginning of the Middle Pleistocene, 100,000 years closer to modern times than Arsuaga had previously thought.
Thus, experts say, the remains of hominids from the Cleft of Bones represent the oldest reliably dated remains of the Homo species with clearly expressed Neanderthal apomorphies. Presumably, Arsuaga and his colleagues believe, the last common ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans lived about 430,000 years ago.
After studying 17 skulls from the Cleft of the Bones, scientists have identified their morphological properties, confirming the hypothesis of the mosaic nature of the evolution of Neanderthals. For example, new features are most pronounced in the anatomy of the teeth and face, and the cranial vault resembles more primitive hominids. A number of factors indicate that "neanderthalization" began with the masticatory apparatus, the authors say.
Photo courtesy of scientificfilms.tv
All 17 skulls also showed a striking similarity, while other remains from the same period known to anthropologists are very different from Atapuerca's hominids. Most likely, different European populations of the Middle Pleistocene had a different appearance and their evolution proceeded at different rates. For example, the people from Cleft Bone were closer to Neanderthals.
The article also mentions the authors' proposal to revise the taxonomic affiliation of the hominids from the Cleft of Bones. This is due to the fact that many Neanderthal apomorphies in their chewing apparatus make it problematic to classify them as Homo heidelbergiensis, but there are few anatomical grounds for assigning them to Neanderthals, and at present it remains only to single out the Cleft Bones hominid into a separate taxon.
