What did the Cro-Magnons learn? Ancient Cro-Magnon man - characteristics of lifestyle, tools, interesting facts with photos and videos
It is no coincidence that the CRO-MANNON man is also unanimously called “modern man.” (Referring, of course, to the modern Caucasian.) The name “Cro-Magnon” is conventional: it comes from the site of Cro-Magnon in France, where the first such skeleton was found. There is no biological reason not to call a Cro-Magnon an early Caucasian - or you and I, a late Cro-Magnon. If the question about the direct origin of blacks from Neanderthals is not yet raised very confidently (more confidently about the origin of the Australoids from them; we are personally confident in both), then there is no doubt here. Each representative European peoples and even some others (later) can say: Cro-Magnon is my great-great-great-great-grandfather.
This was understood already at the dawn of anthropology. Prominent German anthropologist Alexander Ecker (1818-1887) in the 60s years XIX century discovered skulls of the “northern type” in the graves of southern Germany and established their identity with the skulls of modern Germans. Skulls of the pure “northern type” were also discovered throughout Scandinavia and Northern Germany by the leading Swedish anthropologist Anders Retzius (1796-1860). It was on the basis of these numerous craniological series that it was suggested that the modern “northern type” in its structure goes back to the Cro-Magnon type of Paleolithic Europe. The classic of the French anthropological school, Armand de Quatrefages (1810-1892), even called ancient Cro-Magnon man blond in modern sense this word. Ideally upright, very tall (average height 187 cm) and large-headed (brain volume from 1600 to 1900 cm?), they, like us, had a straight forehead, a high cranial vault, and a sharply protruding chin. Over time, having discovered the fingerprints of ancient sculptors on clay figurines of the Paleolithic era, scientists established their complete racial identity with modern Caucasians.
Craniology data is a very serious argument, as much has already been said above. Therefore, scientific data on the distribution of the Cro-Magnon skull across the globe deserve not only trust, but also special attention and reflection.
As Eugen Fischer wrote in his work “Race and the Origin of Races in Man” (1927): “One of the most substantiated hypotheses is this: from the Cro-Magnon race came the Nordic race, the builders of megaliths, dolmen burials of Scandinavia, Denmark, etc. According to this hypothesis , the Nordic race arose as a result of modification of the Late Paleolithic race in the North as the currently inhabited places became free of ice. The Nordic race arose here, and it was then that it acquired its typical qualities. This best explanation origin Nordic race" Let us leave in this passage the question of the place of Cro-Magnon ethnogenesis for further discussion (as it is still beyond the competence of anthropologists) and accept the main thing: Caucasians settled the North precisely as Cro-Magnon modifications.
Were they already divided into racial subtypes? Did the subtypes begin to develop linguistic isolation even then? There is no doubt that sooner or later this happened. Darwin's teachings state this quite convincingly: the consequence of natural selection is the divergence of characters. This means that one parent species can give rise to several new species. This is precisely what the waves of migrations from North to South, which were carried out by the Cro-Magnons periodically throughout the foreseeable historical and prehistoric retrospective, speak of. Figuratively speaking, Cro-Magnons, right up to the 20th century AD, were sprayed out in “quanta” to the South, East and West from their northern ecological niche as it overflowed.
But, of course, they did not call themselves Cro-Magnons. What were the names of the expansive “quanta”? They are called differently by different sources, and we will omit the names of many forgotten ones today. In the Middle Ages, New and Contemporary times, these were, for example, Germans, Spaniards, English, French, Dutch, Belgians, Russians. In more distant times - Franks, Vikings, Goths, Normans, Lombards. Before them - the Germans, Celts, Huns, Scythians, Slavs. Before them - the Etruscans, Proto-Hellenes, Proto-Italics. Before them, the Indo-Aryans, before them - the Proto-Iranians, before them - the Hittites... All of them spoke languages of the Indo-European group, but during the time that elapsed from “quantum” to “quantum”, they managed to mutate to the point of complete impossibility of mutual understanding.
Always “from top to bottom,” always from North to South, waves of mass migrations (“invasions”) rolled one after another, represented by ever new descendants of the Cro-Magnon man. At the same time, the late wave often rolled onto the earlier one; A fratricidal war broke out, all the more terrible because the combatants no longer saw each other as brothers, because time and cross-breeding with opposing races and peoples sometimes changed their appearance and language beyond recognition. The brother did not recognize or understand his brother. One “quantum” spoke Hittite, another - in Sanskrit, a third in Zend and Avestan languages, a fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh - in Greek, Latin, Finnish, Slavic... Language barriers have already become rigid, and racial subtypes are the result of miscegenation - already established: how was it possible to restore the relationship? In those days, no one had ever thought of measuring skulls to solve this problem!
The skulls were measured in modern times - and they gasped: the descendants of the Cro-Magnon man, it turns out (judging by the proto-Nordic skulls in the burials), reached Central Africa, India, Oceania and Polynesia, not to mention Siberia, the Urals, Altai, Kazakhstan, China, Central Asia, the Pamirs and the entire Mediterranean, including North Africa and Western Asia. Etc.
Today these descendants have a variety of names, speak different languages, do not understand each other and are not considered kinship. But they all came out of the Great Northern Platform, they all have a common ancestor - the Cro-Magnon man.
WHERE DID THE NEANDERTHALS GO?
AS EVERYONE knows, Neanderthals once inhabited all of Europe, except Scandinavia and northern Russia: their remains are found in England, Germany, France, Italy, Yugoslavia, southern Russia(in Scythian burial mounds), etc. These are autochthons, old-timers of Europe. They were found in the Middle and South-East Asia, and in Southern Siberia, China, Crimea, Palestine, Africa (all the way to distant Rhodesia) and the island of Java. Let's not touch on the question of how they got there or where they came from for now. Different experts date the age of the Neanderthal in different ways: according to some data, he is 50-100 thousand years old, according to others, less reliable, as much as 200, 250 and even 300 thousand years old. For now, it is enough for us to take note of the thesis: “Anthropologists have established the presence of three variants of fossil people in Europe during the mentioned period of anthropogenesis: 1) Neanderthals; 2) modern people; 3) intermediate forms,” clarifying that by modern man we mean a Cro-Magnon man, and by intermediate forms a hybrid of the first two, and by no means a “transitional link.”
The first Neanderthal was found near Düsseldorf in 1856. In 1997, researchers from the University of Munich analyzed the DNA of the remains of this very first Neanderthal. The age of the find was determined to be 50 thousand years. A study of 328 identified nucleotide chains led paleontologist S. Paabo to the conclusion: the differences in genes between Neanderthals and modern humans are too great to consider them relatives. This idea was confirmed by studies by M. Ponce de Leon and K. Zollikofer (University of Zurich), who compared the skulls of a two-year-old Neanderthal and an age-matched little Cro-Magnon. The conclusion was clear: these skulls were formed in completely different ways.
The appearance of the Neanderthals had features that were very different from the Cro-Magnon ones, but which are still characteristic of the Negroid and Australoid races today: a depressed chin, large brow ridges, very massive jaws. The Neanderthal man had a larger brain than the Cro-Magnon man, but a different configuration. The imperfection and small size of the frontal lobes of the brain were brightened up by the presence of convolutions indicating a certain development mental abilities. In the interspecies struggle, such a brain did not become an advantage compared to the Cro-Magnon one, but there is hardly any reason to oppose Neanderthals to the homo sapiens species as a whole, since they undoubtedly had a mind. And the structure of their palate, lower jaw, lower left frontal lobe of the brain (speech area modern man) is such that it allowed Neanderthals to speak, although not very phonetically rich, due to the absence of a mental protuberance. The average height of men was 1.65 m, women were 10 cm lower. At the same time, the men weighed about 90 kg due to very highly developed muscles and heavy, strong bones.
Whole corpses of Neanderthals (like the corpses of mammoths) were not preserved, since they were not found in permafrost soils. There are only skeletons. Therefore, today we cannot judge for sure the color of their skin. In popular pictures and school textbooks, Neanderthals are usually depicted as white-skinned, upright creatures covered with sparse hair. But this coloring is not based on anything. A number of scientists today have put forward a much more plausible hypothesis that Neanderthals were black. This is evidenced by the geographical localization of the Neanderthals closest to us in time, who lived mainly in Central and South Africa and in Java, as well as the color of those modern races that are reasonably considered to be the descendants of the Neanderthal: Negroids, Australoids, Dravidians, etc. It is enough to “repaint” the Neanderthal from the school table in black - and a creature extremely similar in appearance will appear before us with all conviction with the named races. Not only skin and appearance, but also much more, for example, the structure of the tibia and ankle bones (whose articular planes indicate the habit of squatting for a long time, which is not typical for Caucasians) makes Neanderthals similar to modern inhabitants of the South of the Earth. It is very characteristic that among the remains of Cro-Magnons found in the grottoes of Grimaldi (Italy), the so-called “Grimaldians,” there are two skeletons, characterized by some scientists as Negroid, by others as Neanderthal.
Neanderthals, like Cro-Magnons, were people, they were radically different from the animal world. Although biologically completely different people, much inferior to Cro-Magnon man. But nevertheless, the Neanderthals created their own culture, called Mousterian (Chelian and Acheulian): stone and bone axes, scrapers, pointed points, although not in such a wide range as the Cro-Magnons, who created a dozen stone and bone “devices”. Neanderthals also knew fire; already 40 thousand years ago they buried their dead with honor according to a primitive ritual, honored the afterlife, and practiced hunting magic. At the same time, they began to develop primitive jewelry: pendants made from animal teeth. Scientists believe, however, that they could have adopted the custom of decorating themselves from the Cro-Magnons. In any case, this is no longer characteristic of anyone in the animal kingdom. But the Neanderthals, unlike the Cro-Magnons, did not leave works of art (rock paintings, sculptures made of bone and baked clay).
The relationship between Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons was not idyllic. At Neanderthal sites, carefully crushed and gnawed bones are found not only of large game, but also bones of Cro-Magnons, that is, ancestors, processed in exactly the same way modern people. And vice versa: crushed bones of Neanderthals were found at Cro-Magnon sites. The two protoraces waged an irreconcilable war among themselves, a war of destruction, “to be devoured,” as the Bible would put it. Which war was accompanied, as fossil skeletons irrefutably testify, by racial mixing, most likely violent.
For approximately ten thousand years, a brutal confrontation between two proto-races lasted on the same territory; but by the end of this period (about 40 thousand years ago), the Cro-Magnons displaced the Neanderthals from Europe almost completely. Thirty thousand years ago, their remains still survived in the Gibraltar region, in the Pyrenees and the Dalmatian mountains. But in general, the “race of the vanquished” rolled further south, to Western Asia and the Mediterranean, where the confrontation continued for many millennia.
As has already been quite reliably established, Cro-Magnons did not and could not descend from Neanderthals. But they could mix with them (we emphasize and confirm this once again) “improving the breed.” Moreover, both on their own initiative and in addition to it, depending on the outcome of a particular interracial skirmish. If men who were captured were in danger of being eaten, the fate of women could be completely different. A study of the Tasmanians, who were “stuck” in the Stone Age until their disappearance in the 19th century, showed that inter-tribal relations of Paleolithic people, in addition to diplomacy, trade and war, certainly included the abduction of women. The Neanderthal breed definitely improved during crossbreeding, the Cro-Magnon breed just as definitely worsened, but one way or another, the process was so intense, long-lasting and reciprocal that it led, as already mentioned, to the formation of new ethnic groups and even races of the second order.
A prominent domestic scientist, Yu. D. Benevolenskaya, in her article “The problem of identifying the sapient and Neanderthal lines in the early stages of evolution” (Courier of the Petrovskaya Kunstkamera. Issue 8-9, St. Petersburg, 1999) writes: “The hypothesis of the evolutionary transformation of Neanderthals into a neoanthrope is increasingly giving way to the idea of the displacement of the first by modern people, which was accompanied by crossbreeding between them.”
Another outstanding Russian anthropologist A. A. Zubov in the article “Problems of intraspecific taxonomy of the genus homo in connection with modern ideas on the biological differentiation of humanity (Modern anthropology and genetics and the problem of races in humans. M., 1995) also points out: “We can talk about the “network-like” nature of the evolution of the genus Homo at all stages of its evolution. It is important to note that the “network” could include different evolutionary “floors” that interacted with each other and made their genetic contribution to the general, unified fund of diversity of the evolving genus Homo.”
In other words, representatives of the “higher” human levels entered into sexual intercourse with representatives of the “lower”, Neanderthal, levels, as a result of which they gave birth to mestizos, then numerically isolated to the level of entire peoples and races, which gave rise to the general evolutionary diversity of the genus homo.
The famous American biologist Anthony Barnett in his book “The Human Race” (M., 1968) also testifies that “modern people appeared at about the same time, if not earlier, as Neanderthal man, and developed in parallel. Intermediate types between modern humans and Neanderthals could have been the result of either interbreeding or early phases of Neanderthal divergence from the lineage that led to modern humans."
In all likelihood, all territories, including Europe, where at one time or another both proto-races—Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons—lived simultaneously as a zone of crossbreeding. Hybrid forms then continued to exist there everywhere and produce offspring, interbreeding more and more with the dominant type - in Europe the Cro-Magnon became such already 40 thousand years ago. At the same time, according to Darwin's theory, the characteristics of mixed forms, as not provided for by natural selection (nature), in each generation were increasingly replaced by the dominant characteristics of the Caucasian, being perceived over time as an atavism. As a result, Neanderthal traits among white Caucasians, although still found today, are only rare. The closer to the south, the more frequent they are, and in the zone of Western Asia and the Mediterranean they either become dominant or appear in the form of hybrid ethnic groups, which can be considered, for example, Semites, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Maghrebians, etc. Crossbreeding is whimsically selective: if Ethiopians have black skin and Caucasian facial features, while Semites, on the contrary, often have Negroid (Neanderthaloid) facial features with white or olive (“mulatto”) skin, etc.
It is not surprising that entire hybrid peoples arose in this zone, because it was here that the finale of the Great Neanderthal War played out for at least ten thousand years, and the two protoraces locked between Mediterranean Sea and the Atlas Mountains, continued to sort things out until they completely dissolved into each other and broke up into bizarrely combined, but rather homogeneous secondary races and ethnic groups. (The dominant type disappeared as such and the possibility of returning to it - reversion - became generally excluded, although from time to time both initial types necessarily appear, but only sporadically and fragmentarily.)
This is, in particular, narrated by the finds of archaeologists D. Garrod and T. McCone, made at the beginning of the twentieth century in Palestine on Mount Carmel in the Goat (Skhul) and Pechnaya (Tabun) caves. The remains of ancient people were discovered there, separated in time by about ten thousand years: ancient ash in the Pechnaya Cave is 40 thousand years old, and in Kozya Cave - 30 thousand years old. Over these ten thousand years, enormous changes occurred with the population inhabiting this area: the purely Neanderthal appearance gradually accumulated an increasing number of characteristic Cro-Magnon features. The inhabitants of the Skhul cave closest to us in time have greatest number Cro-Magnon characteristics (including an average height of 175 cm), while still remaining a hybrid.
Later, the conclusions drawn from the study of the Skhul and Tabun caves were fully confirmed by new finds in the same geographical area and in the same temporary soil layers. Namely: in the 1930s. on Mount Kafeh near Nazareth, the remains of six Neanderthals were found with such characteristic Cro-Magnon differences as a high cranial vault, a rounded back of the head, etc. Similar finds were then made in the caves of Yabrud (Syria), Haoua Fteah (Libya), Jebel Irhoud (Morocco) , Shanidar (Iraq). In 1963, a Japanese expedition found in Israel the skeleton of an entire Neanderthal, but... the height of a Cro-Magnon man (170 cm). And so on.
As we already know for sure, the Cro-Magnon man did not descend from the Neanderthal man. He fought with him to the death, completely cleared Europe of him (partially mingling with the enemy, but then squeezing out his residual traits drop by drop for tens of thousands of years), but was unable to repeat this feat in Western Asia and the Mediterranean. Here, precisely in this region, the first “melting pot” in history arose, in which they found their death and new life both the “south-sweeping” echelons of Cro-Magnons and the Neanderthals who fled from them but were unable to escape.
Does this mean that today only hybrid, intermediate or secondary forms remain of the ancient Neanderthals, that they all completely dissolved into a stronger race of winners or simply died out, giving way to other races?
No, there is no reason for such pessimism.
The Atlas Mountains stopped the weary pursuers, who had found in the blessed climate of the Mediterranean their cherished ideal, bequeathed by genes and tribal legends: they had nowhere and no need to strive further. But the persecuted, fleeing for their lives, filtered through the mountain barrier and gradually populated all of Africa and not only it. As a result, each proto-race became entrenched in its own area: the Cro-Magnons, who became Caucasians, at home, mainly in Europe; Neanderthals, who became Negroids and Australoids, - at home, mainly in Africa, then in the south of India (where they were displaced in the 2nd millennium BC by the descendants of the Cro-Magnons, the so-called “Andronovians” - the future “Indo-Aryans”), in Australia, Tasmania etc.; and the world's first mixed race - at home, in Western Asia and the Mediterranean. This happened approximately 30 thousand years ago.
Cro-Magnons are considered to be the ancestors of modern humans who lived on our planet in the late (or upper) Paleolithic era (40-12 thousand years ago). The name of this species comes from the Cro-Magnon cave, located in the southwestern part of France. It was there in 1868 that archaeologist Louis Larte, during excavations, came across the remains of ancient people, who in their own way differed from the previously discovered skeletons of Neanderthals and resembled Homo sapiens. The find, which was about 30 thousand years old, immediately attracted the attention of scientists who studied the history of that period, because nothing was known about the way of life of the Cro-Magnons at that time. In subsequent years, their remains, along with tools, were discovered in other territories (Mladeč and Dolni Vestonice in the Czech Republic, Pavyland in England, Peshtera ku Oase in Romania, Murzak Koba in Crimea, Sungir in Russia, Mezhirech in Ukraine, Fish Hook, Cape Flats in Africa, etc.).
Origin and migration
The origin of Cro-Magnons has not been fully studied to this day. Previously, historians and anthropologists adhered to the Marxist theory of the emergence of this type of ancient man. According to her, the Cro-Magnon man is a direct descendant of the Neanderthal man. Many modern researchers question this theory. They are inclined to believe that Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons descended from a common ancestor, after which each of them began to develop separately.
Modern scientists have not been able to reach a consensus on in which part of the planet the first ancestors of modern humans appeared and when exactly this happened. The most common version says that Cro-Magnons formed into a separate species about 200 thousand years ago, and this happened in eastern Africa. After 70 thousand years, they began migrating to the Middle East in search of new lands to live. From here, one part of the Cro-Magnons settled on the coast Indian Ocean, and the other moved north and reached the lands of Asia Minor and Northern Black Sea region. Homo sapiens appeared in Europe approximately 40-45 thousand years ago.
Appearance
What did the Cro-Magnons look like? Ancient man, fossil man differed from modern individuals in body structure and brain size. In contrast, representatives of Homo sapiens resembled modern humans, but were larger. Archaeological finds have revealed that the male Cro-Magnons who inhabited ancient Europe, reached a height of 180 cm (women were shorter), had wide faces and deep-set eyes. reasonable was 1400-1900 cubic centimeters, which corresponds to this indicator in modern people. The lifestyle of the Cro-Magnons, who had to survive in the harsh conditions of ancient times, contributed to the formation of well-developed muscle mass.
Life
They lived in communities whose number reached 100 people. Their main activities were hunting and gathering plant foods. They were the first to make tools from bones and antlers. Along with this, their use of stone tools remained widespread. Lighter and more improved products allowed them to get more food, sew clothes, and invent devices aimed at making their existence easier. Scientists are convinced that the ancient people of this era had well-developed speech.
Housing
The Cro-Magnons still continued to settle in caves, but new types of housing had already begun to appear. They learned to build reliable tents from animal skins, wood and bones. Such houses could be moved, thanks to which the Cro-Magnon lifestyle ceased to be sedentary. Wandering from place to place in order to develop new lands, they carried their housing and household with them. The Cro-Magnons were the first prehistoric people to domesticate a dog and use it as a companion.
The ancestors of humanity had a widespread cult of hunting. This is evidenced by numerous finds of animal figurines pierced by arrows, found during excavations of their settlements. The walls were decorated with images of animals and hunting scenes.
Foraging for food
Hunting became firmly established in the life of the Cro-Magnon man. The realities of the Stone Age were such that in order to feed themselves, it was necessary to kill. The ancient inhabitants of our planet hunted well organized groups 10-20 people each. The objects of their persecution were large animals (mammoths, wolves, woolly rhinoceroses, bears, red deer, bison). By destroying the beast, they provided their communities with plenty of skin and meat. The Cro-Magnons' main weapons for killing animals were spear throwers and bows. In addition to hunting, they were engaged in catching birds and fish (for the first activity they used snares, and for the second - harpoons and hooks).
In addition to meat and fish, the descendants of modern humans ate wild plants. The food of Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons was very similar. They ate everything that nature gave them (bark, leaves and fruits of trees, stems, flowers and roots of plants, cereals, mushrooms, nuts, algae, etc.).
Burials
The Cro-Magnons had interesting funeral customs. They placed deceased relatives in the grave in a half-bent position. Their hair was decorated with nets, their hands were decorated with bracelets, and their faces were covered with flat stones. Colors were sprinkled on top of the bodies of the dead. Ancient people believed in the afterlife, so they buried their relatives along with household items, jewelry and food, being sure that they would need them after death.
Cro-Magnon Cultural Revolution
People who lived during the Late Paleolithic period made a number of discoveries that allowed them to significantly surpass cultural development their predecessors. Their main achievement was the invention of a new method of processing flint, which went down in history under the name “knife plate method.” This discovery made a real revolution in the manufacture of tools. The method was that individual plates were beaten or pressed from a stone nodule (core), from which various products were subsequently made. Thanks to new technology, prehistoric people learned to obtain up to 250 cm of working edge from one kilogram of flint (for Neanderthals this figure did not exceed 220 cm, and for their predecessors it barely reached 45 cm).
An equally important discovery of the Cro-Magnons was the production of tools from animal raw materials. Spending a lot of time hunting, the ancient man noticed that the bones, horns and tusks of animals are characterized by increased strength. He began to make qualitatively new products from them that made his life easier. Bone needles and awls appeared, making it easier to sew clothes from skins. Animal raw materials began to be used in the construction of new homes, as well as to make jewelry and figurines from it. The development of new materials led to the invention of more advanced hunting tools - spear throwers and bows. These adaptations allowed the Cro-Magnons to kill animals that were many times their strength and size.
The way of life of the Cro-Magnons was not only about surviving among wildlife. Prehistoric people strived for beauty. They left their descendants many works of art. These include wall paintings in caves, tools decorated with unique ornaments, and figurines of bison, horses, deer and other animals made from flint, clay, bones and tusks. The ancient Cro-Magnons worshiped feminine beauty. Among the finds discovered by archaeologists, there are many figurines of the fair sex. Due to the splendor of their forms, modern historians called them “Venuses”.
Cro-Magnons - common name ancestors of people who existed 40-10 thousand years ago (). Cro-Magnons are a sharp leap in the development of human evolution, which became decisive not only in the survival of the human race, but also in the formation of Homo sapiens.
Cro-Magnons appeared much later, about 40-50 thousand years ago. According to some estimates, the earliest Cro-Magnons could have existed more than 100 thousand years ago. Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons are species of the genus Homo.
Neanderthals supposedly evolved from humans, who in turn were a species of Homo erectus (), and were not the ancestors of humans. Cro-Magnons descended from Homo erectus and are the direct ancestors of modern humans. The name "Cro-Magnon" refers to the discovery of several human skeletons with Late Paleolithic tools in the rock grotto of Cro-Magnon, France. Later, the remains of Cro-Magnons and their cultures were found in many parts of the world - in Great Britain, the Czech Republic, Serbia, Romania, and Russia.
Scientists offer different versions of the appearance and spread of Cro-Magnons, the ancestors of humans. Judging by one version, the first representatives of the ancestors of people with the Cro-Magnon type of development (a species of Homo erectus) appeared in East Africa another 130-180 thousand years ago. About 50-60 thousand years ago, Cro-Magnons began to migrate from Africa to Eurasia. Initially, one group settled on the coast of the Indian Ocean, and the second settled in the steppes Central Asia. A little later, migration began to Europe, which was settled by Cro-Magnons about 20 thousand years ago. There are also other versions about the spread of Cro-Magnons.
Cro-Magnons had a huge advantage over the Neanderthals that existed at the same time in Europe. Although the Neanderthals were more adapted to northern conditions, they were more powerful and stronger, they could not resist the Cro-Magnons. The direct ancestors of people were carriers of such a high culture for that time that the Neanderthals were clearly inferior to them in development, although, according to some studies, the Neanderthal brain was larger, he knew how to create tools for labor and hunting, used fire, created clothes and homes, and knew how to make jewelry , had speech, and so on. By that time the Cro-Magnon man had already produced enough complex decorations made of stone, horn and bone, as well as rock paintings. The Cro-Magnons were the first to come up with human settlements and lived in communities ( tribal communities), which included up to 100 people. Cro-Magnons used caves, tents made of animal skins, dugouts, and houses made of stone slabs as dwellings in different parts of the world. The Cro-Magnons created clothing from skins and made more modern tools for labor and hunting than their ancestors and Neanderthals. Cro-Magnons also domesticated the dog for the first time.
As researchers suggest, migrating Cro-Magnons who arrived in Europe met here with Neanderthals, who long before them had already mastered the best territories, populated the most convenient caves, and settled in advantageous areas near rivers or in places where there was a lot of prey. Probably, in 1960, the Cro-Magnons, who had a higher development, simply exterminated the Neanderthals. Archaeologists find bones of Neanderthals at Cro-Magnon sites that have obvious traces of eating them, that is, Neanderthals were not only exterminated, but also eaten. There is also a version that only part of the Neanderthals were destroyed, the rest were able to assimilate with the Cro-Magnons.
Finds of Cro-Magnons clearly indicate the existence of religious ideas. The beginnings of religion are also observed among Neanderthals, but many scientists express great doubts about this. Among the Cro-Magnons, cult rituals can be traced very clearly. The ancestors of people tens of thousands of years ago carried out complex funeral rites, buried their relatives in a bent position in a fetal position (belief in the transmigration of the soul, rebirth), decorated the dead with various products, placed household items, food in the grave (belief in the afterlife of the soul, during which it will need the same things as during the earthly life - plates, food, weapons, etc.).
The emergence of people of the modern physical type, who replaced ancient people, occurred relatively recently, about 40 thousand years ago. Fossil remains of people of modern physical type have been found in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. Several of their skeletons were found in the Cro-Magnon Grotto in France. Based on the location where they were found, modern fossil humans were named Cro-Magnons. In our country, unique finds of these people were made near Voronezh and Vladimir.
Cro-Magnons had a high forehead and lacked a massive supraorbital ridge. The lower jaw had the same chin protrusion as ours. This sign is associated with the development of the speech apparatus. The volume of the brain generally did not exceed the volume of the Neanderthal brain, but its structure was more perfect, the frontal lobes were more developed. The skeleton's bones are less massive and thinner than those of the Neanderthal. They have fully developed an upright gait and a modern human hand. In general, in their physical structure they did not differ from modern people.
Over the course of tens of thousands of years of later human history, right up to the present time, the physical structure of man has no longer undergone noticeable changes. New labor skills and a new culture were developed, but the structure of human bones, muscles, and their interconnectedness remained almost unchanged.
Cro-Magnons - the origin of modern man
Cro-Magnons are the general name for the ancient representatives of modern humans, who appeared much later than the Neanderthals and coexisted with them for some time (40-30,000 years ago). Their appearance and physical development in fact, they were no different from modern man.
About 40–30,000 years ago, the third greatest event in the life of our planet occurred. The first, which occurred several billion years ago, was the origin of life. The second is the beginning of humanization, the transition from ape to ape-man - about 2 million years ago. The third event is the emergence of a modern type of man, Homo sapiens - Homo sapiens.
40–30,000 years ago he appears and very quickly (quickly in this case, when a millennium is a trifle) takes the place of the Neanderthals.
Skeletons of Cro-Magnons found
As soon as the archaeologist from France Larte discovered 5 skeletons in the Cro-Magnon Grotto under a thick layer of centuries-old sediments, he immediately guessed that he had met “acquaintances”. Shortly before this, the scientist learned that, by order of the authorities of the Haute-Garonne department, 17 skeletons, accidentally found in the Pyrenees cave of Aurignac, were buried in the parish cemetery. Larte was able to easily prove that strict rules can be waived in relation to these people Christian burial, and not only dug them back up, but also established (using stone tools and animal bones from the Aurignac cave) that they were contemporaries of the same ice age in which the classical Neanderthals lived. The tools of Aurignacian man are found in a slightly higher, that is, later, layer than the tools of the Chapellellians.
The two caves in which the most ancient people of the modern type were found gave them their names: the first man began to be called the Cro-Magnon man, and the first large period of his history - the Aurignac period (culture).
Soon followed by dozens of discoveries of Cro-Magnon skeletons and sites throughout Western Europe And North Africa, and the ancient “homo sapiens” appeared in all its splendor and splendor.
Sungir parking lot
Sculptural portraits of a girl and a boy from the Sungir site
Sungir is an Upper Paleolithic site of the Cro-Magnons on the territory of the Vladimir region. There is a well-known pair burial - a boy 12–14 years old and a girl 9–10 years old, lying with their heads facing each other. What could their bones tell us? As it turned out, the boy, despite his age, could throw a javelin well with his right hand. The girl, judging by the development of her fingers and forearm, often made scrolling movements with her right hand. We know that the clothes of the Sungir people were covered with many beads made of mammoth bone, and there were holes in the beads. These holes, apparently, were drilled by the young Cro-Magnon woman.
The structure of the right humerus and cervical vertebrae indicate that the girl often raised her right arm up, and her head was constantly tilted to the left. So that such features can appear on the skeleton already in childhood, the load must be very strong! According to anthropologists, the girl regularly carried weights on her head and held them with her right hand. Perhaps, during the transitions from site to site, which were made by nomadic groups of Cro-Magnons, the little Cro-Magnon was a carrier along with adults.
What was the Cro-Magnon like?
The Cro-Magnons aroused admiration from their discoverers, mixed with envy: the first people - and what kind of people they were!
They were Caucasians, of enormous height (on average 187 cm), with an ideal straight bipedal gait and a very large head (from 1600 to 1900 cm³). Such a large skull could still be considered a “relic of Neanderthalism,” but this head already had a straight forehead, a high cranial vault, and a sharply protruding chin.
Cro-Magnon man did not know what metal was, did not suspect either agriculture or cattle breeding, but if we could take him through 400 centuries, he, apparently, would have easily figured everything out and could have drawn up an equation, written a poem, worked on the machine and perform in a chess tournament.
Where did the Cro-Magnon man come from?
The Cro-Magnon man appeared - for archaeologists and anthropologists - somehow right away: just here, in the caves of France and Italy, squat, powerful, invincible people lived, and suddenly they quickly, abruptly disappear, and people of the modern type are already hunting in their lands. The newcomers were accompanied by an incredible technical revolution: instead of 3-4 primitive stone tools of the Neanderthals, about 20 stone and bone “devices” were used during the Aurignac period: awls, needles, tips, and so on. Immediately, as if out of nowhere, amazing cave art appears.
This powerful anthropological, technical and cultural revolution now determines the entire human history. For billions of years, animals existed only according to biological laws, improving, expanding the apparatus of adaptation, but not leaving the biological framework. But here it happens most important event: the development of a group of animals has reached such a stage that they include in the mechanism of their adaptation, in addition to their own teeth and paws, also an inanimate object that does not belong to the organism: a stick, a stone.
According to one version, the Cro-Magnon man is the ancestor of all modern people, appearing in East Africa approximately 130-180,000 years ago. According to this theory, 50-60,000 years ago they migrated from Africa to Arabian Peninsula and appeared in Eurasia. The first group was able to quickly populate the Indian Ocean coast, while the second migrated to the steppes of Central Asia. The second group is the ancestors nomadic peoples and most of the Middle Eastern and North African population. Migration from the Black Sea to Europe began approximately 40-50,000 years ago, presumably through the Danube corridor. 20,000 years ago, all of Europe was already inhabited.
How have things changed?
Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon
From now on, this creature no longer belongs entirely to biology; there is a gap in the “biological fence”. An Oldowan pebble, a chopper, a stone axe, a steam locomotive, an electronic computing device - these are already phenomena of the same order: a living creature uses and combines inanimate objects. “Who” subordinates “what”.
The breakthrough in biology that occurs in a social animal multiplies, intensifies in the pack, and creates new relationships in this pack. But, apparently, the biological factor, that is, the physical structure of the creature, does not immediately get used to and agree with the new “organs” - tools: about 2 million years, the first ape-people change not only their equipment, but also their physical structure. A hand squeezing a beaten pebble causes the brain to think intensely and grow larger, but without remaining in debt, the brain sends its signals to the hand: it too improves.
Over thousands of centuries, tools go from rough stone, stick or bone to Neanderthal axes, stone scrapers and points.
During this period, the brain increases from 600–700 to 1500 cm³.
The gait ranges from semi-apelike to completely straight.
The hand - from a tenacious paw to the most perfect tool.
The collective - from the animal pack to the first human social forms.
Some law of evolution that we have not yet fully deciphered forces the body of the ape-man to change along with his tools.
Comparison with modern man
Eventually there comes a moment when biology and tools reach full agreement, a moment from which the brain and the hand can do any work. The same brain and the same hand as the Cro-Magnon man will control a bow after 20,000 years, a plow after 25,000, and after another several thousand years - a steam locomotive, a car, an airplane, a rocket.
To move from a primitive ax to a more advanced one, it was necessary to become a Neanderthal from a Pithecanthropus. And in order to come from unpolished stone tips to the splitting of the atom, “nothing” was needed, that is, it seems that nothing fundamentally changed in the human body.
Instead of changing physically in the struggle for existence, man chose a different path. From now on, he began to improve “inanimate objects” and changed the structure of his society. Physical changes were replaced by faster and more painless ones - technical and social ones.
How can we actually know that human biological development has stopped?
Discussions on this topic have been going on for a very long time. It has been noticed that centuries-long, thousand-year fluctuations in the physical structure of man occur: the Cro-Magnon man was taller than us, now, as we know, humanity is growing quite quickly again. Several thousand years ago, human bones were more massive, then they became more elegant, tomorrow, perhaps, they will again become massive and bulky. Undoubtedly, there is “brachycephalization”, an increase in the number of short-headed people compared to long-headed ones.
The reasons for such changes are guesswork: food, a new way of life? The seriousness of these changes is also speculative: are these temporary phenomena, or tomorrow they will be covered by another change, or after several tens or hundreds of thousands of years a person will look different, not like now?
Guessing about the future, we have, however, the right to say: over the last 30-40 thousand years there have been gigantic changes in technology, but during this same time no fundamental “bodily” changes have occurred.
Obviously, the “thousand-great-grandfathers” laid a good foundation!
Cro-Magnon culture
Cro-Magnon created a rich and diverse culture of the Late Paleolithic. There are descriptions of more than 100 types of complex stone and bone tools made with great skill, made by new, more efficient processing of stone and bone. The Cro-Magnons also significantly improved their methods of hunting (driven hunting), hunting deer, mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, cave bears, wolves and other animals. They began to produce spear throwers (a spear could fly 137 m), as well as devices for catching fish (harpoons, hooks), and bird snares.
The Cro-Magnons lived, as a rule, in caves, but at the same time they built various stone dwellings and dugouts, tents made of animal skins and even entire villages. Early neoanthropes could produce sewn clothing, often decorated. Thus, at the Sungir site (Vladimir region), more than 1000 beads were found on a man’s fur clothing, and many other jewelry were found - bracelets, rings.
Cro-Magnon was the creator of a wonderful European primitive art, as evidenced by multicolor paintings on the walls and ceilings of caves ((Spain), Montespan, Lascaux (France), etc.), engravings on pieces of stone or bone, ornaments, small stone and clay sculptures. Amazing images of horses, deer, bison, mammoths, female figurines, called “Venuses” by archaeologists for their splendor of forms, various objects carved from bone, horns and tusks or sculpted from clay, can undoubtedly testify to the highly developed sense of beauty among the Cro-Magnons. Cave art reached its peak approximately 19-15,000 years ago. Scientists believe that the Cro-Magnons could have magical rituals and rituals.
The life expectancy of Cro-Magnons was probably longer than that of Neanderthals: about 10% already lived to be 40 years old. During this era, the primitive communal system was formed.
Cro-Magnon cave with wall paintings
In the southwest of France, near the city of Villoner, Charente department, speleologists and archaeologists discovered a cave with ancient wall paintings.
Find a unique and extremely valuable underground hall with rock art cave explorers succeeded in December 2005, but the unique cave was reported much later. Such strong secrecy in Lately Scientists are increasingly guarding valuable finds to prevent them from being destroyed by unwanted visitors.
Dating work is underway rock paintings. Experts do not rule out that they may be more ancient than those in the famous Lascaux cave and Altamira cave. According to the first impressions of experts, we're talking about about the Cro-Magnon site, that is, the period 30,000 years ago. According to scientists, the discovery in Villonere could be a revolution in science - previously it was believed that in such ancient times people did not resort to painting the walls of their underground dwellings.
