The emergence of Homo sapiens. When did the first man appear? What are Australopithecines?

What are the driving forces, those factors that caused the restructuring of the morphology of Pithecanthropus in this particular direction and not in any other direction, created the prerequisites for the displacement of Pithecanthropus by modern man and determined the success of this process? Since anthropologists began to think about this process, and this happened relatively recently, a variety of reasons have been cited for the change in the morphology of Pithecanthropus and its approach to the morphology of modern humans.

Sinanthropus researcher F. Weindenreich considered the most significant difference between modern man and Pithecanthropus structurally perfect brain with more developed frontal lobes, increased in height, with a reduced occipital region. In general, the correctness of this view F. Weidenreich no doubt. But from this correct statement he was unable to move on to revealing its cause and answer the question: why did the brain itself improve, changing its structure?

Most a characteristic feature of a modern person is a perfect brush, capable of a wide variety of labor operations. All other features of the morphology of modern humans have developed in connection with the transformation of the hand. One might think, although this was not stated by the supporters of this theory, that the brain improved under the influence of numerous irritations coming from the hand, and the number of these irritations constantly increased in the process of labor and mastery of new labor operations. But this hypothesis encounters objections of both factual and theoretical nature. If we consider the restructuring of the brain only as a consequence of the evolution of the hand in the process of adaptation to labor operations, then it should have been reflected mainly in the development of the motor areas of the cerebral cortex, and not in the growth of the frontal lobes - the centers of associative thinking. And the morphological differences between Homo sapiens and Pithecanthropus lie not only in the structure of the brain. It is unclear, for example, how the change in body proportions of modern humans compared to Neanderthals is related to the restructuring of the hand. Thus, the hypothesis that connects the uniqueness of Homo sapiens primarily with the development of the hand in the process of mastering labor operations also cannot be accepted, just like the hypothesis stated above, which sees the main reason for this uniqueness in the development and improvement of the brain.

More acceptable is the hypothesis of factors in the formation of modern humans, developed by Ya.Ya. Roginsky . He used numerous and widely known observations in the clinic of nervous diseases on subjects whose frontal lobes of the brain were damaged: in such subjects, social instincts were sharply inhibited or completely disappeared, and their violent temper made them dangerous to others. Thus, the frontal lobes of the brain are the concentration of not only higher mental, but also social functions. This conclusion was compared with the factor of the growth of the frontal lobes of the brain in modern humans compared to Pithecanthropus and, in turn, led to the conclusion that it was not the development of the brain or the development of the hand in general, but the growth of the frontal lobes of the brain that was the main morphological feature that distinguished people modern type from late Neanderthals. Pithecanthropus, due to his morphology, was not social enough, not sufficiently adapted to life in society to allow this society to develop further: he did not know how to fully suppress his individualistic antisocial instincts, as, incidentally, happens in animals, and his weaponry was much greater. higher. Fights between individual members of the Pithecanthropus herd could result in serious injuries. Isolated cases of such injuries have been noted on some fossil human skulls. The further development of society set tasks for Pithecanthropus that it could not fulfill due to its limited morphological capabilities, so natural selection began to work towards the selection and preservation of more social individuals. Ya.Ya. Roginsky pointed to the enormous social strength and vitality of those groups in which the number of social individuals was greatest. The growth of the frontal lobes of the brain expanded the scope of areas of associative thinking, and with it contributed to the complexity of social life, the diversity of work activities, and caused the further evolution of the structure of the body, physiological functions, and motor skills.

It should be noted that it is impossible to perceive this hypothesis, with all its undeniable persuasiveness, uncritically, as a hypothesis that resolves all the problems and difficulties associated with the process of formation of modern humans. The rather complex labor activity of Neanderthals and the origins of many social institutions and ideological phenomena in the Middle Paleolithic make us doubt the idea of ​​internal conflict in the Neanderthal herd. An increase in brain volume, the development of speech function and language, and the complication of work activity and economic life are general trends in the evolution of hominids, especially hominids in the socio-cultural sphere. They would be impossible in the absence of social connections and directed group behavior. The origins of social behavior go back to the animal world, and therefore, when interpreting the problem of the formation factors of Homo sapiens, it is more expedient to talk about strengthening the social connections that already existed at previous stages of anthropogenesis, and not about replacing conflict behavior with them. Otherwise, we return to the same hypothesis of curbing zoological individualism, already discussed by us, only at a lower stage of hominid evolution. The approach outlined is closest to the old views V.M. Bekhterev , who specifically identified the social form of selection and understood by it a selection in which individuals were selected with behavior that was useful not to the individual himself, but to the group to which he belonged. Strictly speaking, at all stages of hominid evolution this form of selection was obviously decisive; and its role may have only intensified during the formation of Homo sapiens.

Thus, sociality, the greatest adaptation to life in a group, the creation of the most favorable morphophysiological and psychological type for it, which together determined the most dramatic difference between man and other representatives of the animal world, determined, it can be assumed, the next stage of human evolution - the separation modern man as the most perfect organism from the point of view of the requirements of social organization. By analogy with the labor theory of anthropogenesis, this hypothesis can be called social or public, thereby emphasizing the leading role of collective social life in the formation of the modern species within the genus Homo.

A person's closest relative was opened in 1856 in the town of Neadertal near Düsseldorf. The workers who found a cave with strange skulls and large bones decided that these were the remains of a cave bear, and did not even imagine what heated debate their discovery would cause. These bones, as well as bones later found in northern England, eastern Uzbekistan and southern Israel, were the remains of a human ancestor called Neanderthal, is a primitive man who lived from 200,000 to 27,000 years ago. Neanderthal man made primitive tools, painted his body with patterns, had religious beliefs and funeral rituals.

Neanderthals are believed to have evolved from Homo erectus. Within the Neanderthal species, in our understanding, several groups can be distinguished that have morphological, geographical and chronological specificity. European Neanderthals, making up a compact geographical group, fall, according to popular opinion, into two types. The identified types are referred to by various researchers as “classical” (or “typical”) and “atypical” Neanderthals. The first group belongs to a later period. The second group, according to established tradition, is supposedly earlier. Chronological differences are accompanied by morphological ones, but the latter, paradoxically, do not correspond to the expected ones and characterize both groups in the reverse order compared to geological age: later Neanderthals turn out to be more primitive, earlier ones - progressive. The brain of the latter, however, is somewhat smaller in volume than that of the late Neanderthals, but more progressive in structure, the skull is higher, the relief of the skull is less (with the exception of the mastoid processes, which are more developed - a typical human feature), a chin triangle is visible on the lower jaw , the size of the facial skeleton is smaller.

The origins and genealogical relationships of these two groups of European Neanderthals have been discussed many times from a variety of angles. It has been hypothesized that late Neanderthals acquired their distinctive characteristics under the influence of the very cold, harsh glacial climate of Central Europe. Their role in the formation of modern man was less than that of earlier, more progressive forms, which were the direct and main ancestors of modern people. However, against such an interpretation of the morphology and genealogical relationships of chronological groups within European Neanderthals, the consideration was put forward that they were geographically distributed in the same territory and the early forms could also be exposed to the cold climate in the periglacial regions, like the later ones.

The reason for the extinction of later Neanderthals could be too high specialization - Neanderthals were adapted to life in glacial Europe. When conditions changed, such specialization turned into disaster for them. For many years, the question of where the Neanderthals place on the evolutionary tree and whether interbreeding could have occurred between them and Homo sapiens during the period of their coexistence for tens of millennia. If interbreeding was possible, then modern Europeans might have some Neanderthal genes. The answer, although not definitive, was obtained quite recently by Neanderthal DNA research. Geneticist Svante Päbo extracted DNA from Neanderthal remains dating back tens of thousands of years. Despite the fact that the DNA was highly fragmented, scientists were able to use the most modern DNA analysis method to establish the nucleotide sequence of a small section of mitochondrial DNA. Mitochondrial DNA was chosen for the study because its molar concentration in cells is hundreds of times higher than the concentration of nuclear DNA.

DNA extraction was carried out under extremely sterile conditions - scientists worked in suits resembling spacesuits in order to prevent accidental contamination of the studied samples with foreign, modern DNA. Under normal conditions, using the polymerase chain reaction method used by scientists, it is possible to “read” DNA fragments up to several thousand nucleotide pairs in length. In the samples studied, the maximum length of “read” fragments was about 20 nucleotide pairs.

Having received a set of such short fragments, scientists used them to reconstruct the original nucleotide sequence of mitochondrial DNA. Comparing it with the DNA of modern humans showed that they are significantly different. The data obtained suggest that Neanderthals were a separate, although related to humans, species.

More likely, crossing these two species was impossible - the genetic differences between them were too great. Consequently, there are no genes derived from Neanderthals in the human gene pool. Based on the DNA sequence, the divergence time of the Neanderthal and modern human branches was estimated to be 550–690 thousand years. However, the data obtained can be considered preliminary, because These are the results of a study of only one individual.

In addition to the listed main branches in human evolution, there have always been secondary, “blind”, “dead-end” branches of evolutionary development. For example, huge apes ( Gigantopithecus And meganthropes). Roni Sr. also describes the meeting with them in his work: “A strong and flexible creature jumped out of the gray-green darkness into the clearing. No one could say whether it moved like an animal, on four legs, or on two, like people and birds. His face was huge, his jaws were like those of a hyena, his skull was flattened, and his chest was powerful, like that of a lion. ...Nao admired their strength, equal, perhaps, only to the strength of a bear, and thought that if they only wanted, they could easily destroy the red dwarfs, and the kzamms, and the ulamrs...” (kzamms - so the writer named the Neanderthals; the Ulamrs - the tribe of modern people to which the hero of the novel belongs.)

The writer points out that since these creatures “ate only plants, and their choice was more limited than that of deer or bison, the search for food required a lot of time and great care.”

I must say that meat food played a very important role in the development of the human mind. The life of plant-eating apes (for example, gorillas) is an almost continuous process of obtaining food. To get enough, a gorilla needs to absorb a huge amount of food. Animals are busy with this from morning to evening. Meat food saves much more “free time” compared to vegetarian food.

One of the results (it must be said, quite sad) of human preference for meat food was cannibalism(cannibalism), which persisted throughout almost the entire history of mankind. At an ancient Homo sapiens site excavated by archaeologists on the island of Java, for example, 11 skulls with broken bases were found that belonged to representatives of the Homo erectus species. This is evidence of cannibalism. This is how, it turns out, the relationships between representatives of various species of the genus Homo developed (however, it should be noted that more often ancient people ate representatives of their own species, and not other species of the genus Homo).

But Neanderthals, Pithecanthropus, and representatives of other species and subspecies of this genus, too, apparently, were far from harmless. Perhaps the ideas of wild, shaggy cannibals living in the forest, living in the folklore of many peoples, are a faint echo of those distant battles.

Before Homo sapiens, i.e. to the modern human stage is as difficult to document satisfactorily as the original branching stage of the hominid lineage. However, in this case, the matter is complicated by the presence of several contenders for such an intermediate position.

According to a number of anthropologists, the step that led directly to Homo sapiens was the Neanderthal (Homo neanderthalensis or Homo sapiens neanderthalensis). Neanderthals appeared no later than 150 thousand years ago, and different types flourished until the period of c. 40–35 thousand years ago, marked by the undoubted presence of well-formed H. sapiens (Homo sapiens sapiens). This era corresponded to the onset of the Wurm glaciation in Europe, i.e. ice age closest to modern times. Other scientists do not connect the origin of modern humans with Neanderthals, pointing out, in particular, that the morphological structure of the latter’s face and skull was too primitive to have time to evolve to the forms of Homo sapiens.

Neanderthaloids are usually imagined as stocky, hairy, beast-like people with bent legs, with a protruding head on a short neck, giving the impression that they had not yet fully achieved upright walking. Paintings and reconstructions in clay usually emphasize their hairiness and unjustified primitiveness. This image of the Neanderthal is a big distortion. First, we don't know whether Neanderthals were hairy or not. Secondly, they were all completely upright. As for evidence of an inclined position of the body, it was probably obtained from the study of individuals suffering from arthritis.

One of the most surprising features of the entire Neanderthal series of finds is that the least modern of them were the most recent in appearance. This is the so-called the classic Neanderthal type, the skull of which is characterized by a low forehead, a heavy brow, a receding chin, a protruding mouth area, and a long, low cranium. However, their brain volume was larger than that of modern humans. They certainly had a culture: there is evidence of funerary cults and possibly animal cults, since animal bones are found along with the fossil remains of classical Neanderthals.

At one time it was believed that classical Neanderthals lived only in southern and western Europe, and their origin was associated with the advance of the glacier, which placed them in conditions of genetic isolation and climatic selection. However, apparently similar forms were later found in some regions of Africa and the Middle East and possibly in Indonesia. Such a widespread distribution of the classical Neanderthal makes it necessary to abandon this theory.

At the moment, there is no material evidence of any gradual morphological transformation of the classical Neanderthal type into the modern type of man, with the exception of finds made in the Skhul cave in Israel. The skulls discovered in this cave differ significantly from each other, some of them having characteristics that place them in an intermediate position between the two human types. According to some experts, this is evidence of the evolutionary change from Neanderthals to modern humans, while others believe that this phenomenon is the result of mixed marriages between representatives of the two types of people, thereby believing that Homo sapiens evolved independently. This explanation is supported by evidence that as early as 200–300 thousand years ago, i.e. before the appearance of the classical Neanderthal, there was a type of person most likely related to early Homo sapiens, and not to the “progressive” Neanderthal. We are talking about well-known finds - fragments of a skull found in Swan (England), and a more complete skull from Steinheim (Germany).

The controversy regarding the “Neanderthal stage” in human evolution is partly due to the fact that two circumstances are not always taken into account. First, it is possible for the more primitive types of any evolving organism to exist in a relatively unchanged form at the same time that other branches of the same species undergo various evolutionary modifications. Secondly, migrations associated with shifts in climatic zones are possible. Such shifts were repeated in the Pleistocene as glaciers advanced and retreated, and humans could follow shifts in the climate zone. Thus, when considering long periods of time, it must be taken into account that the populations occupying a given habitat at a given time are not necessarily the descendants of populations that lived there at an earlier period. It is possible that early Homo sapiens could migrate from the regions where they appeared, and then return to their original places after many thousands of years, having undergone evolutionary changes. When fully formed Homo sapiens appeared in Europe 35-40 thousand years ago, during the warmer period of the last glaciation, it undoubtedly displaced the classical Neanderthal, which occupied the same region for 100 thousand years. Now it is impossible to accurately determine whether the Neanderthal population moved north, following the retreat of its usual climatic zone, or mixed with Homo sapiens invading its territory.

Where did Homo sapiens come from?

We - people - are so different! Black, yellow and white, tall and short, brunettes and blondes, smart and not so smart... But the blue-eyed Scandinavian giant, the dark-skinned pygmy from the Andaman Islands, and the dark-skinned nomad from the African Sahara - they are all just part of one, single humanity. And this statement is not a poetic image, but a strictly established scientific fact, supported by the latest data from molecular biology. But where to look for the sources of this multifaceted living ocean? Where, when and how did the first human being appear on the planet? It’s amazing, but even in our enlightened times, almost half of the US population and a significant proportion of Europeans give their votes to the divine act of creation, and among the remaining there are many supporters of alien intervention, which, in fact, is not much different from God’s providence. However, even standing on solid scientific evolutionary positions, it is impossible to answer this question unequivocally.

"A man has no reason to be ashamed
ape-like ancestors. I'd rather be ashamed
come from a vain and talkative person,
who, not content with dubious success
in his own activities, interferes
into scientific disputes about which there is no
representation".

T. Huxley (1869)

Not everyone knows that the roots of a version of the origin of man, different from the biblical one, in European science go back to the foggy 1600s, when the works of the Italian philosopher L. Vanini and the English lord, lawyer and theologian M. Hale with the eloquent titles “O the original origin of man" (1615) and "The original origin of the human race, considered and tested according to the light of nature" (1671).

The baton of thinkers who recognized the kinship of humans and animals such as monkeys in the 18th century. was picked up by the French diplomat B. De Mallieu, and then by D. Burnett, Lord Monboddo, who proposed the idea of ​​a common origin of all anthropoids, including humans and chimpanzees. And the French naturalist J.-L. Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, in his multi-volume “Natural History of Animals,” published a century before Charles Darwin’s scientific bestseller “The Descent of Man and Sexual Selection” (1871), directly stated that man descended from the ape.

So, by the end of the 19th century. the idea of ​​man as a product of a long evolution of more primitive humanoid creatures was fully formed and matured. Moreover, in 1863, the German evolutionary biologist E. Haeckel even christened a hypothetical creature that should serve as an intermediate link between man and ape, Pithecanthropus alatus, i.e., an ape-man deprived of speech (from the Greek pithekos - monkey and anthropos - man). All that remained was to discover this Pithecanthropus “in the flesh,” which was done in the early 1890s. Dutch anthropologist E. Dubois, who found on the island. Java remains of a primitive hominin.

From that moment on, primitive man received an “official residence permit” on planet Earth, and the question of geographic centers and the course of anthropogenesis came onto the agenda - no less acute and controversial than the very origin of man from ape-like ancestors. And thanks to the amazing discoveries of recent decades, made jointly by archaeologists, anthropologists and paleogeneticists, the problem of the formation of modern humans again, as in the time of Darwin, received enormous public resonance, going beyond the usual scientific discussion.

African cradle

The history of the search for the ancestral home of modern man, full of amazing discoveries and unexpected plot twists, at the initial stages was a chronicle of anthropological finds. The attention of natural scientists was primarily drawn to the Asian continent, including Southeast Asia, where Dubois discovered the bone remains of the first hominin, later named Homo erectus (homo erectus). Then in the 1920-1930s. in Central Asia, in the Zhoukoudian cave in Northern China, numerous fragments of skeletons of 44 individuals that lived there 460-230 thousand years ago were found. These people named Sinanthropus, at one time considered the oldest link in the human family tree.

However, Africa gradually emerged as the “cradle of humanity.” In 1925, fossil remains of a hominin called Australopithecus, and over the next 80 years, hundreds of similar remains “age” from 1.5 to 7 million years were discovered in the south and east of this continent.

In the area of ​​the East African Rift, stretching in the meridional direction from the Dead Sea basin through the Red Sea and further across the territory of Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania, the most ancient sites with stone products of the Olduvai type (choppers, choppers, roughly retouched flakes, etc.) were found. P.). Including in the river basin. More than 3 thousand primitive stone tools, created by the first representative of the genus, were extracted from under a layer of tuff 2.6 million years old in Kada Gona Homo- a skilled person Homo habilis.

Humanity has sharply “aged”: it became obvious that no later than 6-7 million years ago the common evolutionary trunk was divided into two separate “branches” - apes and australopithecines, the latter of which marked the beginning of a new, “intelligent” path of development. There, in Africa, the earliest fossil remains of people of a modern anatomical type were discovered - Homo sapiens, which appeared about 200-150 thousand years ago. Thus, by the 1990s. the theory of the “African” origin of man, supported by the results of genetic studies of different human populations, is becoming generally accepted.

However, between the two extreme points of reference - the most ancient ancestors of man and modern humanity - there are at least six million years, during which man not only acquired his modern appearance, but also occupied almost the entire habitable territory of the planet. And if Homo sapiens appeared at first only in the African part of the world, then when and how did it populate other continents?

Three outcomes

About 1.8-2.0 million years ago, the distant ancestor of modern humans - Homo erectus Homo erectus or someone close to him Homo ergaster For the first time he left Africa and began to conquer Eurasia. This was the beginning of the first Great Migration - a long and gradual process that took hundreds of millennia, which can be traced by the finds of fossil remains and typical tools of the archaic stone industry.

In the first migration flow of the oldest hominin populations, two main directions can be outlined - to the north and to the east. The first direction went through the Middle East and the Iranian plateau to the Caucasus (and possibly Asia Minor) and further to Europe. Evidence of this is the oldest Paleolithic sites in Dmanisi (Eastern Georgia) and Atapuerca (Spain), dating back to 1.7-1.6 and 1.2-1.1 million years old, respectively.

To the east, early evidence of human presence - pebble tools dating back 1.65-1.35 million years - were found in caves in South Arabia. Further to the east of Asia, the ancient people moved in two ways: the northern one went to Central Asia, the southern one went to East and Southeast Asia through the territory of modern Pakistan and India. Judging by the dating of quartzite tool sites in Pakistan (1.9 Ma) and China (1.8-1.5 Ma), as well as anthropological finds in Indonesia (1.8-1.6 Ma), early hominins settled space of South, Southeast and East Asia no later than 1.5 million years ago. And on the border of Central and Northern Asia, in Southern Siberia in the territory of Altai, the Early Paleolithic site of Karama was discovered, in the sediments of which four layers with an archaic pebble industry 800-600 thousand years old were identified.

At all the oldest sites in Eurasia, left by migrants of the first wave, pebble tools were discovered, characteristic of the most archaic Olduvai stone industry. At about the same time or somewhat later, representatives of other early hominins came from Africa to Eurasia - carriers of the microlithic stone industry, characterized by the predominance of small-sized products, which moved in almost the same ways as their predecessors. These two ancient technological traditions of stone processing played a key role in the development of the tool activity of primitive humanity.

A second global wave of migrants from Africa spread to the Middle East around 1.5 million years ago. Who were the new migrants? Probably, Homo heidelbergensis (the man of Heidelberg) - a new species of people, combining both Neanderthaloid and sapiens traits. These “new Africans” can be distinguished by their stone tools Acheulean industry, made using more advanced stone processing technologies - the so-called Levallois splitting technique and techniques of double-sided stone processing. Moving east, this migration wave met in many areas with the descendants of the first wave of hominins, which was accompanied by a mixture of two industrial traditions - pebble and late Acheulean.

At the turn of 600 thousand years ago, these immigrants from Africa reached Europe, where Neanderthals subsequently formed - the species closest to modern humans. About 450-350 thousand years ago, bearers of the Acheulean traditions penetrated into the east of Eurasia, reaching India and Central Mongolia, but never reached the eastern and southeastern regions of Asia.

The third exodus from Africa is already associated with a person of a modern anatomical species, who appeared there on the evolutionary arena, as mentioned above, 200-150 thousand years ago. It is assumed that approximately 80-60 thousand years ago Homo sapiens, traditionally considered the bearer of the cultural traditions of the Upper Paleolithic, began to populate other continents: first the eastern part of Eurasia and Australia, later Central Asia and Europe.

And here we come to the most dramatic and controversial part of our history. As genetic research has proven, today's humanity consists entirely of representatives of one species Homo sapiens, if you do not take into account creatures like the mythical yeti. But what happened to the ancient human populations - the descendants of the first and second migration waves from the African continent, who lived in the territories of Eurasia for tens, or even hundreds of thousands of years? Did they leave their mark on the evolutionary history of our species, and if so, how great was their contribution to modern humanity?

Based on the answer to this question, researchers can be divided into two different groups - monocentrists And polycentrists.

Two models of anthropogenesis

At the end of the last century, a monocentric point of view on the process of emergence finally prevailed in anthropogenesis. Homo sapiens– the hypothesis of the “African exodus”, according to which the only ancestral home of Homo sapiens is the “dark continent”, from where he settled throughout the world. Based on the results of studying genetic variability in modern people, its supporters suggest that 80-60 thousand years ago a demographic explosion occurred in Africa, and as a result of a sharp population growth and lack of food resources, another migration wave “splashed out” into Eurasia. Unable to withstand competition with a more evolutionarily advanced species, other contemporary hominins, such as Neanderthals, left the evolutionary distance about 30-25 thousand years ago.

The views of the monocentrists themselves on the course of this process differ. Some believe that new human populations exterminated or forced the indigenous ones into less convenient areas, where their mortality rate increased, especially child mortality, and the birth rate decreased. Others do not exclude the possibility in some cases of long-term coexistence of Neanderthals with modern humans (for example, in the south of the Pyrenees), which could result in the diffusion of cultures and sometimes hybridization. Finally, according to the third point of view, a process of acculturation and assimilation took place, as a result of which the indigenous population simply dissolved into the newcomers.

It is difficult to fully accept all these conclusions without convincing archaeological and anthropological evidence. Even if we agree with the controversial assumption of rapid population growth, it still remains unclear why this migration flow first went not to neighboring territories, but far to the east, all the way to Australia. By the way, although on this path a reasonable person had to cover a distance of over 10 thousand km, no archaeological evidence of this has yet been found. Moreover, judging by archaeological data, during the period 80-30 thousand years ago, no changes occurred in the appearance of the local stone industries of South, Southeast and East Asia, which inevitably had to happen if the indigenous population was replaced by newcomers.

This lack of “road” evidence led to the version that Homo sapiens moved from Africa to eastern Asia along the sea coast, which by our time was under water along with all the Paleolithic traces. But with such a development of events, the African stone industry should have appeared almost unchanged on the islands of Southeast Asia, but archaeological materials 60-30 thousand years old do not confirm this.

The monocentric hypothesis has not yet given satisfactory answers to many other questions. In particular, why did a person of a modern physical type arose at least 150 thousand years ago, and the culture of the Upper Paleolithic, which is traditionally associated only with Homo sapiens, 100 thousand years later? Why is this culture, which appeared almost simultaneously in very distant regions of Eurasia, not as homogeneous as would be expected in the case of a single carrier?

Another, polycentric concept is taken to explain the “dark spots” in human history. According to this hypothesis of interregional human evolution, the formation Homo sapiens could go with equal success both in Africa and in the vast territories of Eurasia, inhabited at one time Homo erectus. It is the continuous development of the ancient population in each region that explains, according to polycentricists, the fact that the cultures of the early Upper Paleolithic in Africa, Europe, East Asia and Australia are so significantly different from each other. And although from the point of view of modern biology the formation of the same species (in the strict sense of the word) in such different, geographically distant territories is an unlikely event, there could have been an independent, parallel process of evolution of primitive man towards homo sapiens with his developed material and spiritual culture.

Below we present a number of archaeological, anthropological and genetic evidence in favor of this thesis related to the evolution of the primitive population of Eurasia.

Oriental man

Judging by numerous archaeological finds, in East and Southeast Asia the development of the stone industry about 1.5 million years ago went in a fundamentally different direction than in the rest of Eurasia and Africa. Surprisingly, for more than a million years, the technology of making tools in the Sino-Malay zone has not undergone significant changes. Moreover, as mentioned above, in this stone industry for the period 80-30 thousand years ago, when people of a modern anatomical type should have appeared here, no radical innovations have been identified - neither new stone processing technologies, nor new types of tools.

In terms of anthropological evidence, the largest number of known skeletal remains Homo erectus was found in China and Indonesia. Despite some differences, they form a fairly homogeneous group. Particularly noteworthy is the volume of the brain (1152-1123 cm 3) Homo erectus, found in Yunxian County, China. The significant advancement of the morphology and culture of these ancient people, who lived about 1 million years ago, is demonstrated by the stone tools discovered next to them.

The next link in the evolution of Asian Homo erectus found in Northern China, in the caves of Zhoukoudian. This hominin, similar to Javan Pithecanthropus, was included in the genus Homo as a subspecies Homo erectus pekinensis. According to some anthropologists, all these fossil remains of early and later forms of primitive people line up in a fairly continuous evolutionary series, almost to Homo sapiens.

Thus, it can be considered proven that in East and Southeast Asia, for more than a million years, there was an independent evolutionary development of the Asian form Homo erectus. Which, by the way, does not exclude the possibility of migration of small populations from neighboring regions here and, accordingly, the possibility of gene exchange. At the same time, due to the process of divergence, these primitive people themselves could have developed pronounced differences in morphology. An example is paleoanthropological finds from the island. Java, which differ from similar Chinese finds of the same time: while maintaining the basic features Homo erectus, in a number of characteristics they are close to Homo sapiens.

As a result, at the beginning of the Upper Pleistocene in East and Southeast Asia, on the basis of the local form of erecti, a hominin was formed, anatomically close to humans of the modern physical type. This can be confirmed by new dating obtained for Chinese paleoanthropological finds with the features of “sapiens”, according to which people of modern appearance could have lived in this region already 100 thousand years ago.

Return of the Neanderthal

The first representative of archaic people to become known to science is a Neanderthal Homo neanderthalensis. Neanderthals lived primarily in Europe, but traces of their presence were also found in the Middle East, Western and Central Asia, and southern Siberia. These short, stocky people, who had great physical strength and were well adapted to the harsh climatic conditions of northern latitudes, were not inferior in brain volume (1400 cm 3) to people of modern physical type.

Over the century and a half that has passed since the discovery of the first remains of Neanderthals, hundreds of their sites, settlements and burials have been studied. It turned out that these archaic people not only created very advanced tools, but also demonstrated elements of behavior characteristic of Homo sapiens. Thus, the famous archaeologist A. P. Okladnikov in 1949 discovered a Neanderthal burial with possible traces of a funeral rite in the Teshik-Tash cave (Uzbekistan).

Until the beginning of the 21st century. Many anthropologists considered Neanderthals to be the ancestral form of modern humans, but after analysis of mitochondrial DNA from their remains, they began to be viewed as a dead-end branch. It was believed that Neanderthals were displaced and replaced by modern humans - a native of Africa. However, further anthropological and genetic studies showed that the relationship between Neanderthal and Homo sapiens was far from simple. According to recent data, up to 4 % of the genome of modern humans (non-Africans) was borrowed from Homo neanderthalensis. There is now no doubt that in the border areas inhabited by these human populations, not only cultural diffusion occurred, but also hybridization and assimilation.

Today, the Neanderthal is already classified as a sister group to modern humans, restoring its status as a “human ancestor.”

In the rest of Eurasia, the formation of the Upper Paleolithic followed a different scenario. Let us trace this process using the example of the Altai region, which is associated with sensational results obtained through paleogenetic analysis of anthropological finds from the Denisov and Okladnikov caves.

Our regiment has arrived!

As mentioned above, the initial human settlement of the Altai territory occurred no later than 800 thousand years ago during the first migration wave from Africa. The uppermost culture-containing horizon of sediments of the oldest Paleolithic site in the Asian part of Russia, Karama, in the valley of the river. Anui was formed about 600 thousand years ago, and then there was a long break in the development of Paleolithic culture in this territory. However, about 280 thousand years ago, carriers of more advanced stone processing techniques appeared in Altai, and from that time, as field studies show, there was a continuous development of the culture of Paleolithic man here.

Over the last quarter of a century, about 20 sites in caves and on the slopes of mountain valleys have been explored in this region, and over 70 cultural horizons of the Early, Middle and Upper Paleolithic have been studied. For example, in Denisova Cave alone, 13 Paleolithic layers have been identified. The most ancient finds dating back to the early stage of the Middle Paleolithic were found in a layer aged 282-170 thousand years, to the Middle Paleolithic - 155-50 thousand years, to the upper - 50-20 thousand years. Such a long and “continuous” chronicle makes it possible to trace the dynamics of changes in stone implements over many tens of thousands of years. And it turned out that this process went quite smoothly, through gradual evolution, without external “disturbances” - innovations.

Archaeological data indicate that already 50-45 thousand years ago the Upper Paleolithic began in Altai, and the origins of the Upper Paleolithic cultural traditions can be clearly traced to the final stage of the Middle Paleolithic. Evidence of this is provided by miniature bone needles with a drilled eye, pendants, beads and other non-utilitarian objects made of bone, ornamental stone and mollusk shells, as well as truly unique finds - fragments of a bracelet and a stone ring with traces of grinding, polishing and drilling.

Unfortunately, Paleolithic sites in Altai are relatively poor in anthropological finds. The most significant of them - teeth and skeletal fragments from two caves, Okladnikov and Denisova, were studied at the Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology. Max Planck (Leipzig, Germany) by an international team of geneticists under the leadership of Professor S. Paabo.

Paleogenetic studies have confirmed that the remains of Neanderthals were discovered in Okladnikov Cave. But the results of decoding mitochondrial and then nuclear DNA from bone samples found in the Denisova Cave in the cultural layer of the initial stage of the Upper Paleolithic gave the researchers a surprise. It turned out that we are talking about a new fossil hominin unknown to science, which was named after the place of its discovery Altai man Homo sapiens altaiensis, or Denisovan.

The Denisovan genome differs from the reference genome of a modern African by 11.7 %; for the Neanderthal from Vindija Cave in Croatia, this figure was 12.2 %. This similarity suggests that Neanderthals and Denisovans are sister groups with a common ancestor that separated from the main human evolutionary trunk. These two groups diverged about 640 thousand years ago, embarking on a path of independent development. This is evidenced by the fact that Neanderthals share common genetic variants with modern people of Eurasia, while part of the genetic material of Denisovans was borrowed by Melanesians and indigenous people of Australia, who stand apart from other non-African human populations.

Judging by archaeological data, in the northwestern part of Altai 50-40 thousand years ago, two different groups of primitive people lived nearby - the Denisovans and the easternmost population of Neanderthals, who came here around the same time, most likely from the territory of modern Uzbekistan . And the roots of the culture, the carriers of which were the Denisovans, as already mentioned, can be traced in the ancient horizons of the Denisova Cave. At the same time, judging by the many archaeological finds reflecting the development of the Upper Paleolithic culture, the Denisovans were not only not inferior, but in some respects even superior to the man of modern physical appearance who lived at the same time in other territories.

So, in Eurasia during the late Pleistocene, in addition to Homo sapiens There were at least two more forms of hominins: Neanderthal - in the western part of the continent, and in the east - Denisovan. Taking into account the drift of genes from Neanderthals to Eurasians, and from Denisovans to Melanesians, we can assume that both of these groups took part in the formation of a person of the modern anatomical type.

Taking into account all the archaeological, anthropological and genetic materials available today from the most ancient locations of Africa and Eurasia, it can be assumed that there were several zones on the globe in which an independent process of population evolution took place Homo erectus and development of stone processing technologies. Accordingly, each of these zones developed its own cultural traditions, its own models of transition from the Middle to Upper Paleolithic.

Thus, at the basis of the entire evolutionary sequence, the crown of which was man of the modern anatomical type, lies the ancestral form Homo erectus sensu lato*. Probably, in the late Pleistocene, the human species of modern anatomical and genetic appearance was ultimately formed from it Homo sapiens, which included four forms that can be called Homo sapiens africaniensis(Eastern and Southern Africa), Homo sapiens neanderthalensis(Europe), Homo sapiens orientalensis(Southeast and East Asia) and Homo sapiens altaiensis(North and Central Asia). Most likely, a proposal to unite all these primitive people into a single species Homo sapiens will cause doubts and objections among many researchers, but it is based on a large volume of analytical material, only a small part of which is given above.

Obviously, not all of these subspecies made an equal contribution to the formation of man of the modern anatomical type: the greatest genetic diversity had Homo sapiens africaniensis, and it was he who became the basis of modern man. However, the latest data from paleogenetic studies regarding the presence of Neanderthal and Denisovan genes in the gene pool of modern humanity show that other groups of ancient people did not remain aloof from this process.

Today, archaeologists, anthropologists, geneticists and other specialists dealing with the problem of human origins have accumulated a huge amount of new data, on the basis of which they can put forward different hypotheses, sometimes diametrically opposed. The time has come to discuss them in detail under one indispensable condition: the problem of human origin is multidisciplinary, and new ideas should be based on a comprehensive analysis of the results obtained by specialists from a variety of sciences. Only this path will one day lead us to a solution to one of the most controversial issues that has troubled the minds of people for centuries - the formation of reason. After all, according to the same Huxley, “each of our strongest beliefs can be overthrown or, in any case, changed by further advances of knowledge.”

*Homo erectus sensu lato - Homo erectus in the broadest sense

Literature

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Derevianko A. P. The transition from the Middle to Upper Paleolithic and the problem of the formation of Homo sapiens sapiens in East, Central and North Asia. Novosibirsk: IAET SB RAS, 2009.

Derevianko A. P. Upper Paleolithic in Africa and Eurasia and the formation of a modern anatomical type of man. Novosibirsk: IAET SB RAS, 2011.

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Homo sapiens, or Homo sapiens, has undergone many changes since its inception - both in the structure of the body and in social and spiritual development.

The emergence of people who had a modern physical appearance (type) and changed occurred in the Late Paleolithic. Their skeletons were first discovered in the Cro-Magnon Grotto in France, so people of this type were called Cro-Magnons. It was they who were characterized by a complex of all the basic physiological characteristics that are characteristic of us. They reached a high level in comparison with that of Neanderthals. Scientists consider the Cro-Magnons to be our direct ancestors.

For some time, this type of people existed simultaneously with the Neanderthals, who later died, since only the Cro-Magnons were sufficiently adapted to environmental conditions. It is among them that stone tools go out of use and are replaced by more skillfully crafted ones made from bone and horn. In addition, more types of these tools appear - all kinds of drills, scrapers, harpoons and needles appear. This makes people more independent of climatic conditions and allows them to explore new territories. Homo sapiens also changes his behavior towards elders, a connection appears between generations - continuity of traditions, transfer of experience and knowledge.

To summarize the above, we can highlight the main aspects of the formation of the species Homo sapiens:

1. spiritual and psychological development that leads to self-knowledge and the development of abstract thinking. As a consequence, the emergence of art, as evidenced by cave drawings and paintings;
2. pronunciation of articulate sounds (the origin of speech);
3. thirst for knowledge to pass it on to their fellow tribesmen;
4. creation of new, more advanced tools;
5. which made it possible to tame (domesticate) wild animals and cultivate plants.

These events became an important milestone in the development of man. It was they who allowed him not to depend on his environment and

even exercise control over some of its aspects. Homo sapiens continues to undergo changes, the most important of which becomes

Taking advantage of the benefits of modern civilization and progress, man is still trying to establish power over the forces of nature: changing the flow of rivers, draining swamps, populating territories where life was previously impossible.

According to the modern classification, the species “Homo sapiens” is divided into 2 subspecies - “Homo Idaltu” and “Human” This division into subspecies appeared after the discovery in 1997 of remains that had some anatomical features similar to the skeleton of a modern person, in particular the size of the skull.

According to scientific data, Homo sapiens appeared 70-60 thousand years ago, and during all this time of his existence as a species, he improved under the influence only of social forces, because no changes were found in the anatomical and physiological structure.