Anatomy of Neanderthals. Neanderthals are... Details of life. Why did they die out? III.) Neanderthals were far from stupid
The first Neanderthal skull, which was recognized as belonging to a previously unstudied human species, was discovered in 1856 in the territory of modern Germany in the Neander Valley of the Dussel River, near the city of Dusseldorf.
One of the finds of the remains of a Neanderthal skull was made 15 km from the Netherlands at the bottom North Sea. The deceased lived in the late Pleistocene era (approximately 40 thousand BC), ate exclusively meat, as evidenced by bone analysis. Stone axes and animal bones were discovered alongside human remains. The shelf areas at that time were part of the land (flooded 6500 BC) and a favorable habitat for herbivorous animals.
Anatomy
The appearance of the Neanderthals had features that are still considered primitive today: a depressed chin, large brow ridges, very massive jaws. Their head was larger than that of a modern person, because it contained a much larger brain (from 1400 to 1700 cm 3). The average height of men was 1.65 m, women were 10 centimeters lower. But at the same time, the men weighed about 90 kg, their arms and legs were shorter. DNA analysis of Neanderthal bones suggests they may have been red-haired and fair-skinned.
Physiology
Neanderthals knew how to speak, their speech was higher and slower than that of modern people. It is believed that Neanderthals may have had more advanced abstract thinking. According to anthropologists, average duration The lifespan of Neanderthals was 30-40 years.
Genetics
It has now been established that up to 4% of the genes of some modern people belong to Neanderthals. As genetic analysis has shown, Neanderthals participated in the formation of several modern peoples (French, Spaniards, Greeks and American Indians).
The period of greatest distribution of Neanderthals on the planet occurred during climate cooling. Approximately 30 thousand years BC. the last representatives of this species lived in the very south of Spain, in the Gibraltar region, in the Pyrenees. Material from the site
Neanderthal lifestyle
Neanderthals lived in small tribal communities consisting of 2-4 families. According to the reconstruction of archaeologists, the homes of the Neanderthals were oval huts made of poles dug into the ground, tied together at the top and covered with animal skins. Inside the hut there was a fireplace made of flat stones. Spears were used for hunting.
Customs
Neanderthals buried their dead. More than twenty cases of Neanderthal burials have been discovered. No human predecessors or relatives did this—only modern humans and Neanderthals.
Neanderthal
About 130 thousand years ago, in Europe, as well as in Africa and Asia, Homo neandertalis (Homo Neanderthalis) appeared - a Neanderthal. The names “Neanderthal” and “Cro-Magnon” come from the names of the places where the bones of these ancient people were first found: the Neander River in Germany and the Cro-Magnon Cave in France.
Neanderthals were distinguished by their small stature - average height men were 160 centimeters, women about 155 centimeters. They were stocky, with powerful, broad chests, and physically very strong. Neanderthals had a strong, short neck, a large head, a narrow forehead, and a wide, low nose. Strongly prominent brow ridges with thick eyebrows hung over deep-set eyes. Neanderthals had more differences from monkeys than the Pithecanthropus (Homo erectus) that preceded them; they had a larger skull and, accordingly, a larger brain volume. The “late Neanderthals” developed a chin protuberance on the lower jaw. Neanderthals had the habit of squatting, which some tribes still do today. The term "Neanderthal" has not entirely defined boundaries. Due to the vastness and heterogeneity of this group of hominids, a number of terms are used - “atypical Neanderthals” for early Neanderthals (period 130-70 thousand years ago), “classical Neanderthals” (for European forms of the period 70-40 thousand years ago), “survival Neanderthals” (existed later 45 thousand years ago).
Neanderthal home
In the majority Neanderthals lived in caves where many generations replaced each other. Sometimes, when there were fewer animals to hunt, Neanderthals left their cave and moved to another place. Everything that remained at the site - ashes from the fire, bones, abandoned or unusable tools, weapons - was eventually covered with a layer of earth and stones. After tens, hundreds or even thousands of years, the cave settled a new group people and left a new layer of remains, which were also buried by time. This is how “cultural layers” were formed, from which archaeologists learn about the evolution of man, the change of his occupations and climate changes over thousands of years.
In a cave in the southeast of modern France, scientists discovered 64 such habitat layers that formed over 5 thousand years. On the territory of modern Ukraine, Neanderthal sites were found in the Crimea, Carpathian region, Donbass, on the banks of the Dnieper, Dniester and Desna.
Neanderthals took refuge from the cold not only in caves. Over time, they began to build houses from mammoth bones and poles, covering them with the skins of killed animals.
Daily life and activities of Neanderthals
Important role in life Neanderthals the fire was playing. It is not known for certain when a person first decided to approach a fire caused by a lightning strike or a volcanic eruption. For hundreds of thousands of years, people did not know how to make fire; they were forced to maintain it - “feed” it with branches and leaves. When the tribe moved to a new place, the fire in special “cages” was carried by the strongest and most dexterous people. The “death” of fire often meant the death of the entire tribe, which could not keep warm in the cold without fire or defend itself from predators. Gradually, they began to cook meat and other foods over the fire, which was not only tastier, but also more nutritious for the body, and also contributed to the development of the brain. Later, people learned to make fire on their own by striking sparks from a stone onto dry grass or quickly rotating a wooden stick with their palms in the hole of a dry piece of wood. This became one of man's greatest achievements. The time when people learned to make fire coincided with the era of great migrations.
History of Neanderthals dates back more than 100 thousand years. Neanderthals lived collectively - a primitive herd, or community. They hunted together, so the prey became their common property. Men made weapons and stone tools - scrapers, chisels, awls, knives. They were engaged in hunting and rough work in cutting up the carcasses of hunted animals. Women processed the hides, collected fruits, edible tubers and roots, and collected firewood to keep the fire going. This is how the first, natural division of labor arose - based on gender.
The hunter alone was not able to catch a large animal. Joint hunting required mutual understanding among primitive people. To kill a large animal, Neanderthals used, for example, driven hunting techniques, setting the steppe on fire and driving a herd of horses or deer into a natural trap - an abyss or a swamp, where they could only finish off their prey. Using another hunting technique, the hunters drove the animals onto the thin ice of the river with shouts and noise.
Neanderthals also hunted larger animals, such as cave bears, as evidenced by finds in the Dragon Cave in Austria, bison, woolly rhinoceroses and huge mammoths, for which they used traps - artificially dug and camouflaged holes. Neanderthals did not decorate their bodies, so they did not leave behind any monuments of art. But for the first time they began to bury their dead - they laid the dead relative on his right side, put a stone under his head and bent his legs, leaving weapons and food next to him. Neanderthals probably believed that death was something like a dream. The burials, as well as the remains of their sanctuaries, for example those associated with the cult of the bear, testified to the emergence of the beginnings of religion.
Neanderthal(lat. Homo neanderthalensis) - an extinct species from the genus People (lat. Homo). The first people with Neanderthal features (protoanderthals) appeared in Europe about 600 thousand years ago. Classic Neanderthals formed about 100-130 thousand years ago. The latest remains date back to 28-33 thousand years ago.
Opening
The remains of H. neanderthalensis were first discovered in 1829 by Philippe-Charles Schmerling in the caves of Engie (modern Belgium), it was the skull of a child. In 1848, the skull of an adult Neanderthal was found in Gibraltar (Gibraltar 1). Naturally, neither of these finds was considered at that time as evidence of the existence of an extinct species of people, and they were classified as the remains of Neanderthals much later.
The type specimen (holotype) of the species (Neanderthal 1) was found only in August 1856 in a limestone quarry in the Neanderthal Valley near Düsseldorf (North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany). It consists of the cranial vault, two femurs, three bones from right hand and two from the left, part of the pelvis, fragments of the scapula and ribs. The local gymnasium teacher Johann Karl Fuhlroth was interested in geology and paleontology. Having received the remains from the workers who found them, he paid attention to their complete fossilization and geological position and came to the conclusion of their considerable age and important scientific significance. Fuhlroth then handed them over to Hermann Schaafhausen, professor of anatomy at the University of Bonn. The discovery was announced in June 1857; this happened 2 years before the publication of Charles Darwin’s work “The Origin of Species.” In 1864, at the suggestion of the Anglo-Irish geologist William King the new kind was named after the place of its discovery. In 1867, Ernst Haeckel proposed the name Homo stupidus (i.e., Stupid Man), but in accordance with the rules of nomenclature, priority remained with King's name.
In 1880, the jawbone of a child of H. neanderthalensis was found in the Czech Republic, along with tools from the Mousterian period and the bones of extinct animals. In 1886, the perfectly preserved skeletons of a man and a woman were found in Belgium at a depth of about 5 m, also along with numerous Mousterian tools. Subsequently, the remains of Neanderthals were discovered in other places in the territory modern Russia, Croatia, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Iran, Uzbekistan, Israel and other countries. To date, the remains of more than 400 Neanderthals have been found.
The status of the Neanderthal as a previously unknown species of ancient man was not immediately established. Many prominent scientists of that time did not recognize him as such. Thus, the outstanding German scientist Rudolf Virchow rejected the thesis of “primitive man” and considered the Neanderthal skull to be just a pathologically altered skull of a modern person. And the doctor and anatomist Franz Mayer, having studied the structure of the pelvis and lower limbs, hypothesized that the remains belonged to a man who spent a significant part of his life riding a horse. He suggested that it could be a Russian Cossack from the Napoleonic Wars era.
Classification
Almost since the discovery, scientists have been debating the status of Neanderthals. Some of them are of the opinion that Neanderthal man is not an independent species, but only a subspecies of modern man (lat. Homo sapiens neanderthalensis). This is largely due to the lack of a clear definition of the species. One of the hallmarks of the species is reproductive isolation, and genetic studies suggest that Neanderthals and modern humans interbred. On the one hand, this supports the point of view about the status of Neanderthals as a subspecies of modern humans. But on the other hand, there are documented examples of interspecific crossings, as a result of which fertile offspring appeared, so this characteristic cannot be considered decisive. At the same time, DNA studies and morphological studies show that Neanderthals are still an independent species.
Origin
A comparison of the DNA of modern humans and H. neanderthalensis shows that they descended from a common ancestor, dividing approximately, according to various estimates, from 350-400 to 500 and even 800 thousand years ago. The likely ancestor of both of these species is Homo heidelbergensis. Moreover, Neanderthals descended from the European population of H. heidelbergensis, and modern man- from African and much later.
Anatomy and morphology
Men of this species had an average height of 164-168 cm, weight about 78 kg, women - 152-156 cm and 66 kg, respectively. The brain volume is 1500-1900 cm 3, which exceeds the average brain volume of a modern person.
The cranial vault is low but long, the face is flat with massive brow ridges, the forehead is low and strongly inclined back. The jaws are long and wide with large teeth, protruding forward, but without a chin protrusion. Judging by the wear on their teeth, Neanderthals were right-handed.
Their physique was more massive than that of modern man. The chest is barrel-shaped, the torso is long, and the legs are relatively short. Presumably, the dense physique of Neanderthals is an adaptation to the cold climate, because. due to a decrease in the ratio of body surface to its volume, heat loss by the body through the skin is reduced. The bones are very strong, this is due to highly developed muscles. The average Neanderthal was significantly stronger than modern humans.
Genome
Early studies of the H. neanderthalensis genome focused on mitochondrial DNA (mDNA) studies. Because mDNA under normal conditions is inherited strictly through the maternal line and contains a significantly smaller amount of information (16,569 nucleotides versus ~3 billion in nuclear DNA), so the significance of such studies was not very great.
In 2006, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and 454 Life Sciences announced that within a few next years The genome of Neanderthals will be sequenced. In May 2010, preliminary results of this work were published. Research has revealed that Neanderthals and modern humans may have interbred, and every living person (except Africans) carries between 1 and 4 percent of H. neanderthalensis genes. Sequencing of the entire Neanderthal genome was completed in 2013, and the results were published in the journal Nature on December 18, 2013.
Habitat
Fossil remains of Neanderthals have been discovered across a large area of Eurasia, which includes such modern countries like Great Britain, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Germany, Croatia, Czech Republic, Israel, Iran, Ukraine, Russia, Uzbekistan. The easternmost find is the remains discovered in the Altai Mountains (Southern Siberia).
However, it should be taken into account that a significant part of the period of existence of this species occurred during the last glaciation, which could have destroyed evidence of Neanderthal habitation in more northern latitudes.
No traces of H. neanderthalensis have yet been found in Africa. This is probably due to the adaptation to the cold climate of both themselves and the animals that formed the basis of their diet.
Behavior
Archaeological evidence shows that Neanderthals spent most of their lives in small groups of 5-50 people. There were almost no old people among them, because... most did not live to be 35 years old, but some individuals lived to be 50. There is plenty of evidence of Neanderthals caring for each other. Among those studied, there are skeletons that have traces of cured injuries and diseases, therefore, during the healing, the tribesmen fed and protected the wounded and sick. There is evidence that the dead were buried, with funeral offerings sometimes found in the graves.
It is believed that Neanderthals rarely met strangers in their small territory or left it themselves. Although there are occasional finds of high-quality stone from sources more than 100 km away, these are not sufficient to conclude that there was trade or even regular contact with other groups.
H. neanderthalensis made extensive use of a variety of stone tools. However, over hundreds of thousands of years, their manufacturing technology has changed very little. Apart from the obvious assumption that Neanderthals, despite their big brain, were not very smart, there is an alternative hypothesis. It lies in the fact that due to the small number of Neanderthals (and their number never exceeded 100 thousand individuals), the likelihood of innovation was low. Most of Neanderthal stone tools belong to the Mousterian culture. Some of them are very sharp. There is evidence of the use of wooden instruments, but they themselves have practically not survived to this day.
Neanderthals used different kinds weapons, including spears. But most likely they were used only in close combat, and not for throwing. This is indirectly confirmed big amount skeletons with traces of injuries caused by large animals that Neanderthals hunted and which formed the bulk of their diet.
Previously, it was believed that H. neanderthalensis fed exclusively on the meat of large land mammals, such as mammoths, bison, deer, etc. However, later discoveries showed that small animals and some plants also served as food. And in the south of Spain, traces were also found that Neanderthals ate marine mammals, fish and shellfish. However, despite the variety of food sources, obtaining sufficient quantities was often a problem. Proof of this are skeletons with signs of diseases caused by malnutrition.
It is assumed that Neanderthals already had a significant command of speech. This is indirectly evidenced by the production of complex tools and the hunting of large animals, which require communication for learning and interaction. In addition, there are anatomical and genetic evidence: the structure of the hyoid and occipital bones, the hypoglossal nerve, the presence of a gene responsible for speech in modern humans.
Extinction hypotheses
There are several hypotheses explaining the disappearance of this species, which can be divided into 2 groups: those associated with the emergence and spread of modern humans and other reasons.
According to modern ideas, modern man, having appeared in Africa, gradually began to spread to the north, where by this time Neanderthal man was widespread. Both of these species coexisted for many millennia, but Neanderthal was eventually completely replaced by modern humans.
There is also a hypothesis linking the disappearance of the Neanderthals with climate change caused by the eruption of a large volcano about 40 thousand years ago. This change led to a decrease in the amount of vegetation and the number of large herbivorous animals that fed on vegetation and, in turn, were the food of the Neanderthals. Accordingly, lack of food led to the extinction of H. neanderthalensis itself.
Curiosity is a defining trait of human nature. If it weren’t for him, there would be no amazing discoveries and inventions. The human habitat in the 21st century would be limited to the cave and the surrounding area, used as a training ground for hunting animals. Stone knives, axes, scrapers - these are the tools that were capable of producing the human mind, not burdened with scientific knowledge, but steadily striving for it.
It was this desire that ultimately made man the rightful master of the entire planet. He became the one and only perfect crown of nature, with undivided control over the lands under his control. It would seem that this course of events is quite natural. Not muscle mass, it was not speed and dexterity that prevailed in the struggle for dominance over the endless land, but intelligence, which ultimately ensured an unconditional victory.
Man unknowingly walked towards power over the world, sweeping away all those who stood in his way. However, it was not difficult to deal with opponents, since they were creatures with a lower mental organization. That is, in fact, people on Earth had no worthy competitors. Wise nature, having created an uncountable number of species and subspecies among animals, for some reason completely missed man from the zone of her attention.
This point of view is fundamentally wrong: nature never misses anything - everything is calculated, balanced and rational. People who lived in ancient times were not the only intelligent beings who inhabited the blue planet. This became known quite recently - only about 150 years ago.
How the remains of a Neanderthal were found
Such a sensational discovery was preceded by a boring and tedious routine consisting of hard work in the quarries. They were produced in Germany in the Rhineland province, in the valley of the Dussel River (a tributary of the Rhine). That valley was called Neanderskaya in honor of the pastor, theologian and composer Joachim Neander (1650-1680). He did a lot of good to people during his lifetime, but in this case his name has already worked for the benefit of science and enlightenment.
On one of the hot summer days of 1856, tearing out granite blocks from the mountainous firmament, the workers reached a small ledge of rock. Immediately behind it there was a smooth wall, smoothly descending to the river bank. After a couple of hits with a pick, it turned out that it was clay. She easily succumbed to the shovel, and soon a spacious grotto opened up. Its bottom was covered with a thick layer of alluvial silt.
The cave was a cozy and cool place where the pick and shovel workers settled down to have lunch. The company settled down at the very entrance, building a small fire and placing a cauldron of stew on it. One of the workers accidentally stirred up the mud under his feet, and a long bone, yellowed with time, appeared into the light of day, followed by several more.
The man picked up a shovel, removed a layer of silt from the rocky bottom of the cave and pulled out a human skull from the recess. This already smacked of a crime, so the police were called. She also found it difficult to identify the remains, although it was immediately clear that they were of ancient origin.
Luckily, a very educated man lived in a nearby town. Johann Karl Fuhlrott. He arrived at the scene at the urgent request of representatives of the law. As a school teacher, the above-mentioned gentleman taught natural sciences. After a thorough examination, it was not difficult for him to declare that the found skull and bones were hundreds of years old.
This conclusion sincerely pleased the police, and they hastened to retreat, leaving the archaeological find to the teacher. The same, in turn, drew attention to the strange shape of the skull. She seemed to be human, but at the same time she had a number of features that were unusual for Homo sapiens (reasonable man).
The volume of the skull, in size, exceeded the usual one. The frontal bones had a sloping, strongly sloping back configuration. The eye sockets looked large; Above them hung a bone protrusion in the form of an arc. The massive lower jaw did not protrude forward, but had a streamlined, smooth shape and very little resembled a human one.
Only a few remaining teeth completely coincided in appearance with the usual teeth of people. This suggested the idea that this was, after all, the skull of a homo sapiens, and not some animal that died in a cave many thousands of years ago.
Mr. Fuhlrott showed such an unusual object to specialists. The accidental discovery from the grotto caused a furor in scientific circles. It really differed in many ways from the human skull, but at the same time it had a number of similar features. The conclusion involuntarily suggested itself: a distant ancestor of living people had been found.
Already in 1858, this hypothetical progenitor was named Neanderthal(by analogy with the Neander Valley) and fit perfectly into Darwin’s theory, which captured scientific minds in the last decades of the 19th century.
Charles Darwin (1809-1882) created a rather harmonious and convincing concept, claiming that man descended from apes through biological evolution. It was the Neanderthals who became the transitional species between ape-like ancestors and humans. Supporters of Darwinism endowed them with a primitive mind, the ability to create tools from stone and live in organized communities.
Human evolution according to Darwin
Over time, it became clear that this theory has many flaws, and the ancestors of modern people are Cro-Magnons. The latter existed at the same time as the Neanderthals, had the same level of intellectual development, but they were luckier. They survived, but the Neanderthals disappeared into oblivion, leaving behind only skeletons and primitive tools.
Why did Neanderthals go extinct?
Why did the Neanderthals die out, what was the reason? The answer to this question has not yet been found, although there are a great many different hypotheses and assumptions. In order to get any closer to the solution, it is necessary, first, to get to know these ancient intelligent beings better. Having a general idea of their appearance, lifestyle, social structure and habitat, it is much easier to find an explanation for the mysterious disappearance of an entire humanoid species from the earth's surface.
Recreating the appearance of a Neanderthal from his skull
Neanderthals were by no means weak creatures, unable to stand up for themselves. The height of an adult man did not exceed 165 cm, which is quite a lot (the average height of a modern person is equal to the same figure). A wide chest, strong long arms, short thick legs, a large head on a powerful neck - this is what a typical Neanderthal looked like during his existence on Earth.
The arms did not reach the knees, the feet were wide and long. The brain volume was 1400-1600 cubic meters. cm, which exceeds human (1200-1300 cc). The facial features were not distinguished by the correct proportions, but they looked rough and masculine. A wide nose, thick lips, a small chin, powerful brow ridges, under which small but intelligent eyes were hidden. You don’t even have to mention the high forehead. It had a sloping shape and smoothly passed into the occipital part.
On the left is a Cro-Magnon skull, on the right is a Neanderthal
This is the creation of the hands of nature, which generously endowed its intelligent children with all possible virtues. Neanderthals adapted as much as possible to the harsh world in which they lived safely for many, many thousands of years. According to the most conservative estimates, they appeared on Earth 300 thousand years ago. They disappeared 27 thousand years ago.
The lifespan is huge. More than a million generations have changed. It would seem that nothing foreshadowed the tragic end - and suddenly, out of the blue, it came. Degradation, degeneration of the species? Why then did the Cro-Magnons not become extinct? They lived the same amount of time on earth, but crossed the fatal threshold and became people, filling the entire planet.
Biological characteristics of the Neanderthal organism and lifestyle
Maybe the answer lies in biological features Neanderthal organism? The maximum lifespan of an individual did not reach 50 years. By this time he was turning into a decrepit old man. The heyday of life activity occurred in the period from 12 to 35-38 years. It was at the age of 12 that the Neanderthal turned into a full-fledged man, capable of childbearing, hunting and performing other social functions.
Only a few reached old age. Almost half of Neanderthals died before reaching 20 years of age. Approximately 40% left this mortal coil between the ages of 20 and 30. The lucky ones lived mostly until they were 40-45. Death always went hand in hand with paleoanthropes and was a familiar and commonplace thing.
Numerous diseases; death while hunting or in skirmishes with other tribes; the sharp teeth and claws of predatory animals mowed down these representatives of the hominid family in the thousands. Women gave birth every year and by the age of 25-30 they turned into old women. In their physical development, they were inferior to men, having a more flimsy constitution and shorter stature, but in endurance they had no equal, which once again emphasizes the rationalism and sanity of nature.
Neanderthals lived in small groups of 30-40 people. Precisely a person, since according to the generally accepted classification they belong to the genus of people, and their appearance is that of a Neanderthal man.
Each group had a leader - a chief. He took upon himself all the care of the members of his small community. His word was law, failure to comply with orders was a crime. Only the leader had the right to divide the game obtained from the hunt. He took the best pieces for himself and gave the slightly worse ones to young hunters. The mature and weak, as well as women and children, received the rest.
Strength was respected in this public education, but the weak were not oppressed, but were supported in every possible way and given work according to their strength. This indicates certain moral principles, high consciousness and the beginnings of humanism.
The dead were buried in shallow graves. The human corpse was laid on its side, the knees were pulled up to the chin. A stone knife, some kind of food, and jewelry made from multi-colored pebbles or teeth of predatory animals were left nearby. The burial places were not marked in any way, or maybe something was done, but merciless time destroyed and destroyed everything.
This is how Neanderthals were buried
The diet of Neanderthals was not very varied. These representatives of the human race preferred meat to all other foods. Mammoths, buffalos, cave bears - this is a list of those animals that were hunted with great skill and art by adult and strong members of the community. The weaker and younger caught small animals, but did not favor birds, giving priority to rodents and wild goats.
Neanderthals did not like fish either. They ate it only in difficult times, since hunger is not a problem, and in the absence of fish, as you know, fish also eat cancer. However, here it should be noted that they did not disdain human flesh. At the ancient sites of these people, bones of not only mammoths and buffaloes, but also Cro-Magnons are often found.
For the sake of reference, it should be noted that the latter are also far from angels. Cro-Magnons also ate Neanderthals, apparently considering such gluttony to be commonplace.
To become fully acquainted with representatives of this species, it is necessary to touch upon their habitat. Neanderthals lived mainly in Europe. Their favorite place is the Iberian Peninsula. In second place is probably the southern part of France. There were much fewer Neanderthals in Germany, but they happily settled in the Crimea and the Caucasus.
The Middle East also did not escape the attention of these ancient people. They also inhabited Altai; their settlements are also found in Central Asia. But the main concentration was in the Pyrenees. Two-thirds of all Neanderthals lived here. These were their lands, on which the Cro-Magnon foot did not dare to set foot.
The latter made up for such a loss with other territories, making the Apennine Peninsula their ancestral fiefdom. In the rest of Europe, Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons lived mixed together. It cannot be said that it was a friendly neighborhood. Numerous bloody skirmishes between representatives of the same biological species were common.
The weapons used by the Neanderthals were a club and a stone knife sharpened on both sides. They handled these simple objects very skillfully. Both on the hunt and in skirmishes with enemies, the same club was a reliable means of both defense and attack.
A group of short, powerful, strong men was a formidable military formation, capable of not only defending itself, but also attacking, sending the same Cro-Magnons to a shameful flight. The latter were much taller than the Neanderthals: their height reached 185 cm, but this achievement did not help much. The ancestors of modern man had long legs, arms, a muscular body, but all this was not distinguished by massive forms.
The Cro-Magnons were inferior to the Neanderthals in their physical development. In terms of agility, speed of reaction and mental development they were equal. As a result, force won. The distant ancestors of modern man either retreated or died, and the mighty little men celebrated their victory by eating the bodies of their killed enemies. They communicated through short phrases or individual words.
The speech of the Neanderthals really was not distinguished by eloquence, and the sentences consisted of two or three words. This did not at all mean that ancient people gravitated towards silent contemplation of the world around them and possessed a great gift - the ability to listen to others.
Everything rested on the structure of the nasopharynx and larynx. It is in the larynx that the voice apparatus is located, thanks to which you can talk long and eloquently about completely different things, impressing those present with your extensive knowledge and in an original way thinking.
The structure of these most important organs did not allow the powerful, robust men to utter long, ornate phrases. Nature deprived them of such opportunities from birth, which cannot be said about Cro-Magnons. Everything was fine with their speech. However, you can easily verify this by looking at those around you.
Could underdeveloped speech be the reason for the extinction of a huge number of people? Hardly. The same monkeys feel great in harsh and dangerous world, without possessing the proper art of verbose communication. And the Neanderthals themselves lived for almost 300 thousand years, transmitting information through individual words or short phrases. All this time they coexisted quite comfortably and understood each other perfectly.
Relationship between Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons
If we draw up an approximate chronology of events from such an ancient period, the following picture becomes clearer. The first Neanderthals appeared on the Iberian Peninsula 300 thousand years ago. Around the same time, the first Cro-Magnons appeared in Southeast Africa. These two human species did not intersect in any way, existing on different continents for 200 thousand years.
The first ancestors of modern humans moved to the Middle East about 90 thousand years ago. Neanderthals already lived in these lands. Apparently there were few of them, and the newcomers did not compete with them in the hunt. The world abounded in a variety of living creatures, but the Cro-Magnons, in addition to meat, consumed plant foods, as well as fish and birds, with great pleasure.
Over time, they penetrated into Europe, but, settling on these lands, they again did not interfere with the Neanderthals. Those mainly clustered in the Pyrenees and the south of France. The ancestors of modern man chose the Apennine Peninsula and began to actively settle on the Balkan Peninsula. This peaceful coexistence lasted 50 thousand years. A huge period, considering that modern civilization is no more than seven thousand years old.
Problems and clashes between these paleoanthropes began about 45 thousand years ago. What contributed to this - the advance of ice from the north? They crawled up to 50 degrees C. w. and significantly influenced the flora and fauna of the surrounding world. It got colder in both the Pyrenees and the Apennines. Sub-zero temperatures have become commonplace in winter period. True, the snow cover was small and made it possible for herbivores to feed without problems.
Where there are many well-fed animals, people have no problems with food. Therefore, more than one thousand years passed before the Neanderthals disappeared forever from the surface of the blue planet. They could not be affected by the Ice Age, and mammoths - the main source of food - became extinct only 10 thousand years ago.
Then perhaps a natural process of mixing the two subspecies of people occurred. Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals gradually united into single communities, they had children from joint marriages, and, in the end, they formed a single species that became the progenitor of modern man.
To this assumption, back in the 90s, science said a categorical “no”. Scientists examined the mitochondrial DNA of modern humans and a similar molecule taken from the remains of a Neanderthal. There was nothing in common between them.
Mitochondrial DNA transmitted only from the mother and remains virtually unchanged for thousands of years. It follows that all humanity descended from one progenitor (mitochondrial Eve). The short, sturdy ones turned out to have a completely different foremother, who gave life to the first of them many, many thousands of years ago.
Decades flashed by, centuries passed, millennia slowly crawled into eternity. Neanderthals lived, reproduced, and hunted. They managed to survive Hard times ice ages, of which there were three. They did not squander their originality and strength in the beneficial times of interglacial periods. And suddenly they all died as one, leaving no traces of themselves as a reminder.
First, this human species disappeared from the lands of Germany, then France and the Middle East. The Cro-Magnons settled firmly in the above-mentioned areas. Not only did they not become extinct, but on the contrary, they actively began to multiply, gradually moving further and further to the East.
Neanderthal settlements remained only in the Pyrenees. This was their original place. It was from here that they began their journey, gradually settling in Europe and nearby areas of Asia. Their individual communities even reached Altai and Central Asia.
The last stronghold served the mighty strongmen as reliable protection. They stayed on their native peninsula for another whole millennium. True, the remaining five centuries before their disappearance, the lands dear to their hearts had to be shared with the shameless Cro-Magnons. They very quickly settled in the Pyrenees and began to crowd out the original owners.
The path of evolution of Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals
Cohabitation was characterized by outbreaks of hostility and long periods of peace. The end was fatal for some and prosperous for others. The last Neanderthals disappeared 27 thousand years ago. The Cro-Magnons, having changed slightly in appearance, are still thriving. They are actively reproducing - their number has already exceeded 6 billion.
The mystery of the disappearance of the Neanderthals
So what is this destruction program that turned on during a certain period of time? Here it should immediately be noted that the Neanderthals were far from alone in their tragedy. Many representatives of the animal world sunk into eternity just 30-10 thousand years ago. As an example, we can cite the same mammoths that disappeared from the planet without a trace for unknown reasons.
Science today cannot explain this phenomenon. There are a number of concepts that claim absolute truth, but there is no single theory that can objectively reflect the entire spectrum of contradictions and focus it in a single and coherent system based on absolute and error-free evidence.
The process of extinction of the Neanderthals took more than one thousand years. Their population increased and decreased. In the end, people disappeared, unconditionally giving way in the sun to those more successful and adapted to harsh and rational reality.
The mystery of the disappearance of this human species may lie in areas far from official science. Maybe Neanderthals found an entrance to other worlds, to other dimensions. Having left the existing reality, they are now thriving in a different reality: they are developing, improving, and even surpass modern people in terms of the level of scientific and technological progress.
Living in the sublunary world, the mighty strong men, just like the slender Cro-Magnons, dreamed, loved and daily fought for their survival on planet Earth. They have sunk into oblivion, but, in any case, had a certain impact on the ancestors of modern man. Who knows, maybe some positive or negative character traits inherent in those living today are a derivative of the psychological type that the Neanderthal was.
All this is just guesswork and speculation. The essence of the problem is that ineradicable human curiosity will ultimately play a positive role in this matter. The secret will become clear, and current generations, and maybe their immediate descendants, will finally learn the whole truth about their distant relatives.
The article was written by ridar-shakin
Based on materials from foreign publications
The first discoveries of Neanderthals were made about 150 years ago. In 1856, in the Feldhofer Grotto in the Neander River Valley (Neanderthal) in Germany school teacher and a lover of antiquities, Johann Karl Fuhlrott, during excavations, discovered the skull cap and parts of the skeleton of some interesting creature. But at that time, Charles Darwin’s work had not yet been published, and scientists did not believe in the existence of fossil human ancestors. The famous pathologist Rudolf Vierhof declared this discovery to be the skeleton of an old man who suffered from rickets in childhood and gout in old age.
In 1865, information was published about the skull of a similar individual, found in a quarry on the rock of Gibraltar back in 1848. And only then did scientists recognize that such remains did not belong to a “freak,” but to some previously unknown fossil species of man. This species was named after the location where it was found in 1856 - Neanderthal.
Today, more than 200 locations of the remains of Neanderthals are known in the territory of modern England, Belgium, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, in the Crimea, in different parts African continent, Central Asia, Palestine, Iran, Iraq, China; in a word - everywhere in the Old World.
For the most part, Neanderthals were of average height and powerful build - physically they were superior to modern humans in almost all respects. Judging by the fact that the Neanderthal hunted very fast and agile animals, his strength was combined with mobility. He completely mastered upright walking, and in this sense was no different from us. He had a well-developed hand, but it was somewhat wider and shorter than that of a modern person, and, apparently, not so dexterous.
The size of the Neanderthal brain ranged from 1200 to 1600 cm 3, sometimes even exceeding the average brain volume of a modern person, but the structure of the brain remained largely primitive. In particular, Neanderthals had poorly developed frontal lobes, which are responsible for logical thinking and inhibition processes. From this we can assume that these creatures “didn’t grab stars from the sky”, were extremely excitable, and their behavior was characterized by aggressiveness. Many archaic features have been preserved in the structure of the skull bones. Thus, Neanderthals are characterized by a low sloping forehead, a massive brow ridge, and a weakly defined chin protuberance - all this suggests that, apparently, Neanderthals did not have a developed form of speech.
This was the general appearance of the Neanderthals, but in the vast territory they inhabited there were several various types. Some of them had more archaic features that brought them closer to Pithecanthropus; others, on the contrary, were closer to man in their development modern look.
Tools and dwellings
The tools of the first Neanderthals were not much different from the tools of their predecessors. But over time, new, more complex forms of tools appeared, and the old ones disappeared. This new complex finally took shape in the so-called Mousterian era. Tools, as before, were made of flint, but their shapes became much more diverse, and their manufacturing techniques became more complex. The main preparation of the tool was a flake, which was obtained by chipping from a core (a piece of flint that, as a rule, has a specially prepared platform or platforms from which the chipping is carried out). In total, the Mousterian era is characterized by about 60 different types of tools, many of them, however, can be reduced to variations of three main types: the hewer, the scraper and the pointed point.
Hand axes are a smaller version of the Pithecanthropus hand axes already known to us. If the size of hand axes was 15-20 cm in length, then the size of hand axes was about 5-8 cm. Pointed points are a type of tool with a triangular outline and a point at the end.
Pointed points could be used as knives for cutting meat, leather, wood, as daggers, and also as spear and dart tips. Scrapers were used in cutting animal carcasses, tanning hides and processing wood.
In addition to the listed types, tools such as piercings, scrapers, burins, denticulated and notched tools, etc. are also found at Neanderthal sites.
Neanderthals used bones and tools to make tools. True, for the most part only fragments of bone products reach us, but there are cases when almost complete tools fall into the hands of archaeologists. As a rule, these are primitive points, awls, and spatulas. Sometimes larger guns come across. So, at one of the sites in Germany, scientists found a fragment of a dagger (or maybe a spear), reaching 70 cm in length; A club made of deer antler was also found there.
Tools throughout the territory inhabited by Neanderthals differed from each other and largely depended on who their owners hunted, and therefore on the climate and geographic region. It is clear that the African set of tools should be very different from the European one.
As for climate, European Neanderthals were not particularly lucky in this regard. The fact is that it is precisely during their time that there is a very strong cooling and the formation of glaciers. If Homo erectus (pithecanthropus) lived in an area reminiscent of the African savanna, then the landscape that surrounded the Neanderthals, at least the European ones, was more reminiscent of a forest-steppe or tundra.
People, as before, developed caves - mostly small sheds or shallow grottoes. But during this period, buildings appeared in open spaces. Thus, at the Molodova site on the Dniester, the remains of a dwelling made from the bones and teeth of mammoths were discovered.
You may ask: how do we know the purpose of this or that type of weapon? Firstly, there are still peoples living on Earth who to this day use tools made from flint. Such peoples include some aborigines of Siberia, indigenous people of Australia, etc. And secondly, there is a special science - traceology, which deals with
studying the traces left on tools from contact with one or another material. From these traces it is possible to establish what and how this tool was processed. Experts also conduct direct experiments: they themselves beat pebbles with a hand chopper, try to cut various things with a pointed tip, throw wooden spears, etc.
What did Neanderthals hunt?
The main hunting object of the Neanderthals was the mammoth. This beast did not survive to our time, but we have a fairly accurate idea of it from realistic images left on the walls of caves by Upper Paleolithic people. In addition, the remains (and sometimes whole carcasses) of these animals are found from time to time in Siberia and Alaska in a layer of permafrost, where they are very well preserved, thanks to which we have the opportunity not only to see a mammoth “almost like a living one,” but also find out what he ate (by examining the contents of his stomach).
In size, mammoths were close to elephants (their height reached 3.5 m), but, unlike elephants, they were covered with thick long hair of brown, reddish or black color, which formed a long hanging mane on the shoulders and chest. The mammoth was also protected from the cold by a thick layer of subcutaneous fat. The tusks of some animals reached a length of 3 m and weighed up to 150 kg. Most likely, mammoths used their tusks to shovel the snow in search of food: grass, mosses, ferns and small shrubs. In one day, this animal consumed up to 100 kg of coarse plant food, which it had to grind with four huge molars - each weighed about 8 kg. Mammoths lived in the tundra, grassy steppes and forest-steppes.
To catch such a huge beast, ancient hunters had to work hard. Apparently, they set up various pit traps, or drove the animal into a swamp, where it got stuck, and finished it off there. But in general it is difficult to imagine how a Neanderthal with his primitive weapons could kill a mammoth.
An important game animal was the cave bear - an animal about one and a half times larger than a modern brown bear. Large males, rising on their hind legs, reached a height of 2.5 m.
These animals, as their name suggests, lived primarily in caves, so they were not only the object of hunting, but also competitors: after all, Neanderthals also preferred to live in caves, because it was dry, warm and cozy. The fight against such a serious opponent as a cave bear was extremely dangerous, and did not always end in victory for the hunter.
Neanderthals also hunted bison or bison, horses and reindeer. All these animals provided not only meat, but also fat, bones, and skin. In general, they provided people with everything they needed.
In southern Asia and Africa, mammoths were not found, and the main game animals there were elephants and rhinoceroses, antelopes, gazelles, mountain goats, and buffalos.
It must be said that Neanderthals, apparently, did not disdain their own kind - this is evidenced by a large number of crushed human bones found at the Krapina site in Yugoslavia. (It is known that in this way - by crushing KOC~tei - our ancestors obtained nutritious bone marrow.) The inhabitants of this site received the name “Krapino cannibals” in the literature. Similar finds were made in several other caves of that time.
Taming Fire
We have already said that Sinanthropus (and most likely all Pithecanthropus in general) began to use natural fire - obtained as a result of a lightning strike on a tree or a volcanic eruption. The fire produced in this way was continuously maintained, transported from place to place and carefully stored, because people did not yet know how to produce fire artificially. However, Neanderthals, apparently, had already learned this. How did they do it?
There are 5 known methods of making fire, which were common among primitive peoples back in the 19th century: 1) scraping out fire (fire plow), 2) sawing out fire (fire saw), 3) drilling out fire (fire drill), 4) carving out fire, and 5) producing fire with compressed air (fire pump). The fire pump is a less common method, although it is quite advanced.
Scraping fire (fire plow). This method is not particularly common among backward peoples (and we are unlikely to ever know what it was like in ancient times). It is quite fast, but requires a lot of physical effort. They take a wooden stick and move it, pressing hard, along a wooden plank lying on the ground. The result is fine shavings or wood powder that, due to the friction of wood against wood, heat up and then begin to smolder. Then they are combined with highly flammable tinder and the fire is fanned.
Sawing fire (fire saw). This method is similar to the previous one, but the wooden plank was sawed or scraped not along the grain, but across it. The result was also wood powder, which began to smolder.
Fire drilling (fire drill). This is the most common way to make fire. A fire drill consists of a wooden stick that is used to drill into a wooden plank (or other stick) lying on the ground. As a result, smoking or smoldering wood powder appears quite quickly in the recess on the bottom board; it is poured onto the tinder and the flame is fanned. Ancient people rotated the drill with the palms of both hands, but later they began to do it differently: they rested the drill against something with its upper end and covered it with a belt, and then pulled alternately on both ends of the belt, causing it to rotate.
Carving fire. Fire can be struck by hitting a stone on a stone, hitting a stone on a piece of iron ore (sulfur pyrite, or pyrite), or hitting iron on a stone. The impact produces sparks that should fall on the tinder and ignite it.
"Neanderthal Problem"
From the 1920s until the end of the twentieth century, scientists different countries There was heated debate over whether Neanderthal man was the direct ancestor of modern humans. Many foreign scientists believed that the ancestor of modern man—the so-called “presapiens”—lived almost simultaneously with the Neanderthals and gradually pushed them “into oblivion.” In Russian anthropology, it was generally accepted that it was the Neanderthals that eventually “turned” into Homo sapiens, and one of the main arguments was that all the known remains of modern humans date back to a much later time than the found bones of Neanderthals.
But at the end of the 80s, important finds of Homo sapiens were made in Africa and the Middle East, dating back very early time(the heyday of the Neanderthals), and the position of the Neanderthal as our ancestor was greatly shaken. In addition, thanks to improvements in dating methods for finds, the age of some of them has been revised and turned out to be more ancient.
To date, in two geographical areas of our planet, the remains of modern humans have been found, the age of which exceeds 100 thousand years. These are Africa and the Middle East. On the African continent, in the town of Omo Kibish in the south of Ethiopia, a jaw was discovered, similar in structure to the jaw of Homo sapiens, whose age is about 130 thousand years. Finds of skull fragments from the territory of the Republic of South Africa are about 100 thousand years old, and finds from Tanzania and Kenya are up to 120 thousand years old.
Finds are known from the Skhul cave on Mount Carmel, near Haifa, as well as from the Jabel Kafzeh cave, in the south of Israel (this is all the territory of the Middle East). In both caves, human bone remains were found, which in most respects are much closer to humans modern type than to Neanderthals. (However, this applies only to two individuals.) All these finds date back 90-100 thousand years ago. Thus, it turns out that modern humans lived side by side with Neanderthals for many millennia (at least in the Middle East).
Data obtained using genetic methods, which is rapidly developing in Lately, also indicate that Neanderthal man is not our ancestor and that modern man arose and spread across the planet completely independently. And besides, living long time side by side, our ancestors and Neanderthals did not mix because they do not share the same genes that would inevitably arise from mixing. Although this issue has not yet been finally resolved.
So, on the territory of Europe, Neanderthals reigned supreme for almost 400 thousand years, being the only representatives of the Noto genus. But about 40 thousand years ago, modern people invaded their domain - Homo sapiens, who are also called “people of the Upper Paleolithic” or (according to one of the sites in France) Cro-Magnons. And these are, in the literal sense of the word, our ancestors - our great-great-great... (and so on) -grandmothers and -grandfathers.
