Modern people. There are four different types of man on earth. The appearance of modern man: the time and place of the appearance of man




The inhuman world in which modern man lives forces everyone to wage a constant struggle with external and internal factors. What is happening around an ordinary person sometimes becomes incomprehensible and leads to a feeling of constant discomfort.

Daily sprint

Psychologists and psychiatrists of all stripes note a sharp surge of anxiety, self-doubt and a huge number of different phobias in an ordinary representative of our society.

The life of a modern person takes place at a frantic pace, so there is simply no time to relax and get distracted from numerous everyday problems. The vicious circle, consisting of a marathon distance at a sprint speed, forces people to run a race with themselves. Intensification leads to insomnia, stress, nervous breakdowns and illnesses, which has become a fundamental trend in the post-information age.

Information pressure

The second task that modern man cannot solve is the abundance of information. The flow of various data falls on everyone simultaneously from all possible sources - the Internet, the mass media, the press. This makes critical perception impossible, since internal "filters" cannot cope with such pressure. As a result, the individual cannot operate with real facts and data, since he is unable to separate fiction and lies from reality.

Dehumanization of relationships

A person in modern society is forced to constantly face alienation, which manifests itself not only in work, but also in interpersonal relationships.

The constant manipulation of human consciousness by the media, politicians and public institutions has led to the dehumanization of relations. The exclusion zone that has formed between people makes it difficult to communicate, look for friends or a soul mate, and attempts at rapprochement by strangers are very often perceived as something completely inappropriate. The third problem of the society of the 21st century - dehumanization - is reflected in mass culture, language environment and art.

Problems of social culture

The problems of modern man are inseparable from the deformations in society itself and create a vicious spiral.

The cultural ouroboros causes people to withdraw even more into themselves and move away from other individuals. Modern art - literature, painting, music and cinema - can be considered a typical expression of the processes of degradation of public consciousness.

Films and books about nothing, musical works without harmony and rhythm are presented as the greatest achievements of civilization, full of sacred knowledge and deep meaning, incomprehensible to most.

Crisis of values

The value world of each particular individual can change several times in a lifetime, but in the 21st century this process has become too fast. The result of constant change is constant crises, which do not always lead to a happy ending.

The eschatological notes slipping through the term “crisis of values” do not mean a complete and absolute end, but they make one think about the direction in which it is worth paving the way. A modern person is in a permanent state of crisis from the moment of growing up, since the world around him is changing much faster than the prevailing ideas about it.

A person in the modern world is forced to drag out a rather miserable existence: thoughtlessly following ideals, trends and certain styles, which leads to the inability to develop one's own point of view and one's position in relation to events and processes.

The ubiquitous chaos and entropy that reigns around should not be frightening or cause hysteria, since change is natural and normal if there is something unchanged.

Where and from where is the world heading?

The development of modern man and his main paths were predetermined long before our time. Culturologists name several turning points, the result of which was modern society and a person in the modern world.

Creationism, which fell in an unequal battle under the pressure of adherents of atheology, brought very unexpected results - a widespread decline in morals. Cynicism and criticism, which have become the norm of behavior and thinking since the Renaissance, are considered to be a kind of "rules of good taste" for modern and clergymen.

Science in itself is not the meaning of the existence of society and is not able to answer some questions. To achieve harmony and balance, adherents of the scientific approach should be more humane, since the unresolved problems of our time cannot be described and solved as an equation with several unknowns.

The rationalization of reality sometimes does not allow seeing anything more than numbers, concepts and facts that leave no room for many important things.

Instinct vs reason

The legacy of distant and wild ancestors who once lived in caves is considered to be the main motives of society. Modern man is just as attached to biological rhythms and solar cycles as he was a million years ago. Anthropocentric civilization only creates the illusion of controlling the elements and one's own nature.

The payoff for such deceit comes in the form of personality dysfunction. It is impossible to control every element of the system always and everywhere, because even one's own body cannot be ordered to stop aging or change proportions.

Scientific, political and social institutions are vying with each other about new victories that will certainly help humanity grow blooming gardens on distant planets. However, modern man, armed with all the achievements of the last millennium, is not able to cope with a common cold, like 100, 500 and 2000 years ago.

Who is to blame and what to do?

No one is to blame for the substitution of values, and everyone is guilty. Modern human rights are both respected and not respected at the same time precisely because of this distortion - you can have an opinion, but you can’t express it, you can love something, but you can’t mention it.

The stupid Ouroboros, constantly chewing his own tail, will someday choke, and then there will be complete harmony and world peace in the Universe. However, if this does not happen in the foreseeable future, future generations will at least hope for the best.

And they were replaced by a new variety of "Homo sapiens". These new people were the first people on Earth to have the same skull and whole body shape as modern man. They were named Cro-Magnons, they were our immediate ancestors (for more details, see the article ""). The Cro-Magnons lived in caves or huts at the very end of the last of the ice ages. In those days it was cold, and winters were snowy, only low grasses and shrubs could grow in such conditions. The Cro-Magnons hunted reindeer and woolly mammoths.

Hunting and fishing

The Cro-Magnons learned to make many new types of tools and weapons. To their spears they tied sharp tips made of deer antler with teeth pointing backwards so that the spear would get stuck deep in the side of the wounded animal. In order to throw spears as far as possible, they used special throwing devices. These devices were made of deer antler, and some of them were decorated with carved patterns. They fished with harpoons carved from deer antlers, with tips and teeth curved back. Harpoons were tied to spears, and fishermen pierced fish with them right into.

Sewing

Needles carved from a deer antler were found next to the remains of the Cro-Magnons. This suggests that people have already learned how to sew animal skins. The Cro-Magnons cut deer antlers with a chisel-shaped stone tool - a chisel (see also the article ""). They were probably the first people to learn how to make needles and sew. From one end of the needle they made a hole that served as an eye. Then they cleaned the edges and the point of the needle by rubbing it against a special stone. Perhaps they pierced the skin with a stone drill so that they could pass the needle through the holes that had formed. Instead of thread, they used thin strips of animal skin or intestines. Cro-Magnon people often sewed small beads made of multi-colored pebbles to their clothes to look more elegant. Sometimes for these purposes they also used shells with holes in the middle.

ancient burial

In the earthen floor of the huts and caves of the Cro-Magnons, many burials were discovered. The skeletons were covered with beads of stones and shells, previously attached to rotted clothing. The dead, as a rule, were laid in a grave in a bent position, with their knees pressed to their chin (see also the article ""). Sometimes various tools and weapons are also found in the graves.

This is the skull of a Cro-Magnon woman. It has the same shape as the skulls of modern humans, and has a capacious rounded skull, a pointed chin and a straight forehead.

Huts made of mammoth bones

Some Cro-Magnon tribes lived on the cold steppe plains of Eastern Europe. There were no caves where one could live, and there was not enough wood to build huts. However, the woolly mammoths they hunted provided them with almost everything necessary for life (read also the article ""). Cro-Magnons built huts from long tibia bones and mammoth tusks, covering the frame with animal skins. The ends of the bones were inserted into the skulls, since the builders could not stick them into the frozen ground. These Cro-Magnons wore pants and jackets made from mammoth skins. They ate mammoth meat and stored it in pits dug in the frozen ground.

How to make a caveman necklace

Cro-Magnons made necklaces from small stones and shells, fish bones or pieces of eggshells. Perhaps they also wore beads made from seeds or grains of various fruits, but they have not been preserved in a fossil form. Sea shells and pebbles often have small holes in the middle. If you happen to visit the sea, you can collect them and string them on a string to make a necklace. You can also poke small pieces of fresh eggshells with a needle. Thread them onto cotton thread along with apple and orange pits and you have another necklace.

Recently, a significant number of students of history began to come to the same conclusion. The thesis that modern man originated in Africa turned out to be false.

These are the remains of the door temples of the most ancient civilization on the Land of Elel (the country of Arata). On the territory of European Russia, many such monuments have been preserved.

The modern type of man arose in the last era of glaciation of the planet at the very foot of the glacier, which covered the whole of Europe 70-50 thousand years ago. A thickness of ice up to 5 km high, as in Antarctica, did not leave any chance for the survival of human beings who lived before. As a result, the previous type of human, the Neanderthal, is dying out on the planet. 28 thousand years ago, the last Neanderthal tribes perished. Another type of person who was our ancestor, the Cro-Magnon, also almost shared the fate of his brother. 70 thousand years ago, no more than 2 thousand people remained on the planet. All of them took refuge in a narrow strip of broad-leaved forests that formed on the territory of modern Russia south of the modern city of Moscow on the watershed of the Oka, Volga and Don rivers. Here, the valley, squeezed from three sides by a glacier, has become a place of salvation for mankind. Gradually, over 20-25 thousand years, the population is restored, but this is not yet fully human. This is still a skilled person (he is already making tools and dwellings), but not intelligent. He becomes a man about 50 thousand years ago. He gets the speech.


Here the opinions of scientists differ. Some believe that a person could receive a speech code from a Neanderthal as a result of interspecific sexual relations. Others believe that the Cro-Magnon could not interbreed with the Neanderthal, since these two types of people were not relatives - they had a different gene code. Perhaps, other researchers believe that people received the speech code from the outside. Confirmation of this hypothesis may be circles in cereal fields, mysteriously sometimes appearing both in Russia and in Canada. The signs on the margins surprisingly coincide with the swastika alphabet, which, according to scientists, was the basis of all written systems of mankind. And the fact that a person from the beginning mastered the alphabet, and only then acquired speech, is no longer in doubt among serious scientists. The initial halo of human settlement can be considered the space from the Dnieper River to the Urals horizontally and from Moscow to the Black Sea vertically. This is the territory of modern Russia and part of Ukraine, Belarus.


Approximately 30 thousand years ago, the migration of people from places of salvation to the outside world begins. The colonization of the planet occurs in several noticeable waves. Most of the settlers in the outside world died, and the civilizations they created degraded. Only very recently people have reached the final lands and now began to think about space exploration. But still, how was everything on Earth?


FIRST WAVE


The very first settlers began to appear outside the initial halo of human settlement about 30-32 thousand years ago. At this time, the Neanderthal disappears, probably, this makes it possible to settle in the territories previously controlled by an aggressive brother. Bands of people reach Africa, China and even America. During the ice age, the ocean level is much lower than the modern one - land corridors connect Eurasia with both America and Australia. However, most of the centers of life created by these people faded over time. Their small exotic tribes remained only in Australia and Africa.


The first settlers, whose descendants are still alive and form the basis of civilization, were the ar-keshe (“pure people”) group, which especially worshiped the spirit of light, therefore they were called by the names of this spirit: Samar (hence Samara, Sumer), Seber (hence Siberia ), Deber (hence - Tauris, Dorians), Atryach (hence - Troy).


About 10 thousand years BC one part of the debers left Russia for Western Europe, where they existed for a long time under the name of the Celts, and the other part went to the Middle East, where they formed the state of Samar (Sumer), which originally included the territories of Northern Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, Asia Minor , Balkan Peninsula, Western Iran, Transcaucasia.


This era is well characterized by the temple complex of the Navel Mountain in the southeast of Anatolia in Turkey. Under a hill about 15 meters high and about 300 meters in diameter - one of the innumerable hills in this desert region, in the upper reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates - archaeologists discovered walls and T-shaped pillars of limestone. Their surface was decorated with reliefs on which animals were depicted in a naturalistic way: a leopard, a fox, a donkey, a snake, a duck, a wild boar, a bull, a crane. These monuments date back to the middle of the tenth millennium BC.


In Göbekli Tepe, four round buildings were excavated, reaching a diameter of 15-20 meters. Along the walls, as well as in the center of the premises, there were four dozen monolithic pillars weighing up to 20 tons. The central monoliths (their height reached five meters) resemble stone slabs of Stonehenge; only they are older by almost six thousand years. Apparently, hundreds of people were involved in transporting them from a nearby quarry. An unfinished monolith 7 meters high and weighing 50 tons was found in the quarry.


Around 7500 BC, Göbekli Tepe suddenly becomes empty. Something strange happens: the grandiose sanctuary is covered with earth. So - in a "canned" form - it will stand for almost ten thousand years before archaeologists come here.

The walls of the sanctuary are decorated with some abstract icons. These geometric symbols and animal figurines seem to be more than a simple ornament. However, it seems that as a biological species, modern man can only successfully develop in the north: where cold and ice meet heat. In the south, starting from the 7th millennium BC, life fades again.


At the turn of 4-3 thousand years BC. a new wave of people from the north gives a new impetus to life. At that time, a highly developed civilization had long existed in Rus', which archaeologists designate as the Trypillia culture (named after the village of Tripoli, where the first cities of the most ancient civilization were discovered). People in Rus' live in two-story adobe houses, ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, pottery are developing, ships are being built. At this time, the wheel is invented and the horse is domesticated. The time of the chariot lords is coming. The industrial revolution in the north creates undeniable technological advantages for the new settlers, who in the outside world now meet the more backward local population. A new colonization of the planet begins. New settlers colonize the peoples who arrived in the outside world earlier.


Samar broke up into:


1. Egyptian kingdom (Mamil);


2. Kresh - the Cretan kingdom;


3. Suvar - a kingdom in Mesopotamia, which retained its name - Sumer;


4. Midan (Western Iran);


5. Kafkash (Caucasus).


SECOND WAVE


In the 3-2 millennium BC. the second wave of settlers from Arata moved south - the bilsag (hence the Pelasgians) or bishatar (“five clans”).


The five-pointed star became the emblem of the second wave of immigrants. It means the winged leopard - the herald of victory.


One part of the bilsags settled in the Black Sea region. The other is in the Balkans (where it became known as the Pelasgians). The third one is in the Caucasus (Kutii, Huti, Gutii, Utigi, Utii, Albanians, Hittites). The fourth - in Central Asia (under the name of Saks, Massagets and Kushans). The Central Asian wave then passed through Afghanistan and Pakistan to India and conquered it, the Bilsaga remained in the memory of the Indians under the name of the five brothers - the Pandavas.


Caucasian bilsagas at the turn of the 3rd-2nd millennium BC captured most of Asia Minor and founded the Hittite kingdom here, and around 2200 BC. attacked Sumer.


Balkan bilsaga founded Mycenae, Bilsaga (later Pliska) and other cities.


The Philistines built five (5) port cities on the coast: Aza (Gaza), Ascalon (Ashkelon), Asdod (Ashdod), Jaffa (Yafo), Akko. Five cities - five clans, bilsaga!


Note: out of the 12 tribes of Israel, 7 tribes remained in Rus' and eventually formed Sarmatia (a union of seven tribes), and five tribes left for the outside world. By the way, on the Orthodox cross there are seven small crosses at the ends, as a symbol of Sarmatia. And the five-pointed stars on the Kremlin towers are the symbol of the “Bilsagi”, the five tribes that have gone into the outside world.


THIRD WAVE


In the 2-1 millennium BC. to the south from the central provinces of the Aryan world, a third large wave of settlers began to move, led by the Exaga tribes (“rivermen” or “watermen”). They are transferred to ships that are being built on the Vorozhian Sich near the modern city of Voronezh. On the river Don they descend to the south, their ships even reach Egypt and the upper reaches of the Nile. The "dark ages" are coming due to the constant raids of the people of the sea - sea pirates - Hellenes. They form the Bosporan Freemen in the Sea of ​​Azov and gradually settle in the Black and Mediterranean Seas in city-states. This is how the ancient world is born.


In the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. a catastrophic volcanic eruption on the island of Thera (near Crete) killed most of the population of this island. The city of Troy, which had previously been part of the Cretan kingdom, declared itself an independent kingdom. But the Achaeans or Argives - i.e. the "Urals" conquered Mycenae, Crete and Cyprus and founded their own Mycenaean or Argos kingdom (its coat of arms is a dragon). The Trojans tried to stop the expansion of the Myceans, but around 1200 BC. the latter, after a long siege, took and destroyed Troy. Around the same time, the Mycenaeans captured the territory of the Hittite kingdom (where they founded their principalities) and attacked Egypt. Some of the inhabitants left Troy for the Apennine Peninsula, where they founded a new kingdom, named after their ancestral home - Idel (hence - Italy). The neighbors called them Etruscans.


In the so-called axial era of the 7th c. BC. another major migration of the population began, caused by a war between two tribes - the Sakas and the Massagets (both were descendants of the bilsag, the Second Wave). It seems that the war began somewhere in the territory of today's Kazakhstan. Not all Saks were at enmity with the Massagets, but only a part of the Saks under the leadership of the Nukrat (or Eshtyak) clan. They were Ugrians from the north, whose intention was to move into the more convenient southern lands. First, they settled among the Saks and joined their union, and then decided to invade the territory of the Massagets, where they were defeated.


The Scythian troops sent by King Berendey, pursuing them, broke into the Middle East and subjugated the lands from the Caucasus to Egypt. “Because the Aryaks (ancestors of the Armenians) helped King Berendey conquer the Caucasus, he allowed them to settle in the part of Arman (Transcaucasia). Soon, however, the main troops of Arata were withdrawn to the metropolis (where another civil strife began), and the Scythian militias remaining in the Middle East were attacked by their former allies, the Medes, and retreated.


Since then, the Aryans of the Kypchak-Ishtyak clan were settled in the Northern Black Sea region and began to dominate: Nukrats (Nevrov), Ishtyaks (Yazygs), etc. And the settlers from Rus' to the distant worlds still spread the achievements and features of the culture of Idel.


The Russian scientist Vladimir VERNADSKY (1863–1945) in the twentieth century expressed the idea of ​​the influence of the living organic world on the history of the elements that make up the earth's crust, came to the conclusion that living matter is eternal as a general manifestation of the cosmos, like energy and matter. In December 1911, at the Mendeleev Congress, Vernadsky made a report on the gas exchange of the earth's crust, in which he substantiated the idea of ​​the "organization" of the planet, of the general planetary mechanism. In 1936, Vernadsky accepted the idea of ​​E. Leroy about the noosphere as a continuation, a new state of the biosphere, a new era that should come in the history of the Earth and the entire cosmos.


If we start from the ideas of Vladimir Vernadsky, then the Earth is a living organism, and humanity is its blood. Then, undoubtedly, the heart of this living organism is in Russia. It is here that people come for salvation, and from here, transformed, they again go on wanderings around the planet. I think that Russia will continue to play this role, when restless people begin to settle in space.

About 40 thousand years ago, a modern man appeared, called by scientists Homo sapiens - a reasonable man.

Through the isthmuses that existed at that time, man entered Australia and America. The resettlement of people in different geographical conditions led to the beginning of the process of racial formation. The result was the division of mankind into Caucasians, Mongoloids and Negroids.

Not only the appearance distinguished Homo sapiens from their predecessors. The most important event for the formation of man as a species was the realization of new relationships within the collectives. Now we call these relations social or public.

First of all, this was expressed in the affirmation of kinship relations between people. It was a real revolution in a person's life. It was the recognition of kinship that stabilized human groups, led to the regulation of relations between people, made tribal communities permanent and cohesive associations, which was not observed either in the animal world or in the primitive herd. A tribal community arose, all members of which were descended from a common ancestor.

The most important step towards the formation of social relations was the ban on marriage or sexual relations between relatives. Wives were now allowed to be taken in neighboring friendly families. This, in turn, led to the establishment of stable relationships between individual genera. Several friendly clans began to unite into tribes.

There was a ban on killing a relative, and if he died at the hands of a foreigner, the family avenged his death. "Blood feud" in many ways contributed to the containment of bloody clashes and wars between clans, since it was not safe to kill a person, because he was under the protection of his clan. Therefore, the most terrible punishment was expulsion from the clan.

Tribal associations were also important because only the entire clan had the opportunity to feed themselves. Social differentiation in the tribal community of the period of hunting and gathering did not yet exist. All property of the clan, including food, was common. Relatives helped each other in all matters, jointly obtained food. Everyone made a feasible contribution to the life of the community and received from it as much as possible.

A huge role in the development of social relations between people was played by the emergence of the main means of communication - language.

It should be noted in the formation of Homo sapiens as a social species and the importance of religion. The question of the reasons for its appearance is very difficult. However, it is clear that this was the first attempt by people to explain the world around them, which indicates the emergence of abstract thinking.

The religious views of the people of that time were manifested in the emergence of rites of burial of the dead.

It is known about the emergence of a fertility cult at this time. Fertility was personified by goddesses with disproportionately thick bodies. Archaeologists call their figurines "Paleolithic Venuses".

The appearance of abstract thinking in the Late Paleolithic is also evidenced by Paleolithic art. A grandiose impression is made by the preserved "cave galleries" in the caves of France, Spain and in the Kapova cave in Russia.

Social relations and abstract thinking have become hallmarks of Homo sapiens from its ancestors.

The systematic position of a person

A taxon is a classification unit in the taxonomy of plant and animal organisms.

The main evidence of the origin of man from animals is the presence in his body of rudiments and atavisms.

Rudiments are organs that have lost their meaning and function in the process of historical development (evolution) and remain in the form of underdeveloped formations in the body. They are laid down during the development of the embryo, but do not develop. Examples of rudiments in humans can be: coccygeal vertebrae (remains of the skeleton of the tail), appendix (process of the caecum), body hair; ear muscles (some people can move their ears); third eyelid.

Atavisms are a manifestation, in individual organisms, of signs that existed in individual ancestors, but were lost in the course of evolution. In humans, this is the development of the tail and hair on the whole body.

The historical past of people

The first people on earth. The name of the ape-man - Pithecanthropus was given to one of the earliest finds made in the 19th century in Java.

For a long time, this find was considered a transitional link from apes to humans, the first representatives of the hominin family. These views were promoted by morphological features: a combination of modern-looking bones of the lower limb with a primitive skull and an intermediate mass of the brain. However, the Pithecanthropes of Java are a rather late group of hominids. Starting from the 20s of the twentieth century and up to the present, an important discovery has been made in southern and East Africa: the remains of bipedal Plio-Pleistocene primates (from 6 to 1 million years) have been found. They marked the beginning of a new stage in the development of paleontology - the reconstruction of these stages of hominin evolution on the basis of direct paleontological data, and not on the basis of various indirect comparative anatomical and embryological data.

The era of the bipedal apes australopithecines. The first Australopithecus of East Africa, the Zinjanthropus, was discovered by the spouses L. and M. Lika. The most striking distinguishing feature of Australopithecus is upright walking. This is evidenced by the structure of the pelvis. Bipedal locomotion is one of the oldest acquisitions of man.

The first representatives of the human race in East Africa. Along with the massive Australopithecus, other creatures lived in East Africa 2 million years ago. This became known for the first time when the following year after the discovery of Zinjanthropus, the remains of a miniature hominid were discovered, the brain volume of which was no less (and even more) than that of Australopithecus. It was later revealed that he was a contemporary of the Zinjanthropus. The most important discoveries were made in the lowest layer dating back 2-1.7 million years. Its maximum thickness is 40 meters. The climate, when this layer was laid, was more humid and its inhabitants were zinjantrop and prezinjantrop. The latter did not last long. In addition, stones with traces of artificial processing were also found in this layer. Most often it was a pebble ranging in size from a walnut to 7–10 cm, with a few chips of the working edge. Initially, it was assumed that Zinjantrops were able to do this, but after new discoveries it became obvious: either the tools were made by a more advanced prezinjantrop, or both inhabitants were capable of such initial stone processing. The emergence of a clamp with a full opposition of the thumb must have been preceded by a period of predominance of a forceful grip, when the object was raked in a handful and clamped in the hand. Moreover, it was the nail phalanx of the thumb that experienced especially strong pressure.

Prerequisites of anthropogenesis. The common ancestors of great apes and humans were gregarious narrow-nosed monkeys that lived on trees in tropical forests. The transition of this group to a terrestrial way of life, caused by a cooling of the climate and the displacement of forests by steppes, led to upright walking. The straightened position of the body and the transfer of the center of gravity caused the replacement of the arched spinal column with an S-shaped one, which gave it flexibility. A vaulted springy foot was formed, the pelvis expanded, the chest became wider and shorter, the jaw apparatus was lighter, and most importantly, the forelimbs were freed from the need to support the body, their movements became freer and more varied, their functions became more complicated. The transition from the use of objects to the manufacture of tools is the boundary between ape and man. The evolution of the hand followed the path of natural selection of mutations useful for work. Along with upright walking, the most important prerequisite for anthropogenesis was the herd way of life, which, with the development of labor activity and the exchange of signals, led to the development of articulate speech. Concrete ideas about the surrounding objects and phenomena were generalized into abstract concepts, mental and speech abilities developed. Higher nervous activity was formed, and articulate speech developed.

Stages of human development. There are three stages in human evolution: ancient people, ancient people and modern (new) people. Many populations of Homo sapiens did not replace each other sequentially, but lived simultaneously, fighting for existence and destroying the weaker ones.

human ancestors Progressive features in appearance Lifestyle Tools
Parapithecus (discovered in Egypt in 1911) They walked on two legs. Low forehead brow ridges, hairline Considered as the oldest ape Tools of labor in the form of a club; hewn stones
Dryopithecus (bone remains found in Western Europe, South Asia and East Africa. Antiquity from 12 to 40 million years) According to most scientists, driopithecus are considered as a common ancestral group for modern great apes and humans.
Australopithecus (bone remains of 2.6-3.5 million years old found in South and East Africa) They had a small body (length 120-130 cm), weight 30-40 kg, brain volume - 500-600 cm2, moved on two legs. They consumed vegetable and meat food, lived in open areas (such as savannahs). Australopithecus is also considered as a stage of human evolution, immediately preceding the emergence of the most ancient people (archanthropes). Sticks, stones, animal bones were used as tools.
Pithecanthropus (ancient man, remains discovered - Africa, Mediterranean, Java island; 1 million years ago) Height 150 cm; brain volume 900–1,000 cm2, forehead low, with superciliary ridge; jaws without chin protrusion public lifestyle; lived in caves, used fire. Primitive stone tools, sticks
Sinanthropus (China and others, 400 thousand years ago) Height 150–160 cm; brain volume 850–1,220 cm3, forehead low, with superciliary ridge, no chin prominence They lived in herds, built primitive dwellings, used fire, dressed in skins Tools of stone and bone
Neanderthal (ancient man); Europe, Africa, Asia; about 150 thousand years ago Height 155-165 cm; brain volume 1400 cm3; few convolutions; the forehead is low, with a superciliary ridge; chin protrusion is poorly developed The social way of life, the construction of hearths and dwellings, the use of fire for cooking, dressed in skins.

They used gestures and primitive speech to communicate. There was a division of labor. First burials.

Tools of labor made of wood and stone (knife, scraper, polyhedral points, etc.)
Cro-Magnon - the first modern man (everywhere; 50-60 thousand years ago) Height up to 180 cm; brain volume - 1,600 cm2; high forehead; convolutions are developed; lower jaw with chin protrusion Ancestral community. They looked like a reasonable person. Settlement construction. The emergence of rites The emergence of art, pottery, agriculture. Developed. Developed speech. Domestication of animals, domestication of plants. They had rock art. A variety of tools made of bone, stone, wood

Modern people. The emergence of people of the modern physical type occurred relatively recently (about 50 thousand years ago), who were called Cro-Magnons. Increased brain volume (1,600 cm3), well-developed articulate speech; the construction of dwellings, the first rudiments of art (rock painting), clothing, jewelry, bone and stone tools, the first tamed animals - all testify to the fact that a real person finally separated himself from his bestial ancestors. Neanderthals, Cro-Magnons and modern humans form one species - Homo sapiens. Many years passed before people moved from the appropriating economy (hunting, gathering) to the producing economy. They learned how to grow plants and tame some animals. In the evolution of the Cro-Magnons, social factors were of great importance, the role of education and the transfer of experience grew immeasurably.

Races of man

All modern humanity belongs to one species - Homo sapiens. The unity of mankind follows from the common origin, the similarity of the structure, the unlimited interbreeding of representatives of different races and the fertility of offspring from mixed marriages. Within the species - Homo sapiens - there are five large races: Negroid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Australoid, American. Each of them is divided into small races. Differences between races come down to the features of skin color, hair, eyes, the shape of the nose, lips, etc. these differences arose in the process of adapting human populations to local natural conditions. It is believed that the black skin absorbed ultraviolet rays. Narrow eyes protected from sharp solar exposure in open spaces; a wide nose cooled the inhaled air faster by evaporation from the mucous membranes, on the contrary, a narrow nose warmed the cold inhaled air better, etc.

But man, thanks to labor, quickly got out of the influence of natural selection, and these differences quickly lost their adaptive significance.

Human races began to form, it is believed, about 30-40 thousand years ago, in the process of human settlement of the Earth, and then many racial traits had an adaptive value and were fixed by natural selection in a certain geographical environment. All human races are characterized by the general specific features of Homo sapiens, and all races are absolutely equivalent in biological and mental relations and are at the same level of evolutionary development.

There is no sharp border between the main races, and there are a number of smooth transitions - small races, whose representatives have smoothed out or mixed the features of the main masses. It is assumed that in the future the differences between races will completely disappear and humanity will be racially homogeneous, but with many morphological variants.

Human races should not be confused with the concepts of nation, people, language group. Different groups can be part of one nation, and the same races can be part of different nations.

Origin of modern man

The emergence of Homo sapiens was preceded by a long period of development of the organic world of the planet. The origins of the most ancient mammals have been traced back to the end of the Mesozoic era. The common ancestor of mammals were primitive insectivores. The unity of the origin of primates with other mammals is proved by the biological similarity of the orders of mammals. The order of primates has a multimillion-year history of development.

The lower primates include small animals: tupai, lemurs and tarsier. The higher primates include monkeys and humans. The suborder of higher humanoid primates is divided into two groups: broad-nosed monkeys (lower monkeys) and narrow-nosed monkeys (lower monkeys, higher monkeys and humans).

The most important in science is the question of the ancestral home of the original form of the human ancestor.

Historically, the hypothesis of the Asian ancestral home was multifacetedly argued. Numerous finds of Middle Miocene Sivapithecus hominoids (Sivapithecus) living about 8-12 million years ago have been made in Pakistan and India. According to modern concepts, Asian Sivapithecus were the ancestors of only modern orangutans.

Later, the Asians made the richest African finds of fossil bones. A number of finds of primates living in the early and middle Miocene are known from Africa. Their morphology is closest to modern pongids and the first australopithecines.

Fossil hominoids lived not only in Asia and Africa, many great apes inhabited southern Europe in the Miocene.

Of the three possible centers of origin of the original human ancestor, the most complete connection between the Miocene and later hominoids can be traced in Africa: Samburupithecus (Samburupithecus) (9.5 million years ago) - Sahelanthropus (6-7 million years ago). There are fairly late Miocene great apes in Asia and Europe, but no very ancient hominids. Thus, Africa is most likely the ancestral home of the hominids.

There are two currents in the theory of the formation of mankind. Classical - monocentrism - speaks of one ancestral home of mankind on the African continent. Supporters of polycentrism argue that there were several independent zones of anthropogenesis, one of which could be located not just in Asia, but even in a zone with extremely harsh climatic conditions.

The scope of the family of hominids depends on what characters are used as the basis for determining the place of specific species in the hominoid system. Since the only modern representative of the family is man, historically three most important systems have been identified from his features, which are considered truly hominid. These systems have been called the hominid triad:

Upright walking (bipedia);

A brush adapted to the manufacture of tools;

Highly developed brain.

The systematic division of hominins is very confusing. In old works, it was customary to distinguish several stages of human evolution - archanthropes, paleoanthropes and neoanthropes. The archanthropes were immediately preceded by the australopithecines, or, in stadial terminology, the protanthropes. Stage terms are sometimes used in modern literature.

At present, almost all scientists are inclined to think about the more complex nature of evolution. Some populations overtook the rest in terms of their level of development, and migration or isolation played a significant role in the uneven distribution of progressive features across the planet. Progressive signs could arise not in a complex, but in different groups independently, uniting later as a result of mixtures. This version of evolution is called network evolution.

Thus, the terms "archanthropes", "paleoanthropes" and "neoanthropes" should be regarded only as conditional (but sometimes convenient), uniting sometimes very different groups of hominins. The advantage of using them is avoiding the confusing systematic nomenclature, which is understood differently by different researchers.

Arranging hominin fossils chronologically, one can get an idea of ​​the stages of human evolution:

- Australopithecus (predecessors of man);

- Pithecanthropes (the most ancient people, archanthropes);

- Neanderthals (ancient people, paleoanthropes);

- a man of the modern type (neoanthropes).

It is believed that Australopithecus are descendants of Ramapithecus descended from Driopithecus - the most likely ancestors of man.

Australopithecus appeared about 6-7 million years ago, and the last of them died out only about 900 thousand years ago, during the existence of much more advanced forms. As far as is known, Australopithecus never left Africa, although some finds made on the island of Java are sometimes attributed to this group.

The complexity of the position of Australopithecus among primates lies in the fact that their structure mosaically combines features that are characteristic of both modern great apes and humans.

The Australopithecus skull is similar to that of a chimpanzee. Characterized by large jaws, massive bony ridges for the attachment of chewing muscles, a small brain and a large flattened face. Australopithecus teeth were very large, but the fangs were short, and the details of the structure of the teeth were more human than monkey.

The skeletal structure of Australopithecus is characterized by a wide low pelvis, relatively long legs and short arms, a grasping hand and a non-grasping foot, and a vertical spine. Such a structure is already almost human, the differences are only in the details of the structure and in small sizes.

The way of life of Australopithecus, apparently, was unlike that known among modern primates. They lived in tropical forests and savannahs, feeding mainly on plants. However, later Australopithecus hunted antelopes or took prey from large predators - lions and hyenas. Australopithecus lived in groups of several individuals and, apparently, constantly roamed the expanses of Africa in search of food. Australopithecus tools were unlikely to be able to manufacture, although they were used for sure.

The remains of pithecanthropes - the oldest representatives of humans or Homo erectus (upright man) - are widespread in Asia, Africa and Europe.

The Pithecanthropes were humans, almost modern in skeletal structure, but their skulls were significantly different from the modern ones. Huge jaws, overhanging brow ridges, a sloping forehead and a protruding nape are very characteristic physiognomic features of archanthropes. The walls of the skull were very thick, reaching 2 cm in thickness in some individuals. The brain of the archanthropes continued to progressively change. The frontal lobe grew, the role of the temporal lobe increased. Its volume fluctuated within 700-1100 cm3. The hand had a completely modern structure. Approximately by the time of 1-1.5 million years ago, the tools were improved so much that they were already attributed to a new archaeological culture - the Acheulean. A typical tool of the Acheulian culture is a hand ax - heavy, with a rough cutting edge. In addition to stone tools, the archanthropes also made wooden spears, occasionally found in the peat bogs of Europe.

The period of existence of archanthropes is important in the sense that it was then that the foundations of modern human society were laid. Perhaps the appearance of speech dates back to this time, as can be judged from the casts of the brain. At this time, people began to hunt large dangerous animals, which, of course, required the coordination of the team and the complication of communication. At the same time, people became acquainted with fire and the first resettlement from tropical to subtropical zones took place. Obviously, the size of the groups of archanthropes increased, and the population of the Earth as a whole also grew. Archanthropes knew how to build primitive dwellings.

Among the archanthropes there were peculiar specialized groups that left no descendants, while others evolved further. Sometimes among them there are many types. Apparently, there were at least two main branches of the archanthropes - the western, or Afro-European, and the eastern, or Asian.

Hominins of the period from about 500 to 35 thousand years ago are referred to as paleoanthropes or "archaic sapiens". They are systematically divided into "Heidelberg Man" and Neanderthals.

The biological evolution of hominins continued in the direction of reducing the massiveness of the skull and increasing the volume and complexity of the structure of the brain. It is significant that the volume of the brain grew faster than the structure developed and the shape changed. In some representatives of paleoanthropes, the size of the brain reached modern values; in general, the range of brain volume in them reached 1000-1700 cm3.

According to the complication of the structure of the brain, the behavior of people became more complicated. Whereas early paleoanthropes used the Acheulean stone-working technique, later ones improved upon it. Approximately 200 thousand years ago, the Mousterian technique appeared - more advanced and economical. Typical tools of the Mousterian era are the pointed and scraper. The cultural difference of territorial groups of people increased. In Asia, primitive methods of stone processing were preserved for a long time. In Europe, Mousterian technology reached its peak and became noticeably specialized. African cultures were especially progressive. So, in Africa, traditions of bone processing and the use of ocher appeared very early, possibly for ritual purposes.

Paleoanthropes, like their ancestors, continued to migrate around the planet. Getting into new ecological conditions, people learned to cope with various natural difficulties. Apparently, the appearance of clothing dates back to this time. The methods of building dwellings were improved, people actively populated the caves, driving out large predators from there - bears, lions and hyenas. The methods of hunting animals have noticeably improved, as evidenced by the numerous remains of bones in the parking lots. European Neanderthals were, in fact, the main predators of their time. However, there is also evidence of cannibalism among paleoanthropes.

Important changes took place in the psyche of ancient people. Symbolic activity was born. Its first samples cannot even be called art: these are pits on stones, traced stripes on limestone, bones and pieces of ocher. However, such non-utilitarian activity indicates a significant complication of the mental processes of paleoanthropes.

Even more significant is the archaeological evidence for Neanderthal ritual practices. The most important evidence of the high level of the Neanderthal psyche is the first burials of the dead. The most ancient of them date back to about 100 thousand years ago. Probably, at the same time, the first ideas about the afterlife appeared.

Outwardly, paleoanthropes differed greatly. They had a huge brow and a high face, a wide nose, a heavy lower jaw with a sloping chin, and a sloping forehead. The back of the head of many paleoanthropes protruded strongly backwards. However, all these signs were not as pronounced as in archanthropes. The late paleoanthropes, attributed to the Neanderthals, had a number of specific features, for example, a very broad face protruding forward with sloping cheekbones. Many signs of European Neanderthals could have arisen under the influence of the most difficult conditions of the ice age about 60 thousand years ago. The physique of the Neanderthals was very stocky, the legs were relatively short, the chest was barrel-shaped, the shoulders were very wide.

Sapientation is the process of the emergence of the modern human species Homo sapiens sapiens, which consists both in biological restructuring - an increase in the brain, rounding of the skull, a decrease in the size of the face, the appearance of a chin protrusion - and in sociocultural innovations - the emergence of art, symbolic behavior, technological progress, the development of languages.

In several African localities with dates from 200 to 100 thousand years ago, bones of people were found who did not have a strongly protruding nape, a large superciliary ridge, and at the same time had a very large brain and a protruding chin. Similar finds have been made in the Middle East. Since about 40 thousand years ago, people of a completely modern appearance, only somewhat more massive modern ones - neoanthropes - have been known from almost the entire territory of the ecumene - from Africa, Europe, Asia and Australia. Only America may have been settled somewhat later.

The population of Europe, belonging to the modern species, who lived in the era of the Upper Paleolithic - from 40 to 10 thousand years ago - is called Cro-Magnons. Note that Cro-Magnons in Europe coexisted with Neanderthals for 5 thousand years in a row. They differed from each other not only in terms of physical structure.

Homo sapiens

The Cro-Magnons had a much more perfect culture. The technique of making tools has grown immeasurably. They began to be made from plates - specially prepared blanks, which made it possible to manufacture much more elegant tools than the Mousterian pointed ones. The Cro-Magnons also widely used animal bones for making tools. The technical equipment of people has grown - bows and arrows have appeared.

The most significant phenomenon is the flowering of Upper Paleolithic art. In the caves of France, Spain and Italy, excellent examples of rock art have been preserved, in the layers of sites from Brittany to Baikal, statuettes of people and animals made of bones and limestone have been found. The handles of knives and spear-throwers were decorated with intricate carvings. Clothes were decorated with beads and painted with ocher.

The settlements of the Upper Paleolithic people were usually regularly visited hunting camps. Dwellings were built here, the life of society went on, rituals were performed, and the dead were buried. In the Upper Paleolithic era, man tamed the wolf, turning it into a dog. So man himself began to actively influence the process of speciation in animals.

Regarding the fate of the Neanderthals, it was previously believed that they evolved into modern humans, one stage passed into another. Now this option seems almost unbelievable - the differences in structure and culture are too great, and the coexistence of Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons has already been proven.

Some scholars believe that an immeasurably higher level of technical equipment and social organization helped the Cro-Magnons in the struggle for territory. In addition, a mixture of some groups of the first neoanthropes and later Neanderthals is not at all excluded. Probably, it was this mixture of genes and cultures that helped the first neoanthropes quickly adapt to completely new natural conditions for them.

So, according to paleontological data, the line of predecessors leading to man separated from the line of modern great apes about 4-8 million years ago. In science, there are many mutually exclusive opinions about the causes, time and place of the emergence of modern man. There were a huge number of predecessors of modern man, not all of which were our ancestors. They can be divided into stages or grouped according to biological systematics: archanthropes, paleoanthropes and neoanthropes. Together with biological evolution, there was also social evolution, reconstructed, in particular, by the methods of archeology.

According to the most reasoned point of view, a person of modern appearance and behavior arose in Africa or the Middle East from 100 to 40 thousand years ago. Since about 35 thousand years ago, only the modern species of man has existed on Earth, which has spread throughout the planet.

Aspects of the decision-making process
Cell theory, mineral metabolism
Pharynx, esophagus and stomach in the human digestive system
aging process
Water-salt metabolism in humans
Differences between human activity and animal behavior
human heredity
Second signal system
The mechanism of urination in the kidneys
Brain development in ontogeny
The role and functions of human skin
Linking environmental issues and health

The emergence of a modern type of man: the time and place of the emergence of man. Main hypotheses.

The earliest remains of modern humans have been found in Africa. Homo sapiens appeared here approximately 130-100 thousand years ago. The origin of Homo sapiens is still debated in anthropology. Proponents of the theory of monocentrism associate the origin of Homo sapiens with one region. Their opponents, adherents of polycentrism, say that Homo sapiens appeared simultaneously in several regions of the Earth.
- the hypothesis of monocentrism(hypothesis of the African ancestral home). It was from Africa, according to this version, that Homo sapiens moved about 100 thousand years ago through Gibraltar and Western Asia to Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Another way of settlement ran to Southeast Asia. About 50 thousand years ago, Homo sapiens settled in Australia. It entered America about 25-30 thousand years ago.

- polycentrism hypothesis, first put forward by the American anthropologist Franz Weidenreich (1873-1948), identifies four centers for the formation of a modern type of man and, accordingly, his races: Southeast Asia (Australoids), South Africa (Negroids), East Asia (Mongoloids) and Western Asia (Caucasoids) . Now the multi-regional hypothesis is more common - it proceeds from the fact that Homo erectus settled from Africa and after that arose - simultaneously in several centers - modern man.

Neoanthropes - a generalized name for modern people who replaced all their predecessors in the period 40-30 thousand years ago.
The active settlement of our planet by Homo sapiens took place 40-38 thousand years ago.

human evolution

The earliest representatives of modern man in Europe and partly beyond its borders are the Cro-Magnons (fr. Homme de Cro-Magnon) who lived 40-10 thousand years ago (Upper Paleolithic period). The name comes from the grotto of Cro-Magnon in France, where several human skeletons were discovered in 1868 along with Late Paleolithic tools. The most important fossil finds: in Africa - Cape Flats, Fish Hook, Nazlet Hater; in Europe - Comb Chapel, Mladech, Cro-Magnon, in Russia - Sungir, in Ukraine - Mezhirech. The volume of the brain is 1200-1500 cm³. Height is about 180 cm. Flattened, high, almost vertical forehead. Superciliary ridges are reduced.

24. Acceleration. Morphological, physiological and mental manifestation of acceleration. The main hypotheses of acceleration.

ACCELERATION - acceleration of growth and physical development of children in comparison with previous generations. For the first time, such phenomena were noted in the middle of the 19th century. When comparing the results of anthropometric surveys conducted at the beginning of the 20th century with the data of the 30s. 19th century it was found that the process of acceleration covered the population of all economically developed countries.

Signs of acceleration are noted already at the stage of intrauterine development. So, over the past 70-80 years, the body length of a newborn has increased by an average of 1 cm, weight - by 100-300 g. 6th month of life, now observed at 4 months; the circumference of the chest of the child becomes larger than the circumference of the head not at 6 months, but at 2-5 months. Children begin to hold their heads earlier, at an earlier age, their fontanel overgrows and milk teeth erupt. With age, the rate of acceleration increases: the body length of 4-7-year-old children for each decade increases on average by 1.5 cm, body weight - by 0.5 kg.

As observations show, no significant differences were found in the acceleration rates of children of different nationalities. Urban children are subject to acceleration to a slightly greater extent than rural children.

In the 1980s there is a slowdown in the rate of acceleration, which indicates a relative stabilization in the rate of development of children born at the end of the 20th century.

There are a number of hypotheses designed to explain the causes of acceleration, but none of them is considered exhaustive. Probably, the acceleration of development occurs under the influence of a whole complex of socio-economic and natural conditions of life - improved nutrition; genetic changes as a result of the activation of migration processes and mixing of the population; an increase in the intensity of external stimuli that stimulate the nervous system, etc. (individual factors and conditions are difficult to accurately account for and evaluate).

There is evidence of the so-called psychological acceleration, i.e. accelerating the mental development of children. However, in the opinion of most experts, these data are rather indicative of an earlier underestimation of the child's intellectual abilities. It is shown that the creation of favorable stimulating conditions and the use of special methods for the development of perception, attention, speech, etc. contributes to the fuller realization of the child's potential. Psychologists, however, warn against "artificial acceleration" when intellectual development is excessively intensified by placing excessive demands on the child. A reliable indicator of the correspondence of developmental influences to the child's capabilities is his emotional stability, his readiness to accept new stimuli and tasks with enthusiasm.

A rapid increase in body length and weight is not an unambiguous indicator of physiological and mental development. There are passport (chronological) and biological age, characterizing the actual development of the child. For some children, these ages coincide, but most children of the same passport age are at different stages of biological development. Moreover, children of small stature can mature according to their biological age, and, conversely, with high stature, infantilism of physical development can be preserved. There is also acceleration within one generation. Within one age group, there are about 8% of children with accelerated development, and about the same number of children who are characterized by some delay in physical development.

In general, acceleration is a statistical pattern. For each individual child, its manifestations have their own individual characteristics, which should not be regarded as advantages or disadvantages.

1. Heliogenic hypothesis suggests that the main cause of acceleration is an increase in the level of insolation (solar exposure), including ultraviolet radiation, to which modern children are exposed. According to E. Koch, who first made such an assumption, ultraviolet radiation, activating all the processes occurring in the body, including the formation of vitamin D, accelerates growth.

The beneficial effect of solar radiation on a growing organism is well known, but there are facts that do not fit into this hypothesis. For example, it has been noted that the rate of acceleration among the inhabitants of the northern latitudes is as significant as in the southern regions of the globe. In some mountainous regions (Tien Shan, Pamir, Altai), children grow somewhat more slowly than their peers from the plains, despite the fact that the level of insolation is higher in high mountain regions. The heliogenic hypothesis is also contradicted by the fact that children living in rural areas grow and develop on average more slowly than their peers in cities.

2. The next in time of appearance and the first in the number of supporters is alimentary(literally - nutritious) theory. Some adherents of this theory associate acceleration with an increase in the consumption of proteins and fats of animal origin, others with milk and vitamins, especially in the first months of a child's life.

Despite the well-known anabolic effect of a high protein diet, this hypothesis has its weak points. Thus, in some countries, for example, in Japan, the population traditionally receives significantly less animal protein than in Europe, but the acceleration rate of Japanese children is very high. The connection of acceleration with the fortification of the diet is also doubtful, since the synthesis and industrial production of vitamins have been carried out over the past 20–30 years, and the acceleration process has been observed for more than 100 years.

3. Urbanization hypothesis. Its supporters believe that the accelerated pace of city life, the increase in mental load due to additional sources of information (radio, television, newspapers and books), street noise and other factors have an exciting effect on the central nervous system of children, activate its somatotropic function. The urbanization hypothesis partially explains the higher rates of acceleration in cities, but does not fully reveal the cause of the phenomenon itself.

4. Contamination and mutagenic hypotheses. Proponents of these hypotheses believe that the main cause of acceleration is pollution (contamination) of the human environment with industrial waste, which has mutagenic properties and therefore gives a biostimulating heterosis-like effect. As causative agents, products of oil, coal and gas processing, an increased level of radiation exceeding the natural modern background by 20–70 times, radio wave pollution, and others are called.

5. genetic hypothesis. Its supporters see the reason for the acceleration in the genetic effect associated with marriages between people who previously lived in settlements remote from each other. Industrialization and the mass movement of the young part of the population to cities led to an increase in the number of heterolocal marriages (marriages between people from different places), to a mixture of the population and an effect similar to heterosis. The phenomenon of heterosis has been well studied in animals. It lies in the phenomenon of the superiority of the hybrids of the first generation in a number of ways over the best of the parental forms. Studies have shown that with an increase in the distance between the homeland of the father and mother, the indicators of physical development in children increase, and maturation accelerates.

6. Hypothesis of cyclical growth and development rates children and adolescents, depending on the cycles of solar activity. Analyzing the anthropological indicators of the population in different eras, as well as the results of morphological studies of some animal species, scientists noted that periods of increase and decrease in the rate of development were obviously observed in former times, but their intensity was less pronounced. Based on this, an assumption is made about the phase nature of this process and a gradual slowdown in the rate of acceleration* is predicted.

Concluding the conversation about acceleration, it should be noted that it is not only of scientific interest. Its study led to the conclusion that in children who are ahead of their peers in physical development, disharmonic states are more often observed, which are risk factors for the occurrence of various diseases. These diseases include posture disorders, myopia, vegetative disorders, obesity, heart, lung and kidney diseases. In addition to these medical consequences, acceleration also has psychological consequences associated with a discrepancy between the degree of physical, functional development and the social status of a teenager.

At one time, Ernst Haeckel, an energetic propagandist of Darwinism, built a scheme of human evolution, consisting of 22 stages. But gradually it became clear that almost none of them corresponded to reality. Meanwhile, since the end of the last century, anthropology has left the sphere of arbitrary fortune-telling and has begun an active search for a fossil ancestor of man. It was especially tempting to find the so-called "missing link" that would link man and ape.

At first, the excavations seemed to bring what was expected of them. In 1892 on about. Java E. Dubois found the bones of a creature that was dubbed "upright ape-man" - Pitecantropus Erektus (See the article by E. Dubois about the discovery of Pithecanthropus in the collection "Human Evolution". M., 1924). In 1911, fragments of a skull and jaw with clearly simian features were found in England. They were declared to belong to the "Man of the Dawn", an eoanthrope. In 1924, in Africa, R. Dart discovered the skull of a monkey with features that bring it closer to humans. It was called the "southern monkey", Australopithecus (Dart R.A. Australopithecus africanus. The Man Ape of South Africa. - Nature. Februari, 7. P. 191). And finally, in 1927, in China, near Beijing, the skull and bones of a creature very similar to Pithecanthropus, called Sinanthropus, were found (Teilhard de Chardin P. La decouverte du Sinantrope. - Etudes. July 5, 1937. cm. also: Py-kan W., Shenlon L. Peking Man, In the World of Science, 1983, No. 8. In addition, fossilized bones of creatures very close to humans have already been found in Europe before. They received the name "primitive people", or Neanderthals, after the name of the place in which the remains of this creature were first discovered (See Sat: Fossil hominids and human origin. M., 1966).

These finds, as well as a number of others, made it possible for supporters of slow evolution to recreate the "path from ape to man." Indeed, the scheme based on these findings attracts with its simplicity and persuasiveness. According to this scheme, development gradually proceeds from the ancient ape to Australopithecus, from it to Pithecanthropus and Sinanthropus, and from them the line stretches to Eoanthropus and Neanderthal, the ancestors of modern humans. Gradually, however, this scheme began to cause serious doubts, and the question of the human ancestor turned out to be immeasurably more complicated than previously thought.

Eoanthrope had long inspired doubts about his antiquity, and finally fell out of our ancestry under the most unexpected circumstances. As it turned out, he just turned out to be a fake, fabricated from the bones of a person and a chimpanzee. Thus, the scientific world has been a victim of deliberate deception for 40 years (see: Jlupuwe V.I. The Garden of Eden. M., 1981, p. 81 el.).

Further: new finds of australopithecines (paranthropus, plesianthropus, etc.) showed that they were monkeys that inhabited Africa in large numbers, but their "human" features were clearly exaggerated. The fact is that the first find belonged to a cub. And as you know, the young great apes have features that bring them closer to humans. This feature indicates that the ancestors of monkeys were more "humanoid". Modern anthropoids have gone far from the main trunk of human development. They had large jaws, powerful fangs and even a crest on the skull, which strengthened their chewing muscles, like predators. When the skulls of adult Australopithecus were found, it turned out that although they had not yet developed fangs, like modern gorillas, they had powerful jaws that were not inferior to those of a gorilla and an orangutan. The skull of the same cub, found in 1924, was the same witness to more "human" ancestors, as well as the skulls of the cubs of modern anthropoids.

“Numerous objections of a morphological, zoogeographical, geological and general biological order,” writes the Soviet anthropologist Yakimov, “do not allow us to recognize in the South African australopithecines the direct ancestors of man, who, with their further development, gave rise to early forms of hominids” (Yakimov V.P. Early stages of anthropogenesis. — In: Proceedings of the Institute of Ethnography, vol. XVI, 1951, p. 33).

In 1960, anthropologist Louis Leakey made a sensational statement that he had discovered a human ancestor. In East Africa, in the Oldway Gorge, Leakey found fragments of the bones of a primate, which he called Zinjanthropus. However, it was soon established that Zinjanthropus is nothing more than one of the forms of the Australopithecus monkey, close to the gorilla (Kraus B.S. The Basis of Human Evolution. 1964. P. 240). Soon Leakey made another discovery. He found the bones of a more progressively shaped creature he called the pre-Zinjanthropus, or Homo Habilis. In some respects, the pre-Zinjanthropus was more primitive than the Australopithecus. This gave reason to Louis Leakey to consider him a member of the direct pedigree of a person, especially since the first dating indicated that this find was more than one and a half million years old (Leakey L. At 1,750,000 years into the human past. - In the collection: Science and Humanity. M " 1963. P. 85. Until now, the find and its age are the object of a lively discussion. And so far there is no definitive evidence whether the pre-zinjanthropus could be our direct ancestor (See: Reshetiv Yu. G. Nature of the Earth and the origin of man. M., 1966. S. 213 ate.).

Recently, the finds of Louis Leakey's son, Robert Leakey, have aroused great interest. On the shores of Lake Rudolph in Africa, he discovered the bones of humanoid creatures, the life of which the scientist attributed to the second million years before our time (see: Leakey R. E. Further Evidence of Lower Pleistocene Hominids from East Rudolf, North Kenya.-Nature. V 231. 1971; The Emergence of Human Society. Paleolithic Africa. M., 1977. P. 24 sheets; Go M. The Missing Link / Translated from English M., 1977. P. 67 ff.; Hours F. Dieu crea l'hommea Son image, "Le monde de la Bible", 1979, WS, pp. 42-48).

But the most sensational was the discovery of Donald Johanson in Hadera (Ethiopia). There, in 1974, an almost complete skeleton of a female, similar in type to Australopithecus, was found. "Lucy" (as Johanson dubbed this creature) had an upright gait, was distinguished by a rather slender physique with a height of about a meter, but her skull bore completely monkey features. Scientists have dated the find at 3-3.5 million years. It is likely that "Lucy" gives us an idea of ​​those biological forms that gave rise to the genus Homo (See: Johanson D., Go M. Lucy. The origin of the human race. M "1984).

As for the real man, until very recently it was believed that his antiquity does not exceed 50 - 40 thousand years. However, recent studies by the French physicist A. Villad (1988) helped to establish that the age of the oldest finds of Homo Sapiens reaches 100-130 thousand years. Most of them are found in East Africa. The exception is the skull from the Jebel Qafzeh cave near Nazareth, a city well known from biblical history.

A biomolecular analysis of representatives of various modern races of the Old World, conducted by scientists in the United States and Japan, showed that all these races come from a single genetic root and most likely from Africa.

The closest relative of Homo Sapiens among the currently known fossil forms is the Neanderthal. This species was distributed extremely widely in Europe, Asia and Africa. The study of Neanderthals revealed one of their remarkable features. The early forms of Neanderthals, which preceded the classical ones, turned out to be morphologically closer to Homo Sapiens (Kraus V. Op.

The rise of the modern human

cit. P. 243). Such early forms include skulls found in Steingeim, Swanscombe and Fonteshe-Vade (See: Gerasimov M. People of the Stone Age. M., 1964, p. 47 ate). These forms are conditionally called "presapient", that is, preceding a real person. Classical Neanderthals, according to the general opinion of anthropologists, could not be our ancestors. This species is very specialized, stopped in its development, and, unlike the "presapiens", in many respects it is more closely related to the lower monkeys, despite its "human" appearance. Studies of the brain cavities of Neanderthal skulls have shown that these creatures had poorly developed frontal areas that are directly related to the control of emotions. "The defeat of the orbital parts of the frontal region in a person can lead to drastic changes in his character, to a violation of the social structure of the personality, to manifestations of unbridled rage, etc." (Roginsky Ya.Ya. Problems of anthropogenesis. M., 1977. P. 197). Consequently, the psychology of the Neanderthal was characterized by unbridled aggressiveness, and his intelligence was significantly lower than human.

Nevertheless, some groups of Neanderthals had a rudimentary art (See.

A. Chernysh's message about this discovery in the book: At the origins of creativity. Novosibirsk, 1979), so some researchers tend to consider Neanderthals not the predecessors of man, but one of the primitive human races.

Thus, the abundance of finds did not clarify the picture, but rather complicated it. Until now, the species that could be recognized as a direct ancestor of man is still unknown. The finds mainly speak of creatures that represented lateral branches of development, which reached a dead end and, perhaps, could not withstand the competition with humans.

Some scientists believe that in inaccessible areas, a few copies of these "cousins" of man, these fruits of a failed attempt to become human, could still be preserved. All information about the so-called "snowman" and other similar creatures (basically, apparently, reliable) suggests that in appearance and behavior they differ little from modern anthropoids (See: Izzard R. In the footsteps of a snowman. M ., 1960; as well as a number of articles on this issue in the periodical press).

The question arises, when chronologically did the Great Moment come and anthropogenesis took place? About 9 million years ago, Australopithecus appeared on Earth, about 3 million years ago - habilis, and later - archanthropes. Simultaneously with the archanthropes, there were also early forms of Neanderthals. The heyday of the Neanderthals covers the interval between 300 and 40 thousand years before our time.

It is believed that a real person first appeared about 100 thousand years ago. Thus, compared with 9 million years of existence of animals close to humans, the era of Homo Sapiens seems negligible. It was truly a "sudden leap".

The difficulties associated with solving the problem of our biological ancestor have given rise to many hypotheses of anthropogenesis. Suffice it to mention the theory of Herman Klaatsch (1922), who, on the basis of comparative anatomical data, denied the close connection of man with anthropoids and derived our ancestry from a special trunk of primates; the theory of F. Wood Jones (1929), who considered our ancestor the tertiary tarsier; the theory of Henry Osborne, who, like Klaach, denies the origin of man from ape-like ancestors; Franz Weidenreich (1947) links our family tree to a special group of giant primates. According to Robert Broome, "the line of man goes through tarsiers and primitive non-specialized anthropoids to some ape-like men" that laid the foundation for the family of hominids (1947). The latter theory is currently the most successful.

A number of researchers, including Soviet ones, believe that man arose from several (at least two) genetic trunks. There are, however, serious objections to this theory of polygenism. Most modern anthropologists therefore stand on the positions of monogenism, which considers Homo Sapiens as a single species that arose from a single root (See: Ya. Ya. Roginsky, Problems of Anthropogenesis, p. 141 ff.).

How did Christians feel about the theory of the origin of man? Initially, the teaching that "man descended from apes" shocked many. Because of the undeserved contempt for the monkeys, this seemed something shameful. A whole storm broke out (fortunately, not for long). At the famous Oxford dispute, Bishop Wilberforce ironically asked the advocate of Darwinism, Huxley: on what line does he consider himself a descendant of an ape - on the line of his grandmother or grandfather? Huxley replied in a tone that he preferred to descend from a monkey than from a man who sticks his nose into what he does not understand. Pastor Sedgwick, naturalist, teacher of Darwin, signed his letter to him with these words: "In the past your friend, now - one of the descendants of the monkey." But soon the passions began to subside. The problem already put forward by Wallace made us think about whether the human spirit can have a natural origin. Some defenders of the literal understanding of the Bible wanted by all means to consider the "dust of the earth" of the Book of Genesis necessarily clay.

But the more sensible ones admitted that, in the words of A. Tolstoy, "a piece of clay is no more noble than an orangutan."

Gradually they began to understand that there had been a misunderstanding. "The belief that a person has the same natural origin as other living beings, just as can not be to the detriment of religion, as the doctrine of the rotation of the Earth" (Klaach G. Origin and development of the human race. S. 364).

This idea was expressed publicly by Erich Wasman, a well-known Austrian zoologist, who owns hundreds of scientific works. Back in 1906, he delivered a series of lectures on the origin of man, which attracted much attention from the Christian intelligentsia. In them, he showed that the biblical teaching does not exclude the evolutionary origin of the human body (Wasman E. Christianity and the theory of development. Pg., 1917. P. 24). Wasman's point of view was soon shared by many scientists, including those far from Christianity. Thus, the neo-Darwinist August Weisman argued that religion in these matters cannot contradict science.

As a result, many Christian scientists began to deal with the problem of paleoanthropology. Among them, the first place is occupied by Henri Breuil, Hugo Obermeier and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. The Church's point of view on this issue was reflected in Pope Pius XII's encyclical "Humani generis" - "On the human race", which states that the Church recommends the study of evolutionary theory "to the extent that research speaks about the origin of the human body (Detente my.-A.M.) from already existing living matter, but adhere to the fact that souls are directly created by God. (For this encyclical, see Antonianum, January-April 1958.)

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27 How man came to earth

191. Consider the drawing. Indicate the similarities and differences between humans and great apes.

  • Answer: Five-fingered limbs, broad shoulders, similarity of the auricle, general external similarity.

192. Write down the names of the ancestors of modern man in the order they appeared on Earth.

    1) Dryopitek

    2) Australopithecus

    3) Man-skillful

    4) Homo erectus

    5) Neonderthal

    6) Cro-Magnon

193. Look at the picture and write the names of the human ancestors.

194. Using the textbook material, fill in the table "Ancestors of modern man."

  • Ancestor Features of the external structure Capabilities
    Dryopithecus More like a modern day monkey No distinctive
    Australopithecus First upright Used objects found as weapons
    skillful man Changed skull, more straight back He began to make primitive tools, build huts, use fire
    Homo erectus It was larger than the ancestor, had a developed brain Used fire and made tools to perfection
    neoanderthal Big head, massive eyebrows, medium height They sewed clothes, insulated huts, possessed speech
    Cro-Magnon Very similar to modern man They knew how to draw, the first pet appeared

195. Answer the question.

Which of the human ancestors first developed articulate speech?

  • Answer: Homo sapiens (Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon)

196. Using additional sources of information, prepare a report about one of the person's ancestors. Write down the message plan.

Who are we, descendants of monkeys or the most ancient inhabitants of the planet?

Specify the source of the information used.

    1) Appearance

    2) Cro-Magnon occupations

    3) Hunting for the first pet

    4) Cro-Magnon drawings

    5) Speech and reasoning activity

197. Insert the missing letters.

  • Answer: Australia ABOUT petek, dri ABOUT P AND tech, n E onde R dance, to R Oman b onets.

Make up 2-3 sentences with these words.

  • Apes and humans have a common ancestor - driopithecus. From him came australopithecine, subsequently gave life to the mind of a reasonable man.

Each generation considers itself much cooler than all the previous ones. Indeed, thanks to technological progress, it knows what they did not know before, uses things that did not exist before, eats, drinks and consumes products and services that were invented quite recently. After all, you are a modern person, and they are already covered with the dust of time.

Then this generation “becomes obsolete”, even more modern people come who believe that no one really lived before them, only they live for real. This is how generation after generation passes, and they do not really understand that everything that distinguishes one century from another is not so significant.

Even now, many people imagine that technological progress, social progress, began quite recently, we are at its peak. And therefore we are, as it were, smarter, better than our ancestors, and therefore we have every right to give a damn about their experience.

But maybe we exaggerate the importance of technological progress? And we exaggerate precisely because we have become a consumer society, and the function of consumption has become almost the main task of man?

Of course, we have made huge strides in consumption. What about everything else?

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