Hostility to the very idea of ​​"gods" reigns in science today, but it's really just a matter of terminology and religious convention. A striking example- the cult of aircraft. After all, oddly enough, the best confirmation of the theory of the Creator-God is himself Man is Homo sapiens. Moreover, if you believe latest research, the idea of ​​God is embedded in man at the biological level.

Since Charles Darwin shocked the scientists and theologians of his time with evidence of the existence of evolution, man has been considered the final link in a long evolutionary chain, at the other end of which are the simplest forms of life, from which, since the emergence of life on our planet, over billions of years, developed vertebrates, then mammals, primates and Man himself.

Of course, a person can also be considered as a set of elements, but even then, if we assume that life arose as a result of random chemical reactions, then why did all living organisms on Earth develop from a single source, and not from many random ones? Why is only a small percentage of organic matter chemical elements, found in abundance on Earth, and a large number of elements rarely found on our planet and our lives are balanced on a razor's edge? Does this mean that life was brought to our planet from another world, for example, by meteorites?

What caused the Great Sexual Revolution? And in general, there are many interesting things in a person - the sense organs, the mechanisms of memory, brain rhythms, the mysteries of human physiology, the second signal system, but the main topic of this article will be a more fundamental mystery - the position of man in the evolutionary chain.

It is now believed that the ancestor of man, the monkey, appeared on Earth about 25 million years ago! Discoveries in East Africa made it possible to establish that the transition to the type of great ape (hominid) took place about 14,000,000 years ago. Human and chimpanzee genes split from a common ancestral trunk 5 to 7 million years ago. Even closer to us were the pygmy chimpanzees "bonobos", which separated from chimpanzees about 3 million years ago.

Sex occupies a huge place in human relationships, and bonobos, unlike other monkeys, often copulate in a face-to-face position, and their sex life is such that it overshadows the promiscuity of the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah! So it is likely that our common ancestors with monkeys behaved more like bonobos than like chimpanzees. But sex is a topic for a separate trial, and we will continue.

Among the skeletons found, there are only three contenders for the title of the first fully bipedal primate. All of them were found in East Africa, in the Rift Valley, cutting through the territories of Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania.

Approximately 1.5 million years ago, Homo erectus (upright man) appeared. This primate had a much more extensive skull than its predecessors, and was already beginning to create and use more complex stone tools. The wide spread of skeletons found indicates that between 1,000,000 and 700,000 years ago, Homo erectus left Africa and settled in China, Australasia and Europe, but disappeared altogether between 300,000 and 200,000 years ago for unknown reasons.

Around the same time, the first primitive man, christened Neanderthal by scientists, after the name of the area where his remains were first discovered.

The remains were found by Johann Karl Fuhlrott in 1856 in the Feldhofer cave near Düsseldorf in Germany. This cave is located in the Neandertal Valley. In 1863, the English anthropologist and anatomist W. King suggested the name for the find Homo neanderthalensis. Neanderthals inhabited Europe and Western Asia in the period from 300 thousand to 28 thousand years ago. For some time they coexisted with a human of the modern anatomical type, who settled in Europe about 40 thousand years ago. Previously, based on the morphological comparison of Neanderthals with modern humans, three hypotheses were proposed: Neanderthals are the direct ancestors of humans; they have made some genetic contribution to the gene pool; they represented an independent branch, which was completely supplanted by modern man. It is the latter hypothesis that is confirmed by modern genetic studies. The time of existence of the last common ancestor of man and Neanderthal is estimated at 500 thousand years before our time.

Recent discoveries have forced a fundamental rethinking of the assessment of the Neanderthal. In particular, the skeleton of a Neanderthal man who lived 60 thousand years ago was found in the Kebara cave on Mount Carmel in Israel, in which the hyoid bone was completely preserved, completely identical to the bone of a modern person. Since the ability to speak depends on the hyoid bone, scientists were forced to admit that the Neanderthal had this ability. And many scientists believe that speech is the key to unlocking the great leap forward in human development.

Nowadays, most anthropologists believe that the Neanderthal was full-fledged, and for a long time, in terms of its behavioral characteristics, it was quite equivalent to other representatives of this species. It is possible that the Neanderthal was no less intelligent and human-like than we are in our time. It has been suggested that the large and coarse lines of his skull are simply the result of some kind of genetic disorder, like acromegaly. These disturbances quickly dissolved into a limited, isolated population as a result of crossing.

But, nevertheless, despite the huge period of time - more than two million years - separating the developed Australopithecus and the Neanderthal, both used similar tools - pointed stones, and the features of their appearance (as we imagine them) practically did not differ.

“If you put a hungry lion, a man, a chimpanzee, a baboon and a dog in a large cage, then it is clear that the man will be eaten first!”

African folk wisdom

The emergence of Homo sapiens is not just an unfathomable mystery, it seems incredible. For millions of years, there has been little progress in the processing of stone tools; and suddenly, about 200 thousand years ago, it appeared with a cranial volume 50% larger than before, with the ability to speak and quite close to the modern anatomy of the body. (According to a number of independent studies, this happened in Southeast Africa.)

In 1911, the anthropologist Sir Arthur Kent compiled a list of anatomical features inherent in each of the species of primate monkeys that distinguish them from each other. He called them "common features". As a result, he got the following indicators: gorilla - 75; chimpanzee - 109; orangutan - 113; gibbon - 116; humans, 312. How can Sir Arthur Kent's research be reconciled with the scientifically proven fact that there is a 98% genetic similarity between humans and chimpanzees? I would reverse this ratio and ask the question - how does a difference in DNA of 2% determine the striking difference between humans and their "cousins" - primates?

We have to somehow explain how a 2% difference in genes gives rise to so many new characteristics in a person - brain, speech, sexuality and much more. It is strange that a cell of Homo sapiens contains only 46 chromosomes, while chimpanzees and gorillas have 48. The theory of natural selection was unable to explain how such a major structural change could occur - the fusion of two chromosomes.

In the words of Steve Jones, “...we are the result of evolution - a series of successive mistakes. No one will argue that evolution has ever been so abrupt that in one step it could be embodied whole plan restructuring of the body. Indeed, experts believe that the possibility of the successful implementation of a large evolutionary leap called macromutation is extremely unlikely, since such a leap is most likely to be detrimental to the survival of species that are already well adapted to environment, or at least ambiguous, for example, due to the mechanism of action of the immune system, we have lost the ability to regenerate tissues like amphibians.

Catastrophe theory

Evolutionist Daniel Dennett neatly describes the situation with a literary analogy: someone is trying to improve a classic literary text with only proofreading. If most of the editing - placing commas or correcting misspelled words - has little effect, then tangible editing of the text in almost all cases spoils the original text. Thus, everything seems to be stacked against genetic improvement, but a favorable mutation can take place in the conditions of a small isolated population. Under other conditions, favorable mutations would dissolve into a larger mass of "normal" individuals.

Thus, it becomes obvious that the most important factor in the splitting of species is their geographical separation, in order to prevent interbreeding. And as unlikely as it is statistically likely that new species will emerge, there are currently about 30 million different species on Earth. And before, according to the calculations, there were another 3 billion, now extinct. This is possible only in the context of the catastrophic development of history on planet Earth - and this point of view is now becoming more and more popular. However, it is impossible to give a single example (with the exception of microorganisms) when any kind of recent times(during the last half million years) improved by mutation or split into two different species.

Anthropologists have always tried to present the evolution from Homo erectus to a gradual process, albeit in leaps and bounds. However, their attempts to adjust the archaeological data to the requirements of a given concept each time turned out to be untenable. For example, how to explain the sharp increase in the volume of the skull in Homo sapiens?

How is it that Homo sapiens gained intelligence and self-awareness, while its ape relative has spent the last 6 million years in a state of complete stagnation? Why has no other creature in the animal kingdom been able to advance to high level mental development?

The usual answer to this is that when the man got to his feet, both his hands were freed and he began to use tools. This advance accelerated learning through the feedback system, which, in turn, stimulated the process of mental development.

Recent scientific findings confirm that, in some cases, electrochemical processes in the brain can promote the growth of dendrites, tiny signal receptors that connect to neurons ( nerve cells). Experiments with experimental rats have shown that if toys are placed in a cage with rats, then the mass of brain tissue in rats begins to grow faster. Researchers (Christopher A. Walsh and Anjen Chenn) have even been able to identify a protein called beta-catenin, which is responsible for why the human cortex is larger than that of other species. Walsh explained his findings: "The cerebral cortex of mice is normally smooth. In humans, it is very wrinkled due to the large volume of tissue and lack of space in the skull. This can be compared to how we put a piece of paper in a ball. We found that in mice with increased production of beta- catenin's cerebral cortex was much larger in volume, it was wrinkled in the same way as in humans". Which, however, did not add clarity. After all, in the animal kingdom there are a lot of species whose representatives use tools, but at the same time do not become intelligent.

Here are some examples: an Egyptian kite throws stones from above at ostrich eggs, trying to break their hard shell. A woodpecker from the Galapagos Islands uses branches or needles of a cactus, using them with five different ways to pick out tree beetles and other insects from rotten trunks. A sea otter on the Pacific coast of the United States uses one stone as a hammer and another as an anvil to smash the shell to get its favorite delicacy, bear ear shells. Our closest relatives, the chimpanzee monkeys, also make and use simple tools, but do they reach our level of intelligence? Why did humans become intelligent and chimpanzees not? We read about the search for our oldest ape ancestors all the time, but in reality it would be much more interesting to find the missing link of Homo super erectus.

But back to man. According to common sense, it should have taken another million years to move from stone tools to other materials, and perhaps another hundred million years to master mathematics, civil engineering and astronomy, but for inexplicable reasons, man continued to live a primitive life, using stone tools, only for 160 thousand years, and about 40-50 thousand years ago, something happened that caused the migration of mankind and the transition to modern forms of behavior. Most likely these were climatic changes, although the issue requires separate consideration.

Comparative DNA analysis of different populations modern people allowed us to assume that even before leaving Africa, about 60-70 thousand years ago (when there was also a decrease in the number, although not as significant as 135 thousand years ago), the ancestral population was divided into at least three groups, which gave rise to African, Mongoloid and Caucasoid races.

Part of the racial traits may have arisen later as an adaptation to living conditions. This applies at least to skin color, one of the most significant racial characteristics for most people. Pigmentation provides protection from solar radiation, but should not interfere with the formation, for example, of certain vitamins that prevent rickets and are necessary for normal fertility.

Since man came out of Africa, it would seem that it goes without saying that our distant African ancestors were similar to the modern inhabitants of this continent. However, some researchers believe that the first people who appeared in Africa were closer to the Mongoloids.

So: only 13 thousand years ago Man settled almost all over the globe. Over the next thousand years, he learned to lead Agriculture, after another 6 thousand years created great civilization with advanced astronomical science). And now, finally, after another 6 thousand years, a person goes into the depths of the solar system!

We do not have the means to determine the exact chronology for the periods where the application of the carbon isotope method ends (about 35 thousand years before our time) and further into the depths of history throughout the Middle Pliocene.

What reliable data do we have about Homo sapiens? At a conference held in 1992, the most reliable evidence obtained up to that time was summed up. The dates given here are the average for a number of all specimens found in the area and are given with an accuracy of ±20%.

The most revealing find, made in Kaftsekh in Israel, is 115,000 years old. Other specimens found at Skul and Mount Carmel in Israel are 101,000-81,000 years old.

The specimens found in Africa, in the lower layers of the Frontier Cave, are 128,000 years old (and dating from ostrich egg shells has been confirmed to be at least 100,000 years old).

In South Africa, at the mouth of the Clasis River, dates range from 130,000 to 118,000 years before present (BP).
And, finally, in Jebel Irhoud, in South Africa, specimens were found with the earliest dating - 190 thousand-105 thousand years BC.

From this we can conclude that Homo sapiens appeared on Earth less than 200 thousand years ago. And there is not the slightest evidence that there are earlier remains of a modern or partially modern person. All specimens are no different from their European counterparts - the Cro-Magnons, who settled in Europe about 35 thousand years ago. And if you dress them in modern clothes, then they would be practically no different from modern people. How did the ancestors of modern man appear in Southeast Africa 150-300 thousand years ago, and not, say, two or three million years later, as the logic of the movement of evolution suggests? Why did civilization begin at all? There is no obvious reason why we should be more civilized than the tribes in the Amazon jungle or the impenetrable forests of New Guinea, which are still at a primitive stage of development.

Civilization and Methods of Managing Consciousness and Human Behavior

Summary

• The biochemical composition of terrestrial organisms indicates that they all developed from a “single source”, which, however, does not exclude either the hypothesis of “accidental spontaneous generation” or the version of “introducing the seeds of life”.
• Man is clearly knocked out of the evolutionary chain. With a huge number of "distant ancestors", the link that led to the creation of man has not been found. At the same time, the rate of evolutionary development has no analogues in the animal world.
• It is surprising that the modification of only 2% of the genetic material of chimpanzees caused such a radical difference between humans and their closest relatives - monkeys.
• Features of the structure and sexual behavior of man indicate a much longer period of peaceful evolution in a warm climate than determined by archaeological and genetic data.
• The genetic predisposition to speech and the efficiency of the internal structure of the brain strongly point to two essential requirements of the evolutionary process - its incredibly long period, and the vital need to achieve an optimal level. The course of the proposed evolutionary development does not at all require such efficiency of thinking.
• Babies' skulls are disproportionately large for safe delivery. It is quite possible that the “turtles” were inherited from the “race of giants”, so often mentioned in ancient myths.
• The transition from gathering and hunting to farming and cattle breeding, which took place in the Middle East about 13,000 years ago, created the prerequisites for the accelerated development of human civilization. Interestingly, this coincides in time with the alleged Flood that destroyed the mammoths. By the way, around that time the Ice Age ended.

MAN REASONABLE(Homo sapiens) - a man of the modern type.

The course of evolution from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens, i.e. to the stage of modern humans, is just as difficult to satisfactorily document as the initial branching of the hominid lineage. However, in this case, the matter is complicated by the presence of several applicants for such an intermediate position.

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

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

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

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

At the moment, there is no material evidence of any gradual morphological transformation of the classical type of Neanderthal into the modern type of man, with the exception of finds made in the Skhul cave in Israel. The skulls found in this cave are very different from each other, some of them have features that put them in an intermediate position between the two human types. According to some experts, this is evidence of the evolutionary change of the Neanderthal to modern humans, while others believe that this phenomenon is the result of intermarriage between representatives of two types of people, thus believing that Homo sapiens evolved independently. This explanation is supported by evidence that as early as 200–300 thousand years ago, i.e. before the advent of the classical Neanderthal, there was a type of human that most likely refers to the early Homo sapiens, and not to the "progressive" Neanderthal. We are talking about well-known finds - skull fragments found in Swanscom (England), and a more complete skull from Steinheim (Germany).

Differences in the question of the "Neanderthal stage" in human evolution are partly due to the fact that two circumstances are not always taken into account. First, it is possible for the more primitive types of any evolving organism to exist relatively unchanged at the same time that other branches of the same species are undergoing various evolutionary modifications. Secondly, migrations associated with a shift in climatic zones are possible. Such shifts were repeated in the Pleistocene as glaciers advanced and retreated, and man could follow the shifts. climate zone. Thus, when considering long periods of time, it must be taken into account that the populations occupying a given area at a certain moment are not necessarily descendants of populations that lived there for more than early period. It is possible that early Homo sapiens could migrate from the regions where they appeared, and then return to their former places after many thousands of years, having managed to undergo evolutionary changes. When the fully developed Homo sapiens appeared in Europe 35,000 to 40,000 years ago, during the warmer period of the last glaciation, it undoubtedly supplanted the classical Neanderthal that had occupied the same region for 100,000 years. Now it is impossible to determine for sure whether the Neanderthal population moved north, following the retreat of its usual climatic zone, or whether it mixed with Homo sapiens invading its territory.

Neanderthals [History of failed humanity] Vishnyatsky Leonid Borisovich

homeland of homo sapiens

homeland of homo sapiens

With all the variety of views on the problem of the origin of Homo sapiens (Fig. 11.1), all the proposed options for solving it can be reduced to two main opposing theories, which were briefly discussed in Chapter 3. According to one of them, monocentric, the place of origin of people of the modern anatomical type there was some rather limited territorial region, from where they subsequently settled throughout the planet, gradually displacing, destroying or assimilating the hominid populations that preceded them in different places. Most often, East Africa is considered as such a region, and the corresponding theory of the appearance and spread of Homo sapiens is called the theory of the "African Exodus". The opposite position is taken by researchers who defend the so-called "multi-regional" - polycentric - theory, according to which the evolutionary formation of Homo sapiens took place everywhere, that is, in Africa, and in Asia, and in Europe, on a local basis, but with a more or less wide exchange genes between populations of these regions. Although the dispute between monocentrists and polycentrists, which has a long history, is still not over, the initiative is now clearly in the hands of the supporters of the theory of the African origin of Homo sapiens, and their opponents have to give up one position after another.

Rice. 11.1. Possible Scenarios origin Homo sapiens: a- the candelabra hypothesis, suggesting independent evolution in Europe, Asia and Africa from local hominids; b- multi-regional hypothesis, which differs from the first one by the recognition of gene exchange between populations different regions; in- hypothesis full replacement, according to which our species originally appeared in Africa, from where it subsequently spread throughout the planet, displacing the forms of hominids that preceded it in other regions and at the same time not mixing with them; G- assimilation hypothesis, which differs from the hypothesis of complete replacement by the recognition of partial hybridization between sapiens and the aboriginal population of Europe and Asia

Firstly, fossil anthropological materials unambiguously indicate that people of a modern or very close physical type appeared in East Africa already at the end of the Middle Pleistocene, i.e., much earlier than anywhere else. The oldest known anthropological find attributable to Homo sapiens is the skull of Omo 1 (Fig. 11.2), discovered in 1967 near the northern coast of Lake. Turkana (Ethiopia). Its age, judging by the available absolute dates and a number of other data, ranges from 190 to 200 thousand years ago. The well-preserved frontal and, especially, the occipital bones of this skull are anatomically quite modern, as are the remains of the bones of the facial skeleton. A sufficiently developed chin protrusion is fixed. According to the conclusion of many anthropologists who studied this find, the skull of Omo 1, as well as the known parts of the postcranial skeleton of the same individual, do not bear signs that go beyond the range of variability usual for Homo sapiens.

Rice. 11.2. Skull Omo 1 - the oldest of all anthropological finds attributed to Homo sapiens

On the whole, three skulls found not so long ago at the Herto site in the Middle Awash, also in Ethiopia, are very similar in structure to the finds from Omo. One of them has come down to us almost completely (except for the lower jaw), the safety of the other two is also quite good. The age of these skulls is from 154 to 160 thousand years. In general, despite the presence of a number of primitive features, the morphology of the Kherto skulls allows us to consider their owners as ancient representatives of the modern form of man. Comparable in age, the remains of people of a modern or very close to that anatomical type were also found at a number of other East African sites, for example, in the Mumba grotto (Tanzania) and the Dire-Dawa cave (Ethiopia). Thus, a number of well-studied and fairly reliably dated anthropological finds from East Africa indicate that people who did not differ or differed little in anatomical terms from the current inhabitants of the Earth lived in this region 150–200 thousand years ago.

Rice. 11.3. Some links in the evolutionary line, which led, as expected, to the appearance of the species Homo sapiens: 1 - Bodo, 2 - Broken Hill, 3 - Letoli, 4 - Omo 1, 5 - Border

Secondly, of all the continents, only Africa is known to contain a large number of remains of transitional hominids, allowing at least in general terms trace the process of transformation of local homo erectus into people of modern anatomical type. It is believed that the immediate predecessors and ancestors of the first Homo sapiens in Africa could be hominids represented by skulls such as Singa (Sudan), Florisbad (South Africa), Ileret (Kenya) and a number of other finds. They date from the second half of the Middle Pleistocene. Skulls from Broken Hill (Zambia), Ndutu (Tanzania), Bodo (Ethiopia) and a number of other specimens are considered as somewhat earlier links in this line of evolution (Fig. 11.3). All African hominids, anatomically and chronologically intermediate between Homo erectus and Homo sapiens, are sometimes referred, together with their European and Asian contemporaries, to Homo Heidelbergensis, and sometimes they are included in special types, the earlier of which is called homo rhodesiensis ( Homo rhodesiensis), and the later Homo helmei ( Homo helmei).

Thirdly, genetic data, according to most experts in this field, also point to Africa as the most likely initial center for the formation of the Homo sapiens species. It is no coincidence that the greatest genetic diversity among modern human populations is observed precisely there, and as we move away from Africa, this diversity decreases more and more. This is how it should be if the theory of the “African Exodus” is correct: after all, the populations of Homo sapiens, who were the first to leave their ancestral home and settled somewhere in the vicinity of it, “captured” only part of the species gene pool on the way, those groups that then spun off from them and moved even further - only a part of a part and so on.

Finally, fourthly, the skeleton of the first European Homo sapiens is characterized by a number of features that are typical of the inhabitants of the tropics and hot subtropics, but not of high latitudes. This has already been discussed in Chapter 4 (see Figures 4.3–4.5). This picture is in good agreement with the theory of the African origin of people of the modern anatomical type.