Progress in medicine, biotechnology, and pharmaceuticals is usually expected from success in the development of genetics. But in recent years, genetics has been actively manifesting itself in anthropology, a seemingly distant field, helping to shed light on human origins.
This is what Australopithecus, one of the possible ancestors of humans, who lived about three million years ago, could have looked like. Drawing by Z. Burian.
According to the displacement model, all modern people - Europeans, Asians, Americans - are descendants of a relatively small group that emerged from Africa approximately 100 thousand years ago and displaced representatives of all previous waves of settlement.
The sequence of nucleotides in DNA can be determined using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), which allows the hereditary material to be copied and multiplied many times over.
Neanderthals inhabited Europe and Western Asia from 300 thousand to 28 thousand years ago.
Comparison of Neanderthal and modern human skeletons.
Neanderthals were well adapted to survive in the harsh climate of Europe during the Ice Age. Drawing by Z. Burian.
As genetic studies show, the settlement of anatomically modern humans began from Africa approximately 100 thousand years ago. The map shows the main migration routes.
An ancient painter finishes painting on the walls of the Lascaux cave (France). Artist Z. Burian.
Various members of the hominid family (probable ancestors and close relatives of modern humans). Most of the connections between the branches of the evolutionary tree are still in question.
Australopithecus afarensis (southern Afar monkey).
Kenyanthrope pay.
Australopithecus africanus (southern African monkey).
Paranthropus robustus (South African form of massive hominid).
Homo habilis (handy man).
Homo ergaster.
Homo erectus (homo erectus).
Upright walking - PROS AND CONS
I remember my surprise when, on the pages of my favorite magazine, in an article by B. Mednikov, I first encountered a downright “heretical” thought not about the advantages, but about the disadvantages of upright walking for the entire biology and physiology of modern man (“Science and Life” No. 11, 1974). Such an opinion was unusual and contradicted all the “paradigms” learned at school and university, but it sounded extremely convincing.
Upright walking is usually considered a sign of anthropogenesis, but birds were the first to stand on their hind limbs (among modern ones - penguins). It is known that Plato called man “two-legged without feathers.” Aristotle, refuting this statement, demonstrated a plucked rooster. Nature “tried” to raise its other creations on their hind legs, an example of this is the upright kangaroo.
In humans, upright walking caused a narrowing of the pelvis, otherwise lever loads would lead to a fracture of the femoral neck. And as a result, it turned out that a woman’s pelvic circumference is on average 14-17 percent smaller than the head circumference of the fetus growing in her womb. The solution to the problem was half-hearted and to the detriment of both sides. A child is born with an unformed skull - everyone knows about two fontanelles in babies - and also prematurely, after which he cannot stand on his feet for a whole year. During pregnancy, the expectant mother turns off the expression of the gene for the female sex hormone estrogen. It should be remembered that one of the main functions of sex hormones is to strengthen bones. Turning off estrogen synthesis leads to osteoporosis (decreased bone density) in pregnant women, which can cause a hip fracture in old age. Premature birth is forced to prolong the period of breastfeeding. This requires large mammary glands, which often results in the development of cancer.
Let us note in parentheses that just as “favorable” a sign as upright walking is loss of hair. Our skin becomes bare as a result of the appearance of a special gene that suppresses the development of hair follicles. But bare skin is more susceptible to cancer, which is also aggravated by a decrease in the synthesis of the black pigment melanin during migration to the north, to Europe.
And there are many such examples from human biology. Take heart diseases, for example: isn’t their occurrence due to the fact that the heart has to pump almost half of the blood volume vertically upward?
True, all these evolutionary “advantages” with a “minus” sign are justified by the release of the upper limbs, which begin to lose mass; at the same time, the fingers acquire the ability to make smaller and more subtle movements, which affects the development of the motor areas of the cerebral cortex. And yet we must admit that upright walking was a necessary, but not decisive stage in the development of modern man.
"WE WOULD LIKE TO OFFER..."Thus began a letter from the then unknown F. Crick and J. Watson to the editor of the journal Nature, published in April 1953. We were talking about the double-stranded structure of DNA. Everyone knows about it now, but at that time there would have hardly been a dozen people in the world who were seriously working on this biopolymer. However, few people remember that Watson and Crick opposed the authority of Nobel laureate L. Pauling, who had recently published an article on triple-stranded DNA.
Now we know that Pauling simply had a contaminated DNA sample, but that’s not the point. For Pauling, DNA was simply a “scaffold” to which protein genes were attached. Watson and Crick believed that double-strandedness could also explain the genetic properties of DNA. Few people immediately believed them; it was not for nothing that they were given the Nobel Prize only after they awarded the biochemists who isolated the enzyme for DNA synthesis and were able to establish this same synthesis in a test tube.
And now, almost half a century later, in February 2001, a decoding of the human genome was published in the journals Nature and Science. It is unlikely that the “patriarchs” of genetics could hope to live to see their universal triumph!
This is the situation that arises with a quick glance at the genome. The high degree of “homogeneity” of our genes is noteworthy when compared with the genes of chimpanzees. Although genome sequencers say that “we are all a little African,” referring to the African roots of our genome, the genetic variability of chimpanzees is four times higher: 0.1 percent on average in humans and 0.4 percent in apes.
At the same time, the greatest difference in genetic pools is observed among Africans. Representatives of all other races and peoples have much lower genome variability than on the Dark Continent. We can also say that the African genome is the most ancient. It is not for nothing that molecular biologists have been saying for fifteen years that Adam and Eve once lived in Africa.
KENYA AUTHORIZED TO DECLAREFor many reasons, anthropology does not often please us with epoch-making finds in the savannah scorched by the merciless African sun. American researcher Don Johanson became famous in 1974 for the discovery of the famous Lucy in Ethiopia. The age of Lucy, named after the heroine of one of the Beatles' songs, is determined to be 3.5 million years. It was an Australopithecus (Australopithecus afarensis). For a quarter of a century, Johanson assured everyone that it was from Lucy that the human race originated.
However, not everyone agreed with this. In March 2001, a press conference was held in Washington, at which an anthropologist from Kenya, Meave Leakey, spoke, by the way, a representative of a whole family of famous anthropologists. This event was timed to coincide with the publication of the journal Nature with an article by Leakey and her colleagues about the discovery of Kenyanthropus platyops, or Kenyan flat-faced man, approximately the same age as Lucy. The Kenyan find was so different from others that researchers awarded it the rank of a new human species.
Kenyanthropus has a flatter face than Lucy and, most importantly, smaller teeth. This suggests that, unlike Lucy, who ate grass, rhizomes and even branches, Platyops ate softer fruits and berries, as well as insects.
The discovery of Kenyanthropus is consistent with the findings of French and Kenyan scientists, which they reported in early December 2000. A left femur and a massive right shoulder were found in the Tugen Hills of Kenya, about 250 km northeast of Nairobi. The structure of the bones shows that the creature both walked on the ground and climbed trees. But the most important thing is a fragment of the jaw and preserved teeth: small canines and molars, which indicates a rather “gentle” diet of fruits and soft vegetables. The age of this ancient man, who was called "orrorin", is estimated at 6 million years.
Meav Leakey, speaking at a press conference, said that now instead of one candidate for future people, namely Lucy, scientists have at least two. Johanson also agreed that there were more than one African species from which humans could have descended.
However, among anthropologists, in addition to supporters of the emergence of man in Africa, there are also multiregionalists, or polycentrists, who believe that the second center of the origin and evolution of man and his ancestors was Asia. As evidence of their correctness, they cite the remains of Peking and Javanese man, with which, in general, scientific anthropology started at the beginning of the last century. True, the dating of those remains is very blurry (the skull of a Javanese girl is estimated at 300-800 thousand years old), and besides, all Asian representatives of the human race belong to an earlier stage of development than Homo sapiens, called Homo erectus (upright man) . In Europe, the representative of Erectus was Neanderthal.
But anthropology in the age of the genome does not live only on bones and skulls, and molecular biology was destined to resolve the disputes.
ADAM AND EVE IN THE DNA FILESThe molecular approach was first discussed in the middle of the last century. It was then that scientists drew attention to the uneven distribution of carriers of different blood groups. It has been suggested that blood type B, especially common in Asia, protects its carriers from such terrible diseases as plague and cholera.
In the 1960s, an attempt was made to estimate the age of humans as a species using serum proteins (albumin), comparing them with those of chimpanzees. No one knew the evolutionary age of the chimpanzee branch, the rate of molecular changes at the level of amino acid sequences of proteins, and much more. Nevertheless, the purely phenotypic result amazed the minds of that time: humans have been evolving as a species for at least 5 million years! At least it was then that the branches of ape ancestors and ape-like ancestors of humans split.
Scientists did not believe such estimates, although they already had skulls two million years old. The protein data were dismissed as a curious “artifact”.
And yet, molecular biology had the final say. First, the age of Eve, who lived in Africa 160-200 thousand years ago, was determined using mitochondrial DNA, then the same framework was obtained for Adam using the male sex chromosome Y. Adam’s age was, however, somewhat less, but still in the range of 100 thousand years.
Explaining modern methods of accessing evolutionary DNA files requires a separate article, so let the reader take the author's word for it. We can only explain that the DNA of mitochondria (the organelles in which the main energy “currency” of the cell, ATP, is produced) is transmitted only through the maternal line, and the Y chromosome, naturally, through the paternal line.
Over the decade and a half that ended the twentieth century, the sophistication and resolution of molecular analysis increased immeasurably. And new data obtained by scientists allow us to talk in detail about the last steps of anthropogenesis. In December 2000, an article was published in Nature that compared the complete mitochondrial DNA (16.5 thousand letters of the gene code) of 53 volunteers from 14 major language groups of the world. Analysis of DNA protocols made it possible to identify four main branches of the settlement of our ancestors. Moreover, three of them - the “oldest” - are rooted in Africa, and the last one includes both Africans and “displaced people” from the Dark Continent. The authors of the article dated the “exodus” from Africa to only 52 thousand years (plus or minus 28 thousand). The very emergence of modern man dates back 130 thousand years, which approximately coincides with the originally determined age of molecular Eve.
Almost the same results were obtained when comparing DNA sequences from the Y chromosome, published in Nature Genetics in 2001. At the same time, 167 special markers were identified that correspond to the geography of residence of 1062 people and reflect waves of migration around the world. In particular, the Japanese, due to geographic and historical isolation, are characterized by a special group of markers that no one else has.
The analysis showed that the most ancient branch of the family tree is the Ethiopian one, where Lucy was found. The authors date the exodus from Africa to 35-89 thousand years. After the inhabitants of Ethiopia, the most ancient are the inhabitants of Sardinia and Europe with its Basques. By the way, as another work shows, it was the Basques who settled southwestern Ireland - the frequency of a particular DNA “signature” reaches 98 and 89 percent, respectively, on the west coast of Ireland and in the Basque Country!
Then there was settlement along the Asian coast of the Indian and Pacific oceans. At the same time, American Indians turned out to be “older” than Indians, and the youngest were South Africans and residents of Japan and Taiwan.
Another message came at the end of April 2001 from Harvard (USA), where the Whitehead Institute, which, by the way, conducts the main work on the Y chromosome (it was there that the male gene SRY - “sex region Y” was discovered) , compared 300 chromosomes from Swedes, Central Europeans and Nigeria. The results are very clear: modern Europeans descended about 25 thousand years ago from a small group of only a few hundred people who came out of Africa.
By the way, the Chinese also turned out to come from the Dark Continent. The journal Science in May 2001 published data from a study by Chinese scientist Li Ying, a professor of population genetics at Shanghai University. Blood samples for the study of male sex Y chromosome markers were collected from 12,127 men from 163 populations in East Asia: Iran, China, New Guinea and Siberia. Analysis of samples, which Li Yin conducted together with Peter Underhill from Stanford University (USA), showed that the ancestors of modern East Asians lived about 100 thousand years ago in Africa.
Alan Templeton from Washington University in St. Louis (USA) compared the DNA of people from ten genetic regions of the world, and he used for analysis not only mitochondria and Y chromosomes, but also X chromosomes and six other chromosomes. Based on these data, in his article in the journal Nature in March 2002, he concludes that there have been at least three waves of migration from Africa in human history. The emergence of Homo erectus 1.7 million years ago was followed by another wave, 400-800 thousand years ago. And only then, about 100 thousand years ago, did the exodus of anatomically modern humans from Africa occur. There was also a relatively recent (several tens of thousands of years ago) return movement from Asia to Africa, as well as genetic interpenetration of different groups.
New methods for studying DNA evolution are still young and quite expensive: reading one letter of the gene code costs almost a dollar. That is why the genome of several tens or hundreds of people is analyzed, and not several millions, which would be highly desirable from a statistical point of view.
But nevertheless, everything is gradually falling into place. Genetics does not support supporters of multiregional human origins. Apparently, our species originated recently, and those remains that were found in Asia are just traces of previous waves of settlement from Africa.
Eric Lander, director of the Whitehead Institute, said on this occasion, speaking in Edinburgh (UK) at the HUGO (Human Genome Organization) conference: “The Earth's population is now 6 billion people, but gene variability shows that they all came from several tens of thousands, and very closely related ones. Man was a small species that became numerous literally in the blink of an historical eye."
WHY "EXODUS"?Speaking about the results of reading the human genome and a preliminary comparison of the genomes of representatives of different nations, the researchers stated as an indisputable fact that “we all come from Africa.” They were also struck by the “emptiness” of the genome, 95 percent of which does not contain “useful” information about the structure of proteins. Throw away some percentage of regulatory sequences, and 90 percent will still remain “meaningless.” Why do you need a telephone book with a volume of 1000 pages, 900 of which are filled with meaningless combinations of letters, all sorts of “aaaaaaaa” and “bbbbbw”?
A separate article can be written about the structure of the human genome, but now we are interested in one very important fact related to retroviruses. Our genome contains many fragments of the genomes of once formidable retroviruses that have been “pacified.” Let us recall that retroviruses - these include, for example, the immunodeficiency virus - carry RNA instead of DNA. They make a DNA copy on an RNA template, which is then integrated into the genome of our cells.
One might think that viruses of this kind are very necessary for us as mammals, since they allow us to suppress the reaction of rejection of the fetus, which is genetically half foreign material (half of the genes in the fetus are paternal). Experimental blocking of one of the retroviruses living in the cells of the placenta, which is formed from fetal cells, leads to the death of developing mice as a result of the fact that maternal immune T-lymphocytes are not “deactivated”. Our genome even contains special sequences of 14 letters of the gene code necessary for integrating the retroviral genome.
But, judging by our genome and its size, it takes a lot of (evolutionary) time to pacify retroviruses. That is why ancient man fled from Africa, fleeing from these same retroviruses - HIV, cancer, as well as such as the Ebola virus, smallpox, etc. Add here polio, from which chimpanzees also suffer, malaria, which affects the brain, sleeping sickness, worms and much more that tropical countries are famous for.
So, some 100 thousand years ago, a group of very intelligent and aggressive human individuals escaped from Africa and began their triumphal march around the world. How did interaction occur with representatives of previous waves of settlement, for example with Neanderthals in Europe? The same DNA proves that genetic interbreeding most likely did not take place.
The March 2000 issue of Nature published an article by Igor Ovchinnikov, Vitaly Kharitonov and Galina Romanova, who, together with their English colleagues, analyzed mitochondrial DNA isolated from the bones of a two-year-old Neanderthal child found in the Mezmaiskaya cave in the Kuban by an expedition of the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Radiocarbon dating gave 29 thousand years - it seems that this was one of the last Neanders. DNA analysis showed that it is 3.48 percent different from the DNA of the Neanderthal from Feldhofer Cave (Germany). However, both DNAs form a single branch that is markedly different from the DNA of modern humans. Thus, Neanderthal DNA did not contribute to our mitochondrial DNA.
One hundred and fifty years ago, when science first turned from myths about the creation of man to anatomical evidence, it had nothing at its disposal except guesswork and conjecture. For a hundred years, anthropology was forced to base its conclusions on rare fragmentary finds, which, even if they convinced anyone of something, still had to involve a share of faith in the future discovery of some kind of “connecting link.”
In the light of modern genetic discoveries, anthropological findings indicate many things: upright walking is not associated with the development of the brain, and the manufacture of tools is not associated with it; Moreover, genetic changes “overtake” changes in the structure of skulls.
GENOME AND RACE DIVISIONThe Italian scientist Guido Barbugiani, who, with the permission of the Pope, conducted a study of the relics of the Evangelist Luke, was unable to establish the nationality of Christ’s companion. The DNA of the relics is definitely not Greek, but some markers are similar to sequences found in modern inhabitants of Turkish Anatolia, and some to Syrian ones. Again, in such a short period of historical time, the populations of Anatolia and Syria did not diverge genetically far enough from each other to be significantly different. On the other hand, over the past two thousand years, so many waves of conquest and great migrations of peoples have passed through this border region of the Middle East that it has turned, as Barbujani says, into a zone of numerous gene contacts.
The scientist goes even further, declaring that “the concept of genetically distinctly different races of man is completely incorrect.” If, he says, the genetic differences between a Scandinavian and an inhabitant of Tierra del Fuego are taken as 100 percent, then the differences between you and any other member of the community close to you will average 85 percent! Back in 1997, Barbujani analyzed 109 DNA markers in 16 populations taken from around the world, including the pygmies of Zaire. The analysis showed very high intragroup differences at the genetic level. What can I say: transplantologists know very well that organ and tissue transplants are often impossible, even from parents to children.
However, transplantologists were also faced with the fact that white kidneys were not suitable for transplantation to black Americans. It got to the point that a new heart remedy, BiDil, specially designed for use by African Americans, recently appeared in the United States.
But the racial approach to pharmacology does not justify itself, as evidenced by more detailed studies of the effectiveness of drugs conducted already in the post-genomic era. David Goldstein of University College London analyzed the DNA of 354 people from eight different populations around the world, resulting in four groups (an analysis was also carried out on six enzymes that process these same drugs in human liver cells).
The four identified groups characterize people's response to drugs much more accurately than races. An article published in the November 2001 issue of Nature Genetics provides a striking example. When analyzing the DNA of Ethiopians, 62 percent of them were in the same group as Ashkenazi Jews, Armenians and... Norwegians! Therefore, the unification of Ethiopians, whose Greek name translates as “dark-faced,” with African Americans of the same Caribbean is not at all justified. "Racial markers do not always correlate with people's genetic relatedness," Goldstein notes. And he adds: "Similarity in genetic sequences provides much more useful information when conducting pharmacological tests. And race simply 'masks' differences in people's responses to a particular drug."
It is already an established fact that the chromosomal sites responsible for our genetic origin fall into four groups. But previously they simply shrugged it off. Now pharmaceutical companies will get down to business and quickly expose all racists...
WHAT'S NEXT?In connection with the deciphering of the genome, there was no shortage of predictions for the future. Here are some of them. Within 10 years, it is planned to release dozens of gene tests for various diseases onto the market (just as you can now buy antibody pregnancy tests in pharmacies). And 5 years after this, gene screening will begin before in vitro fertilization, which will be followed by gene “amplification” of future children (for money, of course).
By 2020, cancer treatment will be established after gene typing of tumor cells. Medicines will begin to take into account the genetic constitution of patients. Safe therapies using cloned stem cells will become available. By 2030, “genetic healthcare” will be created, which will increase active life expectancy to 90 years. Heated debates are coming about the further evolution of man as a species. The birth of the profession of “designer” of future children will not blow us away either...
Will this be the apocalypse of our days in the style of F. Coppola or the deliverance of humanity from God's curse for original sin? Candidate of Biological Sciences I. LALAYANTS.
Literature
Lalayants I. Sixth day of creation. - M.: Politizdat, 1985.
Mednikov B. Human Origins. - "Science and Life" No. 11, 1974.
Mednikov B. Axioms of biology. - “Science and Life” No. 2-7, 10, 1980.
Yankovsky N., Borinskaya S. Our history written in genes. - "Nature" No. 6, 2001.
Details for the curiousBRANCHING TREE OF OUR ANCESTORS
Back in the 18th century, Carl Linnaeus developed a classification of plants and animals living on our planet. According to this classification, modern man belongs to the species Homo sapiens sapiens(homo sapiens sapiens), and he is the only representative of the genus to survive evolution Homo. This genus, believed to have appeared 1.6-1.8 million years ago, together with the earlier genus Australopithecines, which lived between 5 and 1.6 million years ago, form the family of hominids. Humans are united with apes by the superfamily hominoids, and with the rest of the apes by the order of primates.
It is believed that hominids separated from hominoids about 6 million years ago - this is the figure given by geneticists who calculated the moment of genetic divergence between humans and apes based on the rate of DNA mutations. French paleoanthropologists Martin Picfort and Brigitte Senu, who recently discovered fragments of a skeleton called Orrorin tugenensis (after the location near Lake Tugen in Kenya), claim that it is approximately 6 million years old. Before this, the oldest hominid was Ardipithecus. The discoverers of Orrorin consider it to be the direct ancestor of humans, and all other branches are collateral.
Ardipithecus. In 1994, in the Afar region of Ethiopia, American anthropologist Tim White discovered teeth, skull fragments and limb bones that date back to 4.5-4.3 million years old. There are indications that Ardipithecus walked on two legs, but it is believed that it lived in trees.
Australopithecines (southern apes) lived in Africa from the late Miocene (approximately 5.3 million years ago) to the early Pleistocene (approximately 1.6 million years ago). Most paleoanthropologists consider them to be the ancestors of modern humans, but there is disagreement over whether the different forms of australopithecines represent a single lineage or a series of parallel species. Australopithecus walked on two legs.
Australopithecus anamensis (southern lake monkey) discovered in 1994 by the famous anthropologist Meave Leakey in the town of Kanapoi on the shores of Lake Turkana (northern Kenya). Australopithecus anamensis lived between 4.2 and 3.9 million years ago in coastal forests. The structure of the tibia allows us to conclude that he used two legs to walk.
Australopithecus afarensis (southern Afar monkey) - the famous Lucy, found in 1974 in Hadar (Ethiopia) by Don Johanson. In 1978, footprints attributed to Afarensis were discovered in Laetoli (Tanzania). Australopithecus afarensis lived between 3.8 and 2.8 million years ago and led a mixed arboreal and terrestrial lifestyle. The structure of the bones indicates that he was upright and could run.
Kenyanthropus platiops (flat-faced Kenyan). The discovery of Kenyanthropus was announced by Meave Leakey in March 2001. His skull, found on the western shore of Lake Turkana (Kenya), dates back to 3.5-3.2 million years. Leakey argues that this is a new branch in the hominid family.
Australopithecus barelgasali. In 1995, French paleontologist Michel Brunet discovered part of the jaw in the town of Koro Toro (Chad). This species, dating back to 3.3-3 million years ago, is closely related to Afarensis.
Australopithecus garhi discovered by Tim White in 1997 in the Bowri Valley, Afar region (Ethiopia). Garhi means "surprise" in the local dialect. This species, which lived approximately 2.5-2.3 million years ago, already knew how to use stone tools.
Australopithecus africanus(African southern monkey) described by Raymond Dart in 1925. This species has a more developed skull than Afarensis, but a more primitive skeleton. He probably lived 3-2.3 million years ago. The light structure of the bones indicates that it lives primarily in trees.
Paranthropus ethiopicus. Paranthropus is close to Australopithecus, but has more massive jaws and teeth. The earliest massive hominid, Aethiopicus, was found near Lake Turkana (Kenya) and in Ethiopia. The most famous example is the "black skull". Paranthropus ethiopicus dates back to 2.5-2.3 million years ago. It had massive jaws and teeth suitable for chewing the rough plant food of the African savannas.
Paranthropus boisei discovered by Louis Leakey in 1959 near Lake Turkana (Kenya) and in the Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania). Boisei (dated 2-1.2 million years ago) probably descended from Aethiopicus. Because of its massive jaws and teeth, it is called the “nutcracker.”
Paranthropus robustus- a South African form of a massive hominid, found in 1940 by Robert Broome in the town of Kromdray (South Africa). Robustus is a contemporary of Boisea. Many paleoanthropologists believe that it evolved from Africanus rather than from Aethiopicus. In this case, it should be classified not as a paranthropus, but as a different genus.
Homo rudolfensis discovered by Richard Leakey in 1972 in Kobi Fora near Lake Turkana (Kenya), which at that time bore the colonial name - Lake Rudolf. This species, which lived approximately 2.4-1.9 million years ago, was first classified as a species of Homo habilis, then separated into a separate species. After the discovery of the flat-faced Kenyan, Miv Leakey proposed that Rudolfensis be included in the new genus Kenyanthropus.
Homo habilis(handy man) was first discovered by Louis Leakey in Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania) in 1961. Then his remains were found in Ethiopia and South Africa. Homo habilis lived approximately 2.3-1.6 million years ago. Many scientists now believe that it belongs to the late Australopithecus rather than to the genus Homo.
Homo ergaster. The best example of Ergaster is the so-called "Turkana Youth", whose skeleton was discovered by Richard Leakey and Alan Walker in the town of Narikotome on the shores of Lake Turkana (Kenya) in 1984. Homo ergaster is dated to be 1.75-1.4 million years old. A skull with a similar structure was found in 1991 in Georgia.
Homo erectus(Homo erectus), whose remains were first discovered in Morocco in 1933 and then in Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania) in 1960, lived between 1.6 and 0.3 million years ago. It is believed to have originated from either Homo habilis or Homo ergaster. In South Africa, numerous sites have been found for Erectus, which learned to make fire approximately 1.1 million years ago. Homo erectus was the first hominid to migrate out of Africa, approximately 1.6 million years ago. His remains were found on the island of Java and in China. Erectus, who migrated to Europe, became the ancestor of Neanderthals.
Illustration copyright Philipp Gunz/MPI EVA Leipzig Image caption Reconstruction of the skull of the earliest known Homo sapiens, made using scans of numerous remains from Jebel Irhoud
The idea that modern humans emerged in a single “cradle of humanity” in eastern Africa some 200,000 years ago is no longer tenable, says a new study.
Fossils of five early modern humans discovered in northern Africa show that Homo sapiens appeared at least 100,000 years earlier than previously thought.
A study published in the journal Nature suggests that our species has evolved across the continent.
According to Professor Jean-Jacques Hublen from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, the scientists' discovery could lead to rewriting textbooks on the origins of our species.
“We cannot say that everything developed quickly in some kind of Eden somewhere in Africa. In our opinion, the development was more consistent, and it happened throughout the continent. So if there was a Garden of Eden, then it was all of Africa,” - he adds.
- Scientists: Our ancestors left Africa earlier than expected
- Mysterious Homo naledi - our ancestors or cousins?
- Primitive man turned out to be much younger than previously thought
Professor Hublen spoke at a press conference at the Collège de France in Paris, where he proudly showed journalists fragments of fossil human remains found at Jebel Irhoud in Morocco. These are skulls, teeth and tubular bones.
In the 1960s, at this one of the oldest sites of modern humans, remains were discovered, the age of which was estimated at 40 thousand years. They were considered an African form of Neanderthals, close relatives of Homo sapiens.
However, Professor Hublen was always troubled by this interpretation, and when he began working at the Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology, he decided to reassess the fossil remains from Jebel Irhoud. More than 10 years later, he tells a very different story.
Illustration copyright Shannon McPherron/MPI EVA Leipzig Image caption Jebel Irhoud has been known for more than half a century because of the fossil remains found thereUsing modern technology, he and his colleagues were able to determine that the age of the new finds ranges from 300 thousand to 350 thousand years. And the found skull is almost the same in shape as that of a modern person.
A number of significant differences are noticeable in the slightly more prominent brow ridges and smaller cerebral ventricles (cavities in the brain filled with cerebrospinal fluid).
Excavations also revealed that these ancient people used stone tools and learned to start and make fire. Therefore, they not only looked like Homo sapiens, they behaved the same.
To date, the earliest fossil remains of this type have been discovered at Omo Kibish in Ethiopia. Their age is about 195 thousand years.
"We now need to reconsider our understanding of how the first modern humans came to be," says Professor Hublen.
Before the emergence of Homo sapiens, there were many different primitive human species. Each of them looked different from the others, and each of them had their own strengths and weaknesses. And each of these species, like animals, evolved and gradually changed appearance. This happened over hundreds of thousands of years.
The previously accepted view was that Homo sapiens evolved unexpectedly from more primitive species in eastern Africa about 200,000 years ago. And by this moment, modern man had formed in the most general terms. Moreover, it was only then that the modern species was thought to have begun to spread throughout Africa, and then throughout the planet.
However, Professor Hublen's discoveries may dispel these notions.
Illustration copyright Jean-Jacques Hublin/MPI-EVA, Leipzig Image caption Fragment of the lower jaw of Homo sapiens, found in Jebel IrhoudThe age of finds in many of the excavation sites in Africa dates back to 300 thousand years. Similar tools and evidence of the use of fire have been discovered in many places. But there are no fossil remains on them.
Since most experts based their research on the assumption that our species appeared no earlier than 200 thousand years ago, it was believed that these places were inhabited by more ancient, other species of humans. However, the findings at Jebel Irhoud suggest that it was actually Homo sapiens who left their mark there.
Illustration copyright Mohammed Kamal, MPI EVA Leipzig Image caption Stone tools found by Professor Hublen's team"This shows that there were many places across Africa where Homo sapiens emerged. We need to move away from the assumption that there was one cradle of humanity," said Professor Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London, who was not involved in the study.
According to him, there is a high probability that Homo sapiens could even exist at the same time and outside of Africa: “We have fossil remains from Israel, probably of the same age, and they have features similar to those of Homo sapiens.”
Professor Stringer says it is possible that primitive humans with smaller brains, larger faces, and strong brow ridges - nonetheless belonging to Homo sapiens - could have existed in earlier times, perhaps even half a million years ago. This is an incredible change in the until recently dominant ideas about the origin of man,
“20 years ago I said that only those who are like us can be called Homo sapiens. There was an idea that Homo sapiens suddenly appeared in Africa at a certain time and he laid the foundation for our species. But now it seems that I was wrong "Professor Stringer told the BBC.
Homo sapiens, or Homo sapiens, has undergone many changes since its inception - both in the structure of the body and in social and spiritual development.
The emergence of people who had a modern physical appearance (type) and changed occurred in the Late Paleolithic. Their skeletons were first discovered in the Cro-Magnon Grotto in France, so people of this type were called Cro-Magnons. It was they who were characterized by a complex of all the basic physiological characteristics that are characteristic of us. They reached a high level in comparison with that of Neanderthals. Scientists consider the Cro-Magnons to be our direct ancestors.
For some time, this type of people existed simultaneously with the Neanderthals, who later died, since only the Cro-Magnons were sufficiently adapted to environmental conditions. It is among them that stone tools go out of use and are replaced by more skillfully crafted ones made from bone and horn. In addition, more types of these tools appear - all kinds of drills, scrapers, harpoons and needles appear. This makes people more independent of climatic conditions and allows them to explore new territories. Homo sapiens also changes his behavior towards elders, a connection appears between generations - continuity of traditions, transfer of experience and knowledge.
To summarize the above, we can highlight the main aspects of the formation of the species Homo sapiens:
- spiritual and psychological development that leads to self-knowledge and the development of abstract thinking. As a consequence, the emergence of art, as evidenced by cave drawings and paintings;
- pronunciation of articulate sounds (the origin of speech);
- thirst for knowledge to pass it on to their fellow tribesmen;
- creation of new, more advanced tools;
- which made it possible to tame (domesticate) wild animals and cultivate plants.
These events became an important milestone in the development of man. It was they who allowed him not to depend on his environment and
even exercise control over some of its aspects. Homo sapiens continues to undergo changes, the most important of which becomes
Taking advantage of the benefits of modern civilization and progress, man is still trying to establish power over the forces of nature: changing the flow of rivers, draining swamps, populating territories where life was previously impossible.
According to the modern classification, the species “Homo sapiens” is divided into 2 subspecies - “Homo Idaltu” and “Human” This division into subspecies appeared after the discovery in 1997 of remains that had some anatomical features similar to the skeleton of a modern person, in particular the size of the skull.
According to scientific data, Homo sapiens appeared 70-60 thousand years ago, and during all this time of his existence as a species, he improved under the influence only of social forces, because no changes were found in the anatomical and physiological structure.
Where did Homo sapiens come from?
We - people - are so different! Black, yellow and white, tall and short, brunettes and blondes, smart and not so smart... But the blue-eyed Scandinavian giant, the dark-skinned pygmy from the Andaman Islands, and the dark-skinned nomad from the African Sahara - they are all just part of one, single humanity. And this statement is not a poetic image, but a strictly established scientific fact, supported by the latest data from molecular biology. But where to look for the sources of this multifaceted living ocean? Where, when and how did the first human being appear on the planet? It’s amazing, but even in our enlightened times, almost half of the US population and a significant proportion of Europeans give their votes to the divine act of creation, and among the remaining there are many supporters of alien intervention, which, in fact, is not much different from God’s providence. However, even standing on solid scientific evolutionary positions, it is impossible to answer this question unequivocally.
"A man has no reason to be ashamed
ape-like ancestors. I'd rather be ashamed
come from a vain and talkative person,
who, not content with dubious success
in his own activities, interferes
into scientific disputes about which there is no
representation".
T. Huxley (1869)
Not everyone knows that the roots of a version of the origin of man, different from the biblical one, in European science go back to the foggy 1600s, when the works of the Italian philosopher L. Vanini and the English lord, lawyer and theologian M. Hale with the eloquent titles “O the original origin of man" (1615) and "The original origin of the human race, considered and tested according to the light of nature" (1671).
The baton of thinkers who recognized the kinship of humans and animals such as monkeys in the 18th century. was picked up by the French diplomat B. De Mallieu, and then by D. Burnett, Lord Monboddo, who proposed the idea of a common origin of all anthropoids, including humans and chimpanzees. And the French naturalist J.-L. Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, in his multi-volume “Natural History of Animals,” published a century before Charles Darwin’s scientific bestseller “The Descent of Man and Sexual Selection” (1871), directly stated that man descended from the ape.
So, by the end of the 19th century. the idea of man as a product of a long evolution of more primitive humanoid creatures was fully formed and matured. Moreover, in 1863, the German evolutionary biologist E. Haeckel even christened a hypothetical creature that should serve as an intermediate link between man and ape, Pithecanthropus alatus, i.e., an ape-man deprived of speech (from the Greek pithekos - monkey and anthropos - man). All that remained was to discover this Pithecanthropus “in the flesh,” which was done in the early 1890s. Dutch anthropologist E. Dubois, who found on the island. Java remains of a primitive hominin.
From that moment on, primitive man received an “official residence permit” on planet Earth, and the question of geographic centers and the course of anthropogenesis came onto the agenda - no less acute and controversial than the very origin of man from ape-like ancestors. And thanks to the amazing discoveries of recent decades, made jointly by archaeologists, anthropologists and paleogeneticists, the problem of the formation of modern humans again, as in the time of Darwin, received enormous public resonance, going beyond the usual scientific discussion.
African cradle
The history of the search for the ancestral home of modern man, full of amazing discoveries and unexpected plot twists, at the initial stages was a chronicle of anthropological finds. The attention of natural scientists was primarily drawn to the Asian continent, including Southeast Asia, where Dubois discovered the bone remains of the first hominin, later named Homo erectus (homo erectus). Then in the 1920-1930s. in Central Asia, in the Zhoukoudian cave in Northern China, numerous fragments of skeletons of 44 individuals that lived there 460-230 thousand years ago were found. These people, named Sinanthropus, at one time considered the oldest link in the human family tree.
In the history of science it is difficult to find a more exciting and controversial problem that attracts universal interest than the problem of the origin of life and the formation of its intellectual pinnacle - humanityHowever, Africa gradually emerged as the “cradle of humanity.” In 1925, fossil remains of a hominin called Australopithecus, and over the next 80 years, hundreds of similar remains “age” from 1.5 to 7 million years were discovered in the south and east of this continent.
In the area of the East African Rift, stretching in the meridional direction from the Dead Sea basin through the Red Sea and further across the territory of Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania, the most ancient sites with stone products of the Olduvai type (choppers, choppers, roughly retouched flakes, etc.) were found. P.). Including in the river basin. More than 3 thousand primitive stone tools, created by the first representative of the genus, were extracted from under a layer of tuff 2.6 million years old in Kada Gona Homo- a skilled person Homo habilis.
Humanity has sharply “aged”: it became obvious that no later than 6-7 million years ago the common evolutionary trunk was divided into two separate “branches” - apes and australopithecines, the latter of which marked the beginning of a new, “intelligent” path of development. There, in Africa, the earliest fossil remains of people of modern anatomical type were discovered - Homo sapiens, which appeared about 200-150 thousand years ago. Thus, by the 1990s. the theory of the “African” origin of man, supported by the results of genetic studies of different human populations, is becoming generally accepted.
However, between the two extreme points of reference - the most ancient ancestors of man and modern humanity - there are at least six million years, during which man not only acquired his modern appearance, but also occupied almost the entire habitable territory of the planet. And if Homo sapiens appeared at first only in the African part of the world, then when and how did it populate other continents?
Three outcomes
About 1.8-2.0 million years ago, the distant ancestor of modern humans - Homo erectus Homo erectus or someone close to him Homo ergaster first went beyond Africa and began to conquer Eurasia. This was the beginning of the first Great Migration - a long and gradual process that took hundreds of millennia, which can be traced by the finds of fossil remains and typical tools of the archaic stone industry.
In the first migration flow of the oldest hominin populations, two main directions can be outlined - to the north and to the east. The first direction went through the Middle East and the Iranian plateau to the Caucasus (and possibly Asia Minor) and further to Europe. Evidence of this is the oldest Paleolithic sites in Dmanisi (Eastern Georgia) and Atapuerca (Spain), dating back to 1.7-1.6 and 1.2-1.1 million years old, respectively.
To the east, early evidence of human presence - pebble tools dating back 1.65-1.35 million years - were found in caves in South Arabia. Further to the east of Asia, the ancient people moved in two ways: the northern one went to Central Asia, the southern one went to East and Southeast Asia through the territory of modern Pakistan and India. Judging by the dating of quartzite tool sites in Pakistan (1.9 Ma) and China (1.8-1.5 Ma), as well as anthropological finds in Indonesia (1.8-1.6 Ma), early hominins settled space of South, Southeast and East Asia no later than 1.5 million years ago. And on the border of Central and Northern Asia, in Southern Siberia in the territory of Altai, the Early Paleolithic site of Karama was discovered, in the sediments of which four layers with an archaic pebble industry 800-600 thousand years old were identified.
At all the oldest sites in Eurasia, left by migrants of the first wave, pebble tools were discovered, characteristic of the most archaic Olduvai stone industry. At about the same time or somewhat later, representatives of other early hominins came from Africa to Eurasia - carriers of the microlithic stone industry, characterized by the predominance of small-sized products, which moved in almost the same ways as their predecessors. These two ancient technological traditions of stone processing played a key role in the development of the tool activity of primitive humanity.
A second global wave of migrants from Africa spread to the Middle East around 1.5 million years ago. Who were the new migrants? Probably, Homo heidelbergensis (the man of Heidelberg) - a new species of people, combining both Neanderthaloid and sapiens traits. These “new Africans” can be distinguished by their stone tools Acheulean industry, made using more advanced stone processing technologies - the so-called Levallois splitting technique and techniques of double-sided stone processing. Moving east, this migration wave met in many areas with the descendants of the first wave of hominins, which was accompanied by a mixture of two industrial traditions - pebble and late Acheulean.
At the turn of 600 thousand years ago, these immigrants from Africa reached Europe, where Neanderthals subsequently formed - the species closest to modern humans. About 450-350 thousand years ago, bearers of the Acheulean traditions penetrated into the east of Eurasia, reaching India and Central Mongolia, but never reached the eastern and southeastern regions of Asia.
The third exodus from Africa is already associated with a person of a modern anatomical species, who appeared there on the evolutionary arena, as mentioned above, 200-150 thousand years ago. It is assumed that approximately 80-60 thousand years ago Homo sapiens, traditionally considered the bearer of the cultural traditions of the Upper Paleolithic, began to populate other continents: first the eastern part of Eurasia and Australia, later Central Asia and Europe.
And here we come to the most dramatic and controversial part of our history. As genetic research has proven, today's humanity consists entirely of representatives of one species Homo sapiens, if you do not take into account creatures like the mythical yeti. But what happened to the ancient human populations - the descendants of the first and second migration waves from the African continent, who lived in the territories of Eurasia for tens, or even hundreds of thousands of years? Did they leave their mark on the evolutionary history of our species, and if so, how great was their contribution to modern humanity?
Based on the answer to this question, researchers can be divided into two different groups - monocentrists And polycentrists.
Two models of anthropogenesis
At the end of the last century, a monocentric point of view on the process of emergence finally prevailed in anthropogenesis. Homo sapiens– the hypothesis of the “African exodus”, according to which the only ancestral home of Homo sapiens is the “dark continent”, from where he settled throughout the world. Based on the results of studying genetic variability in modern people, its supporters suggest that 80-60 thousand years ago a demographic explosion occurred in Africa, and as a result of a sharp population growth and lack of food resources, another migration wave “splashed out” into Eurasia. Unable to withstand competition with a more evolutionarily advanced species, other contemporary hominins, such as Neanderthals, left the evolutionary distance about 30-25 thousand years ago.
The views of the monocentrists themselves on the course of this process differ. Some believe that new human populations exterminated or forced the indigenous ones into less convenient areas, where their mortality rate increased, especially child mortality, and the birth rate decreased. Others do not exclude the possibility in some cases of long-term coexistence of Neanderthals with modern humans (for example, in the south of the Pyrenees), which could result in the diffusion of cultures and sometimes hybridization. Finally, according to the third point of view, a process of acculturation and assimilation took place, as a result of which the indigenous population simply dissolved into the newcomers.
It is difficult to fully accept all these conclusions without convincing archaeological and anthropological evidence. Even if we agree with the controversial assumption of rapid population growth, it still remains unclear why this migration flow first went not to neighboring territories, but far to the east, all the way to Australia. By the way, although on this path a reasonable person had to cover a distance of over 10 thousand km, no archaeological evidence of this has yet been found. Moreover, judging by archaeological data, during the period 80-30 thousand years ago, no changes occurred in the appearance of the local stone industries of South, Southeast and East Asia, which inevitably had to happen if the indigenous population was replaced by newcomers.
This lack of “road” evidence led to the version that Homo sapiens moved from Africa to eastern Asia along the sea coast, which by our time was under water along with all the Paleolithic traces. But with such a development of events, the African stone industry should have appeared almost unchanged on the islands of Southeast Asia, but archaeological materials 60-30 thousand years old do not confirm this.
The monocentric hypothesis has not yet given satisfactory answers to many other questions. In particular, why did a person of a modern physical type arose at least 150 thousand years ago, and the culture of the Upper Paleolithic, which is traditionally associated only with Homo sapiens, 100 thousand years later? Why is this culture, which appeared almost simultaneously in very distant regions of Eurasia, not as homogeneous as would be expected in the case of a single carrier?
Another, polycentric concept is taken to explain the “dark spots” in human history. According to this hypothesis of interregional human evolution, the formation Homo sapiens could go with equal success both in Africa and in the vast territories of Eurasia, inhabited at one time Homo erectus. It is the continuous development of the ancient population in each region that explains, according to polycentricists, the fact that the cultures of the early Upper Paleolithic in Africa, Europe, East Asia and Australia are so significantly different from each other. And although from the point of view of modern biology the formation of the same species (in the strict sense of the word) in such different, geographically distant territories is an unlikely event, there could have been an independent, parallel process of evolution of primitive man towards homo sapiens with his developed material and spiritual culture.
Below we present a number of archaeological, anthropological and genetic evidence in favor of this thesis related to the evolution of the primitive population of Eurasia.
Oriental man
Judging by numerous archaeological finds, in East and Southeast Asia the development of the stone industry about 1.5 million years ago went in a fundamentally different direction than in the rest of Eurasia and Africa. Surprisingly, for more than a million years, the technology of making tools in the Sino-Malay zone has not undergone significant changes. Moreover, as mentioned above, in this stone industry for the period 80-30 thousand years ago, when people of a modern anatomical type should have appeared here, no radical innovations have been identified - neither new stone processing technologies, nor new types of tools.
In terms of anthropological evidence, the largest number of known skeletal remains Homo erectus was found in China and Indonesia. Despite some differences, they form a fairly homogeneous group. Particularly noteworthy is the volume of the brain (1152-1123 cm 3) Homo erectus, found in Yunxian County, China. The significant advancement of the morphology and culture of these ancient people, who lived about 1 million years ago, is demonstrated by the stone tools discovered next to them.
The next link in the evolution of Asian Homo erectus found in Northern China, in the caves of Zhoukoudian. This hominin, similar to Javan Pithecanthropus, was included in the genus Homo as a subspecies Homo erectus pekinensis. According to some anthropologists, all these fossil remains of early and later forms of primitive people line up in a fairly continuous evolutionary series, almost to Homo sapiens.
Thus, it can be considered proven that in East and Southeast Asia, for more than a million years, there was an independent evolutionary development of the Asian form Homo erectus. Which, by the way, does not exclude the possibility of migration of small populations from neighboring regions here and, accordingly, the possibility of gene exchange. At the same time, due to the process of divergence, these primitive people themselves could have developed pronounced differences in morphology. An example is paleoanthropological finds from the island. Java, which differ from similar Chinese finds of the same time: while maintaining the basic features Homo erectus, in a number of characteristics they are close to Homo sapiens.
As a result, at the beginning of the Upper Pleistocene in East and Southeast Asia, on the basis of the local form of erecti, a hominin was formed, anatomically close to humans of the modern physical type. This can be confirmed by new dating obtained for Chinese paleoanthropological finds with features of “sapiens”, according to which people of modern appearance could have lived in this region already 100 thousand years ago.
Return of the Neanderthal
The first representative of archaic people to become known to science is a Neanderthal Homo neanderthalensis. Neanderthals lived mainly in Europe, but traces of their presence were also found in the Middle East, Western and Central Asia, and southern Siberia. These short, stocky people, who had great physical strength and were well adapted to the harsh climatic conditions of northern latitudes, were not inferior in brain volume (1400 cm 3) to people of modern physical type.
Over the century and a half that has passed since the discovery of the first remains of Neanderthals, hundreds of their sites, settlements and burials have been studied. It turned out that these archaic people not only created very advanced tools, but also demonstrated elements of behavior characteristic of Homo sapiens. Thus, the famous archaeologist A. P. Okladnikov in 1949 discovered a Neanderthal burial with possible traces of a funeral rite in the Teshik-Tash cave (Uzbekistan).
In the Obi-Rakhmat cave (Uzbekistan), stone tools dating back to a turning point were discovered - the period of transition of the Middle Paleolithic culture to the Upper Paleolithic. Moreover, the human fossils discovered here provide a unique opportunity to restore the appearance of the man who carried out the technological and cultural revolution.Until the beginning of the 21st century. Many anthropologists considered Neanderthals to be the ancestral form of modern humans, but after analysis of mitochondrial DNA from their remains, they began to be viewed as a dead-end branch. It was believed that Neanderthals were displaced and replaced by modern humans - a native of Africa. However, further anthropological and genetic studies showed that the relationship between Neanderthal and Homo sapiens was far from simple. According to recent data, up to 4 % of the genome of modern humans (non-Africans) was borrowed from Homo neanderthalensis. There is now no doubt that in the border areas inhabited by these human populations, not only cultural diffusion occurred, but also hybridization and assimilation.
Today, the Neanderthal is already classified as a sister group to modern humans, restoring its status as a “human ancestor.”
In the rest of Eurasia, the formation of the Upper Paleolithic followed a different scenario. Let us trace this process using the example of the Altai region, which is associated with sensational results obtained through paleogenetic analysis of anthropological finds from the Denisov and Okladnikov caves.
Our regiment has arrived!
As mentioned above, the initial human settlement of the Altai territory occurred no later than 800 thousand years ago during the first migration wave from Africa. The uppermost culture-containing horizon of sediments of the oldest Paleolithic site in the Asian part of Russia, Karama, in the valley of the river. Anui was formed about 600 thousand years ago, and then there was a long break in the development of Paleolithic culture in this territory. However, about 280 thousand years ago, carriers of more advanced stone processing techniques appeared in Altai, and from that time, as field studies show, there was a continuous development of the culture of Paleolithic man here.
Over the last quarter of a century, about 20 sites in caves and on the slopes of mountain valleys have been explored in this region, and over 70 cultural horizons of the Early, Middle and Upper Paleolithic have been studied. For example, in Denisova Cave alone, 13 Paleolithic layers have been identified. The most ancient finds dating back to the early stage of the Middle Paleolithic were found in a layer aged 282-170 thousand years, to the Middle Paleolithic - 155-50 thousand years, to the upper - 50-20 thousand years. Such a long and “continuous” chronicle makes it possible to trace the dynamics of changes in stone implements over many tens of thousands of years. And it turned out that this process went quite smoothly, through gradual evolution, without external “disturbances” - innovations.
Archaeological data indicate that already 50-45 thousand years ago the Upper Paleolithic began in Altai, and the origins of the Upper Paleolithic cultural traditions can be clearly traced to the final stage of the Middle Paleolithic. Evidence of this is provided by miniature bone needles with a drilled eye, pendants, beads and other non-utilitarian objects made of bone, ornamental stone and mollusk shells, as well as truly unique finds - fragments of a bracelet and a stone ring with traces of grinding, polishing and drilling.
Unfortunately, Paleolithic sites in Altai are relatively poor in anthropological finds. The most significant of them - teeth and skeletal fragments from two caves, Okladnikov and Denisova, were studied at the Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology. Max Planck (Leipzig, Germany) by an international team of geneticists under the leadership of Professor S. Paabo.
Boy from the Stone Age“And that time, as usual, they called Okladnikov.
- Bone.
He approached, bent down and began to carefully clean it with a brush. And his hand trembled. There was not one bone, but many. Fragments of a human skull. Yes Yes! Human! A find he never even dared to dream about.
But maybe the person was buried recently? Bones decay over the years and hope that they can lie in the ground undecayed for tens of thousands of years... This happens, but it is extremely rare. Science has known very few such finds in the history of mankind.
But what if?
He called quietly:
- Verochka!
She came up and bent down.
“It’s a skull,” she whispered. - Look, he's crushed.
The skull lay upside down. He was apparently crushed by a falling block of earth. The skull is small! Boy or girl.
With a shovel and brush, Okladnikov began to expand the excavation. The spatula hit something else hard. Bone. Another one. More... Skeleton. Small. Skeleton of a child. Apparently, some animal made its way into the cave and gnawed the bones. They were scattered, some were gnawed, bitten.
But when did this child live? In what years, centuries, millennia? If he was the young owner of the cave when the people who processed the stones lived here... Oh! It's scary to even think about. If so, then this is a Neanderthal. A man who lived tens, maybe a hundred thousand years ago. He should have brow ridges on his forehead and a slanted chin.
It was easiest to turn the skull over and take a look. But this would disrupt the excavation plan. We must complete the excavations around it, but leave it alone. The excavation around will deepen, and the child’s bones will remain as if on a pedestal.
Okladnikov consulted with Vera Dmitrievna. She agreed with him....
... The child's bones were not touched. They were even covered up. They dug around them. The excavation deepened, and they lay on an earthen pedestal. Every day the pedestal became higher. It seemed to rise from the depths of the earth.
On the eve of that memorable day, Okladnikov could not sleep. He lay with his hands behind his head and looked at the black southern sky. Far, far away the stars swarmed. There were so many of them that they seemed crowded. And yet, from this distant world, filled with awe, there was a breath of peace. I wanted to think about life, about eternity, about the distant past and the distant future.
What did ancient man think about when he looked at the sky? It was the same as it is now. And it probably happened that he couldn’t sleep. He lay in a cave and looked at the sky. Did he only know how to remember or was he already dreaming? What kind of person was this? The stones told a lot of things. But they kept silent about a lot.
Life buries its traces in the depths of the earth. New traces fall on them and also go deeper. And so century after century, millennium after millennium. Life deposits its past in the earth in layers. From them, as if leafing through the pages of history, the archaeologist could recognize the deeds of the people who lived here. And find out, almost unmistakably, determining in what times they lived here.
Lifting the veil over the past, the earth was removed in layers, as time had deposited them.”
Excerpt from the book by E. I. Derevyanko, A. B. Zakstelsky “The Path of Distant Millennia”
Paleogenetic studies have confirmed that the remains of Neanderthals were discovered in Okladnikov Cave. But the results of decoding mitochondrial and then nuclear DNA from bone samples found in the Denisova Cave in the cultural layer of the initial stage of the Upper Paleolithic gave the researchers a surprise. It turned out that we are talking about a new fossil hominin unknown to science, which was named after the place of its discovery Altai man Homo sapiens altaiensis, or Denisovan.
The Denisovan genome differs from the reference genome of a modern African by 11.7 %; for the Neanderthal from Vindija Cave in Croatia, this figure was 12.2 %. This similarity suggests that Neanderthals and Denisovans are sister groups with a common ancestor that separated from the main human evolutionary trunk. These two groups diverged about 640 thousand years ago, embarking on a path of independent development. This is evidenced by the fact that Neanderthals share common genetic variants with modern people of Eurasia, while part of the genetic material of Denisovans was borrowed by Melanesians and indigenous people of Australia, who stand apart from other non-African human populations.
Judging by archaeological data, in the northwestern part of Altai 50-40 thousand years ago, two different groups of primitive people lived nearby - the Denisovans and the easternmost population of Neanderthals, who came here around the same time, most likely from the territory of modern Uzbekistan . And the roots of the culture, the carriers of which were the Denisovans, as already mentioned, can be traced in the ancient horizons of the Denisova Cave. At the same time, judging by the many archaeological finds reflecting the development of the Upper Paleolithic culture, the Denisovans were not only not inferior, but in some respects even superior to the man of modern physical appearance who lived at the same time in other territories.
So, in Eurasia during the late Pleistocene, in addition to Homo sapiens There were at least two more forms of hominins: Neanderthal - in the western part of the continent, and in the east - Denisovan. Taking into account the drift of genes from Neanderthals to Eurasians, and from Denisovans to Melanesians, we can assume that both of these groups took part in the formation of a person of the modern anatomical type.
Taking into account all the archaeological, anthropological and genetic materials available today from the most ancient locations of Africa and Eurasia, it can be assumed that there were several zones on the globe in which an independent process of population evolution took place Homo erectus and development of stone processing technologies. Accordingly, each of these zones developed its own cultural traditions, its own models of transition from the Middle to Upper Paleolithic.
Thus, at the basis of the entire evolutionary sequence, the crown of which was man of the modern anatomical type, lies the ancestral form Homo erectus sensu lato*. Probably, in the late Pleistocene, the human species of modern anatomical and genetic appearance was ultimately formed from it Homo sapiens, which included four forms that can be called Homo sapiens africaniensis(Eastern and Southern Africa), Homo sapiens neanderthalensis(Europe), Homo sapiens orientalensis(Southeast and East Asia) and Homo sapiens altaiensis(North and Central Asia). Most likely, a proposal to unite all these primitive people into a single species Homo sapiens will cause doubts and objections among many researchers, but it is based on a large volume of analytical material, only a small part of which is given above.
Obviously, not all of these subspecies made an equal contribution to the formation of man of the modern anatomical type: the greatest genetic diversity had Homo sapiens africaniensis, and it was he who became the basis of modern man. However, the latest data from paleogenetic studies regarding the presence of Neanderthal and Denisovan genes in the gene pool of modern humanity show that other groups of ancient people did not remain aloof from this process.
Today, archaeologists, anthropologists, geneticists and other specialists dealing with the problem of human origins have accumulated a huge amount of new data, on the basis of which they can put forward different hypotheses, sometimes diametrically opposed. The time has come to discuss them in detail under one indispensable condition: the problem of human origin is multidisciplinary, and new ideas should be based on a comprehensive analysis of the results obtained by specialists from a variety of sciences. Only this path will one day lead us to a solution to one of the most controversial issues that has troubled the minds of people for centuries - the formation of reason. After all, according to the same Huxley, “each of our strongest beliefs can be overthrown or, in any case, changed by further advances of knowledge.”
*Homo erectus sensu lato - Homo erectus in the broadest sense
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For a long time in the Anthropocene, biological factors and patterns were gradually replaced by social ones, which finally ensured the appearance of a modern type of man in the Upper Paleolithic - Homo sapiens, or reasonable man. In 1868, five human skeletons were discovered in the Cro-Magnon cave in France, along with stone tools and drilled shells, which is why Homo sapiens are often called Cro-Magnons. Before Homo sapiens appeared on the planet, there was another humanoid species called Neanderthals. They populated almost the entire Earth and were distinguished by their large size and serious physical strength. Their brain volume was almost the same as that of a modern earthling - 1330 cm3.
Neanderthals lived during the Great Ice Age, so they had to wear clothes made from animal skins and hide from the cold in the depths of caves. Their only rival in natural conditions could only be a saber-toothed tiger. Our ancestors had highly developed brow ridges; they had a powerful, forward jaw with large teeth. The remains found in the Palestinian cave of Es-Shoul, on Mount Carmel, clearly indicate that Neanderthals are the ancestors of modern humans. These remains combine both ancient Neanderthal features and features characteristic of modern humans.
It is assumed that the transition from Neanderthal to man of the current type took place in the most climatically favorable regions of the globe, in particular in the Mediterranean, Western and Central Asia, Crimea and the Caucasus. Recent studies show that Neanderthal man lived for some time even at the same time as Cro-Magnon man, the direct predecessor of modern man. Today, Neanderthals are considered to be a kind of side branch of the evolution of Homo sapiens.
Cro-Magnons appeared about 40 thousand years ago in East Africa. They populated Europe and, within a very short period, completely replaced the Neanderthals. Unlike their ancestors, Cro-Magnons were distinguished by a large, active brain, thanks to which they took an unprecedented step forward in a short period of time.
Since Homo sapiens lived in many regions of the planet with different natural and climatic conditions, this left a certain imprint on his appearance. Already in the Upper Paleolithic era, the racial types of modern man began to develop: Negroid-Australoid, Euro-Asian and Asian-American, or Mongoloid. Representatives of different races differ in skin color, eye shape, hair color and type, skull length and shape, and body proportions.
Hunting became the most important activity for Cro-Magnons. They learned to make darts, tips and spears, invented bone needles, used them to sew the skins of foxes, arctic foxes and wolves, and also began to build dwellings from mammoth bones and other improvised materials.
For collective hunting, building houses and making tools, people began to live in clan communities, consisting of several large families. Women were considered the core of the clan and were mistresses in common dwellings. The growth of the frontal lobes of a person contributed to the complexity of his social life and the variety of work activities, and ensured the further evolution of physiological functions, motor skills and associative thinking.
The technology for producing labor tools was gradually improved, and their range increased. Having learned to take advantage of his developed intellect, Homo sapiens became the sovereign master of all life on Earth. In addition to hunting mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, wild horses and bison, as well as gathering, Homo sapiens also mastered fishing. The way of life of people also changed - a gradual settlement of individual groups of hunters and gatherers began in forest-steppe areas rich in vegetation and game. 
Man learned to tame animals and domesticate some plants. This is how cattle breeding and agriculture appeared.
A sedentary lifestyle ensured the rapid development of production and culture, which led to the flourishing of housing and economic construction, the production of various tools, and the invention of spinning and weaving. A completely new type of economic management began to take shape, and people began to depend less on the vagaries of nature. This led to an increase in the birth rate and the spread of human civilization to new territories. The production of more advanced tools became possible thanks to the development of gold, copper, silver, tin and lead around the 4th millennium BC. There was a social division of labor and specialization of individual tribes in production activities, depending on certain natural and climatic conditions.
We draw conclusions: at the very beginning, human evolution occurred at a very slow pace. It took several million years since the emergence of our earliest ancestors for man to reach the stage of his development at which he learned to create the first cave paintings.
But with the appearance of Homo sapiens on the planet, all of his abilities began to develop rapidly, and in a relatively short period of time, man became the dominant form of life on Earth. Today our civilization has already reached 7 billion people and continues to grow. At the same time, the mechanisms of natural selection and evolution are still at work, but these processes are slow and rarely amenable to direct observation. The emergence of Homo sapiens and the subsequent rapid development of human civilization led to the fact that nature gradually began to be used by people to satisfy their own needs. The impact of people on the biosphere of the planet has produced significant changes in it - the species composition of the organic world in the environment and the nature of the Earth as a whole has changed.