It is unlikely that there will be a person who will take the liberty of drawing an unambiguous conclusion about whether Neanderthals died out or were assimilated into subsequent species and generations of representatives of the human race. The name of this subspecies was determined by the Neanderthal Gorge in Western Germany, where an ancient skull was found. At first, people working in this place suspected criminal implications of the find, and therefore got scared and called the police. But the event turned out to be more significant for history.

Period the rise of Neanderthal man(Fig. 1), who lived in Europe and Western Asia (starting from the Middle East - and ending with Southern Siberia), is considered to be a period of time of 130-28 thousand years, going back centuries. Despite the many signs of the structure of the body and head, as well as behavioral features that make Homo neanderthalensis similar to modern man, the harsh living conditions left a peculiar imprint in the form of a massive skeleton and skull. But this fellow countryman of ours from the past, specialized in a predatory lifestyle, could already be proud of his brain volume, which in its value exceeds the average indicators characteristic of even many of our contemporaries.

Rice. 1 - Neanderthal

The discovery did not produce the desired success at first. The significance of this discovery was realized much later. It so happened that it was this species of fossil people that was given greatest number works and time of scientists. As it turned out, even among representatives of the human race of non-African origin living in our time, 2.5% of genes are Neanderthal.

External features of a Neanderthal

Upright, but stooped and stocky representatives of this subspecies of Homo sapiens, who experienced all the hardships of existence during the period of total glaciation, had a height of: 1.6-1.7 meters - in men; 1.5-1.6 - in women. Skeletal heaviness and solid muscle mass combined with a cranium volume of 1400-1740 cm³ and a brain volume of 1200-1600 cm³. It seemed that the short neck was bending forward under the weight of the large head, and the low forehead seemed to be running back. Despite the size of the skull and brain, almost the same as that of all of us, inhabitants of the 21st century, the Neanderthal is distinguished by some flattening, large width and flatness of the frontal lobes. The largest part of the brain is the occipital lobe, which extends sharply backwards.

Rice. 2 - Neanderthal skull

Forced to eat rough food, these people could boast of very strong teeth. Their cheekbones would surprise us with their width, and their jaw muscles with their power. But despite the size of the jaws, they do not protrude forward. But there is no point in talking about facial beauty by our standards, since the unflattering impression of heavy brow ridges and a small chin is enhanced by the sight of a huge nose. But such an organ is simply necessary to warm cold air during inhalation and protect the upper and lower respiratory tract.

There is an assumption that Neanderthals had pale skin and red hair, and men did not grow beards or mustaches. The structure of their vocal apparatus is such that there is every reason to draw a conclusion regarding their conversational capabilities. But their speech was partly like singing.

The resistance of people of this type to cold can be explained not only by the characteristics of their body, but also by the hypertrophied proportions of the body. The impressive width at the shoulders, the width of the pelvis, the power of the muscles and the barrel-shaped chest turned the body into some kind of ball, which worked to increase the intensity of warming and reduce heat loss. They not only had short arms, rather similar to paws, but also a shortened tibia, which, given the density of the body, inevitably led to a decrease in the step and, accordingly, to an increase in energy consumption for walking (compared to people of our time - up to 32%).

Diet

The increased need to replenish energy reserves is easily explained by the hardships of life at that time. Based on this, it becomes clear why they could not do without regularly eating meat. For many millennia, Neanderthals collectively hunted mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, bison, cave bears and other large animals. Another item on the menu was roots obtained using digging knives. But they did not eat milk, since German anthropologists were able to discover a gene belonging to a Neanderthal, due to which this product was not absorbed by the body of a mature person.

Dwellings

Of course, the most reliable and safe housing were caves, where one could distinguish a kitchen area with the remains of eaten animals, a sleeping place next to a large fireplace, and also a workshop. But often they had to build mobile dwellings (Fig. 3) in the form of huts from large mammoth bones and animal skins. Neanderthals usually settled in groups of 30-40 people, and marriages between close relatives were not uncommon.

Rice. 3 - Mobile home of Neanderthals

Attitude towards death

During the time of the Neanderthals, the whole family took part in burying the dead. The bodies of the dead were sprinkled with ocher, and to block access to them for wild animals, large stones and skulls of deer, rhinoceroses, hyenas or bears were piled on the grave, which served as part of some kind of ritual. In addition, food, toys and weapons (spears, darts, clubs) were placed next to dead relatives. It was Neanderthals who were the first in human history to place flowers on graves. These facts confirm their belief in afterlife and the beginning of the formation of religious ideas.

Tools for labor and cultural purposes

To collect roots, the Neanderthal deftly wielded digging knives, and to protect himself and his relatives, as well as for hunting, they used spears and clubs, since they did not have throwing weapons or bows and arrows. And the decoration of various products was done using drills. The fact that people, surrounded by a hostile world with many hardships and dangers, valued beauty is evidenced by the 4-hole flute of that time. Made from bone, it could produce a melody from three notes: “do”, “re”, “mi”. The ideas of this subspecies of people about art are eloquently illustrated by a find made near the town of La Roche-Cotard in 2003, which is a 10-centimeter stone sculpture in the form of a human face. The age of this product dates back to 35 thousand years.

It is not entirely clear how to perceive the parallel scratches on the bones found near Arcy-sur-Cure, Bachokiro, in Molodova, as well as the pits on the stone slab. And there are no questions about the use of jewelry made from drilled animal teeth and painted shells. The remains indicate that Neanderthals decorated themselves with compositions of feathers of different lengths and colors. different types birds (22 species) whose feathers were cut off. Scientists were able to identify the bones of a bearded vulture, a falcon, a black Eurasian vulture, a golden eagle, a wood pigeon and an alpine jackdaw. At the Pronyatin site in Ukraine, an image of a leopard from 30-40 thousand years ago was found scratched on a bone.

Neanderthals, considered carriers of the Mousterian culture, used disc-shaped and single-area cores in stone processing. Their techniques for creating scrapers, points, drills and knives were characterized by breaking off wide flakes and using trimming along the edges. But the processing of bone material has not received proper development. The beginnings of art are confirmed by finds with a hint of ornament (pits, crosses, stripes). On the same scale it is worth putting the presence of traces of ocher staining and the discovery of the semblance of a pencil in the form of a piece ground off as a result of use.

Issues of medicine and care for relatives

If you examine it with utmost care neanderthal skeletons(Fig. 4), on which there are traces of fractures and their treatment, then one cannot help but admit that already at this stage of the development of civilization the services of a chiropractor were provided. From total number studied injuries, effectiveness medical care amounted to 70%. To help people and their animals, this problem had to be dealt with professionally. The concern of fellow tribesmen for their neighbors is confirmed by excavations in Iraq (Shanidar Cave), where the remains of Neanderthals with broken ribs and a broken skull were found under rubble. Apparently, the wounded were in safe place, when the rest of their relatives were engaged in work and hunting.

Rice. 4 - Neanderthal skeleton

Genetics issues

Judging by the deciphering of the Neanderthal genome from 2006, there is every reason to assert that the divergence between our ancestors and this subspecies dates back 500 thousand years ago, even before the races known to us spread. True, the DNA similarity between Neanderthals and modern humans is 99.5%. The ancestors of the Caucasoid race are considered to be the Cro-Magnons, who had hostile relations with the Neanderthals, which is confirmed by the remains of gnawed bones from each other at sites. Necklaces made of human teeth, as well as shin bones with a cut-off joint, used as caskets, also serve as evidence of the confrontation.

The struggle for territory is evidenced by the periodic transition of caves from Neanderthals to Cro-Magnons - and vice versa. Judging by the equivalence of technologies of both types, driving force their development could be climate change: with the onset of cold weather, the hardy and strong Neanderthal gained the upper hand, and with warming, the heat-loving homo sapiens. But there is also an assumption regarding crossing between them. Moreover, in the genomes of many modern peoples by 2010, Neanderthal genes had been discovered.

As a result of comparison Neanderthal genome with analogues of our contemporaries from China, France, and Papua New Guinea, the likelihood of interbreeding was recognized. How did this happen: did men bring Neanderthals into their tribe, or did women choose Neanderthals known as good hunters? This suggests the assumption that Neanderthals are some kind of alternative branch of human development that has disappeared over the centuries. Who else besides them can be considered super native Europeans? It was the Neanderthal who first populated Europe - and reigned here unchallenged for hundreds of millennia. In terms of their level of predatory nature, only the Eskimos can compare with them, whose diet consists almost 100% of meat dishes.

The fate of the Neanderthals: versions and assumptions

To answer the question regarding the disappearance of the Neanderthals, one can take into account any of the modern concepts. One of them is the opinion of Alesha Hodlicka, an anthropologist from the United States, who considers Neanderthals to be our ancestors at one of the stages of human development. According to his hypothesis, there is a gradual transition of the Neanderthal into the Cro-Magnon group. The theory regarding the extermination of one species by another has the right to life. There is also a version regarding Bigfoot, as the last representative of an extinct subspecies. Or maybe Neanderthals continued their race in the form of mestizos homo sapiens.

1. Origin of the name

1.1 The time and place of appearance of Homo sapiens has been revised

3. Physiological features

6. Culture

6.1 Dwellings

6.2 Customs

6.3 Art

6.4 Science (medicine)

7. The settlement of Europe by Cro-Magnons. Displacement of Neanderthals from lowlands to midlands and highlands

8. Disappearance

9. The emergence and development of speech. Linguistics

10. Notes

11. Literature

Neanderthal man (lat. Homo neanderthalensis or Homo sapiens neanderthalensis) is a fossil species of people who lived 300-24 thousand years ago. Due to assimilation with Cro-Magnons, it is partly the ancestor of modern humans.

1. Origin of the name

The name comes from the discovery of a skull discovered in 1856 in the Neanderthal Gorge near Düsseldorf and Erkrath (West Germany). The gorge was named in honor of Joachim Neander, a German theologian and composer. Two years later (in 1858), Schaafhausen introduced the term “Neanderthal” into scientific use.

1.1 The time and place of appearance of Homo sapiens has been revised

An international team of paleontologists has reconsidered the time and place of the origin of Homo sapiens. The corresponding study was published in the journal Nature, and Science News briefly reported on it.
Experts have discovered on the territory of modern Morocco the remains of the oldest known to science representative of Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens lived in northwestern Africa 300 thousand years ago.
In total, the authors examined 22 fragments of skulls, jaws, teeth, legs and hands of five people, including at least one child. The remains found in Morocco are distinguished from modern representatives of Homo sapiens by the elongated back of the skull and large teeth, which makes them similar to Neanderthals.
Previously, the oldest remains of Homo sapiens were considered to be samples found on the territory of modern Ethiopia, the age of which was estimated at 200 thousand years.
Experts agree that the find will make it possible to advance our understanding of how and when the appearance of Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons occurred.

2. Major fossil finds

Findings of typical Neanderthal fossils

Neanderthals inhabited:

Europe: Neanderthal in Germany, La Chapelle-aux-Saints in France, Kiik-Koba in Crimea, Peloponnese in Greece

Caucasus: Mezmayskaya cave in Krasnodar region

Central Asia (Teshik-Tash) and Altai (Okladnikov Cave)

Near and Middle East: Carmel in Israel, Shanidar in Iraqi Kurdistan.

3. Physiological features

Neanderthals had average height (about 165 cm), a massive build and a large head unusual shape. In terms of cranium volume (1400-1740 cm3), they even surpassed modern people. They were distinguished by powerful brow ridges, a protruding wide nose and a very small chin. The neck is short and, as if under the weight of the head, tilted forward, the arms are short and paw-shaped.

Neanderthals were red-haired and light-skinned. Neanderthals have a mutation in the MC1R receptor gene. Red hair color and White color the skin of modern Europeans is also associated with mutations of this gene.

The average life expectancy was 22.9 years. The identity of the FOXP2 gene (associated with speech) in modern humans and Neanderthals, as well as the structure of the vocal apparatus and brain of Neanderthals, allows us to conclude that they could have speech.

The muscle mass of the Neanderthal was 30-40% greater than that of the Cro-Magnon man, and the skeleton was heavier. Neanderthals were also better adapted to the subarctic climate, since the large nasal cavity was better able to warm up cold air, thereby reducing the risk of colds.

Karen Steudel-Numbers of the University of Wisconsin-Madison determined that, due to their dense build and shortened tibia, which shortened their stride, Neanderthals had a 32% higher energy expenditure for locomotion than modern humans. Using the model of Andrew W. Froehle from the University of California at San Diego and Steven E. Churchill from Duke University, it was clarified that the daily food requirement of a Neanderthal compared to the Cro-Magnon man who lived in those or climatic conditions, was 100-350 kilocalories more. And special chemical studies of bone tissue showed that Neanderthals constantly ate meat.

Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig (Germany) discovered a gene in Neanderthals that prevents the absorption of milk (lactose) in mature age. Also, during the research it turned out that Neanderthals were unfamiliar with many hereditary diseases of modern people - autism, Alzheimer's disease, Down syndrome, schizophrenia.

4. Reconstruction of appearance

Reconstruction of a Neanderthal man and woman, Neanderthal Museum, Mettmann, Germany

How were they different from us?

5. Relationship with modern man

In 2010, Neanderthal genes were found in the genomes of a number of modern peoples. "Those of us who live outside of Africa carry some Neanderthal DNA," Professor Pääbo said. “The genetic material inherited from Neanderthals ranges from 1 to 4%. This is not much, but it is enough to confirm the reliable inheritance of a significant part of the traits in all of us, except Africans,” said Dr. David Reich from Harvard, who also participated in the work. The study compared the Neanderthal genome with the genomes of five of our contemporaries from China, France, Africa and Papua New Guinea.

PS

Just a joke

The son of a learned linguist, looking up from a textbook where it is stated: they claim that language is a separate module in the brain - a virtual, or something, textbook of a given language, into which this person born,” asks his father:
- My little brother babbles and babbles, but nothing is clear. Was he not born Russian?

Neanderthal (lat. Homo neanderthalensis or Homo sapiens neanderthalensis; in Soviet literature also called paleoanthropus) is an extinct species of the genus Homo, possibly a subspecies of Homo sapiens. It is closely related to modern humans, with DNA composition differing by only 0.3%. Neanderthal remains including bones and stone tools, find from Western Europe and up to Central Asia. The first humans with proto-Neanderthal features are believed to have existed in Europe as early as 600-350 thousand years ago.

The exact date of the disappearance of the Neanderthals remains unclear. Fossils found in the Vindija cave in Croatia are dated between 33 thousand and 32 thousand years. But a recent study of fossils from two Spanish sites suggests a date of 45,000 years ago, which is 10,000 years older than previously thought and may cast doubt on recent dates for other artifacts found.

The name Neanderthal comes from the discovery of a skull discovered in 1856 in the Neanderthal Gorge near Düsseldorf and Erkrath (West Germany). The gorge was named in honor of Joachim Neander, a German theologian and composer. Two years later (in 1858), Schaafhausen introduced the term “Neanderthal” into scientific use. The first Neanderthal skull was found in Belgium back in 1829. The second discovery in 1848 was associated with an English military base in Gibraltar. But these first finds were recognized as Neanderthal later, in 1836 and 1864, respectively.

The discovery of a skull, which gave the name to a new species of fossil people, is already the third in the chronology of discovery.

Neanderthals had larger brains than Cro-Magnons (Homo sapiens). They were also much stronger than modern people, having particularly strong hands. The height of Neanderthals for men was 164-168 cm, and for women approximately 152-156 cm.

According to the latest data, Neanderthals had the beginnings of art (cave paintings in Spain), the beginnings of magic (“cults of bear skulls”) and funeral rites (they placed flowers, eggs, meat in the grave of their fellow tribesmen).

The main version of the death of the Neanderthals is that they were driven out of their inhabited places and exterminated by the Cro-Magnons. The latter came to Europe about 40 thousand years ago, and after 5 thousand years the Neanderthals completely died out. These 5 thousand years of coexistence of the two species were a period of intense competition for food and other resources, in which the Cro-Magnons won thanks to tenfold numerical superiority and more intensive land development.

The Mousterian culture of making tools is also associated with Neanderthals.

Map of the settlement of Neanderthals approximately 100-55 thousand years ago, after the end of the Ice Age.

Head of a Neanderthal from the town of Shanidar 1, reconstruction.

The first discoveries of Neanderthals were made about 150 years ago. In 1856, in the Feldhofer Grotto in the valley of the Neander (Neanderthal) River in Germany, school teacher and lover of antiquities Johann Karl Fuhlrott, during excavations, discovered the skull cap and parts of the skeleton of some interesting creature. But at that time, Charles Darwin’s work had not yet been published, and scientists did not believe in the existence of fossil human ancestors. The famous pathologist Rudolf Vierhof declared this discovery to be the skeleton of an old man who suffered from rickets in childhood and gout in old age.

In 1865, information was published about the skull of a similar individual, found in a quarry on the rock of Gibraltar back in 1848. And only then did scientists recognize that such remains did not belong to a “freak,” but to some previously unknown fossil species of man. This species was named after the location where it was found in 1856 - Neanderthal.

Today, more than 200 locations of Neanderthal remains are known in the territory modern England, Belgium, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, in Crimea, in different parts of the African continent, in Central Asia, Palestine, Iran, Iraq, China; in a word - everywhere in the Old World.

For the most part, Neanderthals were of average height and powerful build - physically they were superior to modern humans in almost all respects. Judging by the fact that the Neanderthal hunted very fast and agile animals, his strength was combined with mobility. He completely mastered upright walking, and in this sense was no different from us. He had a well-developed hand, but it was somewhat wider and shorter than that of a modern person, and, apparently, not so dexterous.

The size of the Neanderthal brain ranged from 1200 to 1600 cm 3, sometimes even exceeding the average brain volume of a modern person, but the structure of the brain remained largely primitive. In particular, Neanderthals had poorly developed frontal lobes, which are responsible for logical thinking and inhibition processes. From this we can assume that these creatures “didn’t grab stars from the sky”, were extremely excitable, and their behavior was characterized by aggressiveness. Many archaic features have been preserved in the structure of the skull bones. Thus, Neanderthals are characterized by a low sloping forehead, a massive brow ridge, and a weakly defined chin protuberance - all this suggests that, apparently, Neanderthals did not have a developed form of speech.

This was the general appearance of the Neanderthals, but in the vast territory they inhabited there were several different types. Some of them had more archaic features that brought them closer to Pithecanthropus; others, on the contrary, were closer to man in their development modern look.

Tools and dwellings

The tools of the first Neanderthals were not much different from the tools of their predecessors. But over time, new, more complex shapes guns, and the old ones disappeared. This new complex finally took shape in the so-called Mousterian era. Tools, as before, were made of flint, but their shapes became much more diverse, and their manufacturing techniques became more complex. The main preparation of the tool was a flake, which was obtained by chipping from a core (a piece of flint that, as a rule, has a specially prepared platform or platforms from which the chipping is carried out). In total, the Mousterian era is characterized by about 60 different types of tools, many of them, however, can be reduced to variations of three main types: the hewer, the scraper and the pointed point.

Hand axes are a smaller version of the Pithecanthropus hand axes already known to us. If the size of hand axes was 15-20 cm in length, then the size of hand axes was about 5-8 cm. Pointed points are a type of tool with a triangular outline and a point at the end.

Pointed points could be used as knives for cutting meat, leather, wood, as daggers, and also as spear and dart tips. Scrapers were used in cutting animal carcasses, tanning hides and processing wood.

In addition to the listed types, tools such as piercings, scrapers, burins, denticulated and notched tools, etc. are also found at Neanderthal sites.

Neanderthals used bones and tools to make tools. True, for the most part only fragments of bone products reach us, but there are cases when almost complete tools fall into the hands of archaeologists. As a rule, these are primitive points, awls, and spatulas. Sometimes larger guns come across. So, at one of the sites in Germany, scientists found a fragment of a dagger (or maybe a spear), reaching 70 cm in length; A club made of deer antler was also found there.

Tools throughout the territory inhabited by Neanderthals differed from each other and largely depended on who their owners hunted, and therefore on the climate and geographic region. It is clear that the African set of tools should be very different from the European one.

As for climate, European Neanderthals were not particularly lucky in this regard. The fact is that it is precisely during their time that there is a very strong cooling and the formation of glaciers. If Homo erectus (pithecanthropus) lived in an area reminiscent of the African savanna, then the landscape that surrounded the Neanderthals, at least the European ones, was more reminiscent of a forest-steppe or tundra.

People, as before, developed caves - mostly small sheds or shallow grottoes. But during this period, buildings appeared in open spaces. Thus, at the Molodova site on the Dniester, the remains of a dwelling made from the bones and teeth of mammoths were discovered.

You may ask: how do we know the purpose of this or that type of weapon? Firstly, there are still peoples living on Earth who to this day use tools made from flint. Such peoples include some aborigines of Siberia, indigenous people of Australia, etc. And secondly, there is a special science - traceology, which deals with

studying the traces left on tools from contact with one or another material. From these traces it is possible to establish what and how this tool was processed. Experts also conduct direct experiments: they themselves beat pebbles with a hand chopper, try to cut various things with a pointed tip, throw wooden spears, etc.

What did Neanderthals hunt?

The main hunting object of the Neanderthals was the mammoth. This beast did not survive to our time, but we have a fairly accurate idea of ​​it from realistic images left on the walls of caves by Upper Paleolithic people. In addition, the remains (and sometimes whole carcasses) of these animals are found from time to time in Siberia and Alaska in the layer permafrost, where they are very well preserved, thanks to which we have the opportunity not only to see the mammoth “almost as if alive,” but also to find out what it ate (by examining the contents of its stomach).

In size, mammoths were close to elephants (their height reached 3.5 m), but, unlike elephants, they were covered with thick long hair of brown, reddish or black color, which formed a long hanging mane on the shoulders and chest. The mammoth was also protected from the cold by a thick layer subcutaneous fat. The tusks of some animals reached a length of 3 m and weighed up to 150 kg. Most likely, mammoths used their tusks to shovel the snow in search of food: grass, mosses, ferns and small shrubs. In one day, this animal consumed up to 100 kg of coarse plant food, which it had to grind with four huge molars - each weighed about 8 kg. Mammoths lived in the tundra, grassy steppes and forest-steppes.

To catch such a huge beast, ancient hunters had to work hard. Apparently, they set up various pit traps, or drove the animal into a swamp, where it got stuck, and finished it off there. But in general it is difficult to imagine how a Neanderthal with his primitive weapons could kill a mammoth.

An important game animal was the cave bear - an animal about one and a half times larger than a modern one brown bear. Large males, rising on their hind legs, reached a height of 2.5 m.

These animals, as their name suggests, lived primarily in caves, so they were not only the object of hunting, but also competitors: after all, Neanderthals also preferred to live in caves, because it was dry, warm and cozy. The fight against such a serious opponent as a cave bear was extremely dangerous, and did not always end in victory for the hunter.

Neanderthals also hunted bison or bison, horses and reindeer. All these animals provided not only meat, but also fat, bones, and skin. In general, they provided people with everything they needed.

In southern Asia and Africa, mammoths were not found, and the main game animals there were elephants and rhinoceroses, antelopes, gazelles, mountain goats, and buffalos.

It must be said that Neanderthals, apparently, did not disdain their own kind - this is evidenced by the large number of crushed human bones found at the Krapina site in Yugoslavia. (It is known that in this way - by crushing KOC~tei - our ancestors obtained nutritious bone marrow.) The inhabitants of this site received the name “Krapino cannibals” in the literature. Similar finds were made in several other caves of that time.

Taming Fire

We have already said that Sinanthropus (and most likely all Pithecanthropus in general) began to use natural fire - obtained as a result of a lightning strike on a tree or a volcanic eruption. The fire produced in this way was continuously maintained, transported from place to place and carefully stored, because people did not yet know how to produce fire artificially. However, Neanderthals, apparently, had already learned this. How did they do it?

There are 5 known methods of making fire, which were common among primitive peoples back in the 19th century: 1) scraping out fire (fire plow), 2) sawing out fire (fire saw), 3) drilling out fire (fire drill), 4) carving out fire, and 5) producing fire with compressed air (fire pump). The fire pump is a less common method, although it is quite advanced.

Scraping fire (fire plow). This method is not particularly common among backward peoples (and we are unlikely to ever know what it was like in ancient times). It is quite fast, but requires a lot of physical effort. They take a wooden stick and move it, pressing hard, along a wooden plank lying on the ground. The result is fine shavings or wood powder that, due to the friction of wood against wood, heat up and then begin to smolder. Then they are combined with highly flammable tinder and the fire is fanned.

Sawing fire (fire saw). This method is similar to the previous one, but the wooden plank was sawed or scraped not along the grain, but across it. The result was also wood powder, which began to smolder.

Fire drilling (fire drill). This is the most common way to make fire. A fire drill consists of a wooden stick that is used to drill into a wooden plank (or other stick) lying on the ground. As a result, smoking or smoldering wood powder appears quite quickly in the recess on the bottom board; it is poured onto the tinder and the flame is fanned. Ancient people rotated the drill with the palms of both hands, but later they began to do it differently: they rested the drill against something with its upper end and covered it with a belt, and then pulled alternately on both ends of the belt, causing it to rotate.

Carving fire. You can strike a fire by hitting a stone on a stone, hitting a stone on a piece iron ore(sulfur pyrite, or pyrite) or by striking iron on stone. The impact produces sparks that should fall on the tinder and ignite it.

"Neanderthal Problem"

From the 1920s until the end of the twentieth century, scientists different countries There was heated debate over whether Neanderthal man was the direct ancestor of modern humans. Many foreign scientists believed that the ancestor of modern man—the so-called “presapiens”—lived almost simultaneously with the Neanderthals and gradually pushed them “into oblivion.” In Russian anthropology, it was generally accepted that it was the Neanderthals that eventually “turned” into Homo sapiens, and one of the main arguments was that all the known remains of modern humans date back to a much later time than the found bones of Neanderthals.

But at the end of the 80s, important finds of Homo sapiens were made in Africa and the Middle East, dating back very early time(the heyday of the Neanderthals), and the position of the Neanderthal as our ancestor was greatly shaken. In addition, thanks to improvements in dating methods for finds, the age of some of them has been revised and turned out to be more ancient.

To date, in two geographical areas of our planet, the remains of modern humans have been found, the age of which exceeds 100 thousand years. These are Africa and the Middle East. On the African continent, in the town of Omo Kibish in the south of Ethiopia, a jaw was discovered, similar in structure to the jaw of Homo sapiens, whose age is about 130 thousand years. Finds of skull fragments from the territory of the Republic of South Africa are about 100 thousand years old, and finds from Tanzania and Kenya are up to 120 thousand years old.

Finds are known from the Skhul cave on Mount Carmel, near Haifa, as well as from the Jabel Kafzeh cave, in the south of Israel (this is all the territory of the Middle East). In both caves, human bone remains were found, which in most respects are much closer to humans modern type than to Neanderthals. (However, this applies only to two individuals.) All these finds date back 90-100 thousand years ago. Thus, it turns out that modern humans lived side by side with Neanderthals for many millennia (at least in the Middle East).

Data obtained using genetic methods, which is rapidly developing in Lately, also indicate that Neanderthal is not our ancestor and that modern man arose and spread across the planet completely independently. And besides, living long time side by side, our ancestors and Neanderthals did not mix because they do not share the same genes that would inevitably arise from mixing. Although this issue has not yet been finally resolved.

So, on the territory of Europe, Neanderthals reigned supreme for almost 400 thousand years, being the only representatives of the Noto genus. But about 40 thousand years ago, modern people invaded their domain - Homo sapiens, who are also called “people of the Upper Paleolithic” or (according to one of the sites in France) Cro-Magnons. And this is already in literally words our ancestors - our great-great-great... (and so on) -grandmothers and -grandfathers.

The first discoveries of Neanderthals were made about 150 years ago. In 1856, in the Feldhofer Grotto in the valley of the Neander (Neanderthal) River in Germany, school teacher and lover of antiquities Johann Karl Fuhlrott, during excavations, discovered the skull cap and parts of the skeleton of some interesting creature. But at that time, Charles Darwin’s work had not yet been published into the light, and scientists did not believe in the existence of fossil human ancestors. The famous pathologist Rudolf Vierhof declared this discovery to be the skeleton of an old man who suffered from rickets in childhood and gout in old age.

In 1865, information was published about the skull of a similar individual, found in a quarry on the rock of Gibraltar back in 1848. And only then did scientists recognize that such remains did not belong to a “freak,” but to some previously unknown fossil species of man. This species was named after the location where it was found in 1856 - Neanderthal.

Today, more than 200 locations of the remains of Neanderthals are known in the territory of modern England, Belgium, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, in the Crimea, in different parts of the African continent, in Central Asia, Palestine, Iran, Iraq, China; in a word - everywhere in the Old World.

For the most part, Neanderthals were of average height and powerful build - physically they were superior to modern humans in almost all respects. Judging by the fact that the Neanderthal hunted very fast and agile animals, his strength was combined with mobility. He completely mastered upright walking, and in this sense was no different from us. He had a well-developed hand, but it was somewhat wider and shorter than that of a modern person, and, apparently, not so dexterous.

The size of the Neanderthal brain ranged from 1200 to 1600 cm3, sometimes even exceeding the average brain volume of a modern person, but the structure of the brain remained largely primitive. In particular, Neanderthals had poorly developed frontal lobes, which are responsible for logical thinking and inhibition processes. From this we can assume that these creatures “didn’t grab stars from the sky”, were extremely excitable, and their behavior was characterized by aggressiveness. Many archaic features have been preserved in the structure of the skull bones. Thus, Neanderthals are characterized by a low sloping forehead, a massive brow ridge, and a weakly defined chin protuberance - all this suggests that, apparently, Neanderthals did not have a developed form of speech.

This was the general appearance of the Neanderthals, but in the vast territory they inhabited there were several different types. Some of them had more archaic features that brought them closer to Pithecanthropus; others, on the contrary, in their development stood closer to modern man.

Tools and dwellings

The tools of the first Neanderthals were not much different from the tools of their predecessors. But over time, new, more complex forms of tools appeared, and the old ones disappeared. This new complex finally took shape in the so-called Mousterian era. Tools, as before, were made of flint, but their shapes became much more diverse, and their manufacturing techniques became more complex. The main preparation of the tool was a flake, which was obtained by chipping from a core (a piece of flint that, as a rule, has a specially prepared platform or platforms from which the chipping is carried out). In total, the Mousterian era is characterized by about 60 different types of tools, many of them, however, can be reduced to variations of three main types: the hewer, the scraper and the pointed point.

Hand axes are a smaller version of the Pithecanthropus hand axes already known to us. If the size of hand axes was 15-20 cm in length, then the size of hand axes was about 5-8 cm. Pointed points are a type of tool with a triangular outline and a point at the end.

Pointed points could be used as knives for cutting meat, leather, wood, as daggers, and also as spear and dart tips. Scrapers were used in cutting animal carcasses, tanning hides and processing wood.

In addition to the listed types, tools such as piercings, scrapers, burins, denticulated and notched tools, etc. are also found at Neanderthal sites.

Neanderthals used bones and tools to make tools. True, for the most part only fragments of bone products reach us, but there are cases when almost complete tools fall into the hands of archaeologists. As a rule, these are primitive points, awls, and spatulas. Sometimes larger guns come across. So, at one of the sites in Germany, scientists found a fragment of a dagger (or maybe a spear), reaching 70 cm in length; A club made of deer antler was also found there.

Tools throughout the territory inhabited by Neanderthals differed from each other and largely depended on who their owners hunted, and therefore on the climate and geographic region. It is clear that the African set of tools should be very different from the European one.

As for climate, European Neanderthals were not particularly lucky in this regard. The fact is that it is precisely during their time that there is a very strong cooling and the formation of glaciers. If Homo erectus (pithecanthropus) lived in an area reminiscent of the African savanna, then the landscape that surrounded the Neanderthals, at least the European ones, was more reminiscent of a forest-steppe or tundra.

People, as before, developed caves - mostly small sheds or shallow grottoes. But during this period, buildings appeared in open spaces. Thus, at the Molodova site on the Dniester, the remains of a dwelling made from the bones and teeth of mammoths were discovered.

You may ask: how do we know the purpose of this or that type of weapon? Firstly, there are still peoples living on Earth who to this day use tools made from flint. Such peoples include some aborigines of Siberia, indigenous people of Australia, etc. And secondly, there is a special science - traceology, which deals with

Studying traces left on tools from contact with one or another material. From these traces it is possible to establish what and how this tool was processed. Experts also conduct direct experiments: they themselves beat pebbles with a hand chopper, try to cut various things with a pointed tip, throw wooden spears, etc.

What did Neanderthals hunt?

The main hunting object of the Neanderthals was the mammoth. This beast did not survive to our time, but we have a fairly accurate idea of ​​it from realistic images left on the walls of caves by Upper Paleolithic people. In addition, the remains (and sometimes whole carcasses) of these animals are found from time to time in Siberia and Alaska in a layer of permafrost, where they are very well preserved, thanks to which we have the opportunity not only to see a mammoth “almost like a living one,” but also find out what he ate (by examining the contents of his stomach).

In size, mammoths were close to elephants (their height reached 3.5 m), but, unlike elephants, they were covered with thick long hair of brown, reddish or black color, which formed a long hanging mane on the shoulders and chest. The mammoth was also protected from the cold by a thick layer of subcutaneous fat. The tusks of some animals reached a length of 3 m and weighed up to 150 kg. Most likely, mammoths used their tusks to shovel the snow in search of food: grass, mosses, ferns and small shrubs. In one day, this animal consumed up to 100 kg of coarse plant food, which it had to grind with four huge molars - each weighed about 8 kg. Mammoths lived in the tundra, grassy steppes and forest-steppes.

To catch such a huge beast, ancient hunters had to work hard. Apparently, they set up various pit traps, or drove the animal into a swamp, where it got stuck, and finished it off there. But in general it is difficult to imagine how a Neanderthal with his primitive weapons could kill a mammoth.

An important game animal was the cave bear - an animal about one and a half times larger than a modern brown bear. Large males, rising on their hind legs, reached a height of 2.5 m.

These animals, as their name suggests, lived primarily in caves, so they were not only the object of hunting, but also competitors: after all, Neanderthals also preferred to live in caves, because it was dry, warm and cozy. The fight against such a serious opponent as a cave bear was extremely dangerous, and did not always end in victory for the hunter.

Neanderthals also hunted bison or bison, horses and reindeer. All these animals provided not only meat, but also fat, bones, and skin. In general, they provided people with everything they needed.

In southern Asia and Africa, mammoths were not found, and the main game animals there were elephants and rhinoceroses, antelopes, gazelles, mountain goats, and buffalos.

It must be said that Neanderthals, apparently, did not disdain their own kind - this is evidenced by the large number of crushed human bones found at the Krapina site in Yugoslavia. (It is known that in this way - by crushing KOC~tei - our ancestors obtained nutritious bone marrow.) The inhabitants of this site received the name “Krapino cannibals” in the literature. Similar finds were made in several other caves of that time.

Taming Fire

We have already said that Sinanthropus (and most likely all Pithecanthropus in general) began to use natural fire - obtained as a result of a lightning strike on a tree or a volcanic eruption. The fire produced in this way was continuously maintained, transported from place to place and carefully stored, because people did not yet know how to produce fire artificially. However, Neanderthals, apparently, had already learned this. How did they do it?

There are 5 known methods of making fire, which were common among primitive peoples back in the 19th century: 1) scraping out fire (fire plow), 2) sawing out fire (fire saw), 3) drilling out fire (fire drill), 4) carving out fire, and 5) producing fire with compressed air (fire pump). The fire pump is a less common method, although it is quite advanced.

Scraping fire (fire plow). This method is not particularly common among backward peoples (and we are unlikely to ever know what it was like in ancient times). It is quite fast, but requires a lot of physical effort. They take a wooden stick and move it, pressing hard, along a wooden plank lying on the ground. The result is fine shavings or wood powder that, due to the friction of wood against wood, heat up and then begin to smolder. Then they are combined with highly flammable tinder and the fire is fanned.

Sawing fire (fire saw). This method is similar to the previous one, but the wooden plank was sawed or scraped not along the grain, but across it. The result was also wood powder, which began to smolder.

Fire drilling (fire drill). This is the most common way to make fire. A fire drill consists of a wooden stick that is used to drill into a wooden plank (or other stick) lying on the ground. As a result, smoking or smoldering wood powder appears quite quickly in the recess on the bottom board; it is poured onto the tinder and the flame is fanned. Ancient people rotated the drill with the palms of both hands, but later they began to do it differently: they rested the drill against something with its upper end and covered it with a belt, and then pulled alternately on both ends of the belt, causing it to rotate.

Carving fire. Fire can be struck by hitting a stone on a stone, hitting a stone on a piece of iron ore (sulfur pyrite, or pyrite), or hitting iron on a stone. The impact produces sparks that should fall on the tinder and ignite it.

"Neanderthal Problem"

From the 1920s until the end of the twentieth century, scientists from different countries had heated debates over whether Neanderthal man was the direct ancestor of modern humans. Many foreign scientists believed that the ancestor of modern man—the so-called “presapiens”—lived almost simultaneously with the Neanderthals and gradually pushed them “into oblivion.” In Russian anthropology, it was generally accepted that it was the Neanderthals that eventually “turned” into Homo sapiens, and one of the main arguments was that all the known remains of modern humans date back to a much later time than the found bones of Neanderthals.

But in the late 80s, important discoveries of Homo sapiens were made in Africa and the Middle East, dating back to a very early time (the heyday of the Neanderthals), and the position of the Neanderthal as our ancestor was greatly shaken. In addition, thanks to improvements in dating methods for finds, the age of some of them has been revised and turned out to be more ancient.

To date, in two geographical areas of our planet, the remains of modern humans have been found, the age of which exceeds 100 thousand years. These are Africa and the Middle East. On the African continent, in the town of Omo Kibish in the south of Ethiopia, a jaw was discovered, similar in structure to the jaw of Homo sapiens, whose age is about 130 thousand years. Finds of skull fragments from the territory of the Republic of South Africa are about 100 thousand years old, and finds from Tanzania and Kenya are up to 120 thousand years old.

Finds are known from the Skhul cave on Mount Carmel, near Haifa, as well as from the Jabel Kafzeh cave, in the south of Israel (this is all the territory of the Middle East). In both caves, skeletal remains of people were found who, in most respects, are much closer to modern humans than to Neanderthals. (However, this applies only to two individuals.) All these finds date back 90-100 thousand years ago. Thus, it turns out that modern humans lived side by side with Neanderthals for many millennia (at least in the Middle East).

Data obtained by the methods of genetics, which has been rapidly developing in recent times, also indicate that Neanderthal man is not our ancestor and that modern man arose and settled across the planet completely independently. And besides, living side by side for a long time, our ancestors and Neanderthals did not mix, since they do not have common genes that would inevitably arise during mixing. Although this issue has not yet been finally resolved.

So, on the territory of Europe, Neanderthals reigned supreme for almost 400 thousand years, being the only representatives of the Noto genus. But about 40 thousand years ago, modern people invaded their domain - Homo sapiens, who are also called “people of the Upper Paleolithic” or (according to one of the sites in France) Cro-Magnons. And these are, in the literal sense of the word, our ancestors - our great-great-great... (and so on) -grandmothers and -grandfathers.