Features of the body structure of the Cro-Magnon. Cro-Magnons

Where did the world so understandable to us come from, how did it fit in with the completely different world of the Neanderthals? Many biological features of the oldest Upper Paleolithic people suggest that they came to Europe from tropical regions.

Long limbs, high stature, elongated body proportions, large jaws, elongated braincase are similar in modern tropical populations and Cro-Magnons. The latter differ only in the large size of the bones, the strong relief of the skull, and coarser features. But, if the Cro-Magnons were aliens, where did they come from? How did they interact with the natives - Neanderthals? According to the version most justified now, the modern human species was formed in Africa between 200-160-100 and 45 thousand years ago. Between 80,000 and 45,000 years ago, a limited number of people left East Africa at the Bab el-Mandeb or, less likely, the Isthmus of Suez. They began to settle first along the southern shores of Eurasia - up to Australia - and then to the north, in areas inhabited by Neanderthals, whose possible fate was mentioned above.

From the Upper Paleolithic era to the present, evolutionary changes did not have time to accumulate in sufficient quantities (it is often said that biological evolution stopped with the advent of the modern human species, giving way to social evolution, but the facts indicate the continuation of biological evolution today, just the time scale is insufficient for the appearance significant changes in morphology). Differences between groups of populations that have appeared since that time are usually called racial. A separate section of anthropology is devoted to them - race (cf.

BC e) they settled in Europe, and lived simultaneously with the last representatives of the Neanderthals.

The beginning of the Upper Paleolithic era includes the so-called Paleolithic revolution- the transition to a more advanced technology for the production and use of tools, which occurred about 40 thousand years BC. During this period, there was an explosive flowering of human intellectual and cultural activity associated with the wide spread of people of a modern physical type, who replaced the ancient types of people. Bones were first found in the Cro-Magnon Grotto in France.

It is surprising that for tens of thousands of years, pre-Cro-Magnon humanity has not undergone any changes. At the same time, according to modern ideas, the formation of features of the Cro-Magnon skeleton requires isolation and a huge number of years.

Evolutionary anthropologists believe that the Cro-Magnon population was between 1 and 10 million people, and in 100 thousand years they should have buried about 4 billion bodies with related artifacts. A significant part of the burials of these 4 billion should have been preserved. However, only a few thousand have been found.

Another ambiguity is the extinction of the Neanderthal. One of the dominant hypotheses about the causes of its extinction is its displacement (i.e., destruction) by Cro-Magnon, a competitor for an ecological niche, which occurred about 30 thousand years ago.

Cro-Magnon food

It has been established that the diet of a person of the late Paleolithic era (40-12 thousand years ago), who lived in Europe, consisted of wild fruits, vegetables, deciduous plants, roots, nuts, and lean meat. The results of anthropological studies unequivocally show that in the course of human evolution, a large role was played by a diet containing little fat, very little sugar, but including a large amount of fiber and polysaccharides. The cholesterol content of bushmeat approximates that of livestock meat, but bushmeat contains an almost ideal ratio of saturated and unsaturated fatty acids. Late Paleolithic people consumed a lot of animal protein at the expense of meat, which contributed to physical development and rapid puberty, but not longevity. An analysis of the remains of ancient people revealed characteristic diseases caused by malnutrition, in particular, beriberi, and their life expectancy averaged 30 years.

One way or another, due to the fact that meat food prevailed in the Cro-Magnon diet, they were more stately than their descendants (and ancestors), who preferred plant foods.

Cro-Magnon culture

Religion

From the end of 40 thousand BC. the heyday of the Matriarchy also began - associated with the Cro-Magnons and known mainly from excavations in Europe. The worship of the mother goddess was not just a local cult, but a global phenomenon. material from the site

Cave painting (rock)

During the life of the Cro-Magnons, there is a flourishing of cave (rock) painting, the peak of which was reached in 15-17 thousand BC. (gallery of cave drawings of Lascaux and Altamira).

A fresco in Altamira depicts a herd of bison and other

Introduction 3

1. Characteristics of the settlement of Cro-Magnons 4

2. Cro-Magnon lifestyle 9

Conclusion 28

References 29

Introduction

The origin of man and subsequent racial genesis are rather mysterious. Nevertheless, the scientific discoveries of the past two centuries have helped somewhat lift the veil over the mystery. It is now firmly established that in the conditionally called "prehistoric" era, two types of people lived in parallel on earth - homo neanderthalensis (Neanderthal man) and homo cromagnonis, which is also commonly called homo sapiens-sapiens (Cro-Magnon man or reasonable man). Neanderthal man was first discovered in 1857 in the Neander Valley near Düsseldorf. Cro-Magnon man - in 1868 in the Cro-Magnon grotto in the French province of Dordogne. Since the first discoveries of the two types of ancient people mentioned, numerous more finds of them have been made, which have provided new material for scientific developments.

Preliminary conclusions from scientific discoveries. Judging by basic anthropometric characteristics and genetic analysis, Cro-Magnon man is almost identical to the modern species Homo sapiens-sapiens and is believed to be the immediate ancestor of the Caucasoid race.

This work aims to give a general description of the way of life of the Cro-Magnons.

For this, the following tasks are set:

Describe the settlement of Cro-Magnons.

Consider the lifestyle of the Cro-Magnons.

The work consists of an introduction, two chapters, a conclusion and a list of references.

Characteristics of the settlement of Cro-Magnons

By 30 thousand BC. e. Cro-Magnon groups have already begun moving east and north in search of new hunting grounds. By 20 thousand BC. e. migration to Europe and Asia has reached such proportions that in the newly developed areas, the number of game began to gradually decline.

People were desperately looking for new food sources. Under the pressure of circumstances, our distant ancestors could well become omnivores again, eating both plant and animal food. It is known that it was then that for the first time people turned to the sea in search of food.

Cro-Magnon people became more inventive and creative, creating more complex dwellings and clothing. Innovations allowed groups of Cro-Magnons to hunt new types of game in the northern regions. By 10 thousand BC. e. Cro-Magnons spread to all continents, with the exception of Antarctica. Australia was inhabited 40 - 30 thousand years ago. After 5-15 thousand years, groups of hunters crossed the Bering Strait, getting from Asia to America. These later and more complex communities preyed primarily on large animals. Cro-Magnon hunting methods gradually improved, as evidenced by the large number of animal bones discovered by archaeologists. In particular, in Solutre, a place in France, the remains of more than 10,000 horses were found. In Dolni Vestonice in the Czech Republic, archaeologists have unearthed a large number of mammoth bones. According to a number of archaeologists, since the migration of people to America, which occurred about 15 thousand years ago, in less than one millennium, most of the fauna of North and South America was destroyed. The ease with which the Aztec civilization was defeated by the Spanish conquistadors is explained by the horror that gripped the foot Aztec soldiers at the sight of mounted warriors. The Aztecs had never seen horses before: during the early migrations from north to central America, their ancestors exterminated all the wild horses that lived on the American prairies in search of food. They did not even imagine that these animals can be used not only as a source of food.

The resettlement of Cro-Magnons around the globe was called "the period of unconditional success of mankind." The impact of a carnivorous lifestyle on human development has been very significant. The migration of the most ancient peoples to areas with a more temperate climate stimulated genetic changes. The settlers had lighter skin, less massive bone structure, and straighter hair. The skeleton, especially among the Caucasian peoples, was formed slowly, and their light skin was more resistant to frost than dark. Lighter skin was also better able to absorb vitamin D, which is vital when sunlight is deficient (in areas where days are shorter and nights are longer).

By the time when the man of the modern type was finally formed, the vast geographical expanses of the Earth had already been mastered. They were also inhabited by archanthropes and paleoanthropes, so that the Cro-Magnon man had only two empty continents to master - America and Australia. True, with regard to Australia, the question remains open. It is possible that it was inhabited by paleoanthropes, who contributed to the formation of the Australian neoanthrope. The oldest skull in Australia was found in the area of ​​Lake. Mungo, 900 km west of Sydney. The antiquity of this skull is 27-35 thousand years. Obviously, the beginning of human settlement in Australia should be attributed to this time. Although the skull from Mungo does not have a supraorbital ridge, it is very archaic - it has a sloping forehead and a sharp inflection of the occiput. It is possible that the Mungo skull represents a local version of a paleoanthrope, and there is no reason to deny its participation in the further development of Homo sapiens on the Australian continent.

As for America, from time to time there is information about the discovery of very ancient skeletons on its territory, but all these finds are morphologically related to Homo sapiens. Thus, scientists argue about the time of the settlement of the American mainland, but they are unanimous that America was settled by a man of the modern type. Most likely, the settlement of the American continent took place approximately 25-20 thousand years ago along the Bering Sea Isthmus, which existed at that time on the site of the current Bering Strait.

Cro-Magnon lived at the end of the ice age, or rather, at the end of the Wurm glaciation. Warming and cooling succeeded each other quite often (of course, on the scale of geological time), and the glaciers either retreated or advanced. If at that time the surface of the Earth could be observed from a spacecraft, it would resemble the multi-colored surface of a colossal soap bubble. Scroll through this period so that millennia fit into minutes, and silver-white ice fields creep forward like spilled mercury, but they are immediately thrown back by an unfolding carpet of green vegetation. Coastlines will waver like pennants in the wind as the blue of the ocean expands and contracts. Islands will rise from this blue and disappear into it again, like stones over which a stream is crossed, and it will be blocked by natural dams and dams, forming new ways for human resettlement. On one of these ancient routes, the Cro-Magnon traveled from present-day China to the north, to the cold expanses of Siberia. And from there he probably went overland through Beringia to North America. one

Over many generations, people gradually moved to the northeast of Asia. They could go in two ways - from the depths of the Asian continent, from the territory of present-day Siberia, and along the Pacific coast, skirting the Asian continent from the east. Obviously, there were several waves of "settlers" from Asia to America. The earliest of them moved along the coast, and their origin is associated with areas of East and Southeast Asia. Later Asian migrants moved from the interior of the Asian continent.

In America, people were met by the harsh expanses of Greenland, the sharply continental climate of North America, the tropical forests of the South American continent and the cold winds of Tierra del Fuego. Settling in new areas, a person adapted to new conditions, and as a result, local anthropological variants were formed. 2

The population density in the Cro-Magnon era was low - only 0.01-0.5 people per 1 sq. km. km, the number of groups was about 25-30 people. The entire population of the Earth at that time is estimated from several tens of thousands to half a million people. The territory of Western Europe was somewhat denser. Here, the population density was about 10 people per 1 km, and the entire population of Europe at the time the Cro-Magnons lived there was about 50 thousand people.

It would seem that the population density was very low, and human populations did not have to compete for food and water sources. However, in those days, man lived by hunting and gathering, and his "vital interests" included vast territories over which herds of ungulates roamed - the main object of ancient man's hunting. The need to preserve and increase their hunting grounds forced a person to move further and further, to the still uninhabited areas of the planet.

The more advanced technology of Cro-Magnon man made available to him those sources of food that were unfamiliar to his predecessors. Hunting tools improved, and this expanded the Cro-Magnon's ability to hunt for new types of cottages. With meat food, people received new sources of energy. Feeding on nomadic herbivores, migratory birds, marine pinnipeds and fish, man, along with their meat, gained access to a very wide range of food resources.

Even greater opportunities were opened for Cro-Magnon man by the use of grains of wild-growing cereals for food. In North Africa, in the upper reaches of the Nile, 17 thousand years ago, people lived in whose diet, apparently, cereals played a significant role. Stone sickles and primitive grain graters have been preserved - limestone slabs with a shallow recess in the middle for grain and a recess in the form of a wide trough, along which flour was probably poured. Obviously, these people were already making bread - in the form of simple unleavened cakes baked on hot stones.

Thus, Cro-Magnon man ate much better than his predecessors. This could not but affect the state of his health and overall life expectancy. If for the Neanderthal the average life expectancy was about 25 years, then for the Cro-Magnon man it increased to 30-35 years, remaining at this level until the Middle Ages.

The dominance of the Cro-Magnons was the cause of their own downfall. They fell victim to their own success. Overcrowding soon led to the depletion of hunting areas. Long before this, herds of large animals in densely populated areas were almost completely destroyed. As a result, there was competition for limited food sources. The rivalry in turn led to war, and the war led to subsequent migrations.

Cro-Magnon lifestyle

For modern researchers, the most striking difference between the Cro-Magnon culture is a technological revolution in stone processing. The meaning of this revolution was a much more rational use of stone raw materials. Its economical use was of fundamental importance for ancient man, since it made it possible not to depend on natural sources of flint, carrying with it a small supply. If we compare the total length of the working edge of the product, which a person received from one kilogram of flint, you can see how much longer it is for the Cro-Magnon master compared to the Neanderthal and archanthropus. The oldest man from a kilogram of flint could make only from 10 to 45 cm of the working edge of the tool, the Neanderthal culture made it possible to obtain 220 cm of the working edge from the same amount of flint. As for the Cro-Magnon man, his technology turned out to be many times more effective - he received 25 m of working edge from a kilogram of flint.

The secret of the Cro-Magnon was the emergence of a new method of processing flint - the method of knife-shaped plates. The bottom line was that from the main piece of flint - the core - long and narrow plates were broken off, from which various tools were then made. The cores themselves had a prismatic shape with a flat upper face. The plates were broken off with a precise blow on the edge of the upper face of the core, or were pressed out with the help of bone or horn pushers. The length of the plates was equal to the length of the core - 25-30 cm, and their thickness was several millimeters. 3

The knife-blade method was probably of great help to hunters who went on multi-day expeditions to areas where not only flints, but also other fine-grained rocks were almost absent. They could take with them a supply of cores or plates, so that there would be something to replace the tips of spears that broke off during an unsuccessful throw or remained in the wound of an animal that managed to escape. And the edges of the flint knives, which cut through the joints and tendons, broke off and became dull. Thanks to the knife-blade method, new tools could be made on the spot.

The second important achievement of the Cro-Magnon was the development of new materials - bones and horns. These materials are sometimes referred to as Stone Age plastics. They are durable, ductile and free from such a disadvantage as fragility inherent in wood products. Obviously, the aesthetic appeal of bone products, from which beads, jewelry and figurines were made, also played an important role. In addition, the source of these materials was practically inexhaustible - they were the bones of the same animals that the Cro-Magnon man hunted.

The ratio of stone and bone tools immediately distinguishes the inventory of the Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon sites. Among Neanderthals, for every thousand stone tools, there are at best 25 bone products. At Cro-Magnon sites, bone and flint are equally represented, or even bone tools predominate.

With the advent of bone needles, awls and piercings, fundamentally new possibilities appeared in the processing of skins and in the manufacture of clothing. Large animal bones also served as building material for the dwellings of ancient hunters and as fuel for hearths. four

The Cro-Magnon no longer depended on natural shelters such as caves and rock canopies. He built dwellings where he needed, and this created additional opportunities for long-distance migrations and the development of new lands.

The third achievement of the Cro-Magnons was the invention of fundamentally new hunting tools, unknown to his predecessors. These include, first of all, a bow and a spear thrower. Spear throwers increased the range of ancient hunters' spears, almost tripled their flight range and impact power, and played a big role in the life of ancient hunters. They were made, as a rule, from deer antlers, decorated with carved figures and patterns, and were often real works of art.

However, the spear thrower meant hunting in open spaces, where it was easy to frighten off prey and where the hunter himself remained unprotected in front of a wounded beast. The invention of the bow made it possible to hunt from cover, in addition, the arrow flew further and faster than the spear.

No less important for the Cro-Magnon man were the devices for catching fish - spears and fish braces, which is an analogue of a fishing hook. In South Africa, archaeologists have found small cylindrical stones with grooves that could be used as sinkers for fishing nets.

Further progressive development of culture in the Upper Paleolithic was expressed primarily in the improvement of methods for their manufacture. The finish of the guns has become more perfect, as the retouching technique is now improving. By pressing with force the end of an elastic bone stick or a flint wringer on the edge of a stone, a person quickly and deftly chipped (as if he was cutting off) one after another long and narrow flakes of flint. A new plate manufacturing technique is emerging. Previously, the plates were chipped from the disc-shaped core. Such a core was, in fact, a simple rounded pebble, from which flakes were removed, beating it in a circle from the edges to the center. Now the plates were chipped off from the prismatic core.

Accordingly, the direction of the blows that separated the plates also changed. These blows were no longer applied obliquely, not obliquely, but vertically, from one end of the core to the other. The narrow and long plates of a new type obtained from prismatic cores made it possible to drastically change and expand the range of small stone tools that were required in conditions of an incomparably more developed way of life than before: scrapers of various types, points, piercings, various cutting tools. For the first time, flint tools appear, the working edges of which are, in principle, designed in the same way as modern steel cutters. This is usually a massive cutting edge formed by cleavage planes converging at an acute angle. With such a flint chisel, it was easier to cut wood, bone and horn, cut deep grooves in them and make cuts, successively removing one chip after another.

In the Upper Paleolithic, various bone spearheads and throwing weapons, including compound harpoons with teeth, first appear. During excavations at the Meiendorf site, near Hamburg (Germany), harpoons and deer shoulder blades pierced by such harpoons were found.

The most important event in the development of hunting weapons was the invention of the first mechanical device for throwing darts - a spear thrower (throwing board), which is a rod with a hook at the end. By lengthening the span of the arm, the spear thrower greatly increased thereby the force of impact and the range of the dart.

A variety of stone tools appeared for butchering carcasses and processing the skins of hunted animals, for making wooden and bone products.

In the Upper Paleolithic, the way of life of people becomes much more complicated, the structure of the primitive community develops. Separate groups of Neanderthals were, in all likelihood, alien and even hostile to each other. Of great importance for the rapprochement of different groups should have been the emergence of exogamy, that is, the prohibition of marriage within the clan and the establishment of a permanent marriage relationship between representatives of different clans. The establishment of exogamy as a social institution, which testifies to the growing development and complication of social relations, can be attributed to the Upper Paleolithic time.

The increase in hunting productivity in the Upper Paleolithic contributed to an even clearer division of labor between men and women. Some were constantly engaged in hunting, while others, with the development of relative settledness (due to the same greater productivity of hunting), spent more time in the parking lots, leading the increasingly complicated group economy. Women in the conditions of more or less sedentary life made clothes, various utensils, collected edible and technical plants, for example, used for weaving, cooked food. It is also extremely important that it was the women who were mistresses in public dwellings, while their husbands were strangers here.

With the dominance of group marriage, characteristic of this stage of the tribal system, when the father is not exactly known, the children, of course, belonged to women, which increased the social role and influence on public affairs of the mother.

All this served as the basis for a new form of primitive communal relations - the maternal tribal community.

Direct indications of the design of the maternal clan at this time are, on the one hand, communal dwellings, and on the other hand, widespread images of women in which one can see images of female ancestors known from folklore, for example, among the Eskimos and Aleuts.

On the basis of the further complication of the social life of the Cro-Magnon people, significant changes are taking place in all areas of their culture: a fairly developed art is emerging, in labor practice a person accumulates experience and positive knowledge.

Thus, it was necessary to significantly change the general view of the life of the Cro-Magnon inhabitants not only of the Russian Plain, but of all of Europe. The Cro-Magnons used to be seen as wandering miserable savages, constantly moving from place to place, not knowing peace and more or less stable settlement. Now the general way of their life and their social system have been revealed in a new way.

An absolutely exceptional picture of the dwelling of ancient mammoth hunters in terms of expressiveness and scale was revealed, for example, in one of the numerous Kostenki settlements - in Kostenki I. Studying this place, archaeologists found out that bonfires, animal bones and flints processed by human hand filled the base of the ancient dwelling, outside of which finds were found only occasionally.

The ancient dwelling, unearthed in Kostenki I by excavations in 1931-1936, had an oval shape in plan. Its length was 35 m, width - 15-16 m. The living area thus reached a size of almost 600 square meters. m. With such a large size, the dwelling, of course, could not be heated by one hearth. In the center of the living area, along its long axis, symmetrically located hearth pits stretched at intervals of 2 m. There were 9 foci, each about 1 m in diameter. These hearths were topped with a thick layer of bone ash and charred bones used as fuel. Obviously, the inhabitants of the dwelling, before leaving it, launched their hearths and did not clean them for a long time. They also left unused reserves of fuel in the form of mammoth bones located near the hearths.

One of the hearths served not for heating, but for a completely different song. Pieces of brown iron ore and spherosiderite were fired in it, thus extracting mineral paint - bloodstone. This paint was used by the inhabitants of the settlement in such large quantities that the layer of earth that filled the recess of the dwelling was in places completely painted in red of various shades.

Another characteristic feature of the internal structure of the large dwellings in Kostenki I was also found. Large tubular mammoth bones, vertically dug into the ground, were found next to the hearths or somewhat away from them. Judging by the fact that the bones were covered with notches and notches, they served as a kind of "workbench" for the ancient masters.

The main living area was bordered by additional rooms - dugouts, located along its contour in the form of a ring. Two of them stood out among the others for their larger size and were located almost symmetrically on the right and left sides of the main dwelling. On the floor of both dugouts, the remains of fires that warmed these rooms were noticed. The roof of the dugouts had a frame made of large bones and mammoth tusks. The third large dugout was located at the opposite, far end of the living area and, obviously, served as a storage room for parts of the mammoth carcass. 5

A curious household touch here are also special pits - storage for especially valuable things. In such pits, sculptural images of women, animals, including a mammoth, a bear, a cave lion, decorations from molars and fangs of predators, mainly arctic fox, were found. In addition, in a number of cases, selected flint plates were found, lying several pieces together, large arrowheads of excellent quality, apparently deliberately hidden in specially dug recesses. Considering all this and noting that the figurines of women were broken, and mostly insignificant things turned out to be on the floor of the dwelling, one of the researchers of the Kostenkovo ​​sites, P.P. Efimenko, believes that the large dwelling of Kostenki I was abandoned "under emergency circumstances." In his opinion, the residents left their home, capturing all the most valuable things. They left in place only what was hidden in advance, including figurines. The enemies, having discovered the statuettes of women, broke them in order to destroy the tribal "patrons" of the Kostenkovo ​​community and cause even more damage to it.

Excavations in Kostenki thus revealed a picture of the domestic life of an entire community, which included dozens, and maybe hundreds of people who lived in a vast, already well-arranged by that time, complex common dwelling. This complex and at the same time harmonious picture of the ancient settlement clearly shows that in the life of its inhabitants there was a certain internal routine, which was built on the traditions inherited from previous generations, on the rules of behavior of its members strictly defined by necessity and custom. These traditions were based on the experience of collective labor activity, which has been continuously growing over the course of millennia. The whole life of the Paleolithic community was based on the joint work of its members, on their common struggle with nature.

The most they have in their clothing is a more or less wide belt around the hips, or something like a wide triangular tail that falls behind, as can be seen on the famous figurine from Lespug (France). Sometimes it looks like a tattoo. Much attention was paid by women to the hairstyle, sometimes very complex and magnificent. Hair either falls down in a solid mass, or is collected in concentric circles. Sometimes they are arranged in zigzag vertical rows.

Inside their low and cramped semi-underground winter dwelling, the people of Cro-Magnon time, obviously, were naked or half-naked. Only outside the dwelling they appeared in clothes made of skins and a fur hood. In this form, they are presented in the works of Paleolithic sculptors - in fur clothes or naked with only one belt on the body.

Paleolithic figurines are interesting not only because they truly convey the appearance of the Cro-Magnons, but also because they represent the art of the Ice Age.

In labor, a person developed speech and thinking, learned to reproduce the forms of things he needed according to a predetermined plan, which was the main precondition for creative activity in the field of art. In the course of the development of social labor activity, finally, specific needs arose that caused the birth of art as a special sphere of social consciousness and human activity.

In the Upper Paleolithic, as we see, the technique of hunting economy becomes more complicated. House building is born, a new way of life is being formed. In the course of the maturation of the tribal system, the primitive community becomes stronger and more complicated in its structure. Thinking and speech develop. The mental outlook of a person is immeasurably expanded and his spiritual world is enriched. Along with these general achievements in the development of culture, of great importance for the emergence and further growth of art was the specifically important circumstance that the people of the upper Cro-Magnons now began to widely use the bright colors of natural mineral paints. He also mastered new methods of processing soft stone and bone, which opened up before him previously unknown possibilities for conveying the phenomena of the surrounding reality in a plastic form - in sculpture and carving.

Without these prerequisites, without these technical achievements, born of direct labor practice in the manufacture of tools, neither painting nor the artistic processing of bone, which mainly represents the art of Cro-Magnons known to us, could have arisen.

The most remarkable and most important thing in the history of primitive art lies in the fact that from its first steps it went mainly along the path of truthful transmission of reality. The art of the Upper Cro-Magnons, taken in its best examples, is remarkable for its amazing fidelity to nature and accuracy in the transfer of vital, most significant features. Already in the early days of the Upper Cro-Magnons, in the Aurignacian monuments of Europe, examples of true drawing and sculpture, as well as cave paintings identical with them in spirit, are found. Their appearance, of course, was preceded by a certain preparatory period. 6

The deep archaism of the earliest cave images is reflected in the fact that the appearance of the most ancient of them, early Aurignacian, was caused at first glance by associations that seemed to accidentally flare up in the mind of a primitive man who noticed a similarity in the outlines of stones or rocks with the appearance of certain animals. But already in the Aurignacian time, next to the samples of archaic art, in which the natural resemblance and creativity of man are fancifully combined, such images were also widespread, which entirely owe their appearance to the creative imagination of primitive people.

All these archaic samples of ancient art are characterized by a pronounced simplicity of form and the same dryness of color. Paleolithic man at first limited himself to only coloring his contour drawings with strong and bright tones of mineral paints. It was quite natural in dark caves, dimly lit by barely burning wicks or by the fire of a smoky fire, where the halftones would simply be invisible. Cave drawings of that time are usually figures of animals, made with only one linear contour, outlined with red or yellow stripes, sometimes completely filled inside with round spots or filled with paint.

At the Madeleine stage, new progressive changes take place in the art of the Cro-Magnons, mainly in cave paintings. They are expressed in the transition from the simplest outline and smoothly filled with paint drawings to multi-color paintings, from a line and a smooth monochromatic color field to a spot that conveys the volume and shape of an object with different paint density, a change in tone strength. The simple, albeit colorful drawings of that time are now growing, therefore, into real cave painting with the transfer of the forms of the living body of the depicted animals, characteristic of its best examples, for example, in Altamira.

The vital, realistic nature of Cro-Magnon art is not limited to mastery in the static depiction of the shape of the body of animals. He found his most complete expression in the transmission of their dynamics, in the ability to grasp movements, to convey instantly changing specific poses and positions.

Despite all its truthfulness and vitality, the art of the Cro-Magnons remains fully primitive, truly infantile. It is fundamentally different from the modern one, where the artistic story is strictly limited in space. Cro-Magnon art does not know air and perspective in the true sense of the word; in these drawings, the ground is not visible under the feet of the figures. It also lacks composition in our sense of the word, as a deliberate distribution of individual figures on a plane. The best Cro-Magnon drawings are nothing more than instantaneous and frozen individual impressions with their characteristic amazing liveliness in the transmission of movements.

Even in those cases where large clusters of drawings are observed, no logical sequence, no definite semantic connection is found in them. Such, for example, is the mass of bulls in the painting of Altamira. The accumulation of these bulls is the result of repeated drawing of figures, their simple accumulation over a long time. The random nature of such combinations of figures is emphasized by the heaping of drawings on top of each other. Bulls, mammoths, deer and horses randomly lean on each other. Earlier drawings are overlapped by subsequent ones, barely showing through under them. This is not the result of a single creative effort of the thought of one artist, but the fruits of the uncoordinated spontaneous work of a number of generations, connected only by tradition.

Nevertheless, in some exceptional cases, especially in miniature works, in engravings on bone, and sometimes also in cave paintings, the rudiments of narrative art and, at the same time, a peculiar semantic composition of figures are found. First of all, these are group images of animals, meaning a herd or a herd. The emergence of such group drawings is understandable. The ancient hunter constantly dealt with herds of bulls, herds of wild horses, with groups of mammoths, which were for him the object of a collective hunt - a paddock. That is how, in the form of a herd, they were depicted in a number of cases.

There are in the art of the Cro-Magnons and the beginnings of a perspective image, however, very peculiar and primitive. As a rule, animals are shown from the side, in profile, and people are shown from the front. But there were certain techniques that made it possible to revive the drawing and bring it even closer to reality. So, for example, the bodies of animals are sometimes given in profile, and the head in front, with eyes to the viewer. On the images of a person, on the contrary, the torso was given in front, and the face in profile. There are cases when the animal is depicted from the front, schematically, but in such a way that only the legs and chest, branched deer antlers are visible, and the back is missing, closed by the front half of the body. Together with the plastic images of women, the art of the Upper Cro-Magnons is just as characteristic of sculptural images of animals, equally true to nature, made of mammoth tusk, bone, and even clay mixed with bone ash. These are the figures of a mammoth, bison, horses and other animals, including predators.

The art of the Cro-Magnons grew up on a certain social basis. It served the needs of society, was inextricably linked with a certain level of development of the productive forces and production relations. With a change in this economic basis, society changed, the superstructure changed, including art. Therefore, the art of the Cro-Magnons can by no means be identical with the realistic art of later eras. It is just as unique in its originality, in its primitive realism, as is the entire Cro-Magnon era that gave birth to it - this true "humanity's childhood". 7

The vitality and truthfulness of the best examples of Cro-Magnon art were primarily due to the peculiarities of working life and the worldview of Paleolithic people that grew out of it. The accuracy and sharpness of the observations reflected in the images of animals were determined by the daily labor experience of ancient hunters, whose whole life and well-being depended on knowledge of the lifestyle and nature of animals, on the ability to track them down and master them. Such knowledge of the animal world was a matter of life and death for primitive hunters, and penetration into the life of animals was such a characteristic and important part of the psychology of people that it colored their entire spiritual culture, starting, judging by the data of ethnography, from the animal epic and fairy tales, where animals perform the only or main characters, ending with rituals and myths in which people and animals represent one inseparable whole.

Cro-Magnon art gave people of that time satisfaction with the correspondence of images to nature, the clarity and symmetrical arrangement of lines, and the strength of the color gamut of these images.

Abundant and carefully executed decorations delighted the human eye. A custom arose to cover the simplest household items with ornaments and often give them sculptural forms. Such, for example, are daggers, the hilt of which is turned into a figurine of a deer or a goat, a spear-winder with the image of a partridge. The aesthetic nature of these adornments cannot be denied even in those cases when such adornments acquired a certain religious meaning and magical character.

The art of the Cro-Magnons was of great positive significance in the history of ancient mankind. Consolidating his work life experience in living images of art, primitive man deepened and expanded his ideas about reality and more deeply, comprehensively cognized it, and at the same time enriched his spiritual world. The emergence of art, which meant a huge step forward in human cognitive activity, at the same time largely contributed to the strengthening of social ties.

Monuments of primitive art testify to the development of human consciousness, about his life at that distant time. They also tell about the beliefs of primitive man. The fantastic notions from which the oldest religious beliefs of Stone Age hunters arose include the beginnings of reverence for the forces of nature and, above all, the cult of the beast.

The origin of the rude cult of the beast and hunting witchcraft was due to the importance of hunting as the main source of existence of the ancient people of this period, the real role that belonged to the beast in their daily life. From the very beginning, animals occupied an important place in the consciousness of primitive man and in primitive religion. eight

Transferring to the animal world the relations characteristic of primitive tribal communities, inextricably linked with each other by marriage unions and exogamous norms, primitive man also thought of this animal world as if in the form of a second and completely equal half of his own community. From this developed totemism, i.e., the idea that all members of a given genus are descended from a certain animal, plant, or other "totem" and are connected with this type of animal by an indissoluble bond. The very word totem, which has entered science, is borrowed from the language of one of the North American Indian tribes - the Algonquins, in whom it means "his kind." Animals and people, according to totemic ideas, had common ancestors. Animals, if they wanted to, could take off their skins and become human beings. Giving people their own meat, they died. But if people saved their bones and performed the necessary rituals, the animals returned to life again, thus “providing” an abundance of food, the well-being of the primitive community.

The first weak beginnings of such a primitive cult of the beast can be found, judging by the finds in Teshik-Tash and in the Alpine caves, possibly already at the end of the Mousterian time. Its development is clearly evidenced by the monuments of the cave art of the Upper Cro-Magnons, the content of which is almost exclusively images of animals: mammoths, rhinos, bulls, horses, deer, predators, such as a cave lion and a bear. In the first place, of course, are those animals, the hunting of which was the main source of food: ungulates.

To understand the meaning of these cave drawings, the conditions in which they are located are also important. In itself, the preservation of cave drawings is determined by the stable hygroscopic regime inside the caves, which are also isolated from the influence of temperature fluctuations that took place on the surface of the earth. The drawings are usually located at a considerable distance from the entrance, for example, in Nio (France) - at a distance of 800 m. The constant life of a person at such a distance from the entrance to the caves, in the depths, where eternal darkness and dampness reigned, of course, was impossible. To get into the most wonderful repositories of cave art, sometimes even now you have to make your way into the dark depths of the caves through narrow wells and crevices, often crawling, even swim across the underground rivers and lakes blocking the further path.

What thoughts and feelings guided the primitive sculptors and painters of the ancient Stone Age, their drawings show no less clearly. Here are bison with darts or harpoons stuck in them, animals covered with wounds, dying predators, whose blood is pouring from a wide-open mouth. Schematic drawings are visible on the figures of mammoths, which may depict hunting pits, which, as some researchers believe, served to catch these ice age giants.

The specific purpose of cave drawings is also evidenced by the characteristic overlap of some drawings on others, their multiplicity, showing that the images of animals were made, apparently, not forever, but only for one time, for one or another separate rite. This can be seen even more clearly on small, smooth tiles, where overlapping patterns often form a continuous grid of intersecting and completely tangled lines. Such pebbles must have been re-coated each time with red paint, on which the drawing was scratched. Thus, these drawings were made only for one specific moment, "lived" only once.

It is believed that female figurines of the Upper Cro-Magnons were also largely associated with witchcraft hunting rites. Their meaning is determined, according to these views, by the ideas of the ancient hunters who believed in a kind of "division of labor" between men who kill animals and women who, with their witchcraft, were supposed to "attract" animals under the blows of the hunters' spears. This assumption is well substantiated by ethnographic analogies.

At the same time, female figurines are, apparently, evidence of the existence of a cult of female spirits, characteristic of ancient communities with a maternal clan. This cult is well known according to the beliefs of various tribes, including not only agricultural, but also purely hunting ones, such as the Aleuts and Eskimos of the 17th-18th centuries. n. e., whose way of life, due to the harsh Arctic nature and hunting, showed the greatest similarity with the everyday life of Cro-Magnon hunters in the glacial regions of Europe and Asia. 9

The culture of these Aleutian and Eskimo tribes in its general development, of course, went far ahead in comparison with the culture of the upper Cro-Magnons, but it is more interesting that in their religious beliefs much has been preserved that helps to understand the ideas that the female Paleolithic figurines brought to life.

The development and nature of the primitive religious ideas and rituals that developed among the Cro-Magnons can also be judged from the Upper Paleolithic burials. The earliest Upper Cro-Magnon burials were found in the vicinity of Menton (Italy); they belong to the Aurignacian time. People who buried their dead relatives in Menton grottoes laid them in clothes lavishly decorated with sea shells, necklaces and bracelets made of shells, animal teeth and fish vertebrae. Flint plates and bone dagger-shaped points were found from tools with skeletons in Menton. The dead were covered in mineral red paint. So, in the Grimaldi caves in the vicinity of Menton, two skeletons were found - young men 15-17 years old and old women, laid on a cooled fire in a crouched position. On the skull of the young man, decorations from the headdress, consisting of four rows of drilled sea shells, survived. Bracelets made of the same shells were placed on the left hand of the old woman. Near the body of the young man were, in addition, flint plates. Above, but also still in the Aurignacian layer, lay two children's skeletons, in the pelvic region of which about a thousand drilled shells were found, apparently decorating the front of the clothes.

Cro-Magnon burials show that by that time it was customary to bury the dead with jewelry and tools that they used during life, with food supplies, and sometimes even with materials for making tools and weapons. From this we can conclude that at this time ideas about the soul are already emerging, as well as about the "land of the dead", where the deceased will hunt and lead the same life that he led in this world.

According to these ideas, death usually meant a simple departure of the soul from the human body to the "world of ancestors." The “Land of the Dead” was often imagined to be located in the upper or lower reaches of the river where this tribal community lived, sometimes underground, in the “underworld”, or in the sky, or on an island surrounded by water. Once there, the souls of people obtained food for themselves by hunting and fishing, built dwellings and lived a life similar to the earth.

Something similar to these beliefs, judging by the archaeological sites noted above, must have existed among Paleolithic people. From that era, such views have come down to our time. They are also at the basis of modern religions that have developed in a class society.

Noteworthy is such a characteristic feature of Cro-Magnon burials as the sprinkling of the dead in the graves with blood. According to the views described by ethnographers on the role of red paint in various rites, among many tribes of recent times, red paint - bloodstone - should have replaced blood - a source of vitality and a receptacle for the soul. Judging by their wide distribution and obvious connection with the hunting way of life, such views go back to the distant primitive past.

Conclusion

So, in conclusion, we can say the following: Cro-Magnon archaeological cultures differ significantly from each other in some specific features of flint and bone products. This is one of the features in which the Cro-Magnon culture as a whole differs from the Neanderthal: Neanderthal tools from various regions have a very high degree of similarity. Perhaps such a differentiation of Cro-Magnon products means real cultural differences between individual tribes of ancient people. On the other hand, a certain style in the manufacture of tools could reflect the individual manner of some ancient master, a manifestation of his personal aesthetic preferences.

Cro-Magnon culture includes another phenomenon that has arisen only in modern man. We are talking about the art of the Stone Age, art, the works of which can be considered not only the wall paintings of the Ancient caves, but also the tools of Cro-Magnon man themselves, tools sometimes so perfect in their lines and shapes that they can hardly be reproduced by anyone living today. of people.

Thus, the tasks are solved, the purpose of the work is fulfilled.

Bibliography

1. Boriskovsky P.I. The ancient past of mankind. M., 2001.

2. Ancient civilizations. Under the general editorship of G. M. Bongard-Levin. M., 2009.

3. Ancient civilizations: from Egypt to China. M., 2007.

4. Ibraev L. I. The origin of man. M., 2004

5. History of the ancient world. Ed. D. Reder and others - M., 2001. - Part 1-2.

6. History of primitive society. In 3 vols. M., 2000.

7. Mongait A.L. Archeology of Western Europe / Stone Age. M., 2003.

In Neanderthal cultures, in cultures Cro-Magnons the late Paleolithic was dominated by stone tools ... similar techniques and tools, cro-magnons got an almost inexhaustible source... and clothes In construction cro-magnons basically followed the old...

The first scientific discovery of a modern human was a headless skeleton found in Wells (England) in 1823. It was a burial: the deceased was decorated with shells and sprinkled with red ocher, which subsequently settled on the bones. The skeleton was considered female and was nicknamed the "Red Lady" (a hundred years later it was recognized as male). But the most famous are later finds (1868) in the grotto of Cro-Magnon (France), according to which all ancient people are often not quite called Cro-Magnons.

They were people of high (170-180 cm) height, practically no different from us, with large, coarse-looking features of broad faces. A similar anthropological type is still found among living people in the Balkans and the Caucasus. Subsequently, the remains of people of this type were found in many places in Europe, in our country from the Crimean caves to Sungir near the city of Vladimir.

In ancient times, humanity was no less diverse than it is now. Along with the Cro-Magnons, sometimes next to them, representatives of other forms lived in Europe and Asia.

Neoanthropes lived in the era of the so-called upper paleotype. Like the Neanderthals, they used more than just caves for housing. From tree trunks, mammoth bones and skins, and in Siberia even from stone slabs, they built huts. Their tools become more perfect, in addition to stone, horn and bone are used in their dressing. A modern man painted magnificent frescoes on the walls of caves depicting game animals: horses, mammoths, bison (probably for some magical rites), decorated himself with necklaces, bracelets and rings made of shells and mammoth bone; domesticated the first animal, the dog.

The Cro-Magnons lived in caves or huts at the very end of the last of the ice ages. At the same time, the climate was cold, and winters were snowy, only low grasses and shrubs could grow in such conditions. The Cro-Magnons hunted reindeer and woolly mammoths. The Cro-Magnons learned how to make many new types of weapons. To their spears they tied sharp tips made of deer antler with teeth pointing backwards so that the spear would get stuck deep in the side of the wounded animal. In order to throw the spear as far as possible, they used special throwing devices. These devices were made of deer antler, and some of them were decorated with different patterns.

They fished with harpoons carved from deer antlers, with tips and teeth curved back. Harpoons were tied to spears, and fishermen pierced fish with them right in the water.

Cro-Magnons built huts from long tibia bones and mammoth tusks, covering the frame with animal skins. The ends of the bones were inserted into the skulls, since the builders could not stick them into the frozen ground. In the earthen floor of the huts and caves of the Cro-Magnons, many burials were discovered. This skeleton was covered with beads of stones and shells, previously attached to his rotten clothes. The dead, as a rule, were laid in a grave in a bent position, with their knees pressed to their chin. Sometimes various tools and weapons are also found in the graves.

These Cro-Magnons cut deer antlers with a chisel-shaped stone tool - a chisel.

They were probably the first people to learn how to make needles and sew. From one end of the needle they made a hole that served as an eye. Then they cleaned the edges and the point of the needle by rubbing it against a special stone. Perhaps they pierced the skin with a stone drill so that they could pass the needle through the holes that had formed. Instead of thread, they used thin strips of animal skin or intestines. Cro-Magnon people often sewed small beads made of multi-colored pebbles to their clothes to look more elegant. Sometimes for these purposes they also used shells with holes in the middle.

Apparently, the Cro-Magnons and other people who lived at that time were practically no different from us in terms of the development of higher nervous activity. At this level, the biological evolution of man was completed. The old mechanisms of anthropogenesis ceased to operate.

What were these mechanisms? Recall that the genus Homo originates from Australopithecus - actually monkeys, but with a bipedal gait. Not a single monkey that passed from the trees to the ground did this, but not a single one, except for our ancestors, made the main weapon of defense and attack, first picked up in nature, and then artificially made tools. That is why natural selection for the best instrumental activity is considered the main factor of anthropogenesis. This is exactly what F. Engels had in mind when he noted that man was created by labor.

As a result of the cruel selection of the most skilled craftsmen and skilful hunters, such achievements of anthropogenesis as a large and complexly arranged brain, a hand suitable for the most delicate labor operations, a perfect two-legged gait and articulate speech have developed. It is also important to emphasize the fact that from the very beginning man was a social animal - already Australopithecus, apparently, lived in packs and only because of this were able, for example, to finish off a weakened and wounded animal and fight off the attack of large predators.

All this led to the fact that at the stage of neoanthropes such powerful factors of evolution as natural selection and intraspecific struggle lost their significance and were replaced by social ones. As a result, the biological evolution of man almost stopped.

Cro-Magnons - the origin of modern man

Cro-Magnons - the common name of the ancient representatives of modern man, who appeared much later than the Neanderthals and coexisted with them for some time (40-30,000 years ago). Their appearance and physical development were in fact no different from modern humans.

Approximately 40–30,000 years ago, the third greatest event in the life of our planet took place. The first, which happened several billion years ago, was the origin of life. The second is the beginning of humanization, the transition from ape to ape-man - about 2 million years ago. The third event is the appearance of a modern type of man, Homo sapiens - a reasonable man.

40-30,000 years ago, it appears and very quickly (quickly in this case, when a millennium is a trifle) takes the place of the Neanderthals.

Cro-Magnon skeletons found

As soon as an archaeologist from France Larte discovered 5 skeletons in the Cro-Magnon grotto under a thick layer of centuries-old deposits, he immediately guessed that he had met “acquaintances”. Shortly before this, the scientist became aware that, by order of the authorities of the Haute-Garonne department, 17 skeletons, accidentally found in the Orignac Pyrenean cave, were buried in the parish cemetery. Larte could easily prove that the strict rules of Christian burial could be waived in relation to these people, and not only dug them back, but also established (using stone tools and animal bones from the Aurignac cave) that they were contemporaries of the same ice age, where the classic Neanderthals lived. The tools of the Aurignacian man are in a slightly higher, i.e. late, layer than the tools of the Chapelles.

The two caves in which the most ancient people of the modern type were found gave them their names: the first person was called the Cro-Magnon, and the first great period of his history was the Aurignac period (culture).

Soon followed by dozens of discoveries of Cro-Magnon skeletons and sites throughout Western Europe and North Africa, and the ancient "reasonable man" appeared in all its splendor and splendor.

Parking lot Sungir

Sculptural portraits of a girl and a boy from the Sungir site

Sungir is an Upper Paleolithic Cro-Magnon site on the territory of the Vladimir region. There is a well-known paired burial of a boy aged 12–14 and a girl aged 9–10, lying with their heads to each other. What their bones could tell. As it turned out, the boy, despite his age, could throw a spear well with his right hand. The girl, judging by the development of her fingers and forearm, often made scrolling movements with her right hand. We know that the clothes of the Sungir people were covered with many beads made of mammoth bone, and there were holes in the beads. These holes, apparently, were drilled by a young Cro-Magnon woman.

The structure of the right humerus and cervical vertebrae show that the girl often raised her right arm up, and her head was constantly tilted to the left. In order for such features to appear on the skeleton already in childhood, the load must be very strong! According to anthropologists, the girl regularly wore weights on her head, and held them with her right hand. Perhaps during the transitions from camp to camp, which were made by nomadic groups of Cro-Magnons, the little Cro-Magnon was a carrier on an equal basis with adults.

What was a Cro-Magnon

Cro-Magnons evoked admiration from their discoverers, mixed with envy: the first people - and immediately what!

They were Caucasians, of enormous height (on average 187 cm), with an ideal straight bipedal gait and a very large head (from 1600 to 1900 cm³). Such a large skull could still be considered a "relic of Neanderthalism", but this head already had a straight forehead, a high cranial vault, and a sharply protruding chin.

Cro-Magnon man did not know what metal was, did not suspect either agriculture or cattle breeding, but if we could transfer him through 400 centuries, he, apparently, would easily understand everything and could draw up an equation, write a poem, work on the machine and compete in a chess tournament.

Where did the Cro-Magnon come from?

A Cro-Magnon man appeared - for archaeologists and anthropologists - somehow at once: just here, in the caves of France and Italy, squat, powerful, invincible people lived, and suddenly they quickly, abruptly disappear, and people of the modern type are already hunting in their area. The newcomers are accompanied by an incredible technological revolution: instead of 3-4 primitive Neanderthal stone tools, about 20 stone and bone “devices” are used during the Aurignac period: awls, needles, tips, and so on. Immediately, as if from nothing, an amazing cave art appears.

This most powerful anthropological, technical and cultural upheaval now determines the entire human history. For billions of years, animals have existed only according to biological laws, improving, expanding the apparatus of adaptation, but not leaving the biological framework. But now a most important event occurs: the development of a group of animals has reached such a stage that they include in the mechanism of their adaptation, in addition to their own teeth and paws, also an inanimate object that does not belong to the body: a stick, a stone.

According to one version, the Cro-Magnon is the ancestor of all modern people, having appeared in East Africa approximately 130-180,000 years ago. According to this theory, 50-60,000 years ago they migrated from Africa to the Arabian Peninsula and appeared in Eurasia. The first group was able to quickly populate the coast of the Indian Ocean, and the second migrated to the steppes of Central Asia. The second group is the ancestors of nomadic peoples and most of the Middle Eastern and North African population. Migration from the Black Sea to Europe began approximately 40-50,000 years ago, presumably through the Danube corridor. 20,000 years ago, all of Europe was already inhabited.

How has everything changed?

Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon

From now on, this creature no longer belongs entirely to biology, there is a gap in the “biological fence”. Oldowan pebbles, an axe, a stone axe, a locomotive, an electronic computing device - these are phenomena of the same order: a living being uses and combines inanimate objects. "Who" dominates "what".

The breakthrough of biology that occurs in a social animal multiplies, intensifies in the pack, creates new relationships in this pack. But, apparently, the biological factor, that is, the physical structure of the creature, does not immediately get used to, is consistent with the new "organs" - tools: for about 2 million years, the first ape-men change not only their inventory, but also their physical structure. A hand squeezing a broken pebble makes the brain think hard and increase, but not remaining in debt, the brain sends its signals to the hand: it also improves.

Over thousands of centuries, tools go from rough stone, stick or bone to the Neanderthal axe, stone scraper and pointed point.

The brain during this period increases from 600–700 to 1500 cm³.

Gait - from semi-monkey to completely straight.

Hand - from a tenacious paw to a perfect tool.

The collective - from the animal flock to the first human social forms.

Some law of evolution, which we have not yet fully deciphered, causes the body of the ape-man to change along with his tools.

Comparison with modern man

Eventually there comes a point when biology and tools reach full agreement, a point from which brain and hand can do whatever work they want. The same brain and the same hand as a Cro-Magnon man will control a bow 20,000 years later, a plow 25,000 years later, and a few thousand years later, a locomotive, a car, an airplane, a rocket.

To move from a primitive ax to a more perfect one, it took from Pithecanthropus to become a Neanderthal. And in order to come from stone unpolished tips to the splitting of the atom, “nothing” was needed, that is, it seems that nothing fundamentally changed in the human body.

Instead of changing physically in the struggle for existence, man chose a different path. From now on, he began to improve "inanimate objects" and changed the structure of his society. Physical changes were replaced by faster and more painless - technical, social.

And how can we actually know that the biological development of man has stopped?

Discussions on this topic have been going on for a very long time. It has been noticed that there are secular, millennial fluctuations in the physical structure of a person: the Cro-Magnon man was taller than us, now, as you know, humanity is again growing quite rapidly. Several thousand years ago, human bones were more massive, then they became more elegant, tomorrow, perhaps, they will again become massive and bulky. Undoubtedly, "brachycephalization" is going on, an increase in the number of short-headed people compared to long-headed ones.

The reasons for these changes are cryptic: food, a new way of life? The seriousness of these changes is also conjectural: are these phenomena temporary, or tomorrow they will be covered by another change, or will a person still look different in a few tens or hundreds of millennia, not like now?

Guessing about the future, however, we have the right to declare: over the past 30-40 thousand years, gigantic changes in technology have occurred, but during the same time there have been no fundamental "corporeal" changes.

Obviously, the “thousand-great-grandfathers” laid a good foundation!

Cro-Magnon culture

The Cro-Magnon created a rich and varied Late Paleolithic culture. There are descriptions of more than 100 types of complex stone and bone tools made with great skill, made by new, more efficient processing of stone and bone. To a large extent, the Cro-Magnons also improved hunting methods (driven hunting), hunting deer, mammoths, woolly rhinos, cave bears, wolves and other animals. They began to manufacture spear throwers (a spear could fly 137 m), as well as devices for catching fish (harpoons, hooks), and bird snares.

Cro-Magnons usually lived in caves, but at the same time, they built various dwellings from stone and dugouts, tents from animal skins, and even entire villages. Early neoanthropes could make sewn clothes, often decorated. So, at the Sungir site (Vladimir region), more than 1000 beads were found on the fur clothes of a man, many other decorations were found - bracelets, rings.

The Cro-Magnon man was the creator of remarkable European primitive art, as evidenced by multi-color painting on the walls and ceilings of caves ( (Spain), Montespan, Lascaux (France), etc.), engravings on pieces of stone or bone, ornament, small stone and clay sculpture. Amazing images of horses, deer, bison, mammoths, female figurines, called “Venuses” by archaeologists for the splendor of their forms, various objects carved from bone, horns and tusks or molded from clay, no doubt can testify to a highly developed sense of beauty among Cro-Magnons. Cave art reached its peak approximately 19-15,000 years ago. Scientists believe that the Cro-Magnons could have had magical rites and rituals.

Probably, the life expectancy of Cro-Magnons was longer than that of Neanderthals: about 10% already lived to be 40 years old. In this era, the primitive communal system was also formed.

Cro-Magnon cave with wall paintings

In the south-west of France, near the city of Villonaire, Charente department, speleologists and archaeologists have discovered a cave with ancient wall paintings.

Cave researchers managed to find a unique and extremely valuable underground hall with rock art back in December 2005, but the unique cave was reported much later. Recently, scientists have increasingly adhered to such strong secrecy with valuable finds in order to prevent their destruction by unwanted visitors.

Work is underway to date the rock paintings. Experts do not exclude that they may be older than those in the famous Lasko Cave and Altamira Cave. According to the first impressions of experts, we are talking about a Cro-Magnon site, that is, a period of 30,000 years ago. According to scientists, the find in Villonera could be a revolution in science - it used to be believed that in such ancient times people did not resort to painting the walls of their underground dwellings.