What period did the Cro-Magnons live in? Ancient Cro-Magnon man - characteristics of lifestyle, tools, interesting facts with photos and videos

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 omnivorous 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.

The Cro-Magnons became more inventive and creative, creating more elaborate 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: even during the early migrations from northern 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 at absorbing 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.

The 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. 1

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. 4

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, pounding 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. 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 the excavations of the Meiendorf site, near Hamburg (Germany), harpoons and deer shoulder blades were found, pierced by such harpoons.

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-Magnons, significant changes are also 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, 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 upper Cro-Magnon man 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. An 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. 8

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 particular animal, plant, or other “totem” and are connected with this type of animal by an indissoluble bond. The very word totem, which entered science, was 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 of their own free will, 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...

Cro-Magnon - was a person in the modern sense of the word, of course, more primitive, but still a person. The era in which the Cro-Magnon man lived falls on the period from the 40th to the 10th millennium BC. The first finds of the Cro-Magnon man skeleton were made in 1868 in the south-west of France in the Cro-Magnon cave. So, about 40,000 years ago, in different areas of the globe, a series of cultural shifts took place in completely new directions. The events of a person's life begin to develop along a different path and at a different, accelerated pace, with the main driving force now becoming the person himself.

The number of achievements, changes in the social organization of the life of the Cro-Magnon was so great that it was several times greater than the number of achievements of Australopithecus, Pithecanthropus and Neanderthal combined. The Cro-Magnons inherited from their ancestors a large active brain and a fairly practical technology, thanks to which, in a relatively short period of time, they made an unprecedented step forward. This manifested itself in aesthetics, the development of communication and symbol systems, tool-making technology and active adaptation to external conditions, as well as in new forms of social organization and a more complex approach to their own kind.

All Cro-Magnons used one or another stone tools and were engaged in hunting and gathering. They achieved many astonishing achievements, settled in all geographic areas suitable for habitation. The Cro-Magnons created the first primitive forms of firing pottery, built kilns for this, and even burned coal. In the skill of processing stone tools, they surpassed their ancestors, learned to make all kinds of tools, weapons and devices from bone, tusks, deer antlers and wood.

All areas of Cro-Magnon activity were improved compared to their ancestors. They made better clothes, built hotter fires, built larger dwellings, and ate a much more varied diet than their predecessors.

Among other things, scientists have found that the Cro-Magnons had another important innovation - art. The Cro-Magnon man was a caveman, but with one difference: his unkempt appearance hid a developed intellect and a complex spiritual life. The walls of his caves were covered with painted, carved and scratched masterpieces, very expressive and full of immediate charm.

The Cro-Magnon differed from its predecessors in physiological characteristics. First, his bones are lighter than those of his ancestors. Secondly, the Cro-Magnon skull is similar in everything to the skull of modern people: a clearly defined chin protrusion, a high forehead, small teeth, the volume of the brain cavity corresponds to the modern one. Finally, it has the physical features necessary for the formation of complex speech. The arrangement of the nasal and oral cavities, the elongated pharynx (the part of the throat just above the vocal cords), and the flexibility of the tongue gave it the ability to form and produce distinct sounds far more varied than those available to early humans. However, modern man had to pay a high price for the gift of speech - of all living beings, he alone can suffocate, choking on food, since his elongated pharynx also serves as the vestibule of the esophagus.

Straight gait was destined to become first the rule, and then a necessity. In the meantime, more and more different types of activities fell to the share of hands. Already among monkeys there is a certain division of functions between arms and legs. The hand serves primarily for picking up and holding food, as some lower mammals do with their front paws. With the help of their hands, some monkeys build their nests in trees or, like chimpanzees, canopies between branches to protect themselves from the weather. They grab sticks with their hands to protect themselves from enemies or throw fruits and stones at them. And although the number and general arrangement of bones and muscles are the same in ape and man, the hand of even a primitive savage was capable of performing hundreds of operations inaccessible to a monkey. No monkey hand has ever made even the crudest stone tool.

When processing stone, wood, skins, when making fire, people's hands developed. Especially important was the development of the thumb, which helped to firmly hold both a heavy spear and a thin needle. Gradually, the actions of the hand became more and more confident and complex. In collective work, the mind and speech of people developed.

The beginning of domination over nature expanded the horizons of man. On the other hand, the development of labor necessarily contributed to a closer cohesion of the members of society. As a result, emerging people had a need to say something to each other. Need created an organ for itself: the undeveloped larynx of the monkey was slowly but steadily transformed, and the organs of the mouth gradually learned to pronounce one articulate sound after another.

When did the type of modern man, which is usually called Homo sapiens, arise? All the oldest finds in the Upper Paleolithic layers date back in absolute terms to 25,000–28,000 years ago. The formation of Homo sapiens led to the coexistence of the late progressive forms of Neanderthals and the emerging small groups of modern people for several millennia. The process of replacing the old species with the new one was rather long and complicated.

The growth of the frontal lobes of the brain was the main morphological feature that distinguished the emerging modern humans from the late Neanderthals. The frontal lobes of the brain are the focus of not only higher mental, but also social functions. The growth of the frontal lobes expanded the scope of higher associative thinking, and with it contributed to the complication of social life, the diversity of labor activity, caused a further evolution of the body structure, physiological functions, and motor skills.

The brain volume of a “reasonable person” is twice as large as that of a “skillful person”. He is taller and has a straight figure. "Reasonable people" speak coherent speech.

According to their appearance, "reasonable people" who lived in different countries differed from each other. Such natural conditions as an abundance or lack of sunny days, harsh winds carrying clouds of sand, severe frosts left their mark on the appearance of people. Their division into three main races began: white (Caucasian), black (Negroid) and yellow (Mongoloid). Subsequently, the races were divided into sub-races (for example, yellow - into Mongoloid and Americanoid), areas with a population of transitional races formed on the borders between races (for example, a transitional Ethiopian race appeared on the border between the Caucasian and Negroid races). However, physiological differences between different races are not significant; From a biological point of view, all modern humanity belongs to the same subspecies of the species Homo sapiens. This is confirmed, for example, by genetic studies: the divergence in DNA between races is only 0.1%, and the genetic diversity within races is greater than interracial differences.

Thus, the process of evolution explains the presence of similarities in the external and internal structure of humans and mammals. We briefly list them: the presence of a head, torso, limbs, hairline, nails. The skeletons of both humans and mammals are made up of the same bones. The location and functions of the internal organs are similar. Like mammals, humans feed their young with milk. But a person has significant differences, which will be discussed further.

The Cro-Magnons are the inhabitants of the late Stone Age, who resembled our contemporaries in many of their features. The remains of these people were first discovered in the grotto of Cro-Magnon, located in France, which gave them their name. A lot of parameters - the structure of the skull and features of the hand, the proportions of the body and even the size of the brain of the Cro-Magnons are close to a modern type of person. Therefore, the opinion has taken root in science that it is they who are our direct ancestors.

Appearance Features

Researchers believe that the Cro-Magnon man lived about 30 thousand years ago, while it is interesting that for some time he coexisted with the Neanderthal, who later finally gave way to a more modern primate. For about 6 millennia, according to scientists, these two varieties of ancient people simultaneously inhabited Europe, sharply conflicting over food and other resources.

Despite the fact that the Cro-Magnon man was not much inferior to our contemporaries in appearance, his muscle mass was more developed. This was due to the conditions in which this person lived - the physically weak were doomed to death.

What are the differences?

• The Cro-Magnon has a characteristic chin protrusion and a high forehead. In the Neanderthal, the chin is very small, and the brow ridges were characteristically pronounced.
• Cro-Magnon man had the volume of the brain cavity necessary for the development of the brain, which was not the case with more ancient people.
• The elongated pharynx, the flexibility of the tongue, and the peculiarities of the location of the oral and nasal cavities allowed the Cro-Magnon man to receive the gift of speech. The Neanderthal, according to the researchers, could make several consonant sounds, his speech apparatus allowed him to do this, but he had no speech in the traditional sense.

Unlike the Neanderthal, the Cro-Magnon had a less massive physique, a high skull without a sloping chin, a broad face and eye sockets narrower than those of modern people.

The table shows some features of Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons, their difference from modern man.

As can be seen from the table, the Cro-Magnon man, in terms of structural features, is much closer to our contemporaries than to the Neanderthal man. Anthropological finds indicate that they could interbreed with each other.

Geography of distribution

The remains of a Cro-Magnon type of man are found in various parts of the world. Skeletons and bones have been found on the territory of many European countries: the Czech Republic, Romania, Great Britain, Serbia, Russia, as well as in Africa.

Lifestyle

The researchers managed to recreate the lifestyle model of the Cro-Magnons. So, it is proved that it was they who created the first settlements in the history of mankind, in which they lived in fairly large communities, including from 20 to 100 members. It was these people who learned to communicate with each other, possessed primitive speech skills. The way of life of the Cro-Magnons meant the joint conduct of business. Largely due to this, they managed to achieve impressive success in the hunting and gathering economy. So, hunting in large groups, together, allowed these people to get large animals as prey: mammoths, aurochs. Such achievements to one hunter, even the most experienced, of course, were beyond his strength.

In short, the lifestyle of the Cro-Magnon largely continued the traditions of the Neanderthal people. They also hunted, used the skins of dead animals to make primitive clothing, and lived in caves. But independent buildings made of stones or tents made of skins could also be used as dwellings. Sometimes they dug original dugouts, sheltering from bad weather. In the matter of housing, the Cro-Magnon man managed to make a small innovation - nomad hunters began to build light disassembled huts that could be easily erected and assembled during parking.

Community Life

The features of the structure and lifestyle of the Cro-Magnon make him in many respects similar to a modern type of person. So, in the communities of these ancient people there was a division of labor. Men were engaged in hunting, together they killed wild animals. Women also took part in the preparation of food: they collected berries, seeds and nutritious roots. The fact that decorations are found in the graves of children testifies: the parents had warm feelings for their descendants, grieved for an early loss, tried to take care of the child at least posthumously. Due to the increased life expectancy, Cro-Magnon people got the opportunity to pass on their knowledge and experience to the next generation, to be more attentive to raising children. As a result, infant mortality has also declined.

Some burials differ from others in rich decorations, an abundance of utensils. Researchers believe that noble members of the community, respected for some merit, are buried here.

Tools of labor and hunting

The invention of the harpoon is the merit of the Cro-Magnon man. The lifestyle of this ancient man changed after the appearance of such weapons. Affordable efficient fishing has provided complete food in the form of sea and river inhabitants. It was this ancient man who began to make snares for birds, which his predecessors were not yet able to do.

On the hunt, the ancient man learned to use not only strength, but also ingenuity, building traps for animals many times larger than him. Therefore, obtaining food for an entire community required much less effort than in the days of its predecessors. The corralling of herds of wild animals, mass raids on them was popular. Ancient people learned the science of collective hunting: they frightened large mammals, forcing them to flee to those areas where it was easiest to kill prey.

Cro-Magnon man managed to step up the ladder of evolutionary development much higher than his predecessor, the Neanderthal. He began to use more advanced tools, which allowed him to gain advantages in hunting. So, with the help of spear throwers, this ancient man was able to increase the distance traveled by the spear. Therefore, hunting has become safer, and prey - more plentiful. Long spears were also used as weapons. The tools of labor became more complex, needles, drills, scrapers appeared, as the material for which the ancient man learned to use everything that came to his hand: stones and bones, horns and tusks.

A distinctive feature of Cro-Magnon tools and weapons is a narrower specialization, careful dressing, and the use of a variety of materials in production. Some products are decorated with a carved ornament, indicating that the ancient people were not alien to a peculiar understanding of beauty.

Food

The basis of the Cro-Magnon diet was the meat of animals killed during hunting, primarily mammals. In those days when these ancient people lived, horses, stone goats, deer and tours, bison and antelopes were common, and they served as the main source of food. Having learned to fish with harpoons, people began to eat salmon, which in abundance rose through the shallow water to spawn. Of the birds, according to anthropologists, the inhabitants of antiquity could catch partridges - these birds fly low and could well become a victim of a well-aimed spear. However, there is a hypothesis that they were able to extract waterfowl. Meat stocks, according to scientists, the Cro-Magnons kept in glaciers, the low temperature of which did not allow the product to deteriorate.

Vegetable food was also used by the Cro-Magnons: they ate berries, roots and bulbs, seeds. In warm latitudes, women fished for shellfish.

Art

The Cro-Magnon man also became famous for the fact that he began to create objects of art. These people painted colorful images of animals on the walls of the caves, carved anthropomorphic figures from ivory and deer antlers. It is believed that by drawing animal silhouettes on the walls, ancient hunters wanted to attract prey. According to researchers, it was during this period that the first music and the earliest musical instrument appeared - a stone pipe.

Funeral rituals

The fact that the lifestyle of the Cro-Magnon has become more complicated compared to his ancestors is also evidenced by a change in funeral traditions. So, in the burials they often find an abundance of jewelry (bracelets, beads and necklaces), which indicate that the deceased was rich and noble. Attention to funeral rituals, covering the bodies of the dead with red paint allowed researchers to conclude that the inhabitants of the ancient Stone Age had some rudimentary beliefs about the soul and the afterlife. Household utensils and food were also placed in the graves.

Achievements

The lifestyle of the Cro-Magnon in the harsh conditions of the ice age led to the fact that these people had to take a more serious approach to tailoring. According to the finds - rock paintings and the remains of bone needles - the researchers concluded that the inhabitants of the late Stone Age knew how to sew primitive clothing. They wore jackets with hoods, pants, even mittens and shoes. Often, clothes were decorated with beads, which, according to researchers, was a sign of honor and respect among other members of the community. It was these people who learned how to make the first dishes, using burnt clay for its manufacture. Scientists believe that during the time of the Cro-Magnons, the first animal was domesticated - a dog.

The era of the Cro-Magnons is separated from us by a thousand years, so we can only guess how exactly they lived, what they used for food and what orders reigned in the settlements. Therefore, there are many controversial and controversial hypotheses that have not yet found serious scientific evidence.

• The discovery of a child's jaw of a Neanderthal baby, mutilated by a stone tool, led researchers to think that Cro-Magnons could have eaten Neanderthals.
• It was the Cro-Magnon man that caused the extinction of the Neanderthals: a more developed species forced the latter into areas with an arid climate, where there was practically no prey, dooming them to death.

The structural features of the Cro-Magnon man in many respects bring him closer to a modern type of person. Thanks to the developed brain, these ancient people represented a new round of evolution, their achievements, both in the practical and in the spiritual sense, are truly great.

Modern people

The earliest representatives of neoanthropes were called cro-magnons due to the fact that their bone remains (several skeletons) were first found in 1868 in a cave near the village of Cro-Magnon in France. The later neoanthropes are modern people that still exist today.

The generalized name of modern people who replaced all their predecessors in the period 40-30 thousand years ago - neoanthropes .

Scientists believe that neoanthrope, or a man of the modern type, arose in the Eastern Mediterranean, in Western Asia and in the southeast of Europe. It was here that numerous bone remains of intermediate forms between Neanderthals and early fossil forms were found. Homo sapiens - Cro-Magnons . In those days, all these territories were occupied by dense broad-leaved forests, rich in a variety of game, various fruits (nuts, berries) and succulent herbs. Under these conditions, it is believed that the last step on the way to Homo sapiens. The new man began to actively and widely spread around the planet, making large migrations across all the continents of the Earth.

Cro-Magnons are the first people, i.e. direct representativesHomo sapiens. They were characterized by rather high growth (about 180 cm), a skull with a large cranium (up to 1800 cm 3, more often about 1500 cm 3) , the presence of a pronounced chin, a straight forehead and the absence of brow ridges. The presence of a chin protrusion on the lower jaw indicated that the Cro-Magnons were capable of articulate speech.

Cro-Magnons lived in communities of 15-30 people. Caves, tents made of skins, dugouts served as their dwellings. They lived in a tribal society, began to tame animals and engage in agriculture.

The Cro-Magnons had a developed articulate speech, dressed in clothes made of skins, and were engaged in pottery. In Dolni Vestonice in Moravia, the world's oldest pottery kiln was found, which was used by the Cro-Magnons.

The Cro-Magnons had funeral rites. Household items, food, jewelry were placed in the grave. The dead were sprinkled with blood-red ocher, a net was put on their hair, bracelets were put on their hands, flat stones were placed on their faces and buried in a bent position (knees touching the chin).

The appearance of the Cro-Magnon was no different from the appearance of a modern person.

The Cro-Magnon man was characterized by a significant development of the parts of the brain associated with labor activity, speech and responsible for behavior in social life. Along with stone tools, he widely used bone and horn, from which he made needles, drills, arrowheads and harpoons. The objects of hunting were horses, mammoths, rhinos, deer, bison, arctic foxes and many other animals. Cro-Magnon was also engaged in fishing and gathering fruits, roots and herbs. He had a fairly high culture, as evidenced not only by tools and household items (he knew how to make leather, sew clothes and build housing from the skins of animals), but also various drawings on rocks, cave walls, stone and bone sculptures, made with great skill.

Wall painting in a Cro-Magnon cave (left) and his tools:
1 - horn harpoon; 2 - bone needle; 3 - flint scraper; 4-5 - horn and flint dart tips

By the time of the appearance Homo sapiens representatives of the genus Homo almost all the morphological features characteristic of Homo sapiens: upright posture; development of hands as organs of labor activity; proportional, more slender figure; lack of hairline. Height increased, the front part of the skull decreased, and the brain part became very large. There was not only a powerful increase in the mass of the brain, but also its qualitative change: the frontal lobes of the brain and areas associated with speech, social behavior and complex activities received great development.

All these transformations were not purely biological aromorphoses, as in other animals. They are largely due to the creation of a special, cultural environment and the strongest influence of social factors. Among them are the development of a social way of life and the application of the accumulated life experience of ancestors; labor activity and the creation of a hand as an organ of labor; the emergence of speech and the use of the word as a means of communication and education of a person; development of mental abilities that stimulate the improvement of labor and speech; the use of fire, which helped to scare away animals, protect themselves from the cold, cook food, and also spread around the globe. Social labor and the manufacture of labor tools provided a special, human path for the development of the species, distinguished by social (social) relations, the division of labor, the emergence on this basis of trade, art, religion, science and industrial production.

The emergence of man is the largest aromorphosis in the evolution of the organic world, unparalleled in quality in the entire history of the Earth. It was characterized by special regularities and specific features inherent only in anthropogenesis.

Having mastered the culture of making perfect tools, the reproduction of food, the arrangement of dwellings, the creation of clothing, Homo sapiens, unlike all other types of organisms, has become special, biosocial being , secured itself from adverse natural conditions by creating a special - cultural environment. As a result, there was no need for further evolution of man in the direction of transforming him into another, more perfect form. This is how the evolution of modern man as a biological species stopped. It continues only within the already formed species (mainly along the path of polymorphism of morphophysiological characters in different groups and human populations).

The emergence of the neoanthrope did not occur through a simple accumulation of new properties in the body, but in close unity with the process of formation of all mankind, and social existence(joint life, communication, speech, work, collective activity) was one of the essential properties of anthropogenesis. Under these conditions, a qualitatively new creature with biosocial properties appeared on Earth, which creatively transforms the world with the help of its mental and cultural abilities and social production. Outside of society, formation is unthinkable Homo sapiens as a special kind. The specific stability of the neoanthrope is precisely due to the "transformation" of a person into a representative of humanity.

The appearance of man is an outstanding event in the development of wildlife. With the emergence of human society at the stage Homo sapiens about 40 thousand years ago, the creative role of natural selection lost its significance for humans

Cro-Magnons are the earliest representatives of modern man. It must be said that these people lived later than the Neanderthals and inhabited almost the entire territory of modern Europe. The name "Cro-Magnon" can only be understood as those people who were found in the grotto of Cro-Magnon. These people lived 30 thousand years ago and looked like a modern person.

General information about Cro-Magnons

The Cro-Magnons were very advanced, and it must be said that their skills, achievements, and changes in the social organization of life were many times superior to Neanderthals and Pithecanthropes, and combined. It is with and is associated with Cro-Magnon. The lifestyle of these people has helped them take a big step forward in their development and achievements. Due to the fact that they were able to inherit an active brain from their ancestors, their achievements manifested themselves in aesthetics, tool manufacturing technology, communication, etc.

origin of name

Associated with a reasonable person, the number of changes in which was very large, namely Cro-Magnon. Their way of life was different from the way of life of their ancestors.

It is worth saying that the name "Cro-Magnon" comes from the rocky grotto of Cro-Magnon, located in France. In 1868, Louis Larte found several human skeletons in the area, as well as Late Paleolithic tools. He later described them, after which it was found out that these people existed about 30,000 years ago.

Cro-Magnon physique

Compared to Neanderthals, Cro-Magnons had a less massive skeleton. The growth of early representatives of man reached 180-190 cm.

Their forehead was straighter and smoother than that of Neanderthals. It is also worth noting that the Cro-Magnon skull had a high and round arch. The chin of these people was protruding, the eye sockets were angular, and the nose was rounded.

Cro-Magnons developed a straight gait. Scientists assure that their physique practically did not differ from the physique of modern people. And this already speaks volumes.

It was the Cro-Magnon man who was very similar to modern man. early representatives of man was quite interesting and unusual, compared with their ancestors. The Cro-Magnon people made a huge amount of effort in order to be as similar as possible to a modern person.

The earliest representatives of man are the Cro-Magnons. Who are the Cro-Magnons? Lifestyle, housing and clothing

About who the Cro-Magnons are, not only adults know, but also children. We study the features of their stay on Earth at school. It must be said that the first representative of a person who created settlements was precisely the Cro-Magnon. The way of life of these people was different from the Neanderthals. Cro-Magnons gathered in communities that numbered up to 100 people. They lived in caves, as well as tents made of skins. In Eastern Europe, there were representatives who lived in dugouts. It is important that their speech was articulate. Cro-Magnon clothing was skins.

How did the Cro-Magnon hunt? Way of life, tools of labor of an early representative of man

It must be said that the Cro-Magnons succeeded not only in the development of social life, but also in hunting. The paragraph "Features of the way of life of Cro-Magnons" includes an improved method of hunting - driven fishing. The early representatives of man mined northern, as well as mammoths, etc. It was the Cro-Magnons who knew how to make special spear throwers that could fly up to 137 meters. Harpoons and hooks for catching fish were also tools of the Cro-Magnons. They created snares - devices for hunting birds.

primitive art

It is important that it was the Cro-Magnons who became the creators of the European. This is evidenced primarily by the multi-color painting in the caves. The Cro-Magnons used to paint on the walls as well as on the ceilings. Confirmation that these people were creators of primitive art are engravings on stones and bones, ornament, etc.

All this testifies to how interesting and amazing the life of the Cro-Magnons was. Their way of life has become an object of admiration even in our time. It should be noted that the Cro-Magnons made a huge step forward, which significantly brought them closer to modern man.

Burial rites of the Cro-Magnons

It is worth noting that the early representatives of man also had funeral rites. It was customary among the Cro-Magnons to put various decorations, household items, and even food in the grave of the deceased. They were sprinkled on the hair of the dead, put on a net, bracelets on their hands, and flat stones were placed on their faces. It is also worth noting that the Cro-Magnons buried the dead in a bent state, that is, their knees had to touch the chin.

Recall that the Cro-Magnons were the first to domesticate an animal - a dog.

One of the versions of the origin of the Cro-Magnons

It must be said that there are several versions of the origin of the early representatives of man. The most common of them says that the Cro-Magnons were the ancestors of all modern people. According to this theory, these people appeared in East Africa about 100-200 thousand years ago. It is believed that the Cro-Magnons migrated to the Arabian Peninsula 50-60 thousand years ago, after which they appeared in Eurasia. According to this, one group of early human representatives quickly populated the entire coast of the Indian Ocean, while the second group migrated to the steppes of Central Asia. According to numerous data, it can be seen that 20 thousand years ago Europe was already inhabited by the Cro-Magnons.

Until now, many admire the way of life of the Cro-Magnons. Briefly about these early representatives of man, one can say that they were the most similar to modern man, as they improved their skills and abilities, developed and learned a lot of new things. The Cro-Magnons made a huge contribution to the history of human development, because it was they who took a huge step towards the most important achievements.