Modern scientists have long preferred to limit the history of human civilization to a few thousand years, to which the abyss of the wild and cruel Stone Age supposedly extended. But the discovery of such ancient cities as Catal Guyuk in Asia Minor or Jericho in Israel forced us to look at this issue a little differently and extend cultural period existence of mankind for approximately four to five thousand years. However, as for the written evidence of the ancients, science continues to take into account only those that were recognized several dozen, or even a hundred years ago.

Meanwhile, there are documents that make it possible to calculate the history of earthly civilization by at least tens of thousands of years.

Paradoxes from serious scientists

Georgy Sintsell was known as an outstanding historian. He lived at the turn of the 8th and 9th centuries after the Nativity of Christ. For many years, Syncellus preached in Palestine, was the personal secretary of the Patriarch of Constantinople Tarasius (784-806), after whose death he retired to a monastery, where he took up writing work. Syncell's most important work is considered to be "Selected Chronography". When creating it, the historian used the works of ancient authors such as Josephus, Manetho and the famous Babylonian priest Berossus, in whose works one can find many highly unusual things. The erudition of George Syncellus even allowed him to reasonably criticize the father of church history, Eusebius of Caesarea, for falsifying Egyptian chronology.

Syncell himself, in particular, wrote: “The Egyptians have a certain plate called the “Old Chronicle”; it contains 30 dynasties over 113 generations over a period of 36,525 years. The first group (dynasty) of princes is the Aurites, the second is the Mestroens, the third is the Egyptians. “The Chronicle” reads: “No time was determined for Hephaestus, since he was both day and night. Hephaestus' son Helios ruled for 30 thousand years. Chronos and the 12 gods then reigned for 3,984 years; Next were the demigods, numbering eight, who reigned for 217 years.”

The philosopher Simplicius of Cilicia, one of the founders of the Alexandrian school of Neoplatonism, distinguished by his businesslike nature and strict attitude to facts, even reported in the 6th century that he had heard that the Egyptians had been making astronomical observations for the last 630 thousand years. Even if he was mistaken and we are talking about months, then an impressive period still accumulates - 52.5 thousand years. The late ancient historian of philosophy Diogenes Laertius, possessor of a sharp and caustic mind, established that the Egyptians made their astronomical calculations 48,863 years before Alexander the Great. The encyclopedist writer of the first half of the 5th century, Marcian Capella, argued that the Egyptians secretly studied the stars for 40 thousand years before revealing their phenomenal knowledge to the world.

Zodiac - evidence of antiquity

Even Manetho, whose list of pharaonic dynasties is the cornerstone of modern Egyptology, cited evidence in favor of a much deeper antiquity of Egyptian civilization than is now commonly believed. The surviving passages of his History of Egypt contain the following words: “The first man [or God] in Egypt is Hephaestus, who is also known to the Egyptians as the discoverer of fire. The heir of his son Helios [Sun] was Sosis, then in turn Kronos, Osiris, Typhon, brother of Osiris, and finally Horus, son of Osiris and Isis. They were the first rulers of Egypt. After this, royal power passed from one to another, without interruption, until Bidis for 13,900 years.

Then gods and demigods ruled for 1255 years, and again for 1817 years another royal family gained power in the country. Then 30 more Memphis kings reigned for 1790 years, and after them 10 more kings for 350 years. Then came the reign of the “spirits of the dead,” which lasted 5,813 years.”

The alignment of the stars as they were approximately 90,000 years ago is demonstrated in the zodiac adorning the ceiling of the Temple of Hathor in the Egyptian city of Dendera. Moreover, this zodiac is so magnificent that the original ceiling was removed and transported to Paris during the Egyptian expedition of Napoleon I, and a plaster copy was installed instead of the original.

The astrological symbols of the zodiac, as British ufologist Raymond Drake writes, according to the precession of the equinoxes, mean the passage of three and a half large cycles of 25,800 years each. The original temple had long since turned to dust, but the unique zodiac was copied by initiates who sought to preserve this evidence of the deep knowledge of the ancients. A dating of 90 thousand years shocks our modern minds, accustomed to limiting the history of civilization to four or five thousand years, but similar zodiacs were found in the temples of northern India and on Babylonian clay tablets.

Royal lists

It is curious that the Chaldeans (Semitic pastoral tribes, inhabited in the first half of the first millennium BC. e. outskirts of Babylonia) there were also so-called royal lists, which operated with dates of unimaginable antiquity. The history of the Sumerians, who preceded the Babylonians in Mesopotamia, according to these lists, began with the creation of man. In the Bible we're talking about about 10 forefathers, if you count from Adam; among the Sumerians they were called the most ancient kings, and there were also 10 of them. The Israeli forefathers were distinguished by their extraordinary longevity, but the “Methuselah Age” against the background of the life expectancy of the Sumerian rulers does not seem so long. According to one such king list, which lists only eight kings, they reigned for 241,200 years.

According to another, which mentions all 10, it is 456 thousand years. After this, a flood broke out, but humanity was reborn thanks to the surviving righteous man Utnapishtim. A new dynasty of kings arose, whom descendants perceived as gods and demigods. There were 33 kings in the dynasty, who reigned for a total of 24,510 years. After this, there were several more not so durable dynasties, but the history that science now takes seriously begins with the death of the epic hero Gilgamesh around the beginning of the 26th century BC. e.

How many people were there in total?

Very unusual information about the past of mankind is also contained in the mythology of the Aztecs and Mayans. There we are talking not even about one, but about several humanity, which definitely echoes the teachings of the Theosophists.

The Codex Vaticanus - a genuine monument of Aztec culture - says that the first race on Earth were giants, and they died of starvation. The second humanity became a victim of a grandiose fire. Some of these people, according to legend, were able to survive by creating tunnels and fortified chambers under the surface of the planet. Traces of branched underground structures, the age of which can hardly be estimated, are found in many parts of our planet. There are such buildings in South America, and in the African Sahara Desert, and in India, and in Western Europe, and in our country. For example, in Karelia and the Zhiguli Mountains. The third humanity in Aztec myths is called intelligent monkeys, which disappeared as a result of some cataclysm. The fourth race was similar to modern people and drowned in the waters of the Flood. The fifth lives and develops to this day.

Codex Rios and Codex Telleriano-Remensis are documents copied in Latin script in the Aztec language with more early sources, also tell the story of four who lived before the current humanity, who were again destroyed by global catastrophes, albeit in a different sequence. Aztec sources give the existence of each of these humanity from four to five thousand years.

But there is one interesting nuance here. The Aztecs and Mayans, in addition to the usual dating, also operated with a number of so-called sacred years, the duration of which is, for example, for the sacred year of Katun - 20 years, for Baktun - 400 years, for Piktun - eight thousand years, and for the longest - This Alautun series is 64 million years old! So it would also be necessary to clarify which years the Indians of Mesoamerica are talking about in such chronicles.

Of course, this kind of dating looks downright scary, if not crazy. They, perhaps, could be swept aside, which is, by and large, what serious science does. However, artifacts of unimaginable antiquity that were discovered in different parts of our planet by researchers and random people, I think, force us to take the “oddities” of ancient documents cited in this article more seriously.

Where did Homo sapiens come from?

We - people - are so different! Black, yellow and white, tall and short, brunettes and blondes, smart and not so smart... But the blue-eyed Scandinavian giant, the dark-skinned pygmy from the Andaman Islands, and the dark-skinned nomad from the African Sahara - they are all just part of one, single humanity. And this statement is not a poetic image, but a strictly established scientific fact, backed by the latest data molecular biology. But where to look for the sources of this multifaceted living ocean? Where, when and how did the first human being appear on the planet? It’s amazing, but even in our enlightened times, almost half of the US population and a significant proportion of Europeans give their votes to the divine act of creation, and among the remaining there are many supporters of alien intervention, which, in fact, is not much different from God’s providence. However, even standing on solid scientific evolutionary positions, it is impossible to answer this question unequivocally.

"A man has no reason to be ashamed
ape-like ancestors. I'd rather be ashamed
come from a vain and talkative person,
who, not content with dubious success
in his own activities, interferes
into scientific disputes about which there is no
representation".

T. Huxley (1869)

Not everyone knows that the roots of a version of the origin of man, different from the biblical one, in European science go back to the foggy 1600s, when the works of the Italian philosopher L. Vanini and the English lord, lawyer and theologian M. Hale with the eloquent titles “O the original origin of man" (1615) and "The original origin of the human race, considered and tested according to the light of nature" (1671).

The baton of thinkers who recognized the kinship of humans and animals such as monkeys in the 18th century. was picked up by the French diplomat B. De Mallieu, and then by D. Burnett, Lord Monboddo, who proposed the idea of ​​a common origin of all anthropoids, including humans and chimpanzees. And the French naturalist J.-L. Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in his multi-volume " Natural history animals”, published a century before Charles Darwin’s scientific bestseller “The Descent of Man and Sexual Selection” (1871), directly stated that man descended from apes.

So to end of the 19th century V. the idea of ​​man as a product of a long evolution of more primitive humanoid creatures was fully formed and matured. Moreover, in 1863, the German evolutionary biologist E. Haeckel even christened a hypothetical creature that should serve as an intermediate link between man and ape, Pithecanthropus alatus, i.e., an ape-man deprived of speech (from the Greek pithekos - monkey and anthropos - man). All that remained was to discover this Pithecanthropus “in the flesh,” which was done in the early 1890s. Dutch anthropologist E. Dubois, who found on the island. Java remains of a primitive hominin.

From that moment on, primitive man received an “official residence permit” on planet Earth, and the question of geographic centers and the course of anthropogenesis came onto the agenda - no less acute and controversial than the very origin of man from ape-like ancestors. And thanks to amazing discoveries last decades, made jointly by archaeologists, anthropologists and paleogeneticists, the problem of the formation of modern humans again, as in the time of Darwin, received enormous public resonance, going beyond the usual scientific discussion.

African cradle

History of the search for the ancestral home modern man full of amazing discoveries and unexpected turns plot, at the initial stages it was a chronicle of anthropological finds. The attention of natural scientists was primarily attracted to the Asian continent, including the South- East Asia, where Dubois discovered the skeletal remains of the first hominin, later named Homo erectus (homo erectus). Then in the 1920-1930s. in Central Asia, in the Zhoukoudian cave in Northern China, numerous fragments of skeletons of 44 individuals that lived there 460-230 thousand years ago were found. These people named synanthropes, at one time considered the oldest link in the human family tree.

However, Africa gradually emerged as the “cradle of humanity.” In 1925, fossil remains of a hominin called Australopithecus, and over the next 80 years, hundreds of similar remains “age” from 1.5 to 7 million years were discovered in the south and east of this continent.

In the area of ​​the East African Rift, stretching in the meridional direction from the Dead Sea basin through the Red Sea and further across the territory of Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania, the most ancient sites with stone products of the Olduvai type (choppers, choppers, roughly retouched flakes, etc.) were found. P.). Including in the river basin. More than 3 thousand primitive stone tools, created by the first representative of the genus, were extracted from under a layer of tuff 2.6 million years old in Kada Gona Homo- a skilled person Homo habilis.

Humanity has sharply “aged”: it became obvious that no later than 6-7 million years ago the common evolutionary trunk was divided into two separate “branches” - apes and australopithecines, the latter of which marked the beginning of a new, “intelligent” path of development. There, in Africa, the earliest fossil remains of people of a modern anatomical type were discovered - Homo sapiens, which appeared about 200-150 thousand years ago. Thus, by the 1990s. the theory of the “African” origin of man, supported by the results of genetic studies of different human populations, is becoming generally accepted.

However, between the two extreme points of reference - the most ancient ancestors of man and modern humanity - there are at least six million years, during which man not only acquired his modern appearance, but also occupied almost the entire habitable territory of the planet. And if Homo sapiens appeared at first only in the African part of the world, then when and how did it populate other continents?

Three outcomes

About 1.8-2.0 million years ago, the distant ancestor of modern humans - Homo erectus Homo erectus or someone close to him Homo ergaster For the first time he left Africa and began to conquer Eurasia. This was the beginning of the first Great Migration - a long and gradual process that took hundreds of millennia, which can be traced by the finds of fossil remains and typical tools of the archaic stone industry.

In the first migration flow of the oldest hominin populations, two main directions can be outlined - to the north and to the east. The first direction went through the Middle East and the Iranian plateau to the Caucasus (and possibly Asia Minor) and further to Europe. Evidence of this is the oldest Paleolithic sites in Dmanisi (Eastern Georgia) and Atapuerca (Spain), dating back to 1.7-1.6 and 1.2-1.1 million years old, respectively.

IN east direction Early evidence of human presence - pebble tools dating back 1.65-1.35 million years - were found in caves in South Arabia. Further to the east of Asia, the ancient people moved in two ways: the northern one went to Central Asia, the southern one went to East and Southeast Asia through the territory of modern Pakistan and India. Judging by the dating of quartzite tool sites in Pakistan (1.9 Ma) and China (1.8-1.5 Ma), as well as anthropological finds in Indonesia (1.8-1.6 Ma), early hominins settled space of South, Southeast and East Asia no later than 1.5 million years ago. And on the border of Central and Northern Asia, in Southern Siberia in the territory of Altai, the Early Paleolithic site of Karama was discovered, in the sediments of which four layers with an archaic pebble industry 800-600 thousand years old were identified.

At all the oldest sites in Eurasia, left by migrants of the first wave, pebble tools were discovered, characteristic of the most archaic Olduvai stone industry. At about the same time or somewhat later, representatives of other early hominins came from Africa to Eurasia - carriers of the microlithic stone industry, characterized by the predominance of small-sized products, which moved in almost the same ways as their predecessors. These two ancient technological traditions of stone processing played a key role in the development of the tool activity of primitive humanity.

A second global wave of migrants from Africa spread to the Middle East around 1.5 million years ago. Who were the new migrants? Probably, Homo heidelbergensis (the man of Heidelberg) - a new species of people, combining both Neanderthaloid and sapiens traits. These “new Africans” can be distinguished by their stone tools Acheulean industry, made using more advanced stone processing technologies - the so-called Levallois splitting technique and techniques of double-sided stone processing. Moving east, this migration wave met in many areas with the descendants of the first wave of hominins, which was accompanied by a mixture of two industrial traditions - pebble and late Acheulean.

At the turn of 600 thousand years ago, these immigrants from Africa reached Europe, where Neanderthals subsequently formed - the species closest to modern humans. About 450-350 thousand years ago, bearers of the Acheulean traditions penetrated into the east of Eurasia, reaching India and Central Mongolia, but never reached the eastern and southeastern regions of Asia.

The third exodus from Africa is already associated with a person of a modern anatomical species, who appeared there on the evolutionary arena, as mentioned above, 200-150 thousand years ago. It is assumed that approximately 80-60 thousand years ago Homo sapiens, traditionally considered the bearer of the cultural traditions of the Upper Paleolithic, began to populate other continents: first the eastern part of Eurasia and Australia, later Central Asia and Europe.

And here we come to the most dramatic and controversial part of our history. As genetic research has proven, today's humanity consists entirely of representatives of one species Homo sapiens, if you do not take into account creatures like the mythical yeti. But what happened to the ancient human populations - the descendants of the first and second migration waves from the African continent, who lived in the territories of Eurasia for tens, or even hundreds of thousands of years? Did they leave their mark on the evolutionary history of our species, and if so, how great was their contribution to modern humanity?

Based on the answer to this question, researchers can be divided into two different groups - monocentrists And polycentrists.

Two models of anthropogenesis

At the end of the last century, a monocentric point of view on the process of emergence finally prevailed in anthropogenesis. Homo sapiens– the hypothesis of the “African exodus”, according to which the only ancestral home of Homo sapiens is the “dark continent”, from where he settled throughout the world. Based on the results of studying genetic variability in modern people, its proponents suggest that 80-60 thousand years ago a demographic explosion occurred in Africa, and as a result of a sharp population growth and lack of food resources, another migration wave “splashed out” into Eurasia. Unable to withstand competition with a more evolutionarily advanced species, other contemporary hominins, such as Neanderthals, left the evolutionary distance about 30-25 thousand years ago.

The views of the monocentrists themselves on the course of this process differ. Some believe that new human populations exterminated or forced the indigenous ones into less convenient areas, where their mortality rate increased, especially child mortality, and the birth rate decreased. Others do not exclude the possibility in some cases of long-term coexistence of Neanderthals with humans modern look(for example, in the south of the Pyrenees), which could result in the diffusion of cultures and sometimes hybridization. Finally, according to the third point of view, a process of acculturation and assimilation took place, as a result of which the indigenous population simply dissolved into the newcomers.

It is difficult to fully accept all these conclusions without convincing archaeological and anthropological evidence. Even if we agree with the controversial assumption of rapid population growth, it still remains unclear why this migration flow first went not to neighboring territories, but far to the east, all the way to Australia. By the way, although on this path a reasonable person had to cover a distance of over 10 thousand km, no archaeological evidence of this has yet been found. Moreover, judging by archaeological data, during the period 80-30 thousand years ago, no changes occurred in the appearance of the local stone industries of South, Southeast and East Asia, which inevitably had to happen if the indigenous population was replaced by newcomers.

This lack of “road” evidence led to the version that Homo sapiens moved from Africa to eastern Asia along the sea coast, which by our time was under water along with all the Paleolithic traces. But with such a development of events, the African stone industry should have appeared almost unchanged on the islands of Southeast Asia, but archaeological materials 60-30 thousand years old do not confirm this.

The monocentric hypothesis has not yet given satisfactory answers to many other questions. In particular, why did a person of a modern physical type arose at least 150 thousand years ago, and the culture of the Upper Paleolithic, which is traditionally associated only with Homo sapiens, 100 thousand years later? Why is this culture, which appeared almost simultaneously in very distant regions of Eurasia, not as homogeneous as would be expected in the case of a single carrier?

Another, polycentric concept is taken to explain the “dark spots” in human history. According to this hypothesis of interregional human evolution, the formation Homo sapiens could go with equal success both in Africa and in the vast territories of Eurasia, inhabited at one time Homo erectus. It is the continuous development ancient population in each region explains, according to polycentricists, the fact that cultures early stage The Upper Paleolithic in Africa, Europe, East Asia and Australia are so different from each other. And although from the point of view of modern biology the formation of the same species (in the strict sense of the word) in such different, geographically distant territories is an unlikely event, there could have been an independent, parallel process of evolution of primitive man towards homo sapiens with his developed material and spiritual culture.

Below we present a number of archaeological, anthropological and genetic evidence in favor of this thesis related to the evolution of the primitive population of Eurasia.

Oriental man

Judging by numerous archaeological finds, in East and Southeast Asia the development of the stone industry about 1.5 million years ago went in a fundamentally different direction than in the rest of Eurasia and Africa. Surprisingly, for more than a million years, the technology for making tools in the Sino-Malay zone has not changed. significant changes. Moreover, as mentioned above, in this stone industry for the period 80-30 thousand years ago, when people of a modern anatomical type should have appeared here, no radical innovations have been identified - neither new stone processing technologies, nor new types of tools.

In terms of anthropological evidence, the largest number of known skeletal remains Homo erectus was found in China and Indonesia. Despite some differences, they form a fairly homogeneous group. Particularly noteworthy is the volume of the brain (1152-1123 cm 3) Homo erectus, found in Yunxian County, China. The significant advancement of the morphology and culture of these ancient people, who lived about 1 million years ago, is demonstrated by the stone tools discovered next to them.

The next link in the evolution of Asian Homo erectus found in Northern China, in the caves of Zhoukoudian. This hominin, similar to Javan Pithecanthropus, was included in the genus Homo as a subspecies Homo erectus pekinensis. According to some anthropologists, all these fossil remains of early and later forms of primitive people line up in a fairly continuous evolutionary series, almost to Homo sapiens.

Thus, it can be considered proven that in East and Southeast Asia, for more than a million years, there was an independent evolutionary development of the Asian form Homo erectus. Which, by the way, does not exclude the possibility of migration of small populations from neighboring regions here and, accordingly, the possibility of gene exchange. At the same time, due to the process of divergence, these primitive people themselves could have developed pronounced differences in morphology. An example is paleoanthropological finds from the island. Java, which differ from similar Chinese finds of the same time: while maintaining the basic features Homo erectus, in a number of characteristics they are close to Homo sapiens.

As a result, at the beginning of the Upper Pleistocene in East and Southeast Asia, on the basis of the local form of erecti, a hominin was formed, anatomically close to humans of the modern physical type. This can be confirmed by new dating obtained for Chinese paleoanthropological finds with the features of “sapiens”, according to which people of modern appearance could have lived in this region already 100 thousand years ago.

Return of the Neanderthal

The first representative of archaic people to become known to science is a Neanderthal Homo neanderthalensis. Neanderthals lived mainly in Europe, but traces of their presence were also found in the Middle East, in the Western and Central Asia, in the south of Siberia. These short, stocky people, who had great physical strength and were well adapted to the harsh climatic conditions of northern latitudes, were not inferior in brain volume (1400 cm 3) to people of modern physical type.

Over the century and a half that has passed since the discovery of the first remains of Neanderthals, hundreds of their sites, settlements and burials have been studied. It turned out that these archaic people not only created very advanced tools, but also demonstrated elements of behavior characteristic of Homo sapiens. Thus, the famous archaeologist A. P. Okladnikov in 1949 discovered a Neanderthal burial with possible traces of a funeral rite in the Teshik-Tash cave (Uzbekistan).

Before beginning of the XXI V. Many anthropologists considered Neanderthals to be the ancestral form of modern humans, but after analysis of mitochondrial DNA from their remains, they began to be viewed as a dead-end branch. It was believed that Neanderthals were displaced and replaced by modern humans - a native of Africa. However, further anthropological and genetic studies showed that the relationship between Neanderthal and Homo sapiens was far from simple. According to recent data, up to 4 % of the genome of modern humans (non-Africans) was borrowed from Homo neanderthalensis. There is now no doubt that in the border areas inhabited by these human populations, not only cultural diffusion occurred, but also hybridization and assimilation.

Today, the Neanderthal is already classified as a sister group to modern humans, restoring its status as a “human ancestor.”

In the rest of Eurasia, the formation of the Upper Paleolithic followed a different scenario. Let us trace this process using the example of the Altai region, which is associated with sensational results obtained through paleogenetic analysis of anthropological finds from the Denisov and Okladnikov caves.

Our regiment has arrived!

As mentioned above, the initial human settlement of the Altai territory occurred no later than 800 thousand years ago during the first migration wave from Africa. The uppermost culture-containing horizon of sediments of the oldest Paleolithic site in the Asian part of Russia, Karama, in the valley of the river. Anui was formed about 600 thousand years ago, and then there was a long break in the development of Paleolithic culture in this territory. However, about 280 thousand years ago, carriers of more advanced stone processing techniques appeared in Altai, and from that time, as field studies show, there was a continuous development of the culture of Paleolithic man here.

Over the last quarter of a century, about 20 sites in caves and on the slopes of mountain valleys have been explored in this region, and over 70 cultural horizons of the Early, Middle and Upper Paleolithic have been studied. For example, 13 Paleolithic layers have been identified in Denisova Cave alone. The most ancient finds dating back to the early stage of the Middle Paleolithic were found in a layer aged 282-170 thousand years, to the Middle Paleolithic - 155-50 thousand years, to the upper - 50-20 thousand years. Such a long and “continuous” chronicle makes it possible to trace the dynamics of changes in stone implements over many tens of thousands of years. And it turned out that this process went quite smoothly, through gradual evolution, without external “disturbances” - innovations.

Archaeological data indicate that already 50-45 thousand years ago the Upper Paleolithic began in Altai, and the origins of the Upper Paleolithic cultural traditions can be clearly traced to the final stage of the Middle Paleolithic. Evidence of this is provided by miniature bone needles with a drilled eye, pendants, beads and other non-utilitarian objects made of bone, ornamental stone and mollusk shells, as well as truly unique finds - fragments of a bracelet and a stone ring with traces of grinding, polishing and drilling.

Unfortunately, Paleolithic sites in Altai are relatively poor in anthropological finds. The most significant of them - teeth and skeletal fragments from two caves, Okladnikov and Denisova, were studied at the Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology. Max Planck (Leipzig, Germany) by an international team of geneticists under the leadership of Professor S. Paabo.

Paleogenetic studies have confirmed that the remains of Neanderthals were discovered in Okladnikov Cave. But the results of decoding mitochondrial and then nuclear DNA from bone samples found in the Denisova Cave in the cultural layer of the initial stage of the Upper Paleolithic gave the researchers a surprise. It turned out that we are talking about a new fossil hominin unknown to science, which was named after the place of its discovery Altai man Homo sapiens altaiensis, or Denisovan.

The Denisovan genome differs from the reference genome of a modern African by 11.7 %; for the Neanderthal from Vindija Cave in Croatia, this figure was 12.2 %. This similarity suggests that Neanderthals and Denisovans are sister groups with a common ancestor that separated from the main human evolutionary trunk. These two groups diverged about 640 thousand years ago, embarking on the path independent development. This is also evidenced by the fact that Neanderthals have common genetic variants with modern people of Eurasia, while part of the genetic material of Denisovans was borrowed by Melanesians and indigenous people of Australia, standing apart from other non-African human populations.

Judging by archaeological data, in the northwestern part of Altai 50-40 thousand years ago, two different groups of primitive people lived nearby - the Denisovans and the easternmost population of Neanderthals, who came here around the same time, most likely from the territory of modern Uzbekistan . And the roots of the culture, the carriers of which were the Denisovans, as already mentioned, can be traced in the ancient horizons of the Denisova Cave. At the same time, judging by the many archaeological finds reflecting the development of the Upper Paleolithic culture, the Denisovans were not only not inferior, but in some respects even superior to the man of modern physical appearance who lived at the same time in other territories.

So, in Eurasia during the late Pleistocene, in addition to Homo sapiens There were at least two more forms of hominins: Neanderthal - in the western part of the continent, and in the east - Denisovan. Taking into account the drift of genes from Neanderthals to Eurasians, and from Denisovans to Melanesians, we can assume that both of these groups took part in the formation of a person of the modern anatomical type.

Taking into account all the archaeological, anthropological and genetic materials available today from the most ancient locations of Africa and Eurasia, it can be assumed that there were several zones on the globe in which an independent process of population evolution took place Homo erectus and development of stone processing technologies. Accordingly, each of these zones developed its own cultural traditions, their models of the transition from the Middle to Upper Paleolithic.

Thus, at the basis of the entire evolutionary sequence, the crown of which was man of the modern anatomical type, lies the ancestral form Homo erectus sensu lato*. Probably, in the late Pleistocene, it eventually formed the human species of modern anatomical and genetic appearance Homo sapiens, which included four forms that can be called Homo sapiens africaniensis(Eastern and Southern Africa), Homo sapiens neanderthalensis(Europe), Homo sapiens orientalensis(Southeast and East Asia) and Homo sapiens altaiensis(North and Central Asia). Most likely, a proposal to unite all these primitive people into a single species Homo sapiens will cause doubts and objections among many researchers, but it is based on a large volume of analytical material, only a small part of which is given above.

Obviously, not all of these subspecies made an equal contribution to the formation of man of the modern anatomical type: the greatest genetic diversity had Homo sapiens africaniensis, and it was he who became the basis of modern man. However, the latest data from paleogenetic studies regarding the presence of Neanderthal and Denisovan genes in the gene pool modern humanity show that other groups of ancient people did not remain aloof from this process.

Today, archaeologists, anthropologists, geneticists and other specialists dealing with the problem of human origins have accumulated a huge amount of new data, on the basis of which they can put forward different hypotheses, sometimes diametrically opposed. The time has come to discuss them in detail under one indispensable condition: the problem of human origin is multidisciplinary, and new ideas should be based on a comprehensive analysis of the results obtained by specialists from a variety of sciences. Only this path will someday lead us to the solution of one of the most controversial issues, which has been exciting the minds of people for centuries, is about the formation of the mind. After all, according to the same Huxley, “each of our strongest beliefs can be overthrown or, in any case, changed by further advances of knowledge.”

*Homo erectus sensu lato - Homo erectus in the broadest sense

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Our world has existed since time immemorial. Every schoolchild knows this. For billions of years, life has existed on Earth, developing and changing over time. We will tell you how old the world really is in this article.

How old is our universe

About 14 billion years have passed since the Big Bang, and this date serves as a record of the beginning of life in our Universe, but this figure is quite relative. In general, scientists are of the opinion that our Universe has existed for at least 12, but not more than 20 billion years. It should be noted that our Universe is at least 2 times older than the Sun and Earth.

How old is our solar system

According to the generally accepted hypothesis today, the formation of our solar system began approximately 4.6 billion years ago. This process began with the gravitational compression of some part of a huge interstellar gas and dust cloud. Most likely this cloud was several light years in size. It became the progenitor for several stars, including our Sun.

How old is our planet

The age of the Earth is slightly less than the age of our solar system and is approximately 4.54 billion years. These data were obtained using radioisotope dating of terrestrial samples and meteorite matter. They were obtained using the uranium-lead method, which was developed by Claire Patterson. It is this figure that corresponds to the age of the oldest terrestrial, lunar and meteorite samples and has not changed since 1956.

How old is humanity

There are several theories regarding different ages humanity. Let's look at a few of them:

• A reasonable man. If we consider the origin of humanity from the moment of the appearance of the species Homo sapiens, then according to scientific research, its age ranges from 200 to 340 thousand years. That is, humanity is quite young.
• Genus Homo. As mentioned above, the species Homo sapiens is relatively young, but the genus Homo itself, which includes Homo sapiens, has existed for approximately 2.5 million years. This is exactly the age that scientists established by examining the skull of a teenager from Tanzania, discovered in the Olduvai Gorge in 1960.
• Creationism. The theory of creationism has been and remains the main competitor to the theory of evolution. According to it, all life on Earth, including humans, was created approximately 7.5 thousand years ago.

If you want to know more about the age of the Earth, read our article

If we talk about the species homo sapiens, that is, “reasonable man,” he is relatively young. Official science gives it about 200 thousand years. This conclusion was made based on a study of mitochondrial DNA and famous skulls from Ethiopia. The latter were found in 1997 during excavations near the Ethiopian village of Herto. These were the remains of a man and a child, whose age was at least 160 thousand years. Today, these are the most ancient representatives of Homo sapiens known to us. Scientists have dubbed them homo sapiens idaltu, or "oldest intelligent man."

Around the same time, maybe a little earlier (200 thousand years ago), the ancestor of all modern people, “mitrogondrial Eve,” lived in the same place in Africa. Every living person has its mitochondria (a set of genes transmitted only through the female line). However, this does not mean that she was the first woman on earth. It’s just that in the course of evolution, it was her descendants who were most fortunate. By the way, “Adam,” whose Y chromosome is present in every man today, is comparatively younger than “Eve.” It is believed that he lived about 140 thousand years ago.

However, all this data is inaccurate and inconclusive. Science is based only on what it has, and more ancient representatives of homo sapiens have not yet been found. But Adam's age has recently been revised, which could add another 140 thousand years to the age of humanity. A recent study of the genes of one African-American man, Albert Perry, and 11 other villagers in Cameroon showed that they had a more “ancient” Y chromosome, which was once passed on to his descendants by a man who lived approximately 340 thousand years ago.

Homosapiens- a species that includes four subspecies - Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Anatoly DEREVYANKO

Photo by ITAR-TASS

Until recently, it was believed that modern humans originated in Africa about 200 thousand years ago.

“Modern biological type” means us in this case. That is, we, modern people, homo sapiens (more precisely, Homosapienssapiens) we are direct descendants of certain creatures that appeared exactly there and exactly then. Previously, they were called Cro-Magnons, but today this designation is considered obsolete.

About 80 thousand years ago, this “modern man” began his victorious march across the planet. Victorious in literally: It is believed that on that campaign he ousted other human forms from life - for example, the famous Neanderthals.

But recently evidence has emerged that this is not entirely true...

The following circumstances led to this conclusion.

Several years ago an expedition Russian archaeologists and specialists of other sciences, working under the guidance of the director of the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Academician Anatoly Derevyanko, discovered the remains of an ancient man in the Denisovskaya Cave in Altai.

Culturally, he was quite consistent with the level of contemporary sapiens: his tools were at the same technological level, and his love for jewelry indicated a fairly high stage for those times. social development. But biologically...

It turned out that the DNA structure of the found remains differs from genetic code living people. But this was not what caused the main sensation. It turned out that this one - for all, we repeat, technological and cultural characteristics- a reasonable person turned out to be... a “stranger.” According to genetic data, he moved away from our common ancestral line no less than 800 thousand years ago! Even Neanderthals are closer to us!

“We are apparently talking about a new species of human that was previously unknown to world science,” said Svante Pääbo, legendary in professional circles, director of the department of evolutionary genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Well, he knows better: he was the one who carried out the DNA analysis of the unexpected find.

So what happens? While we humans were climbing the evolutionary ladder, a certain competitive “humanity” was climbing up in parallel with us?

Yes, says Academician Derevyanko. Moreover: in his opinion, there may be at least... four such centers where different groups of people strived for the title of Homo sapiens in parallel and independently of each other!

About the main provisions new concept, already sometimes called “a new revolution in anthropology,” he told ITAR-TASS.

Before moving on to the essence of the matter, let's start with the “pre-revolutionary situation”. Before current events, what was the picture of human evolution?

We can confidently say that humanity originated in Africa. The first traces of creatures that learned to make tools have been discovered today in the area of ​​the East African Rift, stretching in the meridional direction from the Dead Sea basin through the Red Sea and further across the territory of Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania.

The spread of the first people to Eurasia and their settlement of vast territories in Asia and Europe occurred in the mode of gradual development of the most favorable conditions for living ecological niches and then advance to adjacent areas. Scientists attribute the beginning of the process of human penetration into Eurasia to a wide chronological range from 2 to 1 million years ago.

The largest population of ancient Homo that emerged from Africa was associated with the species Homo ergaster-erectus and the so-called Oldowan industry. In this context, industry means a certain technology, a culture of stone processing. Oldowan or Oldowan - the most primitive of them, when a stone, most often a pebble, which is why this culture is also called pebble, was split in half to get a sharp edge without additional processing.

About 450–350 thousand years ago, the second global migration flow began to move to the east of Eurasia from the Middle East. It is associated with the spread of the Late Acheulian industry, in which people made macroliths - stone axes and flakes.

During its advancement, the new human population in many territories met the population of the first migration wave, and therefore there is a mixture of two industries - pebble and late Acheulian.

But here’s what’s interesting: judging by the nature of the finds, the second wave reached only India and Mongolia. She didn't go any further. In any case, the overall difference between the industry of East and Southeast Asia and the industry of the rest of Eurasia is noticeable. This means, in turn, that since the first appearance of the oldest human populations in East and Southeast Asia 1.8–1.3 million years ago, there has been a continuous and independent development of both the physical type of man and his culture. And this alone contradicts the theory of the monocentric origin of modern man.

- But you just said that man was born in Africa?..

It is very important to emphasize, and it was not by chance that I did this: we are talking about a person of a modern anatomical type. According to the monocentric hypothesis, it formed 200–150 thousand years ago in Africa, and 80–60 thousand years ago it began to spread to Eurasia and Australia.

However, this hypothesis leaves many problems unresolved.

For example, the researchers are primarily faced with the question: why, if a person of the modern physical type arose at least 150 thousand years ago, then the Upper Paleolithic culture, which is associated with Homo sapiens, appeared only 50–40 thousand years ago?

Or: if the Upper Paleolithic culture spread to other continents with modern man, then why did its products appear almost simultaneously in regions of Eurasia that were very distant from each other? And besides, significantly differing from each other in basic technical and typological characteristics?

And further. According to archaeological data, a person of a modern physical type settled in Australia 50, and maybe 60 thousand years ago, while in the territories adjacent to East Africa on the African continent itself he appeared... later! IN South Africa, judging by anthropological finds, about 40 thousand years ago, in Central and Western - apparently, about 30 thousand years ago, and only in Northern - about 50 thousand years ago. How can we explain the fact that modern man first penetrated into Australia, and only then settled across the African continent?

And how, from the point of view of monocentrism, can we explain the fact that Homo sapiens was able to cover a gigantic distance (more than 10 thousand km) in 5–10 thousand years without leaving any traces along the path of its movement? Indeed, in South, Southeast and East Asia 80–30 thousand years ago, in the event of the replacement of the autochthonous population by newcomers, a complete change of industry should have occurred, but this is not at all visible in East Asia. Moreover, between the regions with the Upper Paleolithic industry there were territories where the Middle Paleolithic culture continued to exist.

Did you float on something, as some suggest? But in Southern and Eastern Africa, at the sites of the final middle and early stages of the Upper Paleolithic, no means of swimming were found. Moreover, in these industries there are no tools for working wood, and without them it is impossible to build boats and other similar means on which one could go to Australia.

What about genetic data? They show that all modern people are descendants of one “father” who lived precisely in Africa and just about 80 thousand years ago...

Well, in fact, monocentrists, based on a study of DNA variability in modern people, suggest that it was in the period 80 - 60 thousand years ago that a demographic explosion occurred in Africa, and as a result of a sharp increase in population and a lack of food resources, a migration wave spilled into Eurasia .

But with all due respect to the data of genetic research, it is impossible to believe in the infallibility of these conclusions without having any convincing archaeological and anthropological evidence to support them. And yet there are none!

Look here. It must be borne in mind that with the average life expectancy at that time being about 25 years, offspring in most cases were left without parents at an immature age. With high postnatal and child mortality, as well as mortality among adolescents due to the early loss of parents, there is no reason to talk about a demographic explosion.

But even if we agree that 80 - 60 thousand years ago in East Africa there was a rapid population growth, which determined the need to search for new food resources and, accordingly, the settlement of new territories, the question arises: why migration flows were initially directed far to the east , all the way to Australia?

In short, the extensive archaeological material from the studied Paleolithic sites of South, Southeast and East Asia in the range of 60–30 thousand years ago does not allow us to trace the wave of migration of anatomically modern people from Africa. In these territories there is not only no change in culture, which should have happened if the autochthonous population was replaced by newcomers, but also clearly expressed innovations indicating acculturation. Such authoritative researchers as F.J. Habgood and N.R. Franklin draws a clear conclusion: the indigenous people of Australia never had the full African “package” of innovations, since they were not from Africa.

Or let's take China. Extensive archaeological material from hundreds of studied Paleolithic sites in East and Southeast Asia indicates the continuity of industrial development in this territory over the last million years. Perhaps, as a result of paleoecological disasters (cold snap, etc.), the range of ancient human populations in the Chinese-Malayan zone narrowed, but archanthropes never left it. Here, both man himself and his culture developed evolutionarily, without any significant outside influences. No similarity with African industries can be traced in the chronological interval 70–30 thousand years ago in Southeast and East Asia. According to the extensive archaeological material available, no migration of people from the west to the territory of China can be traced in the chronological interval of 120–30 thousand years ago.

But over the past 50 years, numerous finds have been discovered in China that make it possible to trace the continuity not only between the ancient anthropological type and modern Chinese populations, but also between Homo erectus and Homo sapiens. In addition, they have a mosaic of morphological characteristics. This indicates a gradual transition from one species to another and indicates that human evolution in China is characterized by continuity and hybridization or interspecific crossing.

In other words, the evolutionary development of Asian Homo erectus took place in East and Southeast Asia for more than 1 million years. This does not exclude the arrival of small populations from neighboring regions and the possibility of gene exchange, especially in areas bordering neighboring populations. But taking into account the closeness of the Paleolithic industries of East and Southeast Asia and their difference from the industries of the adjacent western regions, it can be argued that at the end of the Middle - beginning of the Upper Pleistocene, a person of the modern physical type Homo sapiens orientalensis was formed on the basis of the autochthonous erectoid form of Homo in East and Southeast Asia, along with Africa.

That is, it turns out that the path to sapiens was traversed by different descendants of erectus, independent of each other? From one cutting did different shoots develop, which then intertwined again into one trunk? How can this be?

To understand this process, let's look at the history of the Neanderthals. Moreover, over 150 years of research, hundreds of different sites, settlements, and burials of this species have been studied.

Neanderthals settled mainly in Europe. Their morphological type was adapted to the harsh climatic conditions of northern latitudes. In addition, their Paleolithic locations have also been discovered in the Middle East, Western and Central Asia, and southern Siberia.

They were short, stocky people with great physical strength. Their brain volume was 1400 cubic centimeters and was not inferior to the average brain volume of modern people. Many archaeologists paid attention to the great efficiency of the Neanderthal industry at the final stage of the Middle Paleolithic and the presence in them of many elements of behavior characteristic of a person of a modern anatomical type. There is much evidence of the deliberate burial of their relatives by Neanderthals. They used tools similar to those that developed in parallel in Africa and the East. They also exhibited many other elements of modern human behavior. It is no coincidence that this species – or subspecies – is also considered “intelligent” today: Homo sapiens neanderthalensis.

But it originated between 250 and 300 thousand years ago! That is, it also developed in parallel, not under the influence of “African” man, who can be designated as Homo sapiens africaniensis . And we are left with only one solution: to consider the transition from the Middle to Upper Paleolithic in Western and Central Europe as an autochthonous phenomenon.

- Yes, but there are no Neanderthals today! Just as there is no Chinese Homosapiensorientalensis…

Yes, according to many researchers, Neanderthals were subsequently replaced in Europe by humans of a modern anatomical type who came out of Africa. But others believe that perhaps the fate of Neanderthals was not so sad. One of the leading anthropologists, Erik Trinkaus, having compared Neanderthals and modern humans using 75 traits, came to the conclusion that about a quarter of the traits were characteristic of both Neanderthals and modern humans. modern people, the same amount - only for Neanderthals and about half - for modern people.

In addition, genetic research suggests that up to 4 percent of the genome of modern non-Africans is derived from Neanderthals. The famous researcher Richard Greene and his co-authors, including geneticists, anthropologists and archaeologists, made a very important remark: “... Neanderthals are equally closely related to the Chinese, Papuans and French.” He notes that the results of studying the Neanderthal genome may not be compatible with the hypothesis of the origin of modern humans from a small African population, which then displaced all other forms of Homo and spread across the planet.

At the current level of research, there is no doubt that in the border areas inhabited by Neanderthals and modern humans, or in the territories of their cross settlement, processes not only of cultural diffusion, but also hybridization and assimilation took place. Homo sapiens neanderthalensis undoubtedly contributed to the morphology and genome of modern humans.

Now is the time to remember your sensational discovery in the Denisovskaya Cave in Altai, where another species or subspecies of ancient man was discovered. And also - the tools are quite sapiens, but in terms of genetics - they are not of African origin, and there are more differences with Homo sapiens than with Neanderthals. Although he is not a Neanderthal either...

As a result of field research in Altai over the last quarter of a century, over 70 cultural horizons belonging to the Early, Middle and Upper Paleolithic have been identified at nine cave sites and more than 10 open sites. The chronological range of 100–30 thousand years ago includes about 60 cultural horizons, to varying degrees saturated with archaeological and paleontological material.

Based on extensive materials obtained as a result of field and laboratory studies, it can be rightfully stated that the development of human culture in this territory occurred as a result of the evolutionary development of the Middle Paleolithic industry without any noticeable influences associated with the infiltration of populations with a different culture.

- So no one came and made innovations?

Judge for yourself. In Denisova Cave, 14 cultural-containing layers have been identified, in some of them several habitat horizons have been traced. The most ancient finds, apparently dating back to the Late Acheulean time - the Early Middle Paleolithic, were recorded in the 22nd layer - 282 ± 56 thousand years ago. Next is the gap. The following culture-containing horizons from the 20th to the 12th belong to the Middle Paleolithic, and the 11th and 9th layers are Upper Paleolithic. Please note: there is no gap here.

In all Middle Paleolithic horizons, the continuous evolution of the stone industry can be traced. Particularly important are materials from cultural horizons 18–12, which belong to the chronological interval of 90–50 thousand years ago. But what is especially important: these are things, in general, of the same level that a person of our biological type had. A clear confirmation of the “modern” behavior of the population of the Altai Mountains 50–40 thousand years ago is the bone industry (needles, awls, bases for composite tools) and non-utilitarian items made of bone, stone, shells (beads, pendants, etc.). An unexpected find was a fragment of a stone bracelet, the design of which used several techniques: grinding, polishing, sawing and drilling.

About 45 thousand years ago, a Mousterian-type industry appeared in Altai. This is the culture of the Neanderthals. That is, some group of them got here and settled for a while. Apparently, this small population was forced out of Central Asia (for example, Uzbekistan, Teshik-Tash cave) by a person of a modern physical type.

It did not exist for long in Altai. Its fate is unknown: either it was assimilated by the autochthonous population, or it died out.

As a result, we see: all the archaeological material accumulated as a result of almost 30 years of field research of multi-layer cave sites and open sites in Altai convincingly testifies to the autochthonous, independent formation Here, 50–45 thousand years ago, the Upper Paleolithic industry was one of the brightest and most expressive in Eurasia. This means that the formation of the Upper Paleolithic culture, characteristic of modern humans, occurs in Altai as a result of the evolutionary development of the autochthonous Middle Paleolithic industry.

At the same time, genetically they are not “our” people, right? A study conducted by the famous Svante Pääbo showed that we are even less related to them than to Neanderthals...

We didn't expect this ourselves! After all, judging by the stone and bone industry, the presence large quantity non-utilitarian items, methods and techniques of life support, the presence of items obtained through exchange many hundreds of kilometers away, people living in Altai had modern human behavior. And we, archaeologists, were sure that genetically this population belonged to people of a modern anatomical type.

However, the results of deciphering human nuclear DNA, made from the phalanx of a finger from Denisova Cave at the same Institute of Population Genetics, turned out to be unexpected for everyone. The Denisovan genome deviated from the reference human genome 804 thousand years ago! And they separated from the Neanderthals 640 thousand years ago.

- But there were no Neanderthals then?

Yes, and this means that the common ancestral population of Denisovans and Neanderthals left Africa more than 800 thousand years ago. And it settled, apparently, in the Middle East. And about 600 thousand years ago, another part of the population migrated from the Middle East. At the same time, the ancestors of modern man remained in Africa and developed there in their own way.
But on the other hand, Denisovans left 4–6 percent of their genetic material in the genomes of modern Melanesians. Like Neanderthals - in Europeans. So, although they did not survive to our time in their guise, they cannot be attributed to a dead-end branch in human evolution. They are in us!

Thus, in general, human evolution can be represented as follows.

At the heart of the entire chain leading to the emergence of a modern anatomical type of man in Africa and Eurasia is the ancestral basis of Homo erectus sensu lato. Apparently, the entire evolution of the sapiens line of human development is connected with this polytypic species.

The second migration wave of erectoid forms came to Central Asia, Southern Siberia and Altai about 300 thousand years ago, probably from the Middle East. From this chronological point, we trace in Denisova Cave and other locations in caves and open-air sites in Altai the continuous convergent development of stone industries, and, consequently, of the physical type of man himself.

The industry here was in no way primitive or archaic compared to the rest of Eurasia and Africa. She was focused on environmental conditions of this particular region. In the Chinese-Malay zone, there was an evolutionary development of both industry and the anatomical type of man himself based on erectoid forms. This allows us to distinguish the modern type of man, formed in this territory, into the subspecies Homo sapiens orientalensis.

In the same way, Homo sapiens altaiensis and its material and spiritual culture developed convergently in Southern Siberia.

In turn, Homo sapiens neanderthalensis developed autochthonously in Europe. Here, however, the case is less pure, since modern people came here from Africa. There is some debate about the form of the relationship between these two subspecies, but genetics in any case shows that part of the Neanderthal genome is present in modern humans.

Thus, there is only one conclusion left to draw: Homo sapiens is a species that includes four subspecies. These are Homo sapiens africaniensis (Africa), Homo sapiens orientalensis (Southeast and East Asia), Homo sapiens Neanderthalensis (Europe) and Homo sapiens altaiensis (North and Central Asia). All archaeological, anthropological and genetic studies, from our point of view, indicate exactly this!

Alexander Tsyganov (ITAR-TASS, Moscow)

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