Greater apes: lifestyle of australopithecines. Greater apes: lifestyle of australopithecines When did australopithecines live

Australopithecus?

Around the same time, relatively small upright humanoid creatures appeared in Africa and southern Asia. Moving confidently on their hind limbs, they had free forelimbs - arms.

These were “australopithecus”, that is, “ southern monkeys" Their main difference from apes was that they had completely human lower limbs.

Some of them knew how to make primitive stone tools, which they used for defense against large predators, during hunting, and for cutting up the carcasses of their victims.

In the period from 5 to 0.5 million years ago, four species of australopithecines lived in southern and eastern Africa:

Until the mid-90s, the oldest form of australopithecus was considered to be “Australopithecus afarensis” (A. afr.), discovered by D. Johansson’s expedition in 1974. Then a fairly complete skeleton of a female specimen was found, which is why she received the name “Lucy.” The remains were more than 3.5 million years old (some dating methods indicate an age of 3.8 million). It was a creature similar to a pygmy chimpanzee, but clearly walking upright. It was the height of a six-year-old child (approximately 120-130 cm), and its weight was approximately 30 kilograms.

In 1995, a message appeared that the expedition of T. White, Gen Suva and B. Asafu discovered in the valley of the Awash River (near the village of Aramis) the remains of 17 australopithecines aged 4.4 million years. This ancient form of Australopithecus was given the name A. Ramidis , which means “Australopithecus indigenous” in Afar language.

The latest discovered remains of A. afar. are 2.5 million years old. These creatures had a well-developed bipedal gait with an erect body, which was described in detail in the “Morphology” section.

The third variety is represented by “Australopithecus africanus,” which lived between 0.5 and 0.7 million years ago. These creatures were larger, their height reached 150 cm.

Around the same period and in the same areas, even larger “Australopithecines massive” or “Paranthropus” lived; their height reached 180 cm and weight 60 kg. The remains of these creatures are found throughout southern Asia. By all accounts, these creatures were similar in appearance to gorillas.

The photograph shows the skeletons of Australopithecus: from left to right Avstralophitecus afar, Avstralopithecus afrikanus and Avstralopithecus robustus or “massive” (the found parts of the skeleton are highlighted).

In the interval from 2.5 to one million years, even larger “Australopithecines Beuys” (named after Charles Beuys, who financed the expedition) lived in East Africa. Another name for this creature is “Zinjanthrope” or “East African man”. He also bore a very close resemblance to a gorilla and supposedly lived in the forest. The height of these creatures reached 180 cm, but perhaps more.

Zinjanthrop is interesting because, next to some of the remains of these creatures, roughly beaten pebbles were discovered (tools of the pebble culture, another name is “Olduvai culture” after the name of the Olduvai Gorge where they were discovered) and the skulls of monkeys and small australopithecines, clearly injured by these tools .

Most scientists do not consider Australopithecus to be the direct ancestors of modern humans and classify them as a dead-end branch of hominid evolution. But perhaps this is not the case. In 2004, a message arrived from the island of Flores in Indonesia. The perfectly preserved remains of known to science humanoid creatures. Paleontologists gave them a name Homo-florensis.

Scientists have not yet decided which family of hominids to classify these creatures as.

But there is no reason to exclude australopithecus from the number of possible ancestors of some modern races of modern relict hominoids.

For example, Australopithecus, among which there were large, massive forms (“Zinjanthropus”), may well be the ancestors of the giants of the African population. The author of this hypothesis is the famous American zoologist Professor Ivan Sanderson, who has been mentioned more than once on the pages of this book, who believed that relict hominoids are distant descendants various types Australopithecus. In Russia, a proponent of this hypothesis was the founder of the Seminar on the “Bigfoot” problem, P.P. Smolin.

Homo habilis or Homo erectus?

The first creature that actually stood at the origins of the evolution of modern man is currently considered Homo habilis - “skillful man.” He had a height of 120-150 cm, a weight of about 50 kg, a larger brain than that of the Australopithecus, and a number of other “human characteristics”.

Its habitat was Eastern and Southern Africa, where it is known as “Meganthropus,” and Southeast Asia, where it was called “Pithecanthropus.”

Burian's drawing shows a reconstruction of the appearance of this creature with fragments of the bones of some animal. Habilis made stone tools (“pebble culture”), built simple shelters, collected plant food and hunted small and, possibly, quite large animals. The time of their existence is from 2 to 1.5 million years ago. Thus, they were contemporaries of some australopithecines.

The next representative of the oldest hominids is Homo erectus - “homo erectus” (formerly called Pithecanthropus), who appears approximately 1.6 million years ago. Its remains disappear about 200 thousand years ago. These were quite large creatures, up to 180 centimeters tall, with a brain volume only 25-30% less than that of modern humans.

Recently, many scientists have combined these two groups of hominids into one group - archanthropes.

Homo-erectus was well developed physically, was able to make quite diverse and sophisticated tools of labor and hunting, built primitive dwellings and, most importantly, he learned to use fire, as evidenced by numerous finds of fireplaces at his sites. Fire provided him with an undeniable advantage in the fight against cold and large predators.

Judging by the structure of the skeleton, Pithecanthropus were unsurpassed runners and, according to a number of scientists, they hunted ungulates in a “drive,” that is, they pursued their prey until it was exhausted, after which it was finished off and butchered using stone tools .

This is how the Maasai hunt today. Moreover, it would seem that the beaters can replace one another. But no, one person chases a deer for many hours. As a result, the deer falls exhausted, and the hunter finishes it off.

It was mentioned above that relict hominoids have a high running speed and also drive their prey, after which they kill it, but the use of any tools is usually not mentioned. The exceptions, however, are the West Siberian Tungu and the Yakut Chuchuna (most likely, we are talking about representatives of the same race of relict hominoids - author's note), who in some stories recorded in the 19th century were credited with the ability to use stone knives and primitive bows with arrows. They used these Chuchun weapons ineptly - they shot at the hunters without aiming until the arrows ran out. Based on this, some researchers considered the Chuchuna people - representatives of a tribe unknown to science, standing at a very low level of development. Similar views were expressed, for example, by the famous Soviet scientist Academician A.P. Okladnikov, long years who lived and worked in Siberia and as a child heard numerous stories about ““ wild people” - chuchuna.

Pithecanthropus settled throughout South and Southeast Asia; some groups, having overcome or bypassed the Himalayas and Tibet, penetrated into Central Asia and China, where they are known as “Sinanthropus” (Sinanthropus - “Chinese man”). Sinanthropus lived in caves, used fire - layers of ash several meters thick were found at their sites - this means that they burned fires there for more than one thousand years.

Until recently, it seemed that the Sinanthropus sites near Beijing were the northern border of the Sinanthropus range.

But not everyone agreed with these theories. At the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1915-1919, Professor P. Sushkin gave a course of lectures on the evolution of vertebrates at Kharkov University. The most original part of this course was devoted to the origin of man - he did not evolve from tree-climbers African forms, but formed in the mountainous, cold regions of Asia.

In the article “Evolution of Vertebrates and the Role of Geological Climate Changes,” he wrote that the structure of the human leg indicates the ancient adaptation of primates to climbing, from which upright walking developed. It went through this phase in high-mountain Asia back in the Tertiary period, but was lost among the then numerous mammal fauna until the bulk of them died out during the onset of cooling in the Quaternary era. The climbing resident of the highlands was better adapted to the cooling climate and, thanks to this, survived. In his last article, Sushkin compromised with traditional science and agreed that man may have evolved from a tree-climbing form, but in the conditions of the rapid disappearance of forests due to cooling during the geological uplift of the mountains of Central Asia, he was forced to master rock climbing and then switch to upright walking.

One of the main arguments against Sushkin’s hypothesis was the lack of corresponding archaeological material in Central Asia. But then this gap was eliminated.

During excavations by the expedition of anthropologist M. Gerasimov at the Malka site (Altai), primitive stone tools similar to the tools of the “pebble culture” (“Olduvai culture” of Africa) were discovered.

In the 70s of the twentieth century, the hypothesis of Professor P. Sushkin was once again confirmed by the sensational discoveries of Soviet archaeologists in the center of Yakutia. The Prilena archaeological expedition, led by the famous Soviet archaeologist Yu.A. Mochanov, carried out excavations on the coastal terraces of the Lena River and its tributaries and discovered traces of ancient people in various areas of central Yakutia and the Yana-Chukotka region in north-east Yakutia.

The discovered sites date back to the period from 2.5 (2.8) million to 10-11 thousand years BC. The largest number of stone tools was discovered at the Dyuktai and Dirinrg-Yuryakh sites. The oldest layers were uncovered during excavations at the Diring-Yuryakh site, approximately 90 kilometers north of Yakutsk. Archaeologists discovered here a large number of roughly beaten pebbles - typical tools of the “pebble culture”. The age of the layers in which these tools were discovered was amazing - 2,800 - 1,800 thousand years, that is, the hominids who made these tools were contemporaries of the Australopithecus, who lived in Africa and southern Asia and left stone tools of the "Olduvai culture."

In what environment did the “Diring people” live? Judging by the remains of plants and animals in the soil layers in which Diring tools were found, the climate there at that time was quite different from the modern one - it was more severe. Permafrost already existed, and the winters were quite cold - average annual temperature It was unlikely to be above plus 10 degrees Celsius. In such conditions, ancient hominids could hardly have existed without fire and clothing.

Yu. Mochanov adheres to the Asian hypothesis of human origin, which was developed at the beginning of the century by academician P. Sushkin. According to Mochanov, insignificant changes in natural conditions during the year in the tropical and subtropical zones, where ancient hominids mainly lived, did not create incentives for changes in their morphology and behavior, which would subsequently lead to the formation of people. Is this why it is in these areas that the highest anthropoids have survived to this day: chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans? The abundance of varied plant foods does not create nutritional problems for them throughout the year. “The inability to feed themselves by gathering in cold areas,” writes Mochanov, “forced ancient man to take up hunting and make stone tools. The cold forced him to “tame” fire (in the tropics this is a biological incongruity). Escaping from the cold with the help of fire, clothing and shelters, human ancestors lost their hair...”

As mentioned above, during the ice ages, when huge masses of water accumulated in the ice sheets of the northern and southern hemispheres, huge deserts grew in the equatorial zone. IN summer time From these deserts, powerful winds carried many cubic kilometers of loess that fell on the surface of glaciers to northern latitudes. The surface of northern Asia was not covered by a continuous ice sheet, but the loess sediments that fell to the ground formed layers hundreds of meters thick. This created the conditions for the formation of a fertile layer of soil on the surface of the earth, on which herbs and shrubs could grow. It is in such places that archaeologists find traces of the ancient stone industry - tools of the “Olduvai culture” type: Diring-Yuryakh, Malka, etc. It is unlikely that the “Diring people” would have been able to survive in the harsh conditions of Northern Asia if they had lived in isolated small groups. It can be assumed that they were quite numerous. The fate of small groups or individual families that found themselves isolated for one reason or another was most likely tragic, and they died out.

Distant descendants of another branch of ancient Asian hominids formed a population of Asian relict hominoids. These were huge apes - Gigantopithecus. In conditions of a harsh climate and a lack of food resources, Pithecanthropus ("ancient people") inevitably had to enter into a fight with Gigantopithecus (devas) and, as we know, won it.

Neanderthals?

The most widespread hypothesis is that of B.F. Porshnev, according to which modern relict hominoids are descendants of Neanderthals. This hypothesis was actively supported by the Belgian scientist B. Euvelmans.

For a long time there was an opinion that all Neanderthals died out, or were destroyed by Cro-Magnons (the first people modern type) in the period from 100 to 50 thousand years ago. But Neanderthals are not such a homogeneous group of ancient hominids.

There are two types: Neanderthals of the progressive type, which have significant similarities with modern people, and classical Neanderthals - more primitive creatures that have retained the characteristics of more ancient forms of hominids. In addition, progressive Neanderthals are residents of the southern regions of their common range, and classical inhabitants of the northern regions of Europe.

Group of progressive Neanderthals (according to Burian)

B.F. Porshnev considered relict hominoids to be relict Neanderthals, but this applied only to classical Neanderthals, their most human-like varieties, mainly to the Caucasian Almasty and Mongolian Almas. Perhaps these include the Vanmas and the Barman of Western Asia. He simply kept silent about relict hominoids from other regions, logically believing that one should first deal with at least one form of these creatures unrecognized by science, and only then take on the rest.

B.F. Porshnev drew attention to the great external similarity of the Almas and Almasty with classical Neanderthals, and he took their differences from modern people, the main one of which he considered the lack of articulate speech, as evidence that both cannot be considered people in the full sense of the word. In his opinion, classical Neanderthals, like relict hominoids, should be classified as wild animals (remember St. Augustine’s statement in Chapter 2 about the main characteristic of man - the “rational soul”).

Based on many years of research by B.F. Porshnev came to the conclusion that the boundary separating the ancient and earliest hominids from HOMO SAPIENS is the appearance of articulate speech.

Analyzing the process of improving the stone tools of ancient hominids, one can see that the most ancient tools have not changed for hundreds of thousands of years. The process of their manufacture, as experiments have shown, consisted of applying several blows of one stone to another. The invariability of the form and nature of the “master’s” actions indicates that these actions were stereotypical. This is how an insect (bee, wasp, spider, etc.) acts - no one teaches them “labor actions”, these actions are innate, instinctive. It is impossible to teach an insect new techniques for making burrows, webs or honeycombs. The same examples are observed in the world of birds or animals: for example, the skillfully woven, mitten-like nests of titmice or weavers, molded nests of swallows, etc. are well known - their actions are also instinctive and it is also impossible to teach these birds to “work” differently. It seems that the most ancient hominids “worked” in a similar way: Australopithecus and Homo habilis.

The Paris Museum of Man shows a diagram (exponential curve) showing the evolution of the complexity of the labor skills of ancient hominids over time - we see that the curve illustrating this process has an extended almost horizontal “instinctive” section, the duration of which is at least 2 million years.

A diagram of the labor skills of ancient hominids (Diagram 1) shows that the first rudiments of labor activity appeared among them 2 - 2.5 million years ago.

The diagrams above show the speed at which the methods of processing stone tools improved and became more complex over time. It is clearly seen that this process gradually, but with increasing speed, accelerated. And over the past few tens of thousands of years, the curve of labor skills begins to rise upward with increasing steepness - this indicates the rapid improvement of labor skills (Diagram 1). Obviously, somewhere during this period the hominoid turns into a human.

What could be the reason for this sharp leap in the evolution of hominid labor skills? According to B.F. Porshnev, this could be caused by only one thing - the appearance of articulate speech among hominids, thanks to which they acquired a tool for accumulating and transmitting experience, learning and accumulating knowledge about nature and materials, etc.

During this period, a person begins to learn the properties of things and materials, and this allows him to improve his work activities, improve the quality of manufactured tools, and invent new ones. This, obviously, was possible for representatives of the Cro-Magnon race and possibly progressive Neanderthals. And the classical Neanderthals, according to Porshnev, stopped at the “instinctive” stage of evolution, although they had stone tools (Mousterian culture), they knew how to use fire and built primitive dwellings. The Caucasian almasts and Mongolian almases - humanoid, hairy, dumb creatures - fit this theory perfectly. Both of them do not know how to make fire, but have more than once observed how they warm themselves by a fire left by a person and put branches on the fire. They do not know how to make clothes, but often use things abandoned by people for their intended purpose. With the manufacture of tools and the construction of dwellings, the situation is worse - neither one nor the other was noticed in these creatures.

Thus, there are some difficulties here that require clarification. So, it is not clear why, after millions of years of instinctive labor activity, possessing a set of Mousterian tools, knowing how to build at least some kind of dwellings and use fire, modern Neanderthals lost all this? After all, all this was very useful and important for survival in the fight against cold and predators. If Neanderthals had hair, why did they lose it? The strictly established Dollo principle states that evolution is a unidirectional process and reverse does not have.

Were Neanderthals hairy or hairless? It is simply impossible to assert that the Neanderthals, who lived at the same time as woolly mammoths and hairy rhinoceroses and hunted them, were also hairy. Perhaps they were hairy, if, however, they did not lose their hair earlier, long before that time.

There are several hypotheses regarding the issue of hair loss by human ancestors. One of the most exotic - "littoral" is based on the assumption that man was formed in coastal strip seas and lakes, and this is allegedly confirmed by the finds in some areas of huge heaps of mollusk shells and fish bones.

The authors of the hypothesis claim that ancient monkeys, wandering in shallow water and often forced to straighten up, acquired upright walking and an upright posture. And the constant washing of the surface of the body by waves - alternating getting wet and drying under the tropical sun, led to the loss of hair (though, why did seals and fur seals, living in similar conditions for millions of years, not lose their hair? - author's note).

The other belongs to the famous Soviet anthropologist Ya. Roginsky. He suggested that hominids formed in tropical rainforests. Due to the onset of cooling in high latitudes, the forest zone in the tropical zone began to gradually shrink, savannas arose in place of forests, and the ancestors of hominids were forced to adapt to life in savannah conditions: instead of a quiet life in the shade of a tropical forest, they had to master hunting for the fleet-footed inhabitants of the savannas. Since they had to run a lot under the hot sun in their “fur coat,” they gradually shed it (but why did wild dogs, antelopes, zebras - the descendants of those who were hunted by ancient hominids, never part with their “fur coat”? - approx. author).

Both of these hypotheses suggest that human formation took place in a hot climate. But it was shown above that another point of view is also possible. We know that some races of ancient hominids lived in the harsh climate of Central (Sinanthropus) and Northern (Diringians) Asia. If only primitive stone tools have been found from the Diring people, then after Homo - erectus - a (Sinanthropus) huge ash deposits remained - in the Zhou-kou-dian cave the thickness of the ash layer reaches several meters. There is no doubt that these fires served primarily for heating for many thousands of years.

Imagine what happened in the cave by the light of the fire during the long winter months? Despite the cold and blizzards, Sinanthropus or Diringians had to get food - hunt.

To do this, it was necessary to periodically leave the warm and cozy cave into the cold, look for and track deer or some other animals. The killed animal was unlikely to have been skinned on the spot; most likely, its carcass, unless, of course, it was a mammoth or rhinoceros, was brought to the cave. The removed skin was, of course, carefully cleaned, scraping out the edible soft tissue. The scraped skin obviously served as a bedding for some time or simply lay on the floor of the cave. It is unlikely that ancient people differed from other primates and were particularly careful to observe the rules of personal hygiene; most likely, they relieved their natural needs, at least some, in the same place where they lived. Obviously, this is what modern relict hominoids do as well, a distinctive feature of which is a disgusting smell, which includes the smells of urine, rot and mold.

Under the influence of urine, the skins lying on the floor underwent natural “dressing” - they became soft and flexible. And with soft skins you can already do a lot: for example, wrap yourself in them while sleeping or wrap yourself up when leaving a warm cave, from the hot fire of a fire in the cold. Such skins could already be used for protection from the cold and during hunting, simply thrown over the shoulders. Then it was easy to understand that the long ends of the skin remaining from the limbs were convenient to tie and then the cape freed up the hands. Then it remains to take a very small step to figure out how, by making holes along the edges of the skin and threading a narrow strip of skin or tendon through them, fasten the two edges of a piece of skin, turning this piece into a primitive vest, and then into shirt sleeves. All these inventions were needed in order to protect oneself from the cold, which was especially sensitive when leaving a warm cave.

The appearance of clothing, combined with a hot fire in the cave, made hair on parts of the body protected by clothing unnecessary and, as we know, it was preserved on a person’s arms and legs, since it is much more difficult to make mittens and pants than a shirt. The head is obvious for a long time she was left without a hat - even nowadays Swedes and Norwegians go without hats in winter.

In hairy mammals tropical zone There was no such need and their hair was preserved.

If we accept these assumptions, then the classical Neanderthals and their descendants - Almasts, Barmanu, Pikilyans and the like, separated from the common evolutionary trunk of progressive hominids before the time when the latter lost their hair. Living like Sinanthropus for tens of thousands of years in isolation, in places where there were no raw materials for making stone tools and fuel, classical Neanderthals may have lost their cultural skills. Of course, in such conditions, the most severe natural selection took place and only the most physically developed and viable individuals survived. The individuals that won this struggle for survival developed some internal mechanisms of adaptation to the cold and long winter. We don’t yet know exactly all these mechanisms, but using the example of relict hominoids, we can assume that they formed a layer of subcutaneous fat in the fall, and in winter the physiological activity of the body decreased - they could do without food for a long time.

Groups of Neanderthals who found themselves in conditions of isolation and shortage of food resources for a long time could not have been numerous - most likely, they were separate families. They lived scatteredly, since in such conditions cannibalism was a completely natural phenomenon, and the proximity of neighbors was dangerous. Living by hunting and even in the open spaces of the huge ice sheet that covered a significant part of Europe, Neanderthals obviously did not feel the need for articulate speech - short sound signals (whistles, short exclamations), gestures and poses (like lions, etc.) were enough for them to communicate. wolves and other pack animals). Yes, even members of a small family leading a secluded lifestyle get by with the bare minimum number of words in everyday life and understand each other perfectly. If classical Neanderthals once had the rudiments of articulate speech, then over tens, and perhaps hundreds of thousands of years of isolation, they lost them.

True, relict hominoids do not confirm this point of view. It seems to have been proven by numerous observations in natural conditions and in captivity that relict hominoids do not have articulate speech, but articulate speech is not only the ability to pronounce words, which parrots, starlings and other birds are excellent at doing.

Articulate speech, as a natural ability of a particular animal species, presupposes the presence of appropriate structures in the brain that generate and transmit signals to the muscles of the organs that reproduce sounds (larynx, pharynx, tongue, lips), from which sounds, words and phrases are formed.

It would seem that without these two components articulate speech is impossible, but the work of primatologists has shaken this point of view. Since none of the primates except humans are able to reproduce the sounds of human language, attempts have been made to teach monkeys the language of the deaf and mute. Amslen -y. Experiments were carried out with chimpanzees and gorillas - both showed excellent results.

Thus, the female chimpanzee Washoe not only remembered more than 400 words from which she put together correct phrases, both narrative and interrogative, but also formed new words denoting objects unfamiliar to her, for example, for watermelon she came up with the name “water-berry” , for a swan - “water bird”.

Gorillas are not only not inferior to chimpanzees, but probably surpass them in their linguistic abilities - the female gorilla Koko memorized more than 600 words (however, if chimpanzees taught language to the deaf and dumb, then gorillas taught it with the help of pictures on a computer screen).

We do not know what the success of classical Neanderthals and relict hominoids would have been in such experiments. But if the ancestors of classical Neanderthals and modern relict hominoids once possessed articulate speech, then they should still have retained the ability to reproduce human sounds. At the same time, in the stories about Zana from Abkhazia and the “kul of the Nenets Serikov,” who lived among people for about twenty years, it was stated that they could not speak. True, in 2003-2004, reports appeared that the US state of Tennessee is home to a family of SAQUATCHs, whose vocabulary contains about 150 words, which they use quite intelligently. It was hoped that the future would show whether this was true. But these hopes were not destined to come true, since this farm was sold for debts, and new owner does not feel the desire to be friends with the terrible SAQUATCHES.

And the last thing that should be noted is that the remains of Neanderthals have been found today only in Europe, North Africa and Western Asia. Consequently, relict hominoids from all other regions of the globe cannot in any way be descendants of these same Neanderthals and are descendants of other species or races of ancient hominids.

So who are they?

More about hypotheses of the origin of relict hominoids

Among the ancient natural philosophical ideas about the origin of hominids, the most interesting and complete are the views of the ancient Indian Lokayat materialists, nastikas and tantric scientists. According to the Vedas and other Buddhist sources, the meaning of their teaching is as follows (according to Yu.G. Reshetov:u):

The development of the world is cyclical. The smallest cycle is the south, lasting from 432 thousand to 1728 thousand years. Every 4 yugas make up a larger cycle - max yugas lasting 4230 thousand lunar years.

About 4.5 mahayugas ago, that is, approximately 18.6 million lunar years, large land monkeys appeared on earth - the ancestors of people. They lived in the mountains of Jambudvipa - the continent that at that time united the Hindustan peninsula and Southeast Asia. descendants descended to the plains and populated the forests, where in search of food they moved from place to place, without having a permanent place of residence.

At the beginning of the last revolution of the south (about 4.3 million lunar years ago), the ancestors of people switched to collective food production, which gave them the opportunity to stock up and form permanent settlements along the banks of rivers. Gradually they became more and more like people and would live in complete contentment, except for the fight against monsters - d e v a m i., who were cannibals. Nevertheless, this was the golden age, creta or deva yuga. However, during the subsequent, third yuga, or yug and half of people, they dealt with the monsters - devas and multiplied greatly. So at the beginning of the penultimate, two-to-south year (about 870 thousand lunar years ago) there was not enough food in the forests of Jambudvipa. Clashes began between people, as a result of which they settled to the east, north, south and northwest. From those migrants from Jambudvipa who settled in the east came the peoples belonging to the Mongoloids, from those who went to the south - the Negroids (blacks), from those who went to the northwest - the peoples of the Bull, the latter include the Caucasians of Iran and Central Asia, whose totems are in III millennium BC served as an image of a bull. Large terrestrial apes that remained to live in the mountains, where they were driven out by ancient people, did not turn into people..

This surprisingly well-structured concept contains quite progressive ideas: 1) the idea of ​​evolution, development; 2) the idea that man descended from a monkey, and not vice versa, as other religious teachings of India believe; 3) the idea that natural conditions and their way of life played a significant role in the development of monkeys; 4) it was also progressive that monkeys turned into people under the influence of joint labor for good food; 5) the idea of ​​the unity of origin of human races is quite reasonable; 6) it is interesting that the location of the ancestral home of humanity is associated not with Africa, but with Hindustan and Southeast Asia.

And for the topic of this work, the idea of ​​​​the meeting of the ancestors of people with the giants devas, a long struggle with them, and, finally, the victory of people and the displacement of devas into the mountains and other inaccessible places seems to be extremely more important.

“The hominid line is the history of the consistent displacement of less perfect groups by more perfect ones,” writes academician A.A. Velichko in the article “Nature and the Cradle of Humankind” (Nature magazine 1985, 3). Austalopithecus was replaced by Homo habilis, giving way, in turn , the place of Homo erectus, who were replaced by paleoanthropes (Neanderthals), then displaced by Homo sapiens (Homo sapiens). The explanation for this lies, most likely, in the living conditions...

Australopithecines and other hominids willingly explored open spaces. Naturally, in this case, groups more adapted to the living conditions and more highly organized supplanted their predecessors, sometimes by direct hunting them. According to available data, Homo-habilis, for example, hunted Australopithecus.

The attraction to open spaces is a trend that will accompany humanity throughout its history with increasing intensity...

From the point of view of optimal satisfaction with food resources, man has always been, relatively speaking, a creature of open spaces. However, from what has been said one should not at all conclude that man in the past only “bypassed” the forests. With sharp climate fluctuations in the Quaternary period, forest conditions were repeatedly replaced by steppe conditions in the same areas.

Some groups chose to migrate, while others adapted to the new landscape. It is absolutely obvious: in order for a shift in the state of the natural environment to “work” in the process of phylogeny (change in species), it is necessary that at the given moment of evolution in the natural environment there are organisms that are, as it were, already prepared for a certain reaction to this shift.

In the case considered, the higher primates already had the rudimentary ability to move on the hind limbs, operate with external objects, and eat meat. Radical landscape changes seemed to force the body to develop and improve these properties..."

What was said above regarding ancient hominids is true for any living organisms, including relict hominoids. The appearance of each new, more advanced form of hominids caused a centrifugal wave of migration of more primitive forms - including those that we now know as relict hominoids.

The American professor Ivan Sanderson, mentioned above, divided all relict hominoids into four groups:

NEOGIGANTS - inhabitants of the northern, subpolar regions and inaccessible highlands.

SUB-HOMINIDS - inhabitants of some areas of East Asia;

SUB-PEOPLE - inhabitants of the taiga and mountain zones of North Asia and America;

PROTOPIGMIES - inhabitants of humid tropical forests Africa and Southeast Asia.

On the pages of this book, the reader has repeatedly met representatives of all these groups.

Let's try to imagine how these groups could have formed. To do this, let us once again turn to Yu. Reshetov’s monograph “The Nature of the Earth and the Origin of Man.” This interesting book contains a graph similar to the graph from the Paris Museum of Man, showing the dependence of the evolution of the labor skills of ancient man on changes in the natural environment. Unlike the Parisian one, Reshetov’s schedule, covering about 2 million years, is tied to time and the global climate changes that occurred at one time or another. From this graph it follows that the identification of the so-called “dead-end” forms of hominids coincides in time with the main periods of glaciations, which, as shown above, was quite natural. It seems to us that this graph shows nothing more than the time of formation and separation of individual species of relict hominoids from the general main trunk of progressive hominids.

TRUE GIANTS - the descendants of the ancestral Asian race of GIGANTOPITHECES - those des discussed at the beginning of the section, who lived quietly for a long time in their homeland, isolated from other hominids in the mountainous regions of the Hindu Kush, the Himalayas and Tibet, and then settled throughout icy expanses of Northern Asia. They were more isolated than others biologically and genetically from other proto-hominids. They survived several periods of powerful glaciations there and adapted well to life in the harsh climate of the highlands and northern latitudes Asia. We know that they, like other relict hominoids, show sexual interest in people, but we do not know of a single case of the appearance of offspring from such relationships, not only procreative ones, but any kind at all.

These, in our opinion, should include all the largest representatives of relict hominoids: EKKI, CHULYUKOV, MAIGIKI, TUNGA, TEREKE, possibly the Caucasian MAZYLKH, Chinese EUGEN, Central Asian JONDORA, Himalayan DZU-TI, Australian YAKHO and American SASQUATCH, UKUMAR and TARMA .

Habitats of TRUE GIANTS

It can be assumed that the American NEOGIGANTS are descendants of the ancestral form of hominoids from one of the first waves of migration Asian fauna to the North American continent, subsequently settling in the southern one.

Areas of settlement of NEO-GIANTS

Let us note that on the American continent there are no analogues of ALMASTY, BARMAN and other, more human-like forms of relict hominoids. This indicates that for some reason after GIGANTOPITHESUS there were no more migrations of other forms of relict hominoids from Asia to the American continent. It can be assumed that after the first wave of migration, approaches to land bridges connecting Asia and America in ice ages, turned out to be blocked by some races of ancient people who settled there (perhaps these were the DIRINGIANS or SYNANTHROPES mentioned at the beginning of the chapter), or perhaps the descendants of the GIANTOPITHECES of the previous wave did not allow them there. Nobody knows this.

Archaeological excavations show that the next wave of migrants to the American continent about twenty thousand years ago were primitive hunters - the ancestors of the modern Khanty, Nenets and other indigenous peoples of North Asia, that is, people of a modern type.

They were armed and could act collectively, which gave them an advantage in the fight against the hairy giants.

SUB-HOMINIDS are the descendants of those primitive hominids that formed immediately before the Günz and Mindelian glaciations and after their end were forced out of their habitats by NEANDERTHALS. These are none other than the descendants of Pithecanthropus and Synantropus (HOMO ERECTUS). During their forced long-term isolation, some of their populations degraded and lost all their cultural achievements that their ancestors possessed. These include the Almas and Ksy-gyiks of Mongolia, the Pikilans of Northeast Asia and some populations of relict hominoids of Southeast Asia.

SUB-PEOPLE are the forms closest to humans, and are obviously descendants of the classic NEANDERTHALS, but not those who made perfect and varied stone tools, used fire, buried the dead with certain rituals, but some of their populations, which, obviously , lived for a long time in isolation from the bulk of their relatives. They did not have suitable raw materials at hand to make stones and lost all this useful knowledge and skills. This could have happened during the last glaciations, when all Northern Europe was covered by a powerful ice sheet, and vast glaciers covered the Caucasus, Karakoram and Hindu Kush mountain ranges. Perhaps it almasy of Mongolia, almasty North Caucasus andvanmasy (barmanu) Western Asia.

PROTO-PIGMIES - inhabitants of the tropical rainforests of Africa, Southeast Asia and South America, where their ancestors were apparently displaced by Pithecanthropus or Homo - erectus.

In 2004, scientific The public was amazed by the news of the discovery in the jungles of the island of Flores of perfectly preserved remains of humanoid creatures unknown to science. Paleontologists gave them a name Homo-floresiensis , but privately they dubbed them “hobbits” due to their short stature (about a meter).

Probably, such creatures were descendants of Australopithecus or Homo-habilis -s who presumably inhabited these places about a million years ago. In isolation, they acquired a rather strange appearance: disproportionately long arms and a round head the size of a football.

It is especially interesting that legends about short people, who very much resemble hobbits who lived in the distant past on the islands of this region, have survived to this day. According to eyewitness descriptions, the body of these people was covered with thick hair, and they constantly muttered something under their breath.

Obviously, the bulk of these creatures were exterminated by more advanced Homo sapiens -s, or they became extinct for some other reason.

What actually happened is not yet known. Some experts, based on these stories, believe that the descendants of hobbits are still hiding in the deep unexplored regions.

woes big islands Indonesia, and the finds of their remains are the best confirmation of this.

Experts believe that hobbits are intelligent creatures.

There are also legends about similar creatures among the indigenous inhabitants of Ceylon, and some of them claim that they are still hiding in the jungles of the central part of the island. The local name for these hairy little men is “didi”.

Author's note: stories about short men are widespread in the Pamirs, and in the habitats of huge ghouls and jondors. Unlike the children of the latter, these hairy little men “Ajina” are adults - they live in groups (herds) of dozens of heads in deep caves and are sometimes seen when they play on moonlit nights in front of the entrance to their shelter. They are completely harmless and avoid humans. Perhaps this is an unknown species of tailless monkeys that are nocturnal (?).

Scientists hope to isolate DNA from the hobbits' remains. If this succeeds, science will receive answers to many still unclear questions about these creatures.

There is no consensus among anthropologists about where man was formed. Some argue that this happened in Africa, which is confirmed by the finds of most of the skeletal remains of the oldest hominids on this continent (Australopithecus and Paranthropus). R. Dart, L. S. B. Leakey, K. P. Oakley and others rely on numerous finds of australopithecines in South and East Africa.

In 1871, M. Wagner put forward a hypothesis about the extratropical origin of man. His approach was ecosystem-based. Wagner believed that to transform an ape into a man, frequent and dramatic changes were necessary environment, i.e., a change in the adaptive zone, geographic isolation, the significant role of meat food and the need for hunting to obtain it, the absence of fear of fire and the need to develop skills in making tools, a collective way of life and collective work. His supporters were I. Muller, A. Quatfrage, L. Wilser, D. N. Anuchin, V. E. Larichev.

Wagner’s hypothesis was supported by V.I. Vernadsky

The famous science fiction writer of the 16th century, Herbert Wells, in his novel “The Time Machine” also supported Wagner’s hypothesis: “We forget about the law of nature, which states that the presence of intelligence is the reward for the dangers, anxieties and vicissitudes of life. Creatures that live in perfect harmony with their environment turn into simple machines. Nature never resorts to reason as long as habits and instinct serve it. Where there is no change, the mind perishes. Only those beings possess it who face all kinds of needs and dangers.”

Supporters of M. Wagner's hypothesis believe that this happened somewhere in the mountainous regions of Asia (P. Sushkin, G. G. von Koenigswald, M. F. Nesturkh, G. F. Debets, Yu. A. Mochanov).

They are advocates of the hypothesis of “broad monocentrism” (Ya. Roginsky, V.P. Alekseev), according to which the area of ​​human formation covers both Africa and South Asia. In the distant past, these areas belonged to the disappeared part of the single Antarctic continent, uniting Africa and Asia - Lemuria, of which, in turn, the above-mentioned Jambudvipa was a part.

We will get acquainted with another, quite realistic hypothesis of the origin of man below.

Professor Yavorsky's hypothesis.

This This version was put forward by professor of mineralogy Yavorsky. In his opinion, representatives of Extraterrestrial civilizations monitor the evolution of living nature on the planet, where natural conditions arise that are suitable for the development of living nature. In particular, they carried out such monitoring of the Earth for a long time. Presumably at the end of the Tertiary period they decided that the large apes living on earth had already reached that level of physical and intellectual development that we can try to speed up the process of their evolution in order to form a civilization of intelligent beings on earth. They created in different regions several breeding stations. Using the methods of genetic engineering and artificial selection, they raised the progenitors of the main modern human races and released them “into free swimming.” At the same time, as in any scientific work, they had unsuccessful samples that did not have the right set signs necessary to transform them into intelligent beings. And, probably, they continue to observe the earth's fauna. And what? People observe flying saucers (UFOs) and take pictures of them. Our contemporaries meet humanoids from time to time. They are still conducting some research on representatives of the human race. Why would they be so interested in earthly people, stubbornly not coming into contact with us? They clearly behave towards us, people, like earthly scientists observing the life of animals, insects and other living creatures.

The above hypothesis, with all its exoticism, belongs to the Theories of External Intervention (ETI) and is recognized by a number of scientists. In particular, this is what Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences Valery Doronin writes:
The earth was “inseminated” by UFO pilots.

Even the discoverer of DNA, Francis Crick, suggested in the late 70s of the last century that the Earth was “purposefully ” “inseminated” by alien civilizations. Otherwise it is impossible to explain the similarity of DNA of all living organisms. How does nature create billions of different creatures using one code? If life developed according to Darwin - gradually, subject to the game of chance, with the help of trial and error - then it would be logical for many different genetic codes to arise at once. And if they are not there, it means that evolution was ruled not by chance, but by reason.

In 1967, American geneticists Vincent Sarich and Alan Wilson from the University of California at Berkeley, studying the blood of monkeys and humans, found that the evolutionary lines of the two most genetically similar species of primates - humans and chimpanzees - separated from the common trunk no earlier than 5-7 million years ago. Studies of mitochondrial DNA from blood taken from several hundred people belonging to different races and living on different continents have led to the surprising conclusion that all people, regardless of their race, belong to the same species and descend from the same the only woman- the prototype of the Biblical Eve, although she lived not 6,000, but not less than 200,000 years ago. And this “Eve” lived somewhere in southern Africa.

Another group of scientists from the University of Berkeley, led by Douglas Wallis, found that “Eve” could also live in Asia, and more precisely in the territory of Southeast China.

So maybe all three groups of scientists are right, and Homo sapiens was created not at two, but at three “breeding stations”, located one in southern Africa, the second in Western Asia and the third in Southeast Asia? The best successes were achieved by the “breeders” of the South African station - they created the Cro-Magnon race - HOMO-SAPIENS -s. Was it really a success?

So far, the intelligent being created by the Supermind, with a zeal worthy of better use, is destroying the environment, creating a consumer society. This creature mindlessly squanders minerals, seeing the purpose of its existence not so much in improving technology, but in the limitless expansion of production and consumption. In general, this is the only species of living beings that does everything possible to destroy itself. How can one not observe such an unreasonable “intelligent” creature - one’s own creation. In the process of such selection work, mistakes and failures were inevitable. These “failed hominoids” were simply released into the wild, and the descendants of some of them could well survive to this day in the form of hairy humanoid creatures, which we call relict hominoids. It is definitely too early to put a definitive conclusion on this problem. After all, archaeologists, paleontologists and anthropologists are still dealing with material collected at individual points of the modern landmass of the earth's surface. And the ancient layers that hide the truth about the past thousands and millions of years of human evolution are generally rare. There are no final solutions in science - the solution to one problem provides an answer to a specific question, but at the same time gives rise to many new questions that require solutions. This is the essence and logic of the process of cognition and modern materialistic science.

On the mind, language and thinking of animals and

relict hominoids.

“Probably no aspect of the behavior of gorillas and other great apes,” writes Schaller, “is of such general interest as the way members of a group communicate with each other. Do they have any rudiments of language? Or do they grunt, grunt and bark without any meaning or purpose? As I observed the gorillas, first for weeks and then for months, there was some change in my appreciation of the great apes. At first I was very impressed by their human behavior, but then I began to feel that they were missing something basic that even they could not convey. expressive eyes that they do not have the opportunity to communicate to each other about the past and the future, and about what exists at the present moment, but is not in their immediate field of vision. In other words, gorillas lack language in the truly broad sense of the word.”

Knowing that apes are not capable of reproducing the sounds of human language, a group of American scientists from the University of Nevada, Beatrice and Allen Gardner, who attempted to teach them the language of deaf mutes ( amslen ) and a group of scientists at Stanford University, Gerebert Terrace, who tried to teach them to communicate with humans using a computer (symbols). Both methods gave positive results. The greatest success in mastering amslen -and the Gardners achieved female chimpanzees Washoe and Lucy, and Herbert Terrace achieved the young gorilla Koko.

At the age of nine, Washoe not only learned the meanings of more than three hundred words, but also learned to construct short phrases from them, form new words, and even change the order of words in a sentence depending on whether it is a declarative or an interrogative phrase. In this group, a more complex experiment was carried out, when a female and a male chimpanzee who spoke the language of the deaf-mute ( Amslen ), they were put in one enclosure to see how they would behave when their offspring appeared. When they had a baby, scientists watched with satisfaction as the mother independently taught her baby some words amslen -A. But, unfortunately, chimpanzees have no internal need for a “foreign” language, and all the amazing achievements described belong to young animals - this is a game. Adult chimpanzees do not need human language; they are quite satisfied with their natural language of gestures, postures and a small set of inarticulate sounds.

The experience of teaching human language, as already mentioned, was carried out with gorillas, but not sign language, but “card language” was used. The champion here was the young female Coco, already familiar to us. She began to be taught in 1972, when she was one year old, in 1978 she knew 645 characters. She freely used 345 of them in communication with the instructor: she could say that she was in pain when she was unwell; freely express your desires; answer questions about past and future tenses. Koko has an understanding of abstract concepts such as boredom and imagination; knows how to swear - to tell the female instructor who offended her: “You are a bad dirty restroom!”; comes up with names for previously unfamiliar objects and animals: “water-bird” is a swan, “water-berry” is a watermelon, etc. Later, the stock of English words that she understands exceeded 2000. When Coco was given a tailless kitten, she fell in love with him very much and came up with the name “Sharik” for him.

In August 1999, Coco took an active part in a press conference held over the Internet. She answered various questions from correspondents, not only about what was in the studio, but also about the house and yard of her owners, about the people and pets living there, named their names and nicknames, and many others. When asked by a reporter who she was, Coco replied: “I’m a great animal – a gorilla.”

This was the first ever press conference of an animal in front of people. It was shown on television and could be seen by millions of people

Monkeys have a sense of humor. One day, Coco took advantage of the fact that the instructor entered her cage and left the key in the lock. Jumping out of the cage, she locked the door and had fun for more than an hour, refusing to let him out. Having thoroughly enjoyed the contemplation of the man in the cage, she took pity on her captive and released him.

At the Pyongyang Zoo, a chimpanzee stole a pack of cigarettes from his attendant, hid it behind his back and amused himself by giving him only one cigarette at a time until they ran out.

When Washoe was asked who she saw when she looked in the mirror, she replied, “I am Washoe.”

Trained amslen - the chipanzee Vika was asked to arrange a set of photographs of people and animals into two piles - one of people and the other of animals. She put her photograph with the people (and next to Eleanor Roosevelt!), and put the photograph of her handsome father with the animals, next to the elephants and rhinoceroses.

It turned out that chimpanzees trained in human language feel superior to their “illiterate” relatives. They consider them a “lower race”, behave arrogantly towards them and contemptuously call them “black monkey”, etc.

Forest silent orangutans are not inferior to chimpanzees and gorillas. Thus, the vocabulary of the male orang Panibanish is approximately 3000 English words, and his colleagues Chanteki - approximately 2000.

Panibanisha is talking with journalist Jonathan Lee, with whom he has never met:

- Guest, did you bring me anything tasty?

- Of course I put it in the refrigerator. Do you want me to bring this?

Yes!

When the journalist brought a closed paper cup, he asked Panibanish:

- Do you know what this is?

Jelly.

Please note that this is a fragment of a conversation that the young orangutan Panibanisha had with a stranger.

After analyzing the results of these experiments, one of the leading scientists in this field, Herbert Terrace, came to the conclusion that most of the phrases composed by his pets were only imitation of the words and expressions that the researchers used in the process of communicating with their pets, the results of constant training and memorization “ by heart". In other words, the animal resorted to a kind of forgery, not understanding the interdependence between the elements that make up the word and phrase.

Data obtained from experiments with the Washoe Gardners refute this point of view. How, without understanding the meaning of words, you can create new words like: “water-berry” - watermelon or “water-bird” - swan, or rearrange the words of a narrative phrase into an interrogative one. Even dogs understand the meaning of many words of their owners.

The Center's researchers have developed a program of experiments aimed at finding out whether trained amslen - the monkey, without human intervention, transfers the acquired knowledge and skills to its fellows.

In 1985, at a congress in Los Angeles, researchers from the Foots Center reported on the results of their work. They said that they placed a small chimpanzee, Lulu, in Washoe’s cage. Thirteen-year-old Washoe showed truly maternal feelings for the baby and began raising him. After some time, it was noticed that she was teaching her pupil sign language. She started with the simplest word “food”. She folded his hands in the right way and made sounds that chimpanzees use to indicate the presence of food. With loud cries she expressed her feeling of hunger, confirming her demand with the sign “food”. Lulu first sat next to her and looked at her in surprise. But then he understood the meaning of the required position of the hands - the first word was learned.

The student gradually made progress, and by the age of three his “vocabulary” was 28, and two years later there were 47 “words.” The persistence of the hairy teacher was amazing. After all, no one taught Washoe pedagogy and methods of teaching foreign languages!

Washo also happily adopted some human skills that were not characteristic of chimpanzees. For example, she enjoyed taking a bath in the morning and rubbing herself with oil and subjecting her favorite doll to these procedures.

These observations completely refutes the traditional assertion of animal psychologists that animals do not have long-term memory.

Another series of experiments involved analyzing the content of “conversations” between “educated” monkeys. At first, chimpanzees were divided into two groups. One included 16-year-old Washoe, 8-year-old Moya and three-year-old Luli. The other group consisted of 5-year-old female Tatyu and 8-year-old male Dar. At the final stage, both groups were combined.

Based on observations of these animals, scientists made the following conclusions: During the period of isolation, when chimpanzees lived in separate groups, the number of “conversations” between them was approximately 38 per month, and since the merger of the two groups into one, it has increased to 378! Hence the conclusion follows that the wider the social circle, the more “talkative” the monkeys are. It was noted that 39% of signs used during “conversations” related to various aspects of social activity (for example, putting oneself in order), 29% were associated with attempts to calm or encourage other group members, 29% related to games and only 5% of the signs used were food related. In the process of communication, the monkeys came up with names for each other.

The analysis also showed that during the first stage of the experiment (two groups), Lulu used 90% of all signs in “conversation” only with his adoptive mother, and at the second stage only 54%, since now he also communicated with his older brothers: 9 % of “words” were addressed to Moe, 10% to Taty and 27% to Dar. In addition to the fact that chimpanzees were able to transfer acquired knowledge to each other, scientists noted the fact that it is possible for animals to establish contact in ways that are not inherent to them by nature. At the same time, according to many scientists, they, on their own initiative, used the language created for them by people.

Trained chimpanzees place themselves above other apes, whom they call “dirty.” In an experiment with a trained female chimpanzee, Vicky, the result was completely unexpected. She was asked to put photographs of various animals and people into two piles. She did this absolutely correctly, but she put her photograph in front of people (and next to the photograph of the President’s wife, Eleanor Roosevelt). This means that the ability to communicate in human language, according to Vika, is the main sign of belonging to the human race! Here you have all the philosophy from Plato and Aristotle to Professor Porshnev about the role of articulate language in the origin of man.

The orangutan Panibanisha, like Washoe, independently teaches human language to his one-year-old son Newt, and he even tries to translate from “monkey language” into human.

From the above, we can conclude that language appears not when morphological prerequisites for this appear - apes obviously have them (though without means of speech reproduction), but when, in addition, animals appear in this internal need. Moreover, the latter is more important factor. In human society, they actively use their vocabulary, but, once in natural conditions, chimpanzees do not need it and get by just fine with their natural means of communication.

Relict hominoids mainly lead a solitary lifestyle, only the mother and cubs live together for quite a long time. But we saw that the father visits his family from time to time and also spends some time near them. Under such conditions, contacts between different individuals are quite limited. Members of one family do not need a large vocabulary - for the needs of life and safety, obviously, those sound signals that eyewitnesses tell about are sufficient:

1) a piercing whistle, which is a warning of danger and expresses a threat to the enemy; with the help of a series of two or three whistles, hominoids communicate some information to each other - in any case, to several whistles from a person from the depths of the forest, observers in many cases heard in response exactly the same number of whistles (by the way, the indigenous people Canary Islands in the past, they communicated over long distances by whistling, while communicating quite complex information - approx. author);

2) a loud, frightening roar, which most likely means a feeling panic fear when unexpectedly appearing near a person (some ungulates, such as wildebeest, or defenseless miniature antelopes, which Tajiks call “eliki”, scare away the enemy in a similar way - Author’s note); in this situation, eyewitnesses note the presence of a disgusting smell - this is the “smell of fear” (the same is observed in gorillas and other animals, including humans - they say “sweating with fear.” - Author’s note);

3) sounds reminiscent of a horse neighing;

4) sounds reminiscent of the gentle mooing of a cow, calming

calf cabbage soup;

5) gentle sounds of a mother holding a child in her arms, something like a “lullaby”.

6) the most mysterious is the indistinct muttering that people usually hear from almasty and ghouls when there are several hominoids, but it happens that a hominoid wandering separately or making its way in the bushes “mumbles” - maybe this is their language?

There are probably some other sound signals, but it is obvious that there are not many of them, at least not more than in chimpanzees. From all that has been said, only one sad conclusion can be drawn: relict hominoids do not have their own articulate language.

But let's not despair. Let us remember that the distinguishing features Homo sapiens - Homo sapiens are:

Walking on two legs with a straightened body position - we also see this in relict hominoids;

The ability to make tools is something we see not only in apes and Japanese macaques, but also in some birds. Galapogos finches, for example, extract larvae from under the bark of a tree using a sharp thorn, which they break out of a tree with thorns. Some of the skills of weavers when building a nest are so complex that you are simply amazed. For example, when fastening thin fibers, they tie them with a real “sea knot” (it is possible that sailors learned how to tie such a knot from these birds - editor's note).

The presence of articulate speech, which is the most important sign of Homo sapiens. But articulate speech is a whole complex of interrelated properties and specific functions of the body: the mind, thinking, brain, auditory and speech reproductive organs. We seem to have figured out articulate speech in relict hominoids - most of them do not have it. If Chuchuna-Sasquatch and Almasty have a similarity to human speech, then it has not yet been proven that this speech consists of phonemes - that is, it is articulate.

But there is still reason, thinking and consciousness. After all, why do relict hominoids have such a large brain?

But Aristotle also wrote that “man is an animal with consciousness.”

If by reason we understand the ability to perform rational actions in non-standard, changed conditions (of course, within the limits of their specific ecological niche), then, as we have seen, many animals are endowed with reason to one degree or another: dolphins, elephants, dogs, monkeys, pigs , bears, cats, rats and others. Obviously, all animals and birds, as well as such social insects as ants, termites and bees, are endowed with this ability to one degree or another.

Pets, in particular, show us their intelligent behavior in a particularly clear way.

The dog is a pack animal. And in the pack there is a hierarchy, and the leader enjoys unlimited power. Deprived of the company of its own kind, the dog sees the owner as the leader of the pack, and perceives the members of his family as members of his pack, which, of course, is completely fair. The dog understands not only intonation, but also the meaning of most words used in the everyday life of its owners. She “worships” them and, looking at them, passionately strives to understand what they say. According to the famous geneticist and physiologist S.N. Davidenkov, “if a dog had a mechanism for mastering and reproducing speech, it, according to the capabilities of its brain, could master a course in school algebra.” But there is no such mechanism, and the dog resembles a bad student who, during the exam, “has smart eyes, but cannot say anything.”

The mind is a manifestation of the action of a set of conditioned reflexes and behavioral programs acquired in the process of learning (and self-education) and one’s own subconscious - a set of instinctive programs transmitted by inheritance.

Instincts and reason coexist not to fight each other, but to interact. Intelligence is a later acquisition of an animal, and nature tests its suitability for a long time. Upon completion of such a test, some achievements of the mind are fixed in genetic memory - instinct. If this did not happen, then we would have to admit that all the most complex instinctive programs for any actions existed from the beginning, and this is impossible without the participation of God or the Higher Mind.

Let's remain realistic. Let's assume that everything in the human brain happens the same way as in a computer: the mind is information contained in RAM - a random access memory device (obviously, in the cerebral cortex). And a set of instinctive programs is the contents of long-term memory stored in the ancient, deep structures of the brain and spinal cord.

In all animals, in addition to hereditary behavioral programs (instincts), there was always room in the brain for the formation of voluntary behavior programs (conditioned reflexes); without this, adequate behavior of an individual in changing conditions, learning, development and improvement of consciousness would have been impossible. In vertebrates, the role of consciousness from an auxiliary one expanded, became more complex and gradually turned into such a complexly organized “machine” that it became capable of setting tasks for itself and solving them “in free time”, when the brain is not completely occupied with instinctive programs. We have clearly seen this in the behavior of many animals and birds, and, moreover, we see it from our own experience, successfully combining innate behavior with reasonable actions.

During the evolution of vertebrates, one of the primate species, which led a group lifestyle, was able to make artificial tools for hunting and protection from predators. Primary forms of collective work arose, during which communication was required that was more informative than the exchange of only vital signals. Articulate speech appeared as a tool for accumulating and transferring labor skills and experience. Joint labor gradually transformed group relations into social relations. If at the previous stage of development learning took place reflexively, experience was acquired by observing the behavior of other individuals, primarily parents, then with the advent of articulate speech it became possible to convey and improve experience to students in words.

Gradually, these hominids developed an understanding of themselves, their differences from all other animals, and an understanding of their capabilities. These were the foundations for the emergence of consciousness in this group of hominids, something that fundamentally distinguishes humans from animals. The most highly developed, certainly intelligent animals are not aware of themselves, their capabilities and abilities. Thus, dolphins, sea lions and killer whales, who demonstrate masterly acrobatic abilities in dolphinariums, jumping 3-5 meters out of the water (and they do all this for their own entertainment and in the open sea), are unable to jump over a rope stretched at a height of several tens of centimeters , limiting the cage in which they were placed. Representatives of higher primates, who have learned hundreds and thousands of names for various objects and actions, and even construct new names and phrases from them, are not able to apply their knowledge in a new unfamiliar environment.

In the famous experiments with the chimpanzee Lodygina - Kots, the chimpanzee, trained to walk along bridges laid over water with a mug to the source, was unable to figure out that the bridge, which was set on fire while he was at the source, could be extinguished with water from the mug. And he knew that the fire could be extinguished by filling a mug with tap water.

Such a highly intelligent animal as an elephant does not realize that with her trunk she can easily help her own baby elephant that has fallen into a ditch. True, the elephant from Moscow Corner Durova, once, while crossing some bridge, saved her teacher from falling by catching her with her trunk when she slipped and began to fall from this bridge (they had worked together by that time for more than 20 years).

The role of consciousness, from being auxiliary, expanded and became more and more complex. In the end, their brain turned into such a complexly organized “machine” that it became capable of setting tasks for itself and solving them “in their free time from their main work.” Based on signals received from the sense organs, the machine-brain forms its own internal virtual world, in which the scheme and sequence of actions are simulated and played, and compared different variants and the optimal one for the given, specific conditions is selected. Intelligence is born.

But relying on intelligence did not bring much benefit to primates and human ancestors. This can be seen in the example of great apes. Most of them are extinct, and the remaining ones are few in number and are also on the verge of extinction. The same fate awaited the ancient ancestors of man - these short and defenseless creatures. And this would have happened if two and a half million years ago human ancestors had not learned to make tools. Just as Japanese macaques and pygmy chimpanzees, imitating the first brilliant monkey, learned to wash vegetables, so human ancestors learned from their “first genius” to give a sharp edge to one edge of a large pebble by hitting it with another stone. This tool-making technique has been preserved for more than two million years. Improvement in stone processing technology, of course, occurred, but it went very slowly. This can be explained by the fact that the transfer of work skills occurred only in a direct way from one master to another through observation and imitation, since the ancient master could not tell how he made a stone axe, he could only show it. It is ridiculous to think that ancient people made and used only stone tools. Surely they used in everyday life animal horns and bones, as well as pieces of wood and other materials, processed for more convenient use.

The acceleration and improvement of tool processing technology began approximately 100,000 years ago, and was explosive. According to the general opinion, this was due to the appearance of an articulate language in ancient man. People have the opportunity to accumulate and transmit information to subsequent generations in discrete form, and discrete signals are more resistant to noise - information is less distorted during transmission and storage. After this, there was only one major step left to improve the preservation of information and the accumulation of experience - the invention of writing approximately 4,000 years ago, which contributed to an even greater acceleration of technical and intellectual progress.

Professor B.F. Porshnev believed that before the advent of articulate speech, hominids could not be considered human. But man became himself not at the moment when he began to speak in words consisting of syllables, but much earlier - when he learned to think and was able to rise above nature, having the opportunity to influence it not only with the means that natural selection gave him, and also additional - tools invented (thought up) and made by him, which no animal is capable of, that is, much earlier than the appearance of articulate language, even at the stage homo-habilis.

We should also dwell on this point. After all, for the appearance of articulate speech, it is not enough to have only a large brain; this is not a computer, the memory of which is relatively easy to load with certain programs, after which it immediately begins to execute them. In the large brain of human ancestors, for some reason, specialized areas must have developed that control speech hearing and speech. And they had to somehow form control programs for the corresponding physiological processes and organs, including hundreds of nerves and muscles. And these speech organs themselves had to be formed, since those present in primates, as we see, are completely unsuitable for reproducing human speech. All this could not appear by itself and took a long time.

Of course, Friedrich Engels’ statement that labor created man is correct, but philosophy does not answer the question: what is the mechanism for the emergence of new programs in the brain and associated structures and tissues of the body, the need for which is dictated by the struggle for survival in a changing environment? environment. Conditioned reflexes, which allow an individual to adapt to these changes, do not become unconditioned and are not inherited. Similarly, labor skills cannot be inherited. But somehow they were fixed in the memory of generations. Even such simple as “instinctive” techniques, such as making the simplest stone tools of the “pebble culture”. The process of improving stone tools, which lasted more than two million years, obviously took place in parallel with the improvement of the structures of the brain and speech apparatus of ancient hominids, and we have to assume that this was a process of emergence, development and improvement not only of articulate language, but also a process of development and improvement in hominid of consciousness and thinking.

Thus, the ancient primitive man became a man long before the advent of articulate language. But already at that time he had an advantage over other animals - he had a more developed brain and more developed intelligence.

The point here is that, thanks to the appearance of a larger brain, they were more intelligent, and some of them from time to time invented all sorts of useful innovations: for example, a method of creating a sharp edge on a piece of flint by striking one stone against another; or maintaining a fire in a fire, etc. These innovations attracted the attention of fellow tribesmen who tried to imitate the skills of the inventor, but these skills were not preserved for a long time, since the brain of ancient hominids was not able to remember for a long time what they saw, which was not related to such vitally important things as food, a female, a baby, or the appearance of a dangerous predator. Each human individual had to learn too much and for too long on his own and by imitation. In the absence of a mechanism for the transfer of knowledge, many outstanding inventions were distributed among relatives and fellow tribesmen only for a short period of time, and then inevitably lost.

As archaeological finds show, progress in the development and improvement of skills in processing objects of material culture came unexpectedly, and this progress was explosive. The reason for this, in the general opinion, was the emergence of an articulate language among the homiids and its combination with thinking, which led to their mutual enrichment. This can be explained as follows: without language, information accumulated in a figurative, analogue form, in which individual small details were lost with each transmission, and with each subsequent correspondent the knowledge turned out to be less and less accurate until it became completely unusable.. Articulate speech – this is the transfer of information in discrete form, in this case its distortion during transmission occurs much less frequently, and the information turns out to be suitable for accumulation and transmission to subsequent generations. And this is the basis of progress.

Those examples of various animal languages ​​that were mentioned above show that they are only figurative and communicative in nature, that is, they serve to exchange information with other individuals of their species, with a trainer or instructor. Perhaps only parrots penetrate so deeply into the depths of human language that they are able to construct complex phrases adequately to a changing situation, change intonation, and address questions to to a stranger and answer his questions. A bird speaking in a human voice easily transforms a word heard from one person (for example, from its owner) into the manner of speech of another person who has never uttered this word. In accordance with its emotional state, a parrot can pronounce the same phrase affectionately or rudely, interrogatively or imperatively, tongue twister or emphatically clearly, etc.

In this area, humans and large parrots obviously stand on the same level of linguistic capabilities.

Living with a person for decades, a parrot, on its own initiative, learns new words, remembers their meaning and uses them for several purposes: self-improvement in this activity (that is, it enjoys it), communication with a person or with a dog, if it needs it for in order to play with her, tease her; to comment out loud on your own actions and thoughts. We often hear a parrot talking to itself. There are many such cases: a thief entered an apartment and heard someone talking in the next room. Frightened that he will be discovered, he rushes to run, stumbles in panic, and breaks his leg. Or the parrot has fun giving commands to the dog in the voice of an absent owner, or imitating the voice of a cat. There are other options.

Parrot Roma knows several hundred words. If he dropped something on purpose, he comments: “Dropped it.” And if by accident, then: “Fell!” If he breaks something, knowing full well that it cannot be broken, he quietly or in different voices says: “Well, what are you doing, Roma?” - “Stop it!” - "Hooligan!"

If he needs something, he persistently calls his owner in an increasingly demanding voice. When the owner responds: “What do you want?”, he already shouts in a commanding voice, for example, “Sleep!” - this means you need to turn off the light. If he is thirsty, he says demandingly: “Do you want to drink?” (this means “give me a drink”). And then in an insinuating voice he asks: “Milk?” Having received what is required, he says: “Na” (this means “give” to him). Before trying unfamiliar food, he asks: “Is it tasty?”

One of the parrots is sitting alone on the windowsill, he is bored. I saw a homeless person passing by and shouted to him: “Hey! Man! Why are you so dirty? Go to the bathhouse!” The next day the same homeless man hears: “Hey! Man! Have you been to the bathhouse?” This is not a joke, but a documented fact. The fact is that the homeless man did not believe that it was a parrot sitting on the windowsill, and decided that it was the owner of the apartment and complained to the police about the owner of the bird. I had to conduct a special investigative experiment.

Parrots love to watch TV and remember the names of the characters in their favorite programs.

Talking parrots sing songs, read poetry and entire poems, perform in the circus, and give interviews to television and radio correspondents. While in the studio and answering some questions, the parrot talked about what was or was happening at his home - he called the names of absent family members and the names of dogs and cats.

Of course, not all parrots have such abilities, but some more talented individuals, and even those who ended up with capable educators.

If the tongue of parrots amslen Washoe, Lucy, Lulu and the “computer language” of the gorilla Koko and the orangutans Panibanish and Eddie are not yet languages ​​in the human sense of the word, but only the first steps towards its development, then isn’t the language of dolphins such?

Dolphins belong to the order Cetaceans. Cetaceans, according to science, were in the past land herbivores. All herbivores are herd animals. And herd land animals, when communicating with each other, in addition to postures and movements, emit various sound signals. Consequently, they have developed both means of sound reproduction and auditory organs, as well as corresponding parts of the brain. While mastering the aquatic habitat, cetaceans retained means of sound communication, but in water sound vibrations are unsuitable due to strong attenuation, and they were forced to change the frequency range. Some species, like dolphins, have mastered the ultrasonic range - whistles and clicks, and large whales, in addition to ultrasonic signals, also use infrasonic vibrations. In these ranges, they not only report prey, coordinate their actions during the hunt, warn of danger, but also perform love serenades.

In addition to information that determines the most important factors of life, dolphins are capable of transmitting information to each other about objects and situations that they never encounter in their natural environment. For example, freshly caught dolphins were brought to one of the dolphinariums. They were placed in a pool, next to which there was a pool of old-timer dolphins. The “newbies” were very excited. An active exchange of signals began almost immediately between them and the “old-timers,” which continued throughout the night. By morning the “newbies” had calmed down. But the most surprising thing was that the “newbies” overnight learned to perform almost all the tricks that the “old-timers” dolphins had been trained to do. This means that in the process of exchanging signals, the old-timers not only reassured the newly arrived dolphins, but also told them what they should do in order to live and eat well in the dolphinarium’s pools.

Long-term observations of dolphins in different countries and especially the work of J. Lily’s laboratory have accumulated such rich material about the intellectual abilities of dolphins that hypotheses about the possibility of linguistic communication between humans and dolphins began to be seriously discussed. It seemed that it was enough to take just one more step and the language of the dolphins would be unraveled, but... so far no one has been able to take this last step. And the estimates of the intelligence of these wonderful animals turned out to be somewhat overestimated. For example, when jumping in dolphinariums to a height of up to five meters, dolphins “have no idea” to jump over a fishing net suspended on floats (at the level of the water surface).

Close relatives of dolphins are killer whales. Kept in some dolphinariums, they are not much inferior to dolphins in terms of learning certain tricks. But here's what's wonderful! Finds itself between the Aborigines living on the coast Pacific Ocean and those who hunt whales and killer whales have an “unspoken agreement” that during the hunt they do not interfere with each other. Whalers in their canoes do not hunt killer whales, but they cede the hunting area to them. The whalers want the same thing. The following story is told: in the hunting area of ​​a pod of killer whales, a whaler who did not know the local traditions appeared with a harpoon cannon and shot at the whale, but missed. The flock, which continued to hunt calmly, instantly left the area. But after that, as soon as this whaling ship appeared in the hunting area of ​​other pods of killer whales, they immediately stopped hunting and disappeared.

This indicates that the first flock informed the others that the ship with a cannon on the bow was dangerous.

How does their language, in principle, differ from human language - after all, human language is also modulated sound vibrations, with the help of which we exchange information?

The speech of some domestic parrots is the highest achievement of a non-human vertebrate in mastering human language with its phonetics and elements of syntax. But despite all the perfection of reproducing human speech, this is not the speech of the parrot itself, it is only a “foreign” (human) language that it has learned. In their natural environment, parrots, like monkeys, get along well with their inarticulate language and do not feel the need to improve it.

Birds of the passerine order: crows, jackdaws, magpies and starlings are also capable of mastering human speech, of course, being inferior in this to parrots. But the crows were ahead of everyone in their ability to independently create new “words.” Moreover, they, unlike chimpanzees and gorillas, come up with new “words” not in the language of the deaf-mute amslen -e or computer “language of cards”, and “words” of their own language. So, they “invent” certain sound signals to indicate just a person and a person with a gun, a dog and a cat. These signals are remembered by other individuals from their flock, and sometimes by crows from other flocks. But these “words” are only designations, labels of certain objects, and they do not become part of their language and are not passed on to subsequent generations. This is a conditioned reflex.

American Albert Ostman, abducted by sasquat, witnessed how his captor listened to an angry rebuke from his wife for bringing a bad groom for his daughter.

In Chapter 3, there were several stories about how eyewitnesses, watching two hominoids, heard them talking to each other.

In 1947, policeman Belalov was captured by a huge captar, who then fought and “quarreled” with his wife, who showed too active attention to the captive.

In 1978, Valentin Kataev witnessed two hairy hominoids talking while swimming across a river, and then talking peacefully behind the bushes behind which he was hiding. Moreover, he noticed that they had something like a box in which they had some kind of food (!).

In the same 3rd chapter it was said that two Tajik hunters heard the steps and “muttering” of two ghouls (jondors) approaching them, who came out of the dense bush and stood for some time and looked at the people.

There is a legend among the Yakuts that two chuchuns approached the tent of one family, one of whom had a broken leg. The Yakuts accepted them, provided the necessary assistance and treated the victim for about two months (it was winter).

During this time, they and the people became friends and learned to understand each other. It turned out that the Chuchun had their own language, and they told people about their life. When asked if they had wives and children, the Chuchuns said that they did, and that for the winter they go south to the mountains, where they spend the winter in caves. Maybe the stories of the Yakuts about the stone knives and bows and arrows of the Chuchun are not so fantastic?

In previous chapters, it was said that the American farmer Jessie Clark from Tennessee compiled a dictionary of the language used by the Sasquatch living near her farm. This dictionary includes about 150 words. As subsequent linguistic analysis showed, it contains mainly words from different human languages: Shoshone Indians and English. If the Sasquatch’s memorization of words from the language of the Shoshone Indians is quite acceptable, since they could communicate with them, and Jessica’s grandfather taught them the words of English, then the presence of words from other languages ​​in their language raises deep doubts. If, during an objective linguistic analysis, it turned out that Jessica’s vocabulary contained words that were not borrowed from the languages ​​of local residents and other known languages, this would be the main confirmation that relict hominoids have their own language. Jessica, who was present during her grandfather’s lessons with Fox, writes that although she remembered many of the words, at first it was difficult for her to understand the Sasquatch, since they pronounce them very quickly.

True, if we assume that Chuchuna and Sasquatch are the same type of relict hominoids, then one of these cases confirms the other.

The mysterious “murmuring” of almasty and ghouls often appears in stories about these hominoids and has long aroused suspicion that this is their language. Unfortunately, in the Caucasus and other places it is not known about such long-term observations of hominoids as was the case in the American state of Tennessee.

In 2008, when studying tape recordings of high-frequency sounds attributed to sasquatch, there was some evidence indicating that some phonemes were distinguished in these sounds. But the research is not finished yet.

Above were examples of intelligent behavior of wild and domestic animals and relict hominoids. And it turns out that relict hominoids still have examples of behavior that is not characteristic of other animals. This is a “hairy man” observed by people in the Ryazan region and a dzhondor in the Pamirs by a male helping his wife during childbirth; repeated cases of providing assistance to a wounded person; this is the funeral of a deceased Sasquatch baby in Tennessee, accompanied by a whole ritual of farewell to him; this is providing assistance to people in difficult conditions in the Pamirs and Mongolia - and without any remuneration; out of purely friendly motives; these are signs of gratitude for the service provided (Sasquatch in North America, Ghouls in Tajikistan, Almasty in the Caucasus).

It is especially necessary to highlight some actions of relict hominoids that are not observed in other animals: this is the use of some kind of combs for combing hair and “braids” of almasty; “Maigiki Bridges” and, finally, “Ghoul Traps”. In the latter case, we note that this is not a stick or blade of grass for catching ants or termites in chimpanzees, orangutans and gorillas, and not ready-made stones for cracking palm nuts in pygmy chimpanzees.

This is a device that had to be invented, then a workpiece of the required length and thickness should be broken, split, but not completely, installed in the right position and in the right place, and most importantly, mentally simulate the process of capturing the victim: wait for this right moment and scare off the gophers or mice so that they rush into their holes.

The entire program of these actions had to be imagined mentally, without a prototype, and one had to imagine not only the manufacturing process, but also the action of this “device”, the process of getting a rodent into it and “triggering” it - capturing the victim.

Completing such a fantastically complex task was a huge achievement for the primate - not human. Note that this was the first time in history over the millions of years of existence of this species on earth. The author of this invention had to have not only a sufficiently developed consciousness, but also its highest form - thinking, which was still considered a human privilege. Of course, human thinking in its capabilities is thousands of times greater than the thinking of a ghoul (jondor) or maigika, but this superiority is only quantitative. But there is no fundamental difference between them. Both create a virtual, mental image of changed objects that do not exist in nature, and simulate the behavior of these objects in nature (without seeing all this in reality). The first one had the most difficulty, while all his followers could see the process of making and the operation of the “trap.” The first one had no one to learn from.

Thus, the invention of a small primitive “trap” allows us to conclude that the relict hominoid - the Pamir ghoul - has already stepped on the first step of the ladder that led one of the species of ancient hominids to the transformation into Homo Sapiens - a reasonable person. Consequently, the Pamir ghoul is not a wild animal, it is already a person, the same as he was one and a half to two million years ago, the first and whom we call “Homoerectus”, even if he does not have articulate speech.

Although, as we saw above, the behavior programs of the same ants are even more complex. But they have the most primitive language - the language of smells (pheromones) and we don’t consider them intelligent at all - they act obeying instinct. An individual ant is doomed - it cannot exist without an anthill. Only the anthill, as we have seen, has a developed collective wisdom, but even this mind is not capable of creating something that does not exist in nature.

True, this is not entirely true. For example, the same spiders have an innate ability to weave huge, compared to themselves, webs of web, in which individual threads are arranged in a strictly defined order: these threads, sometimes up to a meter long, intersect at one point, forming something like the spokes of a bicycle wheel, which at the same distance are connected by the same threads, forming concentric circles. And the little spider builds this entire structure in one night! And every spider can do this from the moment it is born. How could such a complex form of behavior appear and become entrenched in the spider’s genes?

Arachnologists still do not have a unified view on the origin of the skills of constructing trapping nets and other structures from spider webs.

The transition to upright walking had important consequences for the evolution of primates. Bipedal creatures no longer needed thick hair to protect their backs from the merciless rays of the sun. Gradually they turned into naked monkeys.;
But most importantly, the transition to upright posture allowed the great apes to move their own brains to a cooler environment, which enabled it to develop into a larger and more active one. In 1924, bone remains of australopithecines, an extinct great ape dating back 1-5 million years, were found in a limestone quarry near Townes, South Africa.
Australopithecus, which lived about 3 million years ago, is considered the predecessor of humans. These creatures averaged 122-152 cm in height and walked upright, as evidenced by the shape of their long bones in their legs and arms. At the same time, the volume of their skull was no more than that of modern chimpanzees or gorillas.
Scientists associate the emergence of australopithecines with the beginning of a cooling period, during which tropical forests began to gradually be replaced by savannas. The ancestors of Australopithecus are called forms of late Dryopithecus. The last ones were less adapted to arboreal environments and therefore switched to living in more open areas. Walking upright significantly complicated the anatomical structure of the brain in Australopithecines and changed the position of the head and eyes. This ensured an expansion of the field of vision - prerequisites appeared for improving the forms of perception of reality in specific images.
Straightening the skeleton also contributed to the release of the forelimbs and their transformation into a hand - an organ of labor activity that had important for further evolution. These features provided australopithecines with clear advantages in the struggle for existence. Australopithecus lived in African savannas in close-knit groups of 25-30 individuals, eating not only plant, but also animal food. They learned to use various items like stones, sticks or bones for hunting and protection from enemies.

Along with the remains of these creatures, primitive bone and stone tools were found, proving that australopithecines had great intelligence, as opposed to simple animal intelligence. With repeated use, the stones inevitably broke off into shards with a cutting, sharp edge, which were much more effective than ordinary natural stones. Operations for processing stones and bones were probably isolated cases among australopithecines at first, but gradually became established natural selection and turned into the skills of the entire primitive herd.
Around the same time, other creatures lived on the planet - Paranthropus, who fed exclusively plant foods and had a more massive build. But they, unlike Australopithecus, apparently did not make any tools. The extinct bipedal apes, Australopithecines, turned out to be the first reliable representatives of the evolutionary branch that ultimately led to the emergence of Homo sapiens.

Australopithecus is a genus of fossilized higher primates that had signs of upright walking and anthropoid features in the structure of the skull.

Australopithecus skull found

The skull of a baby Australopithecus was first discovered in South Africa in 1924. The discovery was credited to Raymond Dart, who arrived in Johannesburg in 1922 obsessed with finding “the missing link between ape and man.” He was able to captivate students with his idea, who began sending him animal bones found during blasting operations. The professor was especially interested in the finds made in the Taung quarry in the east of the Kalahari Desert.

At his request, the young geologist Jung, who often visited the quarry, sent several boxes with different bones to Johannesburg. Dart was attending a friend's wedding when the boxes arrived. Without waiting for it to finish, he rushed to unpack the parcel and in one of the boxes he found the skull of a humanoid creature. For two months, he carefully picked out the stone from the eye sockets and skull.

A detailed study showed that this is the skull of a child no older than 7 years old. The structure of his face and teeth were similar to those of a human, but his brain, although larger in volume than that of a monkey, was significantly smaller than the brain of a modern child of that age. Dart gave this creature the name Australopithecus (from Latin australis - “southern” and Greek pithekos - “monkey”).

Scientists for a long time did not want to acknowledge Dart's discovery. He began to be persecuted in the press. They even called for him to be sent to a mental home... only 12 years later, in 1936, in Sterkfontein, near Johannesburg, R. Broom, during blasting work, noticed in one of the stones the outline of a skull, which also belonged to an Australopithecus.

2 years later, 3 km from the site of this discovery, schoolboy Gert Terblanche came across another Australopithecus skull. And soon the femur, bones and forearm of the left hand were found in the same places. These finds were of great importance, as they made it possible, firstly, to determine the height and weight of Australopithecus (130–150 cm, 35–55 kg), and secondly, to conclude that, unlike monkeys, Australopithecus was an upright creature, and this is already a distinctive sign of a person.

Origin

Australopithecus appears to have evolved from late Dryopithecus about 4 million years ago and lived between 4 and 1 million years ago. Nowadays, scientists distinguish two types of australopithecines: early and late.

Early Australopithecus (Afarensis)

Early australopithecines lived between 4–5 and 1 million years ago. Outwardly, they were very similar to chimpanzees in an upright position. But their arms and fingers were shorter than those of modern monkeys, the fangs were less massive, the jaws were not so developed, and the teeth and eye sockets were similar to those of humans. The brain volume of early australopithecines was approximately 400 cubic centimeters, which is approximately the same as the brain of modern chimpanzees.

Australopithecus Lucy

Australopithecus Lucy skeleton

Early australopithecines are also called Australopithecus afarensis (Australopithecus afarensis) - after the place of the first discovery in the Ethiopian Afar Desert. 1974, November 30 - near the village of Hadar, one and a half hundred kilometers from the capital of Ethiopia Addis Ababa, the expedition of Donald Johanson discovered a skeleton. First, archaeologists discovered a small bone in the ravine, then a fragment of the occipital bone, which clearly belonged to a humanoid creature. With great care, archaeologists began to remove the find from the sand and mud. Everyone was in a state of extreme excitement, in the evening no one could sleep: they argued about what the find was, listened to records of the Beatles, including the song “Lucy in the Diamond Sky.” This is how the name of the find was born - Lucy, which remains in science.

Lucy was an almost complete Australopithecus skeleton, which included fragments of the skull and lower jaw, ribs, vertebrae, two arms, the left half of the pelvis and femur, and the right tibia. The skeleton was preserved surprisingly well, all the bones were in one place and were not stolen by jackals. Most likely, Lucy drowned in a river or lake, her body was covered with sand, which then petrified and walled up the skeleton. Only after millions of years did the movement of the earth push it out.

Now Lucy is considered the most famous representative of Australopithecus afarensis. Scientists were able to establish that her height was slightly more than a meter, she walked on two legs and had a small brain volume.

Late Australopithecus

The second variety of these anthropoids is the late australopithecus. They lived primarily in South Africa from 3 to 1 million years ago. Scientists divide the late australopithecines into three species: the rather miniature Australopithecus africanus, which lived mainly in South Africa, and two very massive australopithecines - the South African paranthropus robustus and the East African zinjanthropus boisei. The brain volume of late australopithecines is 600–700 cubic centimeters. The thumb on the upper limbs was quite large and, unlike the fingers of modern monkeys, was opposed to the rest. As a result, the hands of Australopithecus in their own way appearance looked more like human hands than monkey paws.

Australopithecines had vertical landing heads, which may be evidenced by the absence of strong muscles in the back of their heads, which when horizontal position help keep your head up. This once again indicates that australopithecines moved exclusively on their hind limbs.

What did you eat? How they hunted

Unlike other monkeys, Australopithecus ate not only plant foods, but also meat. The bones of other animals discovered along with Australopithecus bones indicate that they lived not only by gathering edible plants, bird eggs, but also by hunting - both small and fairly large animals. Their food included the ancestors of modern baboons, large ungulates, freshwater crabs and turtles, and lizards.

According to scientists, Australopithecines used sticks, stones, bones and horns of large animals to protect themselves from attacks from predators and for hunting. This was confirmed by the study of animal bones discovered during excavations along with australopithecines. They are often found damaged as a result of strong blows from various objects.

Scientists believe that regular consumption of meat contributed to more intensive brain development in australopithecines. All this created the necessary conditions for the further evolution of this species of anthropoids from ape to man. Australopithecines lived in small wandering groups. Their life expectancy ranged from 17 to 22 years.

East African Zinjanthropus

East African Zinjanthropus was found by the famous English archaeologist Louis Leakey and his wife Mary in 1959 during excavations in the Oldoway Gorge. On July 17, Mary Leakey discovered teeth that clearly belonged to a human being. In size, they were significantly larger than the teeth of modern humans, but in structure they were very similar to them. In addition to the teeth, other skull bones were visible from the ground. The clearing lasted 19 days, as a result of which a skull was removed from the ground, crushed into 400 pieces. But, since they were all lying together, they were able to be glued together and the appearance of the anthropoid was restored. Louis Leakey called his discovery a zinjanthropus (translated from the Greek zinz - the Arabic name for East Africa, anthropos - “man”). It is now more commonly called Australopithecus robustus, or Boisey, after Charles Boisey, who funded the excavation.

The study found that Zinjanthropus lived approximately 2.5 to 1.5 million years ago. He was quite large: the males were already quite human-sized, the females were a little smaller. The brain volume of Zinjanthropus was three times less than that of modern humans, amounting to 500–550 cubic centimeters.

In late australopithecines there is a tendency to improve the masticatory apparatus.

The oldest hominids are usually considered Australopithecus(Australopithecinae). They were a very peculiar group, since they could equally well be described as bipedal apes or monkey-headed humans. The complexity of the position of australopithecines among primates lies in the fact that their structure mosaically combines features characteristic of both modern apes and humans. How to treat this combination of signs?

Skull of the oldest australopithecus - Sahelanthropus tschadensis. 6-7 million years ago
The skull was nicknamed "Tumai".
Source: http://hominin.net/specimens/tm-266-01-060-1/

The earliest remains of australopithecines, found in Toros Menalla (Republic of Chad), date back to 6-7 million years ago. The latest dating was determined for the finds of massive australopithecines in Swartkrans (South Africa) - 900 thousand years ago; This is the time of existence of much more advanced forms of hominids. Australopithecines are known from almost the entire specified period of time. Thus, the period of existence of the Australopithecus group is extremely long.

The area of ​​settlement of Australopithecines is also very large: all of Africa south of the Sahara and, possibly, some territories to the north. As far as is known, Australopithecines never left Africa. Finds from outside this continent sometimes attributed to Australopithecus (Tel Ubeidia from Israel, Meganthropus 1941 and Mojokerto from Java) are in all cases extremely fragmentary and therefore controversial. Within Africa, Australopithecus sites are concentrated in two main areas: East Africa(Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia) and South Africa. Some finds were also made in North Africa; Perhaps their small number is due more to the burial conditions or poor knowledge of the region, rather than to the actual distribution of australopithecines. It is clear that within such a wide time and geographical framework, natural conditions changed more than once, which led to the emergence of new species and genera.

AL 822-1 - skull of a female Australopithecus afarensis (australopithecus gracile).
Source: William H. Kimbel and Yoel Rak. The cranial base of Australopithecus afarensis: new insights from the female skull.
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 2010 365, 3365-3376

Australopithecus can be divided into three main groups, which have replaced each other relatively consistently over time; each of them contains several species:

Early Australopithecus– existed from 7 to 4 million years ago, had the most primitive structure. There are several genera and species of early australopithecines.

Gracile Australopithecus– existed from 4 to 2.5 million years ago, had relatively small sizes and moderate proportions. Usually there is one genus Australopithecus with several types.

Massive Australopithecus– existed from 2.5 to 1 million years ago, they were very massively built specialized forms with extremely developed jaws, small front and huge back teeth. Massive Australopithecines are recognized as an independent genus Paranthropus with three types.

There are many views regarding their detailed taxonomy; The fact of species differences at least between gracile and massive australopithecines can be considered firmly established. The taxonomic relationships within these groups, even between the synchronous groups of eastern and southern Africa, are unclear.

The simultaneous coexistence of different “good” species of australopithecines in the same territory has not been firmly proven for any location, although many assumptions have been put forward in this regard. However, the coexistence of australopithecines with representatives of the “euhominids” (or “early Homo") is beyond doubt, at least for East Africa.

Australopithecines are extinct bipedal apes whose remains were first discovered in South Africa. It is worth noting that these apes lived about 1 million years ago. According to historians, the ancestors of Australopithecus were Dryopithecus. There is no exact date when Australopithecus appeared.

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Early Australopithecus

It is worth noting that these creatures are the first representatives of the evolutionary branch of that time. Among distinctive features Australopithecines can be called upright walking, which significantly distinguished them from other creatures of that time. Historians claim that the most ancient australopithecines lived in the East African region; the arboreal lifestyle was not essential for them. In this area, archaeologists have discovered many remains of such creatures.

Late Australopithecus

This type of australopithecus lived approximately 3 to 1 million years ago in South Africa. Among the differences between such australopithecines is their powerful physique. For example, males were quite tall, but females were short. If we talk about their brain, it was much smaller than that of modern humans (almost three times). To protect themselves from animals, these individuals used various natural objects, for example, animal bones, antlers, wooden objects, etc.

Australopithecus and Homo habilis

Some scientists argue that these ancient apes were early representatives of modern humans. Basically, such individuals are classified as smart person. If we talk about their size, they were practically no different from ordinary classical australopithecines. The majority of australopithecines had a fairly large brain; they were engaged in the manufacture of various tools, processed pebbles, etc. They lived, on average, about twenty years.

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Life of Australopithecus

It should be noted that Australopithecines are the first creatures that walked on two legs, like modern humans. In general, the gait of such individuals was quite bouncing, since when walking they strongly bent their legs. They spent most of their time not on land, but in the trees. Such apes ate various plants, edible roots, insects, baboons, herbivores, etc. Today Australopithecus photos can be seen on the Internet.

According to excavations, it became known that our ancestors loved bone marrow, as many broken skulls and bones were found. By the way, they broke bones using sticks, stones and many other improvised means. It is unlikely that these individuals were involved in murder. Scientists suggest that Australopithecines very rarely killed animals; they mainly ate the prey of predators. Also, predators rarely attacked australopithecines.

http://medvinca.ru/

Poultry meat was of great importance for such individuals, thanks to which the brain of the apes developed well. The fact is that such meat is rich in protein, which is especially necessary for the body in Everyday life. Obtaining poultry meat was quite a difficult task for australopithecines, in contrast to picking a fruit from a tree. To catch birds, they needed to work hard with their heads. The brain volume of Australopithecines can easily be compared with the brain volume common chimpanzee. Their sizes were almost identical. According to historians, there were also quite gigantic australopithecines, whose skulls were first found in Kenya. From the skull it became clear that these creatures had enough big muscles. It can easily be said that the indigenous peoples of Africa are australopithecines. From this article it became clear that Australopithecus appeared for the first time in Africa.

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Video:Evolution: Australopithecus

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