They lived during the Ice Age. How people survived the Ice Age
One of the mysteries of the Earth, along with the emergence of Life on it and the extinction of dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period, is - Great Glaciations.
It is believed that glaciations repeat on Earth regularly every 180-200 million years. Traces of glaciations are known in sediments that are billions and hundreds of millions of years old - in the Cambrian, Carboniferous, Triassic-Permian. That they could be is “said” by the so-called tillites, breeds very similar to moraine the latter, more precisely last glaciations. These are the remains of ancient glacial deposits, consisting of a clayey mass with inclusions of large and small boulders scratched by movement (hatched).
Separate layers tillites, found even in equatorial Africa, can reach thickness of tens and even hundreds of meters!
Signs of glaciations were found on different continents - in Australia, South America, Africa and India, which is used by scientists for reconstruction of paleocontinents and is often cited as confirmation plate tectonics theories.
Traces of ancient glaciations indicate that glaciations on a continental scale– this is not a random phenomenon at all, it is a natural natural phenomenon that occurs under certain conditions.
The last of the ice ages began almost million years ago, in Quaternary time, or the Quaternary period, the Pleistocene and was marked by the extensive spread of glaciers - The Great Glaciation of the Earth.
Under thick, many-kilometer-long covers of ice were the northern part of the North American continent - the North American Ice Sheet, which reached a thickness of up to 3.5 km and extended to approximately 38° north latitude and a significant part of Europe, on which (an ice sheet with a thickness of up to 2.5-3 km) . On the territory of Russia, the glacier descended in two huge tongues along the ancient valleys of the Dnieper and Don.
Partial glaciation also covered Siberia - there was mainly the so-called “mountain-valley glaciation”, when glaciers did not cover the entire area with a thick cover, but were only in the mountains and foothill valleys, which is associated with the sharply continental climate and low temperatures in Eastern Siberia . But almost all of Western Siberia, due to the fact that the rivers were dammed and their flow into the Arctic Ocean stopped, found itself under water, and was a huge sea-lake.
In the Southern Hemisphere, the entire Antarctic continent was under ice, as it is now.
During the period of maximum expansion of the Quaternary glaciation, glaciers covered over 40 million km 2–about a quarter of the entire surface of the continents.
Having reached their greatest development about 250 thousand years ago, the Quaternary glaciers of the Northern Hemisphere began to gradually shrink as the glaciation period was not continuous throughout the Quaternary period.
There is geological, paleobotanical and other evidence that glaciers disappeared several times, giving way to epochs interglacial when the climate was even warmer than today. However, the warm eras were replaced by cold snaps again, and the glaciers spread again.
We now live, apparently, at the end of the fourth epoch of the Quaternary glaciation.
But in Antarctica, glaciation arose millions of years before the time when glaciers appeared in North America and Europe. In addition to the climatic conditions, this was facilitated by the high continent that had existed here for a long time. By the way, now, due to the fact that the thickness of the Antarctic glacier is enormous, the continental bed of the “ice continent” is in some places below sea level...
Unlike the ancient ice sheets of the Northern Hemisphere, which disappeared and then reappeared, the Antarctic ice sheet has changed little in its size. The maximum glaciation of Antarctica was only one and a half times larger than the modern one in volume, and not much larger in area.
Now about the hypotheses... There are hundreds, if not thousands, of hypotheses about why glaciations occur, and whether there were any at all!
The following main ones are usually put forward: scientific hypotheses:
- Volcanic eruptions leading to a decrease in the transparency of the atmosphere and cooling throughout the Earth;
- Epochs of orogenesis (mountain building);
- Reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which reduces the “greenhouse effect” and leads to cooling;
- Cyclicity of solar activity;
- Changes in the position of the Earth relative to the Sun.
But, nevertheless, the causes of glaciations have not been fully elucidated!
It is assumed, for example, that glaciation begins when, with an increase in the distance between the Earth and the Sun, around which it rotates in a slightly elongated orbit, the amount of solar heat received by our planet decreases, i.e. glaciation occurs when the Earth passes the point of its orbit that is farthest from the Sun.
However, astronomers believe that changes in the amount of solar radiation hitting the Earth alone are not enough to trigger an ice age. Apparently, fluctuations in the activity of the Sun itself also matter, which is a periodic, cyclical process, and changes every 11-12 years, with a cyclicity of 2-3 years and 5-6 years. And the largest cycles of activity, as established by the Soviet geographer A.V. Shnitnikov - approximately 1800-2000 years old.
There is also a hypothesis that the emergence of glaciers is associated with certain areas of the Universe through which our Solar System passes, moving with the entire Galaxy, either filled with gas or “clouds” of cosmic dust. And it is likely that “cosmic winter” on Earth occurs when the globe is at the point furthest from the center of our Galaxy, where there are accumulations of “cosmic dust” and gas.
It should be noted that usually before epochs of cooling there are always epochs of warming, and there is, for example, a hypothesis that the Arctic Ocean, due to warming, at times is completely freed from ice (by the way, this is still happening), and there is increased evaporation from the surface of the ocean , streams of moist air are directed to the polar regions of America and Eurasia, and snow falls over the cold surface of the Earth, which does not have time to melt during the short and cold summer. This is how ice sheets appear on continents.
But when, as a result of the transformation of part of the water into ice, the level of the World Ocean drops by tens of meters, the warm Atlantic Ocean ceases to communicate with the Arctic Ocean, and it gradually becomes covered with ice again, evaporation from its surface abruptly stops, less and less snow falls on the continents and less, the “feeding” of the glaciers deteriorates, and the ice sheets begin to melt, and the level of the World Ocean rises again. And again the Arctic Ocean connects with the Atlantic, and again the ice cover began to gradually disappear, i.e. the development cycle of the next glaciation begins anew.
Yes, all these hypotheses quite possible, but so far none of them can be confirmed by serious scientific facts.
Therefore, one of the main, fundamental hypotheses is climate change on the Earth itself, which is associated with the above-mentioned hypotheses.
But it is quite possible that glaciation processes are associated with combined influence of various natural factors, which could act together and replace each other, and the important thing is that, having begun, glaciations, like a “wound clock,” already develop independently, according to their own laws, sometimes even “ignoring” some climatic conditions and patterns.
And the ice age that began in the Northern Hemisphere about 1 million years back, not finished yet, and we, as already mentioned, live in a warmer period of time, in interglacial.
Throughout the era of the Great Glaciations of the Earth, the ice either retreated or advanced again. On the territory of both America and Europe there were, apparently, four global ice ages, between which there were relatively warm periods.
But the complete retreat of the ice occurred only about 20 - 25 thousand years ago, but in some areas the ice lingered even longer. The glacier retreated from the area of modern St. Petersburg only 16 thousand years ago, and in some places in the North small remnants of ancient glaciation have survived to this day.
Let us note that modern glaciers cannot be compared with the ancient glaciation of our planet - they occupy only about 15 million square meters. km, i.e. less than one-thirtieth of the earth's surface.
How can one determine whether there was glaciation in a given place on Earth or not? This is usually quite easy to determine by the peculiar forms of geographical relief and rocks.
In the fields and forests of Russia there are often large accumulations of huge boulders, pebbles, blocks, sands and clays. They usually lie directly on the surface, but they can also be seen in the cliffs of ravines and on the slopes of river valleys.
By the way, one of the first who tried to explain how these deposits were formed was the outstanding geographer and anarchist theorist, Prince Peter Alekseevich Kropotkin. In his work “Research on the Ice Age” (1876), he argued that the territory of Russia was once covered by huge ice fields.
If we look at the physical-geographical map of European Russia, then we can notice some patterns in the location of hills, hills, basins and valleys of large rivers. So, for example, the Leningrad and Novgorod regions from the south and east are, as it were, limited Valdai Upland shaped like an arc. This is exactly the line where in the distant past a huge glacier, advancing from the north, stopped.
To the southeast of the Valdai Upland is the slightly winding Smolensk-Moscow Upland, stretching from Smolensk to Pereslavl-Zalessky. This is another of the boundaries of the distribution of cover glaciers.
Numerous hilly, winding hills are also visible on the West Siberian Plain - "manes" also evidence of the activity of ancient glaciers, or rather glacial waters. Many traces of stopping moving glaciers flowing down the mountain slopes into large basins were discovered in Central and Eastern Siberia.
It is difficult to imagine ice several kilometers thick on the site of current cities, rivers and lakes, but, nevertheless, the glacial plateaus were not inferior in height to the Urals, the Carpathians or the Scandinavian mountains. These gigantic and, moreover, moving masses of ice influenced the entire natural environment - topography, landscapes, river flow, soils, vegetation and wildlife.
It should be noted that on the territory of Europe and the European part of Russia, practically no rocks have been preserved from the geological eras preceding the Quaternary period - Paleogene (66-25 million years) and Neogene (25-1.8 million years), they were completely eroded and redeposited during the Quaternary period, or as it is often called, Pleistocene.
Glaciers originated and moved from Scandinavia, the Kola Peninsula, the Polar Urals (Pai-Khoi) and the islands of the Arctic Ocean. And almost all the geological deposits that we see on the territory of Moscow - moraine, more precisely moraine loams, sands of various origins (aquaglacial, lake, river), huge boulders, as well as cover loams - all this is evidence of the powerful influence of the glacier.
On the territory of Moscow, traces of three glaciations can be identified (although there are many more of them - different researchers identify from 5 to several dozen periods of ice advances and retreats):
- Oka (about 1 million years ago),
- Dnieper (about 300 thousand years ago),
- Moscow (about 150 thousand years ago).
Valdai the glacier (disappeared only 10 - 12 thousand years ago) “did not reach Moscow”, and the deposits of this period are characterized by hydroglacial (fluvio-glacial) deposits - mainly the sands of the Meshchera Lowland.
And the names of the glaciers themselves correspond to the names of those places to which the glaciers reached - the Oka, Dnieper and Don, the Moscow River, Valdai, etc.
Since the thickness of the glaciers reached almost 3 km, one can imagine what colossal work he performed! Some hills and hills on the territory of Moscow and the Moscow region are thick (up to 100 meters!) deposits that were “brought” by the glacier.
The best known are, for example Klinsko-Dmitrovskaya moraine ridge, individual hills on the territory of Moscow ( Sparrow Hills and Teplostanskaya Upland). Huge boulders weighing up to several tons (for example, the Maiden Stone in Kolomenskoye) are also the result of the glacier.
Glaciers smoothed out the unevenness of the relief: they destroyed hills and ridges, and with the resulting rock fragments they filled depressions - river valleys and lake basins, transporting huge masses of stone fragments over a distance of more than 2 thousand km.
However, huge masses of ice (given its colossal thickness) put so much pressure on the underlying rocks that even the strongest of them could not stand it and collapsed.
Their fragments were frozen into the body of the moving glacier and, like sandpaper, for tens of thousands of years they scratched rocks composed of granites, gneisses, sandstones and other rocks, creating depressions in them. Numerous glacial grooves, “scars” and glacial polishing on granite rocks, as well as long hollows in the earth’s crust, subsequently occupied by lakes and swamps, are still preserved. An example is the countless depressions of the lakes of Karelia and the Kola Peninsula.
But the glaciers did not plow up all the rocks on their way. The destruction was mainly carried out in those areas where the ice sheets originated, grew, reached a thickness of more than 3 km and from where they began their movement. The main center of glaciation in Europe was Fennoscandia, which included the Scandinavian mountains, the plateaus of the Kola Peninsula, as well as the plateaus and plains of Finland and Karelia.
Along the way, the ice became saturated with fragments of destroyed rocks, and they gradually accumulated both inside the glacier and under it. When the ice melted, masses of debris, sand and clay remained on the surface. This process was especially active when the movement of the glacier stopped and the melting of its fragments began.
At the edge of glaciers, as a rule, water flows arose, moving along the surface of the ice, in the body of the glacier and under the ice thickness. Gradually they merged, forming entire rivers, which over thousands of years formed narrow valleys and washed away a lot of debris.
As already mentioned, the forms of glacial relief are very diverse. For moraine plains characterized by many ridges and shafts, marking places where moving ice stops, and the main form of relief among them is shafts of terminal moraines, usually these are low arched ridges composed of sand and clay mixed with boulders and pebbles. The depressions between the ridges are often occupied by lakes. Sometimes among the moraine plains you can see outcasts- blocks hundreds of meters in size and weighing tens of tons, giant pieces of the glacier bed, transported by it over enormous distances.
Glaciers often blocked river flows and near such “dams” huge lakes arose, filling depressions in river valleys and depressions, which often changed the direction of river flow. And although such lakes existed for a relatively short time (from a thousand to three thousand years), at their bottom they managed to accumulate lacustrine clays, layered sediments, by counting the layers of which, one can clearly distinguish the periods of winter and summer, as well as how many years these sediments have accumulated.
In the era of the last Valdai glaciation arose Upper Volga periglacial lakes(Mologo-Sheksninskoye, Tverskoye, Verkhne-Molozhskoye, etc.). At first their waters flowed to the southwest, but with the retreat of the glacier they were able to flow to the north. Traces of Mologo-Sheksninsky Lake remain in the form of terraces and shorelines at an altitude of about 100 m.
There are very numerous traces of ancient glaciers in the mountains of Siberia, the Urals, and the Far East. As a result of ancient glaciation, 135-280 thousand years ago, sharp mountain peaks - “gendarmes” - appeared in Altai, the Sayans, the Baikal region and Transbaikalia, on the Stanovoi Highlands. The so-called “net type of glaciation” prevailed here, i.e. If you could look from a bird's eye view, you would be able to see how ice-free plateaus and mountain peaks rise against the backdrop of glaciers.
It should be noted that during the ice ages, quite large ice massifs were located on part of the territory of Siberia, for example on archipelago Severnaya Zemlya, in the Byrranga mountains (Taimyr Peninsula), as well as on the Putorana plateau in northern Siberia.
Extensive mountain-valley glaciation was 270-310 thousand years ago Verkhoyansk Range, Okhotsk-Kolyma Plateau and Chukotka Mountains. These areas are considered centers of glaciations in Siberia.
Traces of these glaciations are numerous bowl-shaped depressions of mountain peaks - circuses or punishments, huge moraine ridges and lake plains in place of melted ice.
In the mountains, as well as on the plains, lakes arose near ice dams, periodically the lakes overflowed, and gigantic masses of water through low watersheds rushed with incredible speed into neighboring valleys, crashing into them and forming huge canyons and gorges. For example, in Altai, in the Chuya-Kurai depression, “giant ripples”, “drilling boilers”, gorges and canyons, huge outlier boulders, “dry waterfalls” and other traces of water flows escaping from ancient lakes “only” are still preserved. just” 12-14 thousand years ago.
“Invading” the plains of Northern Eurasia from the north, the ice sheets either penetrated far to the south along relief depressions, or stopped at some obstacles, for example, hills.
It is probably not yet possible to accurately determine which of the glaciations was the “greatest,” however, it is known, for example, that the Valdai glacier was sharply smaller in area than the Dnieper glacier.
The landscapes at the boundaries of the cover glaciers also differed. Thus, during the Oka glaciation era (500-400 thousand years ago), to the south of them there was a strip of Arctic deserts about 700 km wide - from the Carpathians in the west to the Verkhoyansk Range in the east. Even further, 400-450 km to the south, stretched cold forest-steppe, where only such unpretentious trees as larches, birches and pines could grow. And only at the latitude of the Northern Black Sea region and Eastern Kazakhstan did comparatively warm steppes and semi-deserts begin.
During the era of the Dnieper glaciation, glaciers were significantly larger. Along the edge of the ice sheet stretched the tundra-steppe (dry tundra) with a very harsh climate. The average annual temperature was approaching minus 6°C (for comparison: in the Moscow region the average annual temperature is currently about +2.5°C).
The open space of the tundra, where there was little snow in winter and there were severe frosts, cracked, forming the so-called “permafrost polygons,” which in plan resemble a wedge in shape. They are called “ice wedges,” and in Siberia they often reach a height of ten meters! Traces of these “ice wedges” in ancient glacial deposits “speak” of a harsh climate. Traces of permafrost, or cryogenic effects, are also noticeable in sands; these are often disturbed, as if “torn” layers, often with a high content of iron minerals.
Fluvio-glacial deposits with traces of cryogenic impact
The last “Great Glaciation” has been studied for more than 100 years. Many decades of hard work by outstanding researchers went into collecting data on its distribution on the plains and in the mountains, mapping end-moraine complexes and traces of glacial-dammed lakes, glacial scars, drumlins, and areas of “hilly moraine.”
True, there are also researchers who generally deny ancient glaciations and consider the glacial theory to be erroneous. In their opinion, there was no glaciation at all, but there was a “cold sea on which icebergs floated,” and all glacial deposits are just bottom sediments of this shallow sea!
Other researchers, “recognizing the general validity of the theory of glaciations,” nevertheless doubt the correctness of the conclusion about the grandiose scale of glaciations of the past, and they are especially distrustful of the conclusion about ice sheets that overlapped the polar continental shelves; they believe that there were “small ice caps of the Arctic archipelagos”, “bare tundra” or “cold seas”, and in North America, where the largest “Laurentian ice sheet” in the Northern Hemisphere has long been restored, there were only “groups of glaciers merged at the bases of the domes”.
For Northern Eurasia, these researchers recognize only the Scandinavian ice sheet and isolated “ice caps” of the Polar Urals, Taimyr and the Putorana Plateau, and in the mountains of temperate latitudes and Siberia - only valley glaciers.
And some scientists, on the contrary, are “reconstructing” “giant ice sheets” in Siberia, which are not inferior in size and structure to the Antarctic.
As we have already noted, in the Southern Hemisphere, the Antarctic ice sheet extended over the entire continent, including its underwater margins, in particular the areas of the Ross and Weddell seas.
The maximum height of the Antarctic ice sheet was 4 km, i.e. was close to modern (now about 3.5 km), the ice area increased to almost 17 million square kilometers, and the total volume of ice reached 35-36 million cubic kilometers.
Two more large ice sheets were in South America and New Zealand.
The Patagonian Ice Sheet was located in the Patagonian Andes, their foothills and on the adjacent continental shelf. Today it is reminded of by the picturesque fjord topography of the Chilean coast and the residual ice sheets of the Andes.
"South Alpine complex" of New Zealand– was a smaller copy of Patagonian. It had the same shape and extended onto the shelf in the same way; on the coast it developed a system of similar fjords.
In the Northern Hemisphere, during periods of maximum glaciation, we would see huge Arctic ice sheet resulting from the merger North American and Eurasian covers into a single glacial system, Moreover, an important role was played by floating ice shelves, especially the Central Arctic, which covered the entire deep-water part of the Arctic Ocean.
The largest elements of the Arctic ice sheet were the Laurentian Shield of North America and the Kara Shield of Arctic Eurasia, they were shaped like giant flat-convex domes. The center of the first of them was located over the southwestern part of Hudson Bay, the peak rose to a height of more than 3 km, and its eastern edge extended to the outer edge of the continental shelf.
The Kara ice sheet occupied the entire area of the modern Barents and Kara seas, its center lay over the Kara Sea, and the southern marginal zone covered the entire north of the Russian Plain, Western and Central Siberia.
Of the other elements of the Arctic cover, it deserves special attention East Siberian Ice Sheet, which spread on the shelves of the Laptev, East Siberian and Chukchi seas and was larger than the Greenland ice sheet. He left traces in the form of large glaciodislocations New Siberian Islands and Tiksi region, are also associated with it grandiose glacial-erosive forms of Wrangel Island and the Chukotka Peninsula.
So, the last ice sheet of the Northern Hemisphere consisted of more than a dozen large ice sheets and many smaller ones, as well as the ice shelves that united them, floating in the deep ocean.
The periods of time during which glaciers disappeared, or were reduced by 80-90%, are called interglacials. Landscapes freed from ice in a relatively warm climate were transformed: the tundra retreated to the northern coast of Eurasia, and the taiga and deciduous forests, forest-steppes and steppes occupied a position close to the modern one.
Thus, over the past million years, the nature of Northern Eurasia and North America has repeatedly changed its appearance.
Boulders, crushed stone and sand, frozen into the bottom layers of a moving glacier, acting as a giant “file”, smoothed, polished, scratched granites and gneisses, and under the ice, peculiar layers of boulder loams and sands were formed, characterized by high density associated with the influence of glacial load - main, or bottom moraine.
Since the size of the glacier is determined balance Between the amount of snow that falls on it annually, which turns into firn, and then into ice, and what does not have time to melt and evaporate during the warm seasons, then with climate warming, the edges of the glaciers retreat to new, “equilibrium boundaries.” The end parts of the glacial tongues stop moving and gradually melt, and boulders, sand and loam included in the ice are released, forming a shaft that follows the contours of the glacier - terminal moraine; the other part of the clastic material (mainly sand and clay particles) is carried away by meltwater flows and deposited around in the form fluvioglacial sandy plains (Zandrov).
Similar flows also operate deep in glaciers, filling cracks and intraglacial caverns with fluvioglacial material. After the melting of glacial tongues with such filled voids on the earth's surface, chaotic piles of hills of various shapes and composition remain on top of the melted bottom moraine: ovoid (when viewed from above) drumlins, elongated, like railway embankments (along the axis of the glacier and perpendicular to the terminal moraines) oz and irregular shape kama.
All these forms of glacial landscape are very clearly represented in North America: the boundary of ancient glaciation here is marked by a terminal moraine ridge with heights of up to fifty meters, stretching across the entire continent from its eastern coast to the western. To the north of this “Great Glacial Wall” the glacial deposits are represented mainly by moraine, and to the south of it they are represented by a “cloak” of fluvioglacial sands and pebbles.
Just as four glacial epochs have been identified for the territory of the European part of Russia, four glacial epochs have also been identified for Central Europe, named after the corresponding Alpine rivers - Günz, Mindel, Riess and Würm, and in North America - Nebraska, Kansas, Illinois and Wisconsin glaciations.
Climate periglacial The areas (surrounding the glacier) were cold and dry, which is fully confirmed by paleontological data. In these landscapes a very specific fauna appears with a combination cryophilic (cold-loving) and xerophilic (dry-loving) plants – tundra-steppe.
Now similar natural zones, similar to periglacial ones, have been preserved in the form of so-called relict steppes– islands among the taiga and forest-tundra landscapes, for example, the so-called alasy Yakutia, the southern slopes of the mountains of northeastern Siberia and Alaska, as well as the cold, dry highlands of Central Asia.
Tundra-steppe was different in that her the herbaceous layer was formed mainly not by mosses (as in the tundra), but by grasses, and it was here that it took shape cryophilic option herbaceous vegetation with a very high biomass of grazing ungulates and predators – the so-called “mammoth fauna”.
In its composition, various types of animals were intricately mixed, both characteristic of tundra – reindeer, caribou, muskox, lemmings, For steppes - saiga, horse, camel, bison, gophers, and mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses, saber-toothed tiger - Smilodon, and giant hyena.
It should be noted that many climate changes have been repeated, as it were, “in miniature” within the memory of mankind. These are the so-called “Little Ice Ages” and “Interglacials”.
For example, during the so-called “Little Ice Age” from 1450 to 1850, glaciers advanced everywhere, and their sizes exceeded modern ones (snow cover appeared, for example, in the mountains of Ethiopia, where there is none now).
And in the period preceding the Little Ice Age Atlantic optimum(900-1300) glaciers, on the contrary, shrank, and the climate was noticeably milder than the present one. Let us remember that it was during these times that the Vikings called Greenland the “Green Land”, and even settled it, and also reached the coast of North America and the island of Newfoundland in their boats. And the Novgorod Ushkuin merchants traveled along the “Northern Sea Route” to the Gulf of Ob, founding the city of Mangazeya there.
And the last retreat of glaciers, which began over 10 thousand years ago, is well remembered by people, hence the legends about the Great Flood, as a huge amount of meltwater rushed down to the south, rains and floods became frequent.
In the distant past, the growth of glaciers occurred in eras with lower air temperatures and increased humidity; the same conditions developed in the last centuries of the last era, and in the middle of the last millennium.
And about 2.5 thousand years ago, a significant cooling of the climate began, the Arctic islands were covered with glaciers, in the Mediterranean and Black Sea countries at the turn of the era the climate was colder and wetter than now.
In the Alps in the 1st millennium BC. e. glaciers moved to lower levels, blocked mountain passes with ice and destroyed some high-lying villages. It was during this era that glaciers in the Caucasus sharply intensified and grew.
But by the end of the 1st millennium, climate warming began again, and mountain glaciers in the Alps, Caucasus, Scandinavia and Iceland retreated.
The climate began to change seriously again only in the 14th century; glaciers began to grow rapidly in Greenland, summer thawing of the soil became increasingly short-lived, and by the end of the century permafrost was firmly established here.
From the end of the 15th century, glaciers began to grow in many mountainous countries and polar regions, and after the relatively warm 16th century, harsh centuries began, which were called the “Little Ice Age”. In the south of Europe, severe and long winters often recurred; in 1621 and 1669, the Bosporus Strait froze, and in 1709, the Adriatic Sea froze off the coast. But the “Little Ice Age” ended in the second half of the 19th century and a relatively warm era began, which continues to this day.
Note that the warming of the 20th century is especially pronounced in the polar latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, and fluctuations in glacial systems are characterized by the percentage of advancing, stationary and retreating glaciers.
For example, for the Alps there is data covering the entire past century. If the share of advancing alpine glaciers in the 40-50s of the 20th century was close to zero, then in the mid-60s of the 20th century about 30%, and at the end of the 70s of the 20th century, 65-70% of the surveyed glaciers were advancing here.
Their similar state indicates that the anthropogenic (technogenic) increase in the content of carbon dioxide, methane and other gases and aerosols in the atmosphere in the 20th century did not in any way affect the normal course of global atmospheric and glacial processes. However, at the end of the last, twentieth century, glaciers began to retreat everywhere in the mountains, and the ice of Greenland began to melt, which is associated with climate warming, and which especially intensified in the 1990s.
It is known that the currently increased man-made emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, freon and various aerosols into the atmosphere seem to help reduce solar radiation. In this regard, “voices” appeared, first from journalists, then from politicians, and then from scientists about the beginning of a “new ice age.” Environmentalists have “sounded the alarm”, fearing “the coming anthropogenic warming” due to the constant increase in carbon dioxide and other impurities in the atmosphere.
Yes, it is well known that an increase in CO 2 leads to an increase in the amount of retained heat and thereby increases the air temperature at the Earth’s surface, forming the notorious “greenhouse effect”.
Some other gases of technogenic origin have the same effect: freons, nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides, methane, ammonia. But, nevertheless, not all carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere: 50-60% of industrial CO 2 emissions end up in the ocean, where they are quickly absorbed by animals (corals in the first place), and of course they are also absorbed by plants–Let's remember the process of photosynthesis: plants absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen! Those. the more carbon dioxide, the better, the higher the percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere! By the way, this already happened in the history of the Earth, in the Carboniferous period... Therefore, even a multiple increase in the concentration of CO 2 in the atmosphere cannot lead to the same multiple increase in temperature, since there is a certain natural regulation mechanism that sharply slows down the greenhouse effect at high concentrations of CO 2.
So all the numerous “scientific hypotheses” about the “greenhouse effect”, “rising sea levels”, “changes in the Gulf Stream”, and naturally the “coming Apocalypse” are mostly imposed on us “from above”, by politicians, incompetent scientists, illiterate journalists or simply science scammers. The more you intimidate the population, the easier it is to sell goods and manage...
But in fact, an ordinary natural process is taking place - one stage, one climatic epoch gives way to another, and there is nothing strange about it... But the fact that natural disasters occur, and that there are supposedly more of them - tornadoes, floods, etc. - is another 100-200 years ago, vast areas of the Earth were simply uninhabited! And now there are more than 7 billion people, and they often live where floods and tornadoes are possible - along the banks of rivers and oceans, in the deserts of America! Moreover, let us remember that natural disasters have always existed, and even destroyed entire civilizations!
As for the opinions of scientists, which both politicians and journalists love to refer to... Back in 1983, American sociologists Randall Collins and Sal Restivo, in their famous article “Pirates and Politicians in Mathematics,” wrote openly: “...There is no immutable set of norms that guide the behavior of scientists. What remains constant is the activity of scientists (and related other types of intellectuals), aimed at acquiring wealth and fame, as well as gaining the ability to control the flow of ideas and impose their own ideas on others... The ideals of science do not predetermine scientific behavior, but arise from the struggle for individual success under various competition conditions...”
And a little more about science... Various large companies often provide grants for so-called “scientific research” in certain areas, but the question arises - how competent is the person conducting the research in this area? Why was he chosen out of hundreds of scientists?
And if a certain scientist, “a certain organization” orders, for example, “a certain research on the safety of nuclear energy,” then, it goes without saying that this scientist will be forced to “listen” to the customer, since he has “well-defined interests,” and it is understandable , that he will most likely “adjust” “his conclusions” to the customer, since the main question is already not a question of scientific research–and what does the customer want to receive, what is the result?. And if the customer's result won't suit, then this scientist won't invite you anymore, and not in any “serious project”, i.e. “monetary”, he will no longer participate, since they will invite another scientist, more “amenable”... Much, of course, depends on his civic position, professionalism, and reputation as a scientist... But let’s not forget how much they “get” in Russia scientists... Yes, in the world, in Europe and the USA, a scientist lives mainly on grants... And any scientist also “wants to eat.”
In addition, the data and opinions of one scientist, albeit a major specialist in his field, are not a fact! But if the research is confirmed by some scientific groups, institutes, laboratories, etc. o only then can research be worthy of serious attention.
Unless, of course, these “groups”, “institutes” or “laboratories” were funded by the customer of this research or project...
A.A. Kazdym,
Candidate of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences, member of MOIP
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Elements of spiritual culture were already found in communities of Pithecanthropus (Homo erectus), but Neanderthals had a fully developed spiritual culture. The beginnings of religion, magic, healing, sculpture, painting, dances and songs, musical instruments, spiritualization of nature were characteristic of the Cro-Magnons. Burying the corpses of dead and fallen comrades distinguishes humans from animals. Grief for the deceased speaks of the strength of people’s attachment to each other, of friendship and love. In the burials of ancient people, tools, jewelry, and bones of killed animals are found. Consequently, already in that distant time, our ancestors believed in an afterlife and equipped their deceased for this life. All these questions are well covered in the literature and I will not dwell on them.
The number of people and population density are closely related to the type of culture and the method of food production. The area of territory that is needed to feed three people who obtain their food in different ways is different. For hunter-gatherers, a family of 3 requires at least 10 square meters. km, for farmers who do not use irrigation - approximately 0.5 sq. km, and for farmers using irrigation - 0.1 sq. km. Consequently, with the transition from hunting and gathering to irrigated agriculture, the population must have increased by about 100 times. This is a very important factor that anthropologists clearly do not take into account enough. All ancient technologically advanced civilizations were created by farmers.
However, it should be noted that agricultural civilizations are more vulnerable to sudden climate changes. When the climate dried out, the civilizations of farmers either died or were transformed into the civilizations of nomadic pastoralists. Some may have returned to hunting and gathering again.
The future of humanity
From a group of primates poorly protected from environmental influences, evolution selected our fertile species, which has a unique ability to reproduce, migrate and transform our planet.
Will the evolution of man as a biological being continue? Nowadays, many say: “No. Cultural evolution has protected us from biological overloads that eliminated weak, slow and poorly thinking individuals. Now the use of machines, computers, clothing, glasses and modern medicine have devalued the previous, inherited advantages associated with a powerful physique. intellectual abilities, pigmentation, visual acuity and resistance to diseases such as, say, malaria.In every society there is a high percentage of physically weak or ill-built people, as well as people with weak eyesight or a skin color and poor resistance to diseases that do not correspond to climatic conditions of the area they live in. Physically imperfect people, who 100 years ago would have died in childhood, now survive and give birth, passing on their genetic defects to future generations.
Migration also contributed to the suspension of human evolution. Nowadays, not a single group of the Earth’s population lives in conditions of isolation for a sufficiently long time necessary for its transformation into a new species, as happened in the Pleistocene era. And racial differences will be smoothed out as the number of mixed marriages between representatives of the peoples of Europe, Africa, America, India and China increases." Yes, this gloomy scenario for the future of humanity is quite real. The extinction of humanity as a biological species seems more likely than its further evolution.
However, the development of technology can lead to the emergence of some hybrids - people and mechanisms. Even now, teeth are being safely replaced, and, if necessary, artificial kidneys and an artificial heart are being inserted into the human body. Prosthetic arms and legs are controlled by brain signals. Connecting the human brain to a powerful computer or the Internet can create a monster whose actions are incomprehensible and unpredictable. Hybrids of people and mechanisms (robot people) may well explore other worlds and penetrate into the depths of space. This is the second scenario for the development of humanity and the evolution of creature-mechanisms.
A third scenario is also possible. By the way, it seems to me the most likely. The world's rapidly increasing population is dependent on increased food and energy production. But both require overexploitation of our planet's natural resources. Increased tillage leads to soil erosion, which reduces fertility, and depletion of fossil fuels poses a threat to energy supplies. Climate change could worsen both of these problems. Over-populated and starved of food and fuel, Homo sapiens can see its numbers sharply reduced by war, famine and epidemics. The remaining handful of surviving humans will be returned to hunter-gatherer status. The natural factors of evolution - mutations and natural selection - will begin to operate again. Groups of people will be isolated from each other by long distances, water barriers, language barriers and prejudices. I can say one thing - in this case, the people who will survive and pass on their genes to their descendants will not be residents of multimillion-dollar policies and large cities, not residents of so-called civilized countries, but the aborigines of Australia, the Arctic, residents of tropical rainforests, in whose oral traditions there are references to iron birds and wars. demon titans, etc.
In Europe and Asia, including our country, scientists have discovered a huge accumulation of bones - entire “cemeteries” of animals that lived several million years ago. They unearthed numerous bones of antelopes, gazelles, giraffes, hyenas, tigers, monkeys and other animals.
Why are there not many of them in Europe and Asia now?
To talk about the reasons for their disappearance means to talk about the severe test that the plant and animal world has endured over the past million years.
But first, let’s get acquainted with life as it was at the beginning of the Quaternary period, let’s see under what conditions and how it developed.
Already at the end of the Tertiary period, a noticeable cooling of the climate began.
The Great Glaciation of the Earth.
The vast Russian Plain was covered with coniferous forests. To the south they were replaced by grassy steppes.
But still, in Europe and Asia it was still warm enough for ancient elephants, huge rhinoceroses that reached 2 meters in height, camels, antelopes, and ostriches to live there. Over time, the animal world has been enriched with new forms.
Cave hyenas and bears, trogontherian elephants, related to today's Indian elephants, wolves, foxes, martens, and hares appeared.
Elephant trogontherium.
The most remarkable event in the early Quaternary was the appearance of man on Earth.
This is what science says about human origins.
The living conditions of the australopithecines (“southern apes”), who inhabited the forests at the end of the Tertiary period, gradually deteriorated.
The increasing cooling of the climate caused the freezing of many fruit trees, the fruits of which Australopithecus ate. The reduction of forest areas and the development of steppe zones began.
One of the breeds of monkeys, close in structure to australopithecines, was forced to adapt to a terrestrial lifestyle. On the ground, these monkeys found berries, edible mushrooms, cereal seeds, insects, and succulent roots.
But the rhizomes, bulbs, and beetle larvae were in the ground, and often the ground was dry and hard. Digging with just paws was long and difficult. Gradually, the monkey began to use a randomly picked up tree branch and a sharp stone, using them to dig up the ground. She tried to knock down high-hanging nuts with a stick and break the hard shell with a stone.
Australopithecus.
Such random use of the simplest natural tools became natural among monkeys over time. These were rudimentary forms of labor activity, and it was labor, as F. Engels proved, that played a decisive role in the transformation of ape into man.
“Labor created man himself,” says F. Engels. “He is the first basic condition of all human life.”
When obtaining food with the help of a stone and a stick, the monkey used its forelimbs. She stood up on her hind legs more and more often and gradually learned to walk upright.
Labor activity entailed increased development of the brain. The monkey began to think about his actions, figure out how best to use this or that tool, where to get a strong stick or a sharp stone. So, step by step, she began to turn into a rational being - a human.
Labor was the powerful factor of evolution that opened up the path of limitless development and improvement for primitive humanity.
In 1891, on the island of Java, the remains of one of our ape-like ancestors were found in early Quaternary layers. Scientists called him Pithecanthropus (“ape-man”).
Pithecanthropus (reconstruction).
The structure of the found femur, its slight bend and the similarity of the joints to human ones showed that Pithecanthropus had the ability to stand and walk on two legs.
The skull had the characteristics of a monkey: the brow ridges protruded strongly, the forehead was sloping and low like a monkey; but the brain had a volume of more than 850 cubic centimeters, while the brain volume of great apes is 600–800 cubic centimeters.
By studying the skull, scientists found that the inferior frontal gyrus of the Pithecanthropus brain was much more developed than that of the monkey. And since the motor center of speech is located in this place, it can be assumed that Pithecanthropus already had the ability to speak.
His speech was, of course, very primitive. With a few different exclamations, the Pithecanthropes tried to convey their feelings and intentions to each other. But these were already the rudiments of articulate speech - a new ability that animals do not possess.
Pithecanthropus lived about 800 thousand years ago. They did not yet know fire, but they already knew how to make primitive tools.
In the same deposits in which the bones were found, rough-hewn stone hand axes were discovered.
Using the bones found, scientists reconstructed (restored) the appearance of Pithecanthropus, and we now know what our ancient ape-like ancestor looked like.
New valuable discoveries were made between 1927 and 1937 and in recent years in China, near Beijing. Near the village of Chow Kau Tien, Chinese scientists discovered the bone remains of more than forty ape-men.
Scientists called the Chinese ape-man, who lived later than Pithecanthropus, Sinanthropus (“Chinese man”).
Sinanthropus, whose bones were found by scientists, lived in a large cave, which later collapsed. The cave served as a dwelling for many tens of thousands of years. Only in such a long time could a layer of sediment 50 meters thick accumulate here. In different layers of this layer, bone remains were found, as well as stone tools made by the inhabitants of the cave. During excavations, burnt stones, coals, and ash were discovered.
In one area, the ash layer reached 6 meters thick. Apparently a fire had been kept burning here for centuries.
Thus, Sinanthropus already knew the use of fire. The fire warmed the inhabitants of the cave in winter and scared away predatory animals. The ability to use fire was one of the greatest achievements of primitive man.
Sinanthropus in a cave
Sinanthropus lived and ate not only plant, but also animal food. This is evidenced by the bones of deer, bears, wild boars, and wild horses found in the same cave near Chow Kau Tien. Sinanthropus even hunted elephants and rhinoceroses. Meat food was of great importance for the development of the brain, as it contains various and vital substances.
Engels emphasized that meat food was a necessary prerequisite for human development.
In terms of its development, Sinanthropus stood higher than Pithecanthropus. The volume of his brain had already reached 1100–1200 cubic centimeters (in modern humans, the brain volume is on average 1400–1500 cubic centimeters).
Stone tools of synanthropes.
The spread of ape people was not limited to China and Java.
In 1907, in Germany, near Heidelberg, the lower jaw of a fossil human was discovered at the bottom of a sand pit. Along with the jaw, bone remains of animals from the early Quaternary were found. The found jaw is similar in structure to the jaw of a monkey, and the teeth are similar to human ones.
Scientists called our ancestor, who once lived in these places, “Heidelberg Man” and classified him as one of the most ancient people.
More recently, in 1953, the jaws of an ancient human were found in North Africa. Scientists called him an Atlantropist.
Along with these bone remains, flint, rough-hewn tools used by the Atlantropist were also discovered. The remains of ancient humans were also found in the south and east of the African continent.
Collective life and work, joint hunting contributed to the development of the brain in our ape-like ancestors.
So, step by step, there was a slow transformation of the ape-people into a rational being - a human.
The appearance of man in the Quaternary period was such a remarkable event that scientists call this period the Anthropocene, that is, “the time of the origin of man.”
The Great Test
Millennia passed. Imperceptibly, but inevitably, ominous signs intensified, threatening great disaster to all living things. Cold winds blew from the distant northern deserts. Low lead clouds rushed across the hazy sky, scattering snow pellets. The forests thinned out, animals died or fled to the south.
And now it has come, a great test for the inhabitants of the Northern Hemisphere of the Earth. On the mountains of Finland and Norway, snow accumulated more and more, which did not have time to melt during the short summer. Under the influence of its own gravity, it began to be pressed into ice, and this ice began to slowly spread in all directions. Giant glaciers moved to Western Europe and the plains of our country.
At the same time, extensive glaciations formed in Siberia, in the region of the Verkhoyansk, Kolyma, Anadyr and other mountain ranges.
Sliding into the valleys, the ice pressed on the mountains with such force that it destroyed them and carried with it stones, clay and sand.
Where forests and steppes used to be green, an ice cover lay down for many centuries. Its thickness reached 1000 meters or more. The entire northern half of the Russian Plain was covered with a thick layer of ice.
Throughout the northern part of the European part of our country, a moraine lies under the soil - red-brown loam with many boulders. Who is not familiar with boulders - stones with a smooth surface, so often found on the plains! They come in a variety of sizes, sometimes very large, reaching several meters in diameter. Small boulders, called cobblestones, are used for paving streets and construction work.
By the type of stones from which the boulders are formed, it can be determined that they come from Finland, Novaya Zemlya, and the northern part of Norway. Distant aliens have been wiped, smoothed, polished with water and grains of sand. And along the edges of the moraine ridges the ground is covered with layers of sand and pebbles. They were brought here by numerous streams of flowing water flowing out from under the retreating glacier.
Glaciations have occurred on Earth before. We have already talked about the powerful glaciation that engulfed the Earth at the end of the Carboniferous and Permian periods.
The causes of the ice ages have not yet been fully elucidated by science.
Some scientists say that this reason is extraterrestrial in nature. For example, it has been suggested that glaciations were caused by the passage of the Sun through giant clouds of cosmic dust. The dust weakened the sun's rays, and the Earth became colder.
Another hypothesis connects the cooling with a change in the strength and nature of solar radiation. According to this hypothesis, cold snaps occurred during periods of solar heating. As the heating increased, the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere increased and a huge number of clouds formed. The upper layers of the atmosphere became opaque. They threw most of the light and heat from the sun into space, so much less heat reached the Earth's surface than before. As a result, the Earth's overall climate became colder, despite the strong heating of the uppermost layers of the atmosphere.
Hypotheses have also been put forward to explain glaciation by the coincidence of a number of reasons of an astronomical and “terrestrial” nature.
One of these hypotheses connects the appearance of extensive glaciers with mountain building processes.
We know that high mountain peaks are always covered with snow and ice. During the Quaternary period, extensive glaciers covered the peaks of the northern mountains. The emerging ice sheets greatly increased the cooling of the territories they occupied. This resulted in an ever-increasing growth of glaciers. They began to spread to the sides and no longer had time to melt during the summer.
It is possible that at the same time the tilt of the earth's axis relative to the Sun changed. This caused a redistribution of the amount of heat received by different parts of the globe. The combination of all these reasons ultimately led to the great glaciation of the Earth.
But this hypothesis does not provide a complete explanation of the entire complex picture of Quaternary glaciations.
Probably, glaciations were caused not by one, but by several reasons at once.
To establish the real causes of glaciation that periodically occurred on Earth, to reveal the secret of the great glaciation of the Quaternary period is one of the most interesting tasks facing scientists of various specialties: geologists, biologists, physicists, astronomers.
Life during the great cold snap
How did the sudden changes in natural conditions affect the flora and fauna during the great cold snap?
In the Quaternary period, the remarkable properties of organisms manifested themselves with particular force: persistence in the struggle for existence and adaptability to environmental conditions.
Many animals and plants withstood the cold and adapted to life in the tundra, which stretched along the edge of the glacier.
In glacial deposits, scientists found remains of polar mosses, leaves and pollen of polar willow, dwarf birch and other cold-resistant plants.
Hairy rhinoceroses lived in the tundra, and herds of reindeer grazed. Many arctic foxes and small rodents inhabited the tundra.
And the descendants of trogontherian elephants - huge mammoths - roamed the open forest. Their massive bodies, reaching 3 meters in height at the withers, and columnar legs were covered with thick, long brown hair.
We know well what mammoths looked like, since their well-preserved corpses were found in Siberia, lying in permafrost soil for tens of thousands of years.
A remarkable discovery was made in 1900 in eastern Siberia, 330 kilometers from the city of Sredne-Kolymsk. An Evenk hunter, chasing an elk along the bank of the taiga Berezovka River, saw a tusk sticking out of the ground and part of the skull of some huge animal. The find was reported to the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. A special expedition arrived from there the following year. It turned out that in the coastal cliff there was the corpse of a large mammoth. It is very well preserved. The frozen dark red meat seemed completely fresh. The dogs ate it willingly. The subcutaneous layer of fat reached nine centimeters, the skin was covered with thick hair.
Scientists examined the location of the find and determined the reasons for the death of the animal. The mammoth lived at the end of the last ice age. The ice was receding. The area was the remnant of an ancient glacier, covered with a layer of soil deposited by streams that periodically ran down from the neighboring mountains.
Trees and grass grew on the soil.
The ice, covered with an earthen cover, did not melt, but streams of water cut deep, narrow cracks in its thickness, invisible from above.
Wandering through the taiga in search of food, the mammoth entered the place under which there was a treacherous crack. The ground, supported by a thin layer of ice, could not withstand the weight of his body, and the mammoth collapsed into a crack. The impact on the walls and bottom of the hole was so strong that the bones of the animal’s pelvis and front legs were broken. Death apparently occurred immediately, and the corpse quickly cooled down and froze. Freshly picked grass remained in the mammoth’s mouth, and 12 kilograms of grass were in the stomach.
The corpse was taken to St. Petersburg. Here they made a stuffed animal from his skin, and placed the skeleton separately.
Now the stuffed Berezovsky mammoth is in the Zoological Museum of the USSR Academy of Sciences in Leningrad. The huge animal sits on the ground with a pubescent trunk and bent hind legs. The stuffed animal was given the position in which the mammoth was in the crack.
Another intact mammoth corpse was found in 1948. It was discovered by an expedition of the USSR Academy of Sciences on the Taimyr Peninsula, in the area of the Mamontovaya River. The corpse lay in a layer of fossil peat. You experience involuntary excitement when looking at the brown, furry carcass with 2-meter tusks.
Primitive man even hunted mammoths.
After all, this animal lived in the world as it was tens of thousands of years ago, during the infancy of humanity!
And it’s as if you see a plain in front of you, overgrown with sparse trees, whitened by recently fallen snow.
Swaying their trunks and tearing off leaves, several mammoths slowly walk across the plain.
And in the distance, following the mammoths, several dozen human figures, girded with skins, sneaking along with clubs and heavy stones in their hands. The hunters wait patiently until the mammoths approach the deep hole, covered from above by young trees and green branches...
At the dawn of human culture
Yes, primitive people even hunted huge mammoths!
And although they had only primitive stone and wooden weapons, they were strong in their joint actions in hunting and the ability to act deliberately. So, for example, for large animals, such as the mammoth, they set up pit traps, and when the mammoth fell into such a trap, they killed it with stones and darts.
With the advent of Sinanthropus, who knew how to make tools, use fire and had the ability to articulate speech, our ape-like ancestor had already gone far in its development from its animal relatives.
“The hand of even the most primitive savage is capable of performing hundreds of operations that are inaccessible to any monkey,” says F. Engels. “Not a single monkey’s hand has ever made even the crudest stone knife.”
The life of our ancestors took a new path, inaccessible to animals: along the path of work, thinking, and gradual mastery of the forces of nature.
Numerous finds of bone remains of primitive people tell of the slow but continuous development of prehistoric man.
A very valuable find was made in 1938 by the Soviet scientist A.P. Okladnikov, who carried out archaeological excavations in the mountains of Southern Uzbekistan.
In the Teshik-Tash cave, he discovered the remains of primitive man and traces of his primitive culture. During the excavations, in addition to individual bones, a complete skeleton of an eight- to nine-year-old child was found.
When the found remains were studied, it turned out that A.P. Okladnikov was lucky enough to find the remains of Neanderthals who lived on Earth during the Great Glaciation.
The word "Neanderthal" comes from the name of the Neanderthal Valley in Germany, where the bones of these ancient people, intermediate between Pithecanthropus and modern man, were first found last century.
Here it is before us, a contemporary of the great glaciation restored by scientists.
Neanderthal (reconstruction).
Short, stocky, with strong muscles, he already had more human features in his appearance than ape ones. His brain is already almost equal in volume to the brain of a modern person, although it has a more primitive structure and fewer cerebral convolutions.
The harsh climate of the Ice Age forced Neanderthals to take care of their homes and clothing.
They lived in caves, from which they drove out bears, cave lions and other large predators. Fires were burning in the caves - a reliable barrier for animals.
Using stone knives, Neanderthals removed skins from killed animals and protected themselves from the cold with them. They used skins in the form of bandages and capes; Apparently they didn’t know how to sew them together. At least, among their tools - stone axes, scrapers, pointed points for cutting carcasses - neither a needle nor an awl was found.
Hunting was the main occupation of Neanderthals.
It was impossible to hunt large animals alone, so they lived in groups of 50-100 people.
Human society developed more and more. This was the beginning of human history, the history of social relations, forms of social life.
Human development
Animals need strong jaws and large teeth to grab prey with their mouths, crush bones, and chew tough food.
The teeth of primitive man were helped by hands. Using his hands, he hunted animals, crushed bones to extract bone marrow from them, and cooked food over a fire, which made it soft. From generation to generation, our ancestors' jaws decreased in size and their teeth became smaller. At the same time, the upper part of the skull developed, the forehead moved forward, and along with the skull the volume of the brain increased.
The consciousness of primitive man became more and more distinct, speech became richer, work became more complex and varied.
By the end of the Ice Age, about 20 thousand years ago, Cro-Magnons lived on Earth - already fully developed people of the modern type. They are named after one of the finds of bone remains of modern humans near the village of Cro-Magnon in France. Cro-Magnons were not homogeneous in their anthropological type. (Anthropology is the science of man.) They already bore the features of some racial differences. But all the finds of skeletons of that time and a later period reveal a set of characteristic human features: a straight forehead, a high skull height, the absence of a ridge above the eyes, a protruding chin, low angular eye sockets, a sharply protruding nose.
Cro-Magnons.
Soviet scientists found in the Crimea, in the city of Murzak-Koba, the skeletons of Cro-Magnons and numerous tools they made from stone and bone.
The Cro-Magnons made axes, spearheads and arrowheads from stone.
They made needles, awls, and fishhooks from bones. They carved figures of people, mammoths, and deer from bones and antlers. On the walls of ancient caves there are preserved drawings of animals and hunting scenes, skillfully made by unknown Cro-Magnon artists.
Cro-Magnon tools.
Millennia passed. Man discovered metals - first copper, and then iron - and this discovery played a vital role in the history of mankind. With the discovery and use of metals, the “Stone Age”, which had lasted hundreds of thousands of years, ended. The “Bronze Age” began, which was soon replaced by the “Iron Age”.
Since that time, the development of the material culture of mankind has accelerated. Man learned to build cities and machines, discovered the power of steam, electricity and became a modern powerful intelligent being - the conqueror and transformer of nature.
Life in the Universe
On a clear night, look at the sky.
Countless stars cover the vault of heaven.
The Milky Way stretches like a foggy strip - a collection of billions of immensely distant stars. And beyond the Milky Way, the telescope reveals to our eyes other gigantic star systems, sparkling star islands stretching into infinity.
Planets also revolve around many stars, just like our Sun. Scientists learned about their existence from the peculiarities of the movement of such stars in space. And we involuntarily have a question: is there life on these distant planets?
Science answers: yes, life undoubtedly exists on many celestial bodies. After all, the world is material and united. This means that there must be planets in it that have conditions favorable for life: water, air and a sufficient amount of light and heat. On these worlds, life arises with the same regularity as it happened in the distant past on Earth. At the same time, its progressive development should also lead, sooner or later, to the emergence of intelligent beings.
Engels says:
“...matter comes to the development of thinking beings by virtue of its very nature, and therefore this necessarily happens in all those cases where there are appropriate conditions (not necessarily the same everywhere and always).”
Intelligent beings on other planets may not at all resemble humans in their appearance; but collective work and social life will make us related to the “humanities” of other worlds.
The secrets of cosmic life are still hidden from us. We can currently only observe vegetation on the neighboring planet Mars, orbiting our Sun.
The planets moving around other stars are still inaccessible to our eyes - they are so far from us.
But science and technology are constantly moving forward. Telescope designs are being improved and new research methods are being developed. During the Great Patriotic War, the Soviet scientist D. D. Maksutov invented a telescope of a completely new design, combining the advantages of telescopes of previous systems and not having their disadvantages.
There is no doubt that even more powerful devices will be invented and built, perhaps based on some completely new, now unknown principle of operation.
And then life will be revealed to our eyes, spread throughout the Universe, united in its material basis and infinitely diverse in forms.
The possibilities and power of human knowledge are limitless. The discovery of a new powerful source of energy - the energy of the atomic nucleus - turned the problem of interplanetary travel from a wonderful dream into a real problem for tomorrow's technology. The day is not far off when the vastness of outer space will open up before man and the first interplanetary ships will rapidly rush to other planets. Then we will be able not only to observe, but also to study in all details the life that exists on other worlds, primarily on the neighboring planet Mars. And maybe you, dear reader, will be among the brave astronauts. With excitement you will begin to watch through the window the ever-increasing disk of the planet. And your gaze will impatiently search for signs of life, traces of an alien, mysterious material culture, unknown technical works...
Table of contents
Beginning of life
Planet Earth…3
Mountain Destroyers... 10
Powerful forces that raise and lower continents... 13
Age of the Earth... 24
The Great Chronicle of the Earth
What do the Archean and Proterozoic layers tell us about? The sea is the cradle of life… 29
How plants and animals appeared... 40
The world of invertebrate animals ... 41
Life continues to evolve. The Paleozoic era begins … 42
Cambrian period ... 42
Silurian period ... 44
Devonian period... 49
Carboniferous period ... 55
Permian period ... 58
The Mesozoic era is the Middle Ages of the Earth. Life takes over land and air … 66
What changes and improves living beings? … 66
Triassic period ... 68
Jurassic... 71
Cretaceous period... 78
Cenozoic era - era of new life … 83
Tertiary period ... 84
Forty million years ago... 85
Twenty-five million years ago... 88
Six million years ago... 91
Quaternary period - era of modern life … 94
The emergence of man... 94
The Great Test...99
Life during the great cold snap… 102
At the dawn of human culture ... 105
Human development ... 107
Life in the Universe… 109
Ecology
Ice ages, which took place more than once on our planet, have always been covered in a lot of mysteries. We know that they shrouded entire continents in cold, turning them into sparsely inhabited tundra.
It is also known about 11 such periods, and all of them took place with regular constancy. However, there is still a lot we don't know about them. We invite you to get acquainted with the most interesting facts about the ice ages of our past.
Giant animals
By the time the last Ice Age arrived, evolution had already mammals appeared. Animals that could survive in harsh climatic conditions were quite large, their bodies were covered with a thick layer of fur.
Scientists named these creatures "megafauna", which was able to survive in low temperatures in areas covered with ice, such as in the area of modern Tibet. Smaller animals couldn't adapt to new conditions of glaciation and died.
Herbivorous representatives of megafauna learned to find food for themselves even under layers of ice and were able to adapt to the environment in different ways: for example, rhinoceroses ice age had spade-shaped horns, with the help of which they dug out snow drifts.
Predatory animals, e.g. saber-toothed cats, giant short-faced bears and dire wolves, survived well in new conditions. Although their prey could sometimes fight back due to their large size, it was in abundance.
Ice Age people
Despite the fact that modern man Homo sapiens could not boast of large size and wool at that time, he was able to survive in the cold tundra of the Ice Ages for many thousands of years.
Living conditions were harsh, but people were resourceful. For example, 15 thousand years ago they lived in tribes that hunted and gathered, built original dwellings from mammoth bones, and sewed warm clothes from animal skins. When food was abundant, they stocked up in the permafrost - natural freezer.
Mainly, tools such as stone knives and arrows were used for hunting. To catch and kill large animals of the Ice Age, it was necessary to use special traps. When an animal fell into such traps, a group of people attacked it and beat it to death.
Little Ice Age
Between major ice ages there were sometimes small periods. This is not to say that they were destructive, but they also caused hunger, illness due to crop failure and other problems.
The most recent of the Little Ice Ages began around 12th-14th centuries. The most difficult time can be called the period from 1500 to 1850. At this time, quite low temperatures were observed in the Northern Hemisphere.
In Europe, it was common for the seas to freeze, and in mountainous areas, such as what is now Switzerland, the snow didn't melt even in summer. Cold weather affected every aspect of life and culture. Probably, the Middle Ages remained in history as "Time of Troubles" also because the planet was dominated by the Little Ice Age.
Warming periods
Some ice ages actually turned out to be quite warm. Despite the fact that the surface of the earth was shrouded in ice, the weather was relatively warm.
Sometimes a sufficiently large amount of carbon dioxide accumulated in the planet’s atmosphere, which causes the appearance of greenhouse effect, when heat is trapped in the atmosphere and warms the planet. At the same time, ice continues to form and reflect the sun's rays back into space.
According to experts, this phenomenon led to the formation giant desert with ice on the surface, but rather warm weather.
When will the next ice age occur?
The theory that ice ages occur on our planet at regular intervals goes against theories about global warming. There is no doubt that today we are seeing widespread climate warming, which could help prevent the next ice age.
Human activities lead to the release of carbon dioxide, which is largely responsible for the problem of global warming. However, this gas has another strange by-effect. According to researchers from University of Cambridge, the release of CO2 could stop the next ice age.
According to our planet's planetary cycle, the next ice age is due to arrive soon, but it can only occur if carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere will be relatively low. However, CO2 levels are currently so high that an ice age is out of the question any time soon.
Even if people suddenly stop emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere (which is unlikely), the existing amount will be enough to prevent the onset of the Ice Age for at least another thousand years.
Ice Age Plants
Life was easiest during the Ice Age predators: They could always find food for themselves. But what did herbivores actually eat?
It turns out that there was enough food for these animals too. During ice ages on the planet a lot of plants grew that could survive in harsh conditions. The steppe area was covered with bushes and grass, which mammoths and other herbivores fed on.
A great variety of larger plants could also be found: for example, they grew in abundance spruce and pine. Found in warmer areas birch and willow. That is, the climate, by and large, in many modern southern regions resembled the one found in Siberia today.
However, the plants of the Ice Age were somewhat different from modern ones. Of course, when cold weather sets in many plants have become extinct. If the plant was not able to adapt to the new climate, it had two options: either move to more southern zones or die.
For example, what is now the state of Victoria in southern Australia had the richest diversity of plant species on the planet until the Ice Age, which most of the species died.
Cause of the Ice Age in the Himalayas?
It turns out that the Himalayas, the highest mountain system on our planet, directly related with the onset of the Ice Age.
40-50 million years ago The land masses where China and India are located today collided, forming the highest mountains. As a result of the collision, huge volumes of “fresh” rocks from the bowels of the Earth were exposed.
These rocks eroded, and as a result of chemical reactions, carbon dioxide began to be displaced from the atmosphere. The climate on the planet began to become colder and the ice age began.
Snowball Earth
During various ice ages, our planet was mostly shrouded in ice and snow. only partially. Even during the most severe ice age, ice covered only one third of the globe.
However, there is a hypothesis that during certain periods the Earth was still completely covered with snow, making her look like a giant snowball. Life still managed to survive thanks to rare islands with relatively little ice and enough light for plants to photosynthesize.
According to this theory, our planet turned into a snowball at least once, more precisely 716 million years ago.
Garden of Eden
Some scientists are convinced that Garden of Eden described in the Bible actually existed. It is believed that he was in Africa, and it was thanks to him that our distant ancestors were able to survive during the Ice Age.
Approximately 200 thousand years ago a severe ice age began, which put an end to many forms of life. Fortunately, a small group of people were able to survive the period of severe cold. These people moved to the area where South Africa is located today.
Despite the fact that almost the entire planet was covered with ice, this area remained ice-free. A large number of living beings lived here. The soils of this area were rich in nutrients, so there was abundance of plants. Caves created by nature were used by people and animals as shelters. For living beings it was a real paradise.
According to some scientists, there lived in the "Garden of Eden" no more than a hundred people, which is why humans do not have the same genetic diversity as most other species. However, this theory has not found scientific evidence.
The fourth book in the "The Emergence of Man" series is dedicated to the immediate predecessor of modern man - the Neanderthal. The author introduces the reader to the history of the discovery of Neanderthal man who lived during the Ice Age - a skilled hunter, a contemporary of the cave bear, cave lion, mammoth and other extinct animals.
The book examines the latest hypotheses to explain the almost sudden disappearance of the Neanderthal man and the emergence of his successor, the Cro-Magnon man, and also describes the latest discoveries in this field.
The book is richly illustrated; designed for people interested in the past of our Earth.
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Although the continents in the Ice Age approximately coincided in outline and area with those of today (highlighted in the figure with black lines), they differed from them in climate and, consequently, in vegetation. At the beginning of the Würm glaciation, during the time of the Neanderthals, glaciers (blue color) began to increase and the tundra spread far to the south. Temperate forests and savannah have encroached into former warm-climate areas, including areas of the Mediterranean now flooded by the sea, and tropical areas have become deserts interspersed with rainforests
Neanderthal was the last ancient man, not the first. He stood on shoulders even stronger than his own. Behind him stretched five million years of slow evolution, during which Australopithecus Australopithecus), the offspring of monkeys and not yet quite a man, became the first species of true man - Homo erectus ( Homo erectus), and Homo erectus gave birth to the next species - Homo sapiens ( Homo sapiens). This latter type still exists today. Its early representatives began a long line of varieties and subvarieties, culminating first with Neanderthal and then with modern man. Thus, the Neanderthal concludes one of the most important stages in the development of the species Homo sapiens - later comes only modern man, who belongs to the same species.
Neanderthal man appears about 100 thousand years ago, but by that time other species of Homo sapiens had already existed for about 200 thousand years. Only a few fossils have survived from the pre-Neanderthals, collectively referred to by paleoanthropologists as “early Homo sapiens,” but their stone tools have been found in large quantities, and therefore the lives of these ancient people can be reconstructed with a reasonable degree of probability. We need to understand their achievements and development, because the history of the Neanderthal, like any complete biography, must begin with the story of his immediate ancestors.
Imagine a moment of complete joy of being 250 thousand years ago. Fast forward to where England is now. A man stands motionless on a grassy plateau, inhaling the smell of fresh meat with obvious pleasure - his comrades are using heavy stone tools with sharp edges to chop up the carcass of a newborn deer that they managed to get. His duty is to monitor whether this pleasant smell will attract any predator, dangerous to them, or simply someone who likes to make money at someone else’s expense. Although the plateau seems deserted, the watchman does not relax his vigilance for a moment: what if a lion is hiding somewhere in the grass or a bear is watching them from a nearby forest? But the awareness of possible danger only helps him to more acutely perceive what he sees and hears in this corner of the fertile land where his group lives.
The gentle hills stretching to the horizon are overgrown with oaks and elms, dressed in young foliage. Spring, which recently replaced a mild winter, brought with it such warmth to England that the watchman would not feel cold even without clothes. He can hear the roar of hippos celebrating their mating season in the river; its banks covered with willows can be seen about a kilometer and a half from the hunting site. He hears the cracking of a dry branch. Bear? Or maybe a rhinoceros or a heavy elephant is grazing among the trees?
This man, who stands illuminated by the sun, holding a thin wooden spear in his hand, does not seem so strong, although his height is 165 centimeters, his muscles are well developed and it is immediately noticeable that he must run well. When you look at his head, you might think that he is not particularly intelligent: his face is pushed forward, his forehead is sloping, his skull is low, as if flattened from the sides. However, it has a larger brain than its predecessor, Homo erectus, who carried the torch of human evolution through more than a million years. As a matter of fact, in terms of brain volume, this person is already approaching the modern one, and therefore we can consider that he is a very early representative of the modern species Homo sapiens.
This hunter belongs to a group of thirty people. Their territory is so large that it takes several days to traverse it from end to end, but such a huge area is just enough for them to safely obtain meat all year round without causing irreparable damage to the populations of herbivores living here. Near the borders of their territory other small groups of people roam, whose speech is similar to the speech of our hunter - all these groups are closely related, since men of some groups often take wives from others. Beyond the territories of neighboring groups live other groups - almost unrelated, whose speech is incomprehensible, and even further away they live who are not known at all. The earth and the role that man had to play on it were much greater than our hunter could have imagined.
Two hundred and fifty thousand years ago, the number of people in the whole world probably did not reach 10 million - that is, they would all fit in one modern Tokyo. But this figure only looks unimpressive - humanity occupied a much larger part of the Earth's surface than any other species, taken separately. This hunter lived on the northwestern edge of the human range. To the east, where a wide valley stretched beyond the horizon, which today has become the English Channel separating England from France, groups of five to ten families also roamed. Even further east and south, similar hunter-gatherer groups lived throughout Europe.
In those days, Europe was covered with forests with many wide grassy glades, and the climate was so warm that buffalos thrived even north of what is now the Rhine, and monkeys frolicked in the tropical rainforests along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Asia was not so hospitable everywhere, and people avoided its interior regions because the winters there were harsh and the scorching heat dried up the land in the summer. However, they lived throughout the southern edge of Asia from the Middle East to Java and north all the way to Central China. Africa was probably the densest place to be populated. It is possible that more people lived there than in the rest of the world.
The places that these diverse groups chose to live give a good idea of their way of life. This is almost always an open, grassy area or copse. This preference can be explained very simply: huge herds of animals grazed there, the meat of which constituted the main part of the human diet of those times. Where there were no gregarious herbivores, there were no people. The deserts, tropical rainforests and dense coniferous forests of the north remained uninhabited, which in general occupied a very large part of the earth's surface. In the northern and southern forests, it is true, there were some herbivores, but they grazed alone or in very small groups - due to limited food and the difficulty of moving among closely growing trees, it was not profitable for them to gather in herds. It was so difficult for people at that stage of their development to find and kill single animals that they simply could not exist in such places.
Another habitat unsuitable for humans was the tundra. It was easy to get meat there: huge herds of reindeer, bison and other large animals that served as easy prey found abundant food in the tundra - mosses, lichens, all kinds of herbs, low bushes, and there were almost no trees that would interfere with grazing. However, people had not yet learned to protect themselves from the cold prevailing in these areas, and therefore the early homo sapiens continued to live in the areas that previously fed his ancestor, Homo erectus - in the savannah, in tropical woodlands, in steppes and sparse deciduous forests of mid-latitudes.
It is amazing how much anthropologists have been able to learn about the world of early Homo sapiens, despite the hundreds of thousands of years that have passed since then and the paucity of material found. Much of what played a vital role in the lives of early people disappears quickly and without a trace. Food supplies, skins, sinews, wood, plant fibers and even bones crumble into dust very quickly, unless a rare coincidence of circumstances prevents this. And those few remains of objects made of organic material that have reached us tease curiosity more than satisfy it. For example, here is a sharpened piece of yew wood found in Clacton in England - its age is estimated at 300 thousand years, and it was preserved because it fell into a swamp. Perhaps this is a fragment of a spear, since its tip was burnt and became so hard that it could pierce the skins of animals. But it is possible that this pointed, hard piece of wood was used for completely different purposes: to dig up edible roots, say.
Nevertheless, even such objects of unclear purpose are often amenable to interpretation. As for the yew fragment, logic helps. Without any doubt, people used both spears and sticks for digging long before this tool was made. However, it is more likely that the person spent time and effort to burn the spear rather than the digging tool. In the same way, we have every reason to believe that people who lived in areas with a temperate climate many hundreds of thousands of years ago wrapped themselves in something, although their clothing - without any doubt, animal skins - has not been preserved. It is equally certain that they built some kind of shelter for themselves - in fact, post holes discovered during excavations of an ancient site on the French Riviera prove that people knew how to build primitive huts from branches and animal skins even in the times of homo erectus.
A post hole, a piece of wood, a piece of sharpened bone, a hearth - all this quietly whispers to us about the achievements of man in time immemorial. But the heroes and heroines of these tales are still stubbornly hiding from us. Only two fossils indicate that an early form of Homo sapiens existed about 250,000 years ago - flattened, massive skulls that were found near the English town of Swanscombe and the German town of Steinheim.
However, science has some other materials that help us look into the past. The geological deposits of any given period reveal quite a lot about the climate of that time, including temperature and precipitation. By studying the pollen found in such deposits under a microscope, it is possible to determine exactly which trees, herbaceous or other plants were then dominant. The most important thing for the study of prehistoric eras are stone tools, which are practically eternal. Wherever early people lived, they left stone tools, often in huge quantities. In one Lebanese cave, where people lived for 50 thousand years, over a million processed flints were found.
As a source of information about ancient people, stone tools are somewhat one-sided. They say nothing about many of the most interesting aspects of their lives - family relationships, group organization, what people said and thought, what they looked like. In a certain sense, an archaeologist digging a trench through geological layers is in the position of a man who, on the Moon, would catch transmissions from earthly radio stations, having only a weak receiver: out of the host of signals sent into the air throughout the Earth, only one would sound clearly and clearly in his receiver. clearly - in this case, stone tools. Nevertheless, you can learn a lot from the broadcasts of one station. Firstly, the archaeologist knows that where the tools are found, people once lived. Comparing tools found in different places, but dating back to the same time, can reveal cultural contacts between ancient populations. And comparing tools from layer to layer makes it possible to trace the development of material culture and the level of intelligence of the ancient people who once created them.
Stone tools show that people who lived 250 thousand years ago, although their intelligence deserved the name “reasonable,” still retained much in common with their less developed ancestors, who belonged to the species Homo erectus. Their tools followed a type that had developed hundreds of thousands of years before their appearance. This type is called “Acheulean” after the French town of Saint-Acheuleur near Amiens, where such tools were first found. For the Acheulean culture, a typical tool called a hand ax is relatively flat, oval or pear-shaped, with two working edges along the entire 12-15 cm length (see pp. 42-43). This tool could be used for a variety of purposes - to punch holes in hides, butcher prey, chop or strip branches, and the like. It is possible that the axes were driven into wooden clubs to form a composite tool - something like a modern ax or cleaver, but it is more likely that they were simply held in the hand (perhaps the blunt end was wrapped in a piece of skin to protect the palm).
Early rough-hewn stone tools
By the time the Neanderthals arrived, humans had been making tools for over a million years and had developed not only certain types of tools, but also traditional ways of making them. One of the oldest and most widespread methods, called the Acheulian method, was adopted and used by Neanderthals in various areas of the world, although some Neanderthals preferred the later, Levallois method (see pages 56-57).
Acheulian tools were made from stone, from which pieces were beaten with another stone until it received the desired shape. Shown here are three typical Acheulean tools (front and side views) almost life-size.
Weighty, roughly and unevenly hewn, the Acheulean axe, made about 400 thousand years ago, was nevertheless a very effective universal tool. Its tip and two working edges were used to chop, pierce and scrape
This ax tapering to a thin tip, made about 200 thousand years ago, was lined with a stone chipper. Then its edges were retouched with a relatively elastic chip made of hard wood or bone, breaking off small flat pieces
The long, almost completely straight right edge of the side scraper, made about 200 thousand years ago, is its working edge. The grooves knocked out at the blunt end provided better support for the fingers
In addition to a hand ax with two working edges, stone plates were used, which were sometimes serrated. With their help, more delicate operations were performed when cutting a carcass or processing wood. Some groups of ancient people clearly preferred such plates to large axes, while others added heavy cutters to their stone tools for cutting the joints of large animals. However, in all corners of the world people followed basically the principles of the Acheulean culture, and only in the Far East did a more primitive type of tool with one working edge persist.
Although this general uniformity indicates a paucity of ingenuity, nevertheless the chopper was gradually improved. When people learned to process flint and quartz not only with hard stone chippers, but also with softer ones - from bone, wood or deer antlers, they were able to create handaxes with smoother and sharper working edges (see page 78). In the harsh world of early humans, the improved working edge of the utility ax provided many advantages.
In the cultural layers left by early Homo sapiens, there are other stone tools that indicate developing intelligence and a willingness to experiment. Around that era, some particularly smart hunters discovered a fundamentally new method for making flake tools. Instead of simply pounding on a flint nodule, beating flakes at random, which inevitably involved wasted effort and material, they gradually developed a very complex and efficient production process. First, the nodule was beaten along the edge and on top, obtaining the so-called “nucleus” (core). Then a precise blow to a certain place in the core - and a flake of predetermined size and shape with long and sharp working edges flies off. This method of stone processing, called Levallois (see page 56), speaks of an amazing ability to assess the potential capabilities of the stone, since the tool visibly appears only at the very end of the process of its manufacture.
The hand ax took on the desired shape slowly but surely, and when using the Levallois method, the flake flew off from the flint core, which did not at all resemble any kind of tool, completely ready, like a butterfly leaving the shell of a pupa that outwardly has nothing in common with it . The Levallois method appears to have originated about 200,000 years ago in southern Africa and spread from there, although it may have been independently discovered elsewhere.
If we compare all these various data - tools, a few fossils, a piece of organic material, as well as pollen and geological indications of the then climate - the people of that ancient time acquire visible features. They had tightly built, almost modern-looking bodies, but ape-like faces, although the brain was only slightly smaller in size than the present one. They were excellent hunters and knew how to adapt to any living conditions and climate, except the most severe. In their culture, they followed the traditions of the past, but little by little they found ways to a stronger and more reliable power over nature.
Their world was generally quite welcoming. However, it was destined to suddenly change (suddenly - in the geological sense), and the living conditions in it became so difficult that people, perhaps, have not known either before or since. However, Homo sapiens managed to hold out throughout all the cataclysms, and the test clearly benefited him - he acquired many new skills, his behavior became more flexible, and his intellect developed.
About 200 thousand years ago, cooling began. Glades and lawns in the deciduous forests of Europe imperceptibly became more and more expansive, tropical rainforests on the Mediterranean coast dried up, and pine and spruce forests in eastern Europe slowly gave way to steppes. Perhaps the oldest members of European groups recalled with fear in their voices that before the wind had never frozen the body and snow had never fallen from the sky. But since they had always led a nomadic life, it was natural for them now to move to where the herds of herbivores went. Groups that had previously had little need for fire, clothing, or artificial shelter now learned how to protect themselves from the cold from more northern groups who had acquired this skill since the time of Homo erectus.
All over the world, so much snow began to fall in the mountains that it did not have time to melt during the summer. Year after year, snow accumulated, filling deep gorges and compacting into ice. The weight of this ice was so great that its lower layers acquired the properties of thick putty, and under the pressure of growing snow layers it began to crawl down the gorges. Slowly moving along the mountain slopes, giant fingers of ice tore out huge blocks of stone from them, which then, like sandpaper, were used to clean the soil down to the bedrock. In summer, stormy streams of meltwater carried fine sand and stone dust far ahead, then the wind picked them up, tossed them into colossal yellow-brown clouds and carried them across all continents. And the snow kept falling and falling, so that in some places the ice fields were already thick. two kilometers, buried entire mountain ranges under them and with their weight forced the earth’s crust to bend. At the time of their greatest advance, glaciers covered more than 30% of all land (now they occupy only 10%). Europe was especially hard hit. The surrounding ocean and seas served as an inexhaustible source of evaporating moisture, which, turning into snow, fed the glaciers that slid from the Alps and Scandinavian mountains onto the plains of the continent and covered tens of thousands of square kilometers.
This glaciation, known as the Rissian glaciation, turned out to be one of the most severe climatic traumas that the Earth has ever suffered in its five billion years of history. Although cold snaps had occurred before, in the days of Homo erectus, the Ris glaciation was the first test of Homo sapiens' resilience. He had to endure 75 thousand years of severe cold, interspersed with slight warmings, before the Earth regained a warm climate for a relatively long period of time.
Many experts believe that a necessary precondition for the appearance of glaciers is the slow emergence of plateaus and mountain ranges. It is calculated that one era of mountain building raised the Earth's land mass by an average of more than 450 meters. Such an increase in altitude would inevitably lower the surface temperature by an average of three degrees, and in the highest places perhaps much more. The decrease in temperature undoubtedly increased the likelihood of glaciers forming, but this does not explain the alternation of cold and warm periods.
Various hypotheses have been proposed to explain these fluctuations in the Earth's climate. According to one theory, volcanoes from time to time released colossal amounts of fine dust into the atmosphere, which reflected some of the sun's rays. Scientists have indeed observed a drop in temperature around the world during large eruptions, but the cooling is small and lasts no longer than 15 years, making it unlikely that volcanoes provided the impetus for glaciation. However, other types of dust may have a more significant impact. Some astronomers believe that clouds of cosmic dust may pass between the Sun and the Earth from time to time, shielding the Earth from the Sun for a very long time. But since such clouds of cosmic dust have not been observed within the Solar System, this hypothesis remains just an interesting guess.
Glaciers that changed the lives of ancient people
Over the many millennia that early Homo sapiens evolved into Neanderthals, his world was again and again cooled and squeezed by advancing glaciers. In Europe, ancient people found themselves caught between two different streams of ice. Masses of ice moved from the north, and at the same time mountain glaciers like the one shown in the photograph descended from the Alps - frozen rivers with many tributaries that filled the valleys and made the passes impassable.
This combined advance of continental and mountain glaciers pushed the ancient people of Europe to relatively small areas of the tundra - the surface of the glaciers was so uneven and so many dangerous traps were hidden in it that there was no point in trying to cross them. Irregularities occur because the ice does not move in a straight line. When a glacier crawls over an obstacle or goes around it - for example, encountering spurs on its way like those visible in the photo on the left and right - the surface of the glacier becomes folded and deep cracks form on it, often hidden under a crust of snow. The furrows at the bottom of the photograph are up to thirty meters deep and about three meters wide. Although mountain glaciers are usually not very wide - the tongue below is not even a kilometer wide - their thickness and treacherous surface make them impassable for both animals and people.
A typical mountain glacier, a relic of the Earth's glacial past, consists of four tongues of ice that merge into one ribbed stream about a kilometer wide, the ice creeps down the slope, peeling away the rocks
Another astronomical explanation for ice ages seems more likely. Fluctuations in the angle of our planet's rotation axis and its orbit change the amount of solar heat received by the Earth, and calculations show that these changes should have caused four long periods of cooling over the past three-quarters of a million years. No one knows whether such a drop in temperature could have caused glaciations, but it undoubtedly contributed to them. And finally, it is possible that the Sun itself played some role in the appearance of glaciers. The amount of heat and light emitted by the Sun varies over a cycle that lasts an average of 11 years. The radiation increases when the number of sunspots and giant prominences on the surface of the star increases noticeably, and decreases slightly when these solar storms subside a little. Then everything repeats again. According to some astronomers, solar radiation may have another, very long cycle, similar to the short cycle of sunspots.
But whatever the cause, the impact of climate change has been enormous. During periods of cooling, the global wind system was disrupted. Precipitation has decreased in some places and increased in others. Vegetation patterns changed, and many animal species either became extinct or evolved into new, cold-adapted forms, such as the cave bear or woolly rhinoceros (see pp. 34-35).
During the particularly severe phases of the Rissian Glaciation, the climate of England, where early Homo sapiens had enjoyed warmth and sunshine, became so cold that summer temperatures often dropped below zero. Deciduous forests in the interior and western Europe gave way to tundra and steppe. And even far to the south, on the Mediterranean coast, the trees gradually disappeared, replaced by meadows.
What happened to Africa during this era is not so clear. In some places, the cooling appears to have been accompanied by heavier rainfall, turning the formerly barren areas of the Sahara and Kalahari Desert green with grass and overgrown with trees. At the same time, changes in the global wind system led to the drying out of the Congo Basin, where dense rain forests began to give way to open forests and grassy savanna. Thus, while Europe became less habitable, Africa became increasingly hospitable, and people were able to spread over large parts of this continent.
During the era of the Rissian glaciation, people, in addition, received a lot of new land at their disposal due to the decrease in the level of the World Ocean. So much water was trapped in the giant ice sheets that the level dropped by 150 meters and exposed vast expanses of the continental shelf - an underwater continuation of the continents, which stretches in some places for many hundreds of kilometers, and then drops steeply down to the ocean floor. This is how primitive hunters got millions of square kilometers of new land and they undoubtedly took advantage of this gift from the Ice Age. Each year, their groups penetrated further into the expanses of the newborn land, and, perhaps, set up camps near thundering waterfalls - where rivers fell from the continental shelf into the ocean, wavering far below, at the foot of the cliff.
During the 75 thousand years of the Ris glaciation, the inhabitants of the northern latitudes had to overcome difficulties unknown to early Homo sapiens, who was spoiled by a mild climate, and it is possible that these difficulties had a stimulating effect on the development of human intelligence. Some experts believe that the huge leap in mental development that had already occurred during the era of Homo erectus was explained by the migration of man from the tropics to a temperate climate zone, where much greater ingenuity and behavioral flexibility were required for survival. The first upright settlers learned to use fire, invented clothing and shelter, and adapted to complex seasonal changes by hunting and gathering plant foods. The Ris glaciation, which caused such profound environmental changes, should have become the same test for intelligence, and perhaps even spurred its development in the same way.
Early Homo sapiens maintained his foothold in Europe even in the most difficult times. Stone tools serve as indirect evidence of his continuous presence there, but human fossils that would confirm this could not be found for a long time. It was not until 1971 that two French archaeologists, the spouses Henri and Marie-Antoinette Lumlet (University of Marseille), found evidence that 200 thousand years ago, at the beginning of the Ris glaciation, at least one European group of Homo sapiens was still kept in a cave in the foothills of the Pyrenees . In addition to a large number of tools (mostly flakes), the Lumle couple found the broken skull of a young man of about twenty. This hunter had a forward face, a massive supraorbital ridge and a sloping forehead, and the size of the cranium was somewhat smaller than the average modern one. The two lower jaws found there are massive and, apparently, were perfectly adapted for chewing rough food. The skull and jaws are quite similar to the fragments from Swanscombe and Steinheim and give a fairly good idea of a people occupying an intermediate position between Homo erectus and Neanderthal.
Sitting at the entrance to their vast cave, these people surveyed the area, rather bleak in appearance, but rich in game. Along the banks of the river at the bottom of the ravine right under the cave, in thickets of willows and various bushes, leopards lay in wait for wild horses, goats, bulls and other animals coming to drink. Beyond the ravine, the steppe stretched to the very horizon, and not a single tree blocked the hunters’ view of the herds of elephants, reindeer and rhinoceroses, leisurely wandering under the leaden skies. These large animals, as well as rabbits and other rodents, provided abundant meat for the hunting party. And yet life was very difficult. In order to go outside under the blows of the icy wind carrying sand and prickly dust, great physical training and courage were required. And soon, apparently, it got even worse, and people were forced to go in search of more hospitable places, as indicated by the absence of tools in the later layers. Judging by some data, the climate became truly arctic for some time.
More recently, the Lumle couple made another sensational discovery in the south of France, in Lazare - they found the remains of shelters built inside a cave. These primitive shelters, dating back to the last third of the Ris glaciation (about 150 thousand years ago), were something like tents - apparently, animal skins were stretched over a frame of poles and pressed down around the perimeter with stones (see page 73). Perhaps hunters, from time to time settling in a cave, built such tents to hide from the water dripping from the vaults, or families were looking for some privacy. But the climate also played an important role here - all the tents stood with their backs to the entrance to the cave, from which we can conclude that even in this area, near the Mediterranean Sea, strong cold winds blew.
The cave at Lazarus, in addition, contained further evidence of the increasing complexity and versatility of human behavior. In each tent near the entrance, the Lumle couple found a wolf skull. The identical position of these skulls indicates beyond any doubt that they were not thrown there like unnecessary garbage: they undoubtedly meant something. But what exactly remains a mystery for now. One possible explanation is that hunters, when migrating to other places, left wolf skulls at the entrance to their homes as their magical guardians.
Approximately 125 thousand years ago, the long climatic cataclysms of the Ris glaciation came to naught and a new warm period began. It was supposed to last about 50 thousand years. Glaciers retreated to their mountain strongholds, sea levels rose, and northern regions around the world once again became fully suitable for human habitation. Several curious fossils date back to this period, confirming the continuous approach of Homo sapiens to a more modern form. In a cave near the town of Fontechevade in southwestern France, skull fragments were found that are approximately 110,000 years old and appear to be more modern than the skull of Rissian man from the Pyrenees.
By the time the first half of the warming that followed the Ris glaciation had passed, that is, about 100 thousand years ago, the true Neanderthal appeared and the transition period to him from early Homo sapiens was completed. There are at least two fossils that provide evidence for the emergence of a Neanderthal man: one from a quarry near the German town of Eringsdorf, and the other from a sand quarry on the banks of the Italian Tiber River. These European Neanderthals gradually evolved from the genetic lineage that gave rise first to Iberian man and later to the more modern Fontesevada man. Neanderthals were not very different from their immediate predecessors. The human jaw was still massive and lacking a chin protrusion, the face protruded forward, the skull still remained low and the forehead sloping. However, the volume of the cranium has already fully reached modern levels. When anthropologists use the term "Neanderthal" to describe a particular evolutionary stage, they mean a type of person who had a brain of modern size, but placed in a skull of an ancient shape - long, low, with round facial bones.
A petrified face from the distant past
For the first time, it was possible to look straight into the face of the immediate predecessor of the Neanderthal only in 1971, when, during excavations of a cave near Totavel on the French slope of the Pyrenees, a skull was found with almost completely preserved fragile facial bones. The archaeologists who found it, Henri and Marie-Antoinegt Lumle (University of Marseille), believe that it belonged to a young man, most likely a member of a nomadic hunting group that lived in this cave about 200 thousand years ago - about 100 thousand years after the species erectus was replaced by the species Homo sapiens, and 100 thousand years before the appearance of Neanderthal man.
The skull of Totavel man, like the skull of Homo erectus, is distinguished by a low forehead, sloping away from the bony supraorbital ridge, but the hollow between the forehead and the ridge is not so noticeable. The face protrudes forward - less than that of Homo erectus, but more than that of a Neanderthal; the jaws and teeth are also larger than those of a Neanderthal. The volume of the brain, although it is not easy to establish, since the skull is broken, was apparently still larger than that of Homo erectus and smaller than that of the Neanderthal. From this comparison it seems to follow that Totavel man occupied an intermediate position between the first people and Neanderthals.
The unworn teeth clearly belonged to a young man
The skull is photographed from behind - the entire back of the skull is missing
The massive supraorbital ridge shows that Totavel man was more primitive than Neanderthal man
The sloping forehead and protruding face indicate the relationship of the Totavel man with Homo erectus
It's not easy to rate this brain. Some theorists believe that its size does not mean that the intellectual development of Neanderthals reached modern levels. Based on the fact that brain size usually increases with increasing body weight, they make the following assumption: if Neanderthals were several kilograms heavier than early representatives of the Homo sapiens species, this already sufficiently explains the increase in the cranium, especially since ultimately we are only talking about about several hundred cubic centimeters. In other words, Neanderthals were not necessarily smarter than their predecessors, but simply taller and more powerfully built. But this argument seems dubious - most evolutionists believe that there is a direct relationship between brain size and intelligence. Undoubtedly, this dependence is not easy to define. Measuring intelligence by brain size is to some extent the same as trying to assess the capabilities of an electronic computer by weighing it.
If we interpret the doubts in favor of Neanderthals and recognize them - based on the volume of the skull - as equal in natural intelligence to modern man, then a new problem arises. Why did brain growth stop 100 thousand years ago, although intelligence has such great and obvious value for humans? Why didn't the brain continue to get bigger and presumably better?
Biologist Ernst Mayr (Harvard University) offered an answer to this question. He thinks that before the Neanderthal stage of evolution, intelligence developed with amazing speed because the smartest men became the leaders of their groups and had several wives. More wives - more children. As a result, subsequent generations received a disproportionately large share of the genes of the most developed individuals. Mayr believes that this accelerated process of growth in intelligence stopped about 100 thousand years ago, when the number of hunting-gathering groups increased so much that fatherhood was no longer the privilege of the most intelligent individuals. In other words, their genetic heritage - particularly developed intelligence - was not the main, but only a small part of the overall genetic heritage of the entire group, and therefore was not of decisive importance.
Anthropologist Loring Brace (University of Michigan) prefers a different explanation. In his opinion, human culture in Neanderthal times reached a stage where almost all members of the group, having absorbed collective experience and skills, received an approximately equal chance of survival. If speech was already sufficiently developed (an assumption disputed by some experts) and if intelligence had reached such a level that the least able member of the group could learn everything necessary to survive, exceptional intelligence ceased to be an evolutionary advantage. Individuals, of course, were particularly inventive, but their ideas were communicated to others, and the entire group benefited from their innovations. Thus, according to Brace's theory, the natural intelligence of humanity as a whole stabilized, although people continued to accumulate new knowledge about the world around them.
Both of the above hypotheses are highly speculative, and most anthropologists prefer a more concrete approach. In their opinion, the potential of the Neanderthal brain can only be assessed by establishing how these early people coped with the difficulties that surrounded them. Such scientists focus all their attention on the techniques of stone tool processing - the only clear signal coming from the depths of time - and everywhere they notice signs of growing intelligence. The ancient Acheulean tradition of hand axing continues, but becomes more diverse. Double-sided handaxes now come in a variety of sizes and shapes, and are often crafted so symmetrically and carefully that it seems as if their creators were driven by aesthetic motives. When a man made a small ax to trim the points of spears, or made notches on a flake to strip the bark from a thin trunk that was to become a spear, he carefully shaped these tools to best suit their purpose.
The primacy in updating methods of tool processing apparently belongs to Europe. Because it is surrounded on three sides by seas, early Homo sapiens did not have an easy escape route to warmer areas when the Risian glaciation began, and even Neanderthals sometimes found themselves cut off from the rest of the world for periods of time when, during the warm period that followed the Risian glaciation, suddenly there was a cold snap. Dramatic changes in the surrounding world naturally gave impetus to the ingenuity of the inhabitants of Europe, while the inhabitants of Africa and Asia, where the climate remained more even, were deprived of such an incentive.
About 75 thousand years ago, Neanderthal man received a particularly strong push - the glaciers again went on the offensive. The climate of this last ice age, which was called the Würm period, was at first relatively mild: the winters simply became snowy, and the summers remained cool and rainy. Nevertheless, forests began to disappear again - and throughout Europe, right up to the north of France, they were replaced by tundra or forest-tundra, where open spaces overgrown with moss and lichen were interspersed with clumps of stunted trees.
In previous ice ages, groups of early Homo sapiens usually left such inhospitable regions. But the Neanderthals did not leave them - at least in the summer - and obtained meat by following the herds of reindeer, woolly rhinoceroses and mammoths. They were probably first-class hunters, since it was impossible to survive for a long time only on the meager plant food that the tundra provided. Without a doubt, death reaped a bountiful harvest in these northern outposts of humanity, the groups being small and perhaps easily falling prey to various diseases. Far from the harsh border of the glaciers, the number of groups was noticeably higher.
The tenacity with which the Neanderthals held on to the north, and the prosperity of those who lived in areas with a milder climate, were explained, at least in part, by a shift in the art of stone processing that occurred at the beginning of the Würm glaciation. Neanderthals invented a new method of making tools, thanks to which a variety of tools made from flakes won a final victory over simple chipped stones. Beautiful tools from flakes had long been made using the Levallois method - two or three ready-made flakes were cut from a pre-processed core, and in some places this method was preserved for a long time. However, the new method was much more productive: many Neanderthals now hammered a stone nodule, turning it into a disc-shaped core, and then hit the edge with a hammer, directing the blow towards the center, and chipped off flake after flake until almost nothing remained of the core. Finally, the working edges of the flakes were adjusted so that wood could be processed, carcasses could be dressed, and hides could be cut.
The main advantage of this new method was that many flakes could be obtained from one disc-shaped core without much effort. With the help of further processing, the so-called retouch, it was not difficult for flakes to be given the desired shape or edge, and therefore disc-shaped cores open a significant era of specialized tools. Neanderthal stone inventories are much more diverse than those of their predecessors. French archaeologist François Bordes, one of the leading experts on Neanderthal stone working, lists more than 60 different types of tools designed for cutting, scraping, piercing and gouging. No one group of Neanderthals had all of these tools, but nevertheless, the inventory of each of them included a large number of highly specialized tools - jagged plates, stone knives with one blunt edge to make it easier to press on it, and many others. It is possible that some sharpened flakes served as spear tips - they were either pinched at the end of a spear, or tied to it with narrow strips of leather. With such a set of tools, people could receive much more benefits from nature than before.
Throughout the north of the Sahara and east to China, such retouched tools become predominant. All tools made in this vast area are called Mousterian (after the name of the French cave Le Moustier, where flake tools were first found in the 60s of the 19th century). Two distinct new types emerge from sub-Saharan Africa. One, called "Forsmith", is a further development of the Acheulean tradition, including small handaxes, various scrapers and narrow knives made from flakes. Forsmith tools were made by people who lived in the same open grassy plains that the ancient Acheulian hunters favored. The second new type, the Sangoan, was characterized by a special long, narrow and heavy tool, a kind of combination of machete and piercing tool, as well as axes and small scrapers. This type, like the Mousterian, marked a decisive departure from the Acheulean tradition. Although Sangoan tools are rather crude in appearance, they were convenient for cutting and processing wood.
During the period from 75 to 40 thousand years BC, Neanderthals managed to establish themselves in many areas that were inaccessible to their ancestors. European Neanderthals were not afraid of the advance of the tundra and mastered it. Some of their African relatives, armed with Sangoan weapons, invaded the forests of the Congo Basin, cutting paths through the lush thickets, which, with the return of the rainy seasons, again replaced the grasslands. Other Neanderthals spread across the vast plains of the western Soviet Union or crossed the mighty mountain ranges of southern Asia and opened the continent's heartland to human habitation. And some other Neanderthals, finding paths where bodies of water were located not too far from each other, penetrated into areas almost as dry as real deserts.
These conquests of new regions were not migrations in the strict sense of the word. Not even the most enterprising group could have come up with the suicidal idea of packing up their meager possessions and going one and a half hundred kilometers to places unknown to any of its members. In reality, this dispersal was a process that anthropologists call budding. Several people separated from the group and settled in the neighborhood, where they had their own food sources. If everything went well, the size of their group gradually increased and after two or three generations they moved to an even more remote area.
Now the main thing is specialization. The Northern Mousterians were the best clothing designers in the world at that time, as evidenced by the numerous scrapers and end scrapers left from them, which could have been used for tanning hides. The Sangoans probably became sophisticated experts in the forest and may have learned to make traps, since the four-legged inhabitants of the dense thickets did not roam in herds, like savannah animals, and were much more difficult to track. In addition, people began to specialize in certain game - a marked improvement over the "catch what you catch" principle that had been the basis of hunting since time immemorial. Evidence of such specialization can be found in one of the European inventories, which was called the denticulated Mousterian type because it is characterized by flakes with jagged edges. Serrated Mousterian tools are always found in close proximity to the bones of wild horses. Apparently, those who made them were so skilled at hunting wild horses that they were not interested in other herbivores grazing nearby, but concentrated all their efforts on game, the meat of which they especially liked.
Where there were no certain necessary materials, Neanderthals overcame this difficulty by looking for replacements. On the treeless plains of central Europe, they began experimenting with bone tools to replace the corresponding wooden implements. In many areas there was also a shortage of water, and people could not go far from streams, rivers, lakes or springs. However, Neanderthals penetrated very dry areas using water storage vessels - not clay, but made from eggshells. Recently, ostrich egg shells were found along with Mousterian tools in the sun-baked Negev Desert of the Middle East. These eggs, carefully opened, turned into excellent flasks - after filling them with water, the group could calmly set off on a long journey through the dry hills.
The very abundance of Mousterian tools is already sufficient proof that Neanderthals far surpassed their predecessors in the ability to take from nature everything they needed for life. They undoubtedly greatly expanded man's domain. The conquest of new territories during the time of the Neanderthals took people far beyond the limits to which Homo erectus was limited when, hundreds of thousands of years earlier, he began to spread from the tropics to the mid-latitudes.
However, the failures of the Neanderthals also speak volumes. They did not penetrate into the depths of the tropical rainforests, and, probably, the dense forests of the north also remained practically inaccessible to them. The settlement of these areas required such an organization of the group, such tools and devices, the creation of which was not yet possible for them.
Well, what about the New World? Theoretically, at the beginning of the Würm glaciation, access to the incredible riches of both Americas was open to them. Glaciers again captured the water, and the level of the World Ocean dropped. As a result, a wide, flat isthmus connected Siberia with Alaska, where the familiar tundra, teeming with large game, spread widely. The road from Alaska to the south was at times intercepted by glaciers in western Canada and the Rocky Mountains. Nevertheless, there were millennia when the passage was open. However, getting to the isthmus was very difficult. Eastern Siberia is a mountainous region crossed by several ridges. Even today, the climate there is very harsh and winter temperatures reach record lows. And during the Würm glaciation, it could not help but be even worse.
Apparently, separate brave groups of Neanderthals established themselves in the south of Siberia, where then, in place of the present dense taiga, grass-covered plains stretched, in some places turning into forest-tundra. Looking north and east, these Neanderthals saw endless hills stretching into the unknown. There was a lot of meat there - horses, bison, shaggy mammoths with huge curved tusks, which are so convenient for breaking through the snow crust in order to get to the plants hidden underneath. The temptation to follow the herds there was probably very great. And if the hunters knew that somewhere beyond the horizon lies an isthmus leading to the land of unafraid game, they would probably go there. After all, these were undoubtedly people of the timid ten. Strongly built, hardened by the constant struggle for existence, long accustomed to the possibility of premature death, they were created for daring. But they instinctively knew that they had already entered the grounds of death itself - one brutal winter storm and it would all be over for them. So the Neanderthals never reached America. The New World was destined to remain deserted until man acquired more effective weapons, learned to dress better, and build warmer dwellings.
From the height of modern knowledge, it is very tempting to criticize the Neanderthals for missing such a wonderful opportunity, for not reaching Australia, for retreating to the dense jungle and wilds of coniferous forests. And in many other respects they cannot compare with the people who came after them. Neanderthals never realized the potential of bone as a material for tools, and the art of sewing, which required bone needles, remained unknown to them. They did not know how to weave baskets or make clay vessels, and their stone tools were inferior to the stone tools of those who lived after them. But there is another way to look at Neanderthals. If a hunter who lived in warm England 250 thousand years ago suddenly found himself at a Neanderthal site in ice-bound Europe during the Würm glaciation, he would undoubtedly be amazed and delighted by what his species, the species of Homo sapiens, managed to achieve. He would see people living well in conditions in which he would not last even a few days.
Specialized tools of skilled craftsmen
Neanderthal man used many methods of making tools, but particularly favored a method called Mousterian, which is used to make the tools in these photographs. Unlike early tools, which were chipped stones (see pp. 42-43), Mousterian tools were made from stone flakes, which were broken off from a core that had been previously processed in such a way that the shape of the flake was essentially determined in advance.
The original method of making tools from flakes, called Levallois, existed for about 100 thousand years, and only then the Mousterian stone craftsmen improved it. In their skillful hands, one core produced the maximum number of flakes, which could then be adapted to Neanderthal needs using retouching!
Disc-shaped core and two weapons
The core at the top was chipped so that only a small disc-shaped piece remained from it - thoughtful preliminary processing of the core and precision of blows allowed the master to use this core almost entirely. With the same skill, the flakes were then turned into tools like a double-sided scraper
The core at the top was chipped so that only a small disc-shaped piece remained from it - thoughtful preliminary processing of the core and precision of blows allowed the master to use this core almost entirely. With the same skill, the flakes were then turned into tools and narrow, thin points. Both of these guns are shown from the front and side
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