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What Pithecanthropus could do. The most ancient people are Pithecanthropus. Boy from Turkana

Natural history
19.11.2020

Pithecanthropus is the name given to the oldest people (1 million years old) found on the island. Java. Subsequently, the Javan Pithecanthropus, Sinanthropus (China), Heidelberg Man (Europe) and a number of other “species” of ancient people were united under the name Homo erectus - erect man. In the early Pleistocene (1.6 million years ago), “Homo habilis” was replaced by “Homo erectus” - Homo erectus, who was previously called Pithecanthropus; It was at this time that Australopithecus completely died out. Approximately 1.2-1.0 million years ago, “homo erectus” went beyond Africa and settled in southern Asia and Europe, and 400 thousand years ago disappeared, making room for “homo sapiens” - Homo sapiens.

None of the finds of the remains of the oldest hominids has caused such controversy or attracted such attention as the find made by the Dutch anatomist and physician E. Dubois on the island of Java in 1891-1893. Inspired by Haeckel's prediction of the existence of a "transitional link" between ape and man - Pithecanthropus, the young doctor abandoned his teaching career for the dream of finding the missing link. He became a ship's doctor on a warship and went to Sumatra. The sailors were rarely sick, and Dubois could explore the caves. However, Sumatrans - local residents- they avoided the caves, believing that evil spirits had settled there, and Dubois decided to look for traces of Pithecanthropus along the river beds in Java, where there were many bone remains of animals along the river valleys.

In 1891, he found a third upper molar, but decided that it belonged to a monkey, although the shape of the tooth, its length and protrusions were purely human. In 1892 in the river valley. Solo, near the village of Trinil, he continued to excavate the site of the tooth and found a skull cap that probably belonged to the same creature as the tooth. The heavy bone had a dark color due to mineralization. Dubois found a femur 15 m from the skull. It was a human bone, not an ape. The length of the bone was 45.5 cm, from which it followed that the height of the creature was 170 cm. The skull cap in shape and size occupied an intermediate position between a human and an ape. The forehead was low, sloping, with supraorbital ridges, like those of monkeys. The occipital region of the skull is flattened from above. During reconstruction, the cranial cavity was found to be 900 cubic cm. On the inner surface of the skull, Dubois noticed an imprint of Broca's area, with which the development of speech is usually associated. A cast of the cranial cavity showed that in its structure it is much closer to the human type than to the ape type, but has primitive features. His inferior frontal lobe and parietal lobe are less developed than modern man. The femur is almost straight, and not curved, like in humans, the popliteal fossa is convex, not flat. The owner of the femur had a less perfect gait than a person, but walked on two legs, straightened.

In 1896, Du Bois published a book in which he named his discovery Pithecanthropus erectus, an erect ape-man. Haeckel called the supposed transitional link “the dumb ape-man,” but, judging by Broca’s area, he was not dumb. On the copy given to Haeckel, Dubois wrote “To the Inventor of Pithecanthropus.”

Arriving from Java, Dubois showed his find to prominent scientists - A. Keys, W. Woodworth, R. Virchow. Many researchers did not accept the "missing link" explanation for the find. Thus, Virchow believed that the bone remains belonged to a giant gibbon, and Keys believed that these were the remains of a degenerate person who was also hit on the skull, since the skull cap was too flat. In addition, the growth of pathological bone substance was discovered on the femur.

In 1895, the International Zoological Congress was held in the Netherlands, where Pithecanthropus was the center of attention. Twenty prominent professors put to a vote whether the discovery was a human, an intermediate creature, or an ape. Opinions were divided, however, the femur was classified by most scientists as human, and the teeth and skull cap were classified as an intermediate creature. It seemed to some that this was the lowest type of person, to others that it was a transitional form, and a third of scientists believed that this was a dead-end branch of ancient people. Some believed that the skull cap and femur belonged to to different individuals. After 10 years, Dubois, tired of the struggle, began to hide his find from everyone. At the end of his life, he himself decided that it really belonged to a giant gibbon. No tools containing Pithecanthropus bones were found.

In 1936, the young geologist G. Koenigswald decided to continue the search for Pithecanthropus in Java. Koenigswald was born in the USA, studied in Germany and went to work in the tropics of Southeast Asia in the same places where Du Bois worked. Soon he found roughly processed tools with blade flakes. Koenigswald explored the town of Mojokerto near the city of Sangiran. From 1936 to 1941, he discovered the remains of fossil humans - three skulls and three mandibles. One of the skulls from Mojokerto was a child's; this skull was the first of the discovered remains and immediately attracted attention by the similarity of the skull cap to that of Dubois's Pithecanthropus. The skull of Dubois's find gave the impression of extraordinary primitiveness due to the powerful supraorbital ridge, very low arch and sharp flattening of the parietal bones, and a strongly sloping forehead. These features bring the skull closer to those of modern apes, but the brain capacity is large at 900 cc, approaching the lower limit of variation for this character in modern humans. The femur was a sharp contrast to the skull cap, almost indistinguishable from the femur of a modern person. These contradictions became the source of discussions surrounding Dubois's find. The "Child from Mojokerto" found by Koenigswald is represented only by a powerful braincase. In Sangiran, Koenigswald found a fragment of the lower jaw with premolars and molars, the skull cap of an adult female, the parietal bones and a fragment of the occipital part of the skull of a young man, fragments of the skull of an adult male and two fragments of the lower jaw with teeth. The combination of a primitive skull structure with a progressive type of lower limb in Pithecanthropus is quite consistent with modern ideas about the features of the evolution of higher primates. Morphological features associated with the transformation of the type of locomotion, the transition to upright walking, advanced the development of the skull and brain. A striking example of this is the Australopithecines, in which a small brain in volume and primitive in structure was combined with a bipedal gait and a completely human structure of the limbs.

In Pajistan, broken stones were scattered along the bottom of a dry river bed. It was a cluster of Early Paleolithic tools belonging to Pithecanthropus. For the most part, Pajistani tools are very massive, roughly processed and are choppers or more finely processed

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Pithecanthropus, Pithecanthropus photo
Homo erectus erectus (Dubois, 1892)

Pithecanthropus(from the Greek πίθηκος - monkey and ἄνθρωπος - man), or apeman, or "Javanese man"- a fossil subspecies of humans, once considered as an evolutionary intermediate between australopithecines and neanderthals. Estimated interval of existence between 1 million and 700 thousand years ago. Currently, Pithecanthropus is considered as a local variant of Homo erectus (along with Heidelberg man in Europe and Sinanthropus in China), characteristic exclusively of Southeast Asia and which did not give rise to the direct ancestors of modern humans. It is possible that the direct descendant of Java Man is Homo flores.

  • 1 Appearance
  • 2 Material culture
  • 3 History of discovery
  • 4 Pithecanthropus and modern people
  • 5 Notes
  • 6 See also
  • 7 Links
  • 8 Literature

Appearance

Pithecanthropus had a short stature (a little more than 1.5 meters), an upright gait and an archaic structure of the skull (thick walls, low frontal bone, protruding supraorbital ridges, sloping chin). In terms of brain volume (900-1200 cm³), it occupied an intermediate position between Homo habilis and Neanderthal man, Homo sapiens.

Material culture

There is no direct evidence of whether Pithecanthropus made tools, since bone remains on the island of Java were found in a redeposited state, which precludes the discovery of tools. On the other hand, in the same layers and with the same fauna as the finds of Pithecanthropus, finds of archaic tools similar to the Acheulian culture were made. In addition, among the later finds (Sinanthropus, Heidelberg man, Atlantropus), belonging to the same species Homo erectus or related species (Homo heidelbergensis, Homo ergaster, Homo antecessor), tools of the same culture as the Javanese ones were found. Therefore, there is reason to think that Javanese tools were made by Pithecanthropus.

History of discovery

The term Pithecanthropus was proposed by Haeckel in 1866 as a designation for a hypothetical intermediate between ape and man.

In 1890, Dutch physician Eugene Dubois traveled to the island of Java in search of the ancestor of modern humans. After a month of excavations on the banks of the Solo River near the village of Trinil, a fossilized monkey molar was discovered, and a month later, in October 1891, a skull cap, after which Dubois concluded that these parts belonged to a large ape. A year later, 14 meters from the place of discovery, a human femur was found, which was also attributed to the remains of an unknown anthropoid. Based on the shape of the femur, it was concluded that he walked upright, and the new kind named Pithecantropus erectus (upright ape-man). Later, another molar was found three meters from the skull cap. Eugene brought these bones to Europe for study, forgot the box with them in a cafe, but then, returning to this cafe, he found it in the same place where he had forgotten it.

In December 1895, a conference was held at the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory to reach a conclusion regarding the remains discovered by Du Bois. The abundance of primitive features inherent in the skull of Pithecanthropus (low sloping forehead, massive supraorbital ridge, etc.) led to skepticism of the then scientific community towards the find as a possible human ancestor, and the President of the Society, Rudolf Virchow, even stated:

“There is a deep suture in the skull between the lower vault and the upper edge of the orbits. Such a suture is found only in monkeys, and not in humans, so the skull must have belonged to a monkey. In my opinion this creature was an animal, a giant gibbon. The femur is not connected to the skull in any way.”

In the 1930s, van Koenigswald discovered other, better preserved remains of the Pithecanthropus Homo erectus soloensis on the island of Java (the town of Mojokerto near Sangiran), after which doubts about the belonging of the Pithecanthropus to the genus Homo disappeared, but buried the hope that this subspecies played any role -role in the evolution of modern humans.

Pithecanthropus and modern people

Modern researchers are not inclined to consider Pithecanthropus the ancestor of modern humans. It appears to represent a distant and isolated population of Homo erectus that, in Indonesian conditions, survived until the emergence of modern people and became extinct 27 thousand years ago.

Notes

  1. Porshnev B.F. About the beginning of human history. - M.FARI-V, 2006 - P.63-64

see also

  • List of bones of the human skeleton

Links

Wiktionary has an article "pithecanthropus"
  • "Homo erectus"
  • The misadventures of Eugene Dubois, discoverer of Pithecanthropus...
  • Details about the first discovery of Pithecanthropus in Java (Trinil)
  • "Hominid species"

Literature

  • D. Johanson, M. Eadie. Lucy. The origins of the human race. Per. from English M., 1984.
  • Biological encyclopedic Dictionary/ Ch. ed. M. S. Gilyarov; Editorial team: A. A. Baev, G. G. Vinberg, G. A. Zavarzin and others - M.: Sov. encyclopedia, 1986. - pp. 470-471. - 100,000 copies.
  • V. P. Alekseev, A. I. Pershits. Story primitive society. M., 2001

Pithecanthropus, Pithecanthropus drawings, Pithecanthropus synanthropus, Pithecanthropus photo, Pithecanthropus this, Pithecanthropus, Pithecanthropus findings

Pithecanthropus Information About

Pithecanthropus- a genus sometimes identified to designate archanthropes. Described in 1894 (discovery of Pithecanthropus by E. Dubois). Probably includes several species, including the most recognized:

“Working Man” (Pithecanthropus ergaster or Homo ergaster), “Erectified Man” (Pithecanthropus erectus or Homo erectus), “Heidelberg Man” (Pithecanthropus heidelbergensis or Homo heidelbergensis).

The time frame for the existence of archanthropes is approximately from 1700 to 500 or even 130 thousand years. Distributed throughout the Old World - in Africa (Bodo, Danakil, Bowri, Olduvai 9, Ndutu, Ternifin, etc.), Europe (Ceprano, Petralona, ​​Mauer, Vertescelles, etc.), Asia (Trinil, Sangiran, Zhoukoudian, Lantian, Nanjing, etc.).

It differs from more progressive people in its increased massiveness, large jaws and teeth, and smaller brain (700-1100 cm3).

One of the early representatives of this taxonomic group is the so-called. "Working man" (Homo ergaster or Pithecanthropus ergaster). These are the most ancient archanthropes.

The species was described in 1975 from the mandible of KNM-ER 992 from Koobi Fora in Ethiopia. They originated in Africa about 1.8 or 1.7 million years ago from “Early Homo”, from which they differ in their large brain (770-900 cm3) and large body size (up to 1.8 m in height). About 1.4 million years ago they developed into “Homo erectus” (see Fig. 1).

The most important finds were made in Koobi Fora in Ethiopia (for example, the skulls KNM-ER 3733, KNM-ER 3883 and many other remains) and in Dmanisi (Georgia, 3 skulls, 3 mandibles and a metatarsal bone were found). These are the first people to leave Africa. However, they did not leave the tropical zone. They used tools from the Olduvai culture.

Literature: 1. Khrisanfova E.N., Perevozchikov I.V. Anthropology. M., 1999.

http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/brokgauz/16810

History of Pithecanthropus

There is an opinion (among Darwinists) that some Australopithecines as a result of evolution turned into Pithecanthropus. Previously, it was believed that these creatures appeared 900,000 - 1,000,000 years ago. Recent potassium-argon analysis of the bone remains has increased this date to 1.9 million years. True, not all anthropologists believe in such an ancient age of Pithecanthropus. They refer to the imperfection of the research method. But the number 1.6 million is considered indisputable. This is exactly the age of the almost complete skeleton of Pithecanthropus, found in 1984.

Let's take this date as the beginning of the era of Pithecanthropus. Australopithecus coexisted with them for some time - until about 800,000 BC, then disappeared. Perhaps Pithecanthropus exterminated their less fortunate competitors. Perhaps Australopithecus disappeared for other reasons. But it is unlikely that they became extinct due to envy of more perfect creatures than themselves. And Pithecanthropus, in terms of intelligence, was indeed more perfect than Australopithecines. They have a much larger brain - 900 cubic meters. cm (2/3 of volume human brain). Other organs, such as the hands, are also more human-like. And in terms of dimensions - height 160 cm, weight 80 kg - Pithecanthropus did not differ at all from people. For this reason, Pithecanthropus is often called archanthropus ("ancient people"). Biologists also use the designation Homo erectus - "upright man."

This creature was more skilled than Homo habilis. In addition to choppers, Pithecanthropus made egg-shaped, pointed axes, which were easy to cut and chop with. The flakes formed during the creation of handaxes were also used. They were used to make cleavers for scraping skins from remaining fat and meat. Trihedrons also appeared - perhaps it was a piercing tool. Unlike Homo habilis, who made tools only from quartzites, Pithecanthropus mastered the processing of harder flint. It is more difficult to make tools from flint, but they last much longer. That. among Pithecanthropus we see the first struggle in history for the quality of products. Flint is much less common than quartzite, so throughout the Stone Age it was one of the most valuable materials.

By the way, about the Stone Age. To designate the most ancient eras, historians and archaeologists often use names that characterize the level of technology. So the time of the dominance of Pithecanthropus is usually called the early Paleolithic (i.e. "early stone age"). Often the name of an era is given by the place of the first discovery of tools of a certain type. For this reason, the time of Homo habilis is called the Olduvai era, and the time of Pithecanthropus is called the Acheulean era.

Pithecanthropus differed from Australopithecines not only in appearance and technology, but also in the way they obtained food. They learned to get food together. These creatures invented driven hunting, not only for small animals, but also for the largest ones. As a result, meat foods have become more varied. If Australopithecines were content with small rodents, then the menu of Pithecanthropus included deer, antelope, horses, wild boars, bison and even rhinoceroses and mammoths. In addition, they tasted their closest relatives - great apes. There is reason to believe that Pithecanthropus had a phenomenon that causes outrage among modern civilized people - cannibalism. (True, history knows of cases when “civilized” people perceived the commandment “love your neighbor” exclusively in a gastronomic aspect.) The increase in meat consumption led to population growth. Hunger did not disappear at all, but more individuals began to survive. According to estimates by the American demographer E. Deevy, about 1,000,000 BC. 125,000 Pithecanthropus lived in Africa alone - about the same number of inhabitants in modern Bendery, Mytishchi or Uzhgorod.

By hunting large animals, Pithecanthropus was able not only to improve nutrition, but also to solve the housing problem. After killing saber-toothed tigers or cave bears, they occupied the vacant living space. Caves are more comfortable and safer apartments than the nests or burrows of australopithecines. Safe housing also contributed to population growth.

When the number of cave inhabitants reached a certain level, the danger of internal conflicts increased. Fortunately, there were still uninhabited spaces around, where the herds who disagreed with the political course could retreat. And higher technological capabilities than australopithecines allowed the settlers to survive in a new place. So Pithecanthropus was the first to begin to settle on the earth's surface. On the previous page we mentioned that Australopithecus lived only in eastern Africa. Pithecanthropus also mastered the remaining areas of this continent, and began to move to Asia and Europe. According to modern data, the settlement of Europe began no later than 1,300,000 BC.

The term resettlement does not mean that Pithecanthropus suddenly took off and rushed to distant lands. During the life of one generation, in search of the best hunting grounds, they did not go very far. But over hundreds of thousands of years, they crossed vast continents, reaching in the east the lower reaches of the great Chinese rivers and the island of Java, and in the west to the Atlantic. In the new regions, Pithecanthropus did not settle anywhere. No, they preferred tropical and subtropical zones, the banks of rivers and lakes, the sea coast and mixed savannas. They did not like deserts and high mountain areas, at least their remains were not found there. Paradoxical but true, Pithecanthropus avoided the tropical forests where their ancestors came from.

Driven hunting required better mutual understanding from Pithecanthropus. It is believed that the result was the appearance of the rudiments of speech in them, similar to human speech - i.e. consisting not of sounds, but of words. At least the structure of their jaws and mouth muscles allowed them to speak. True, there could be no more words in their dictionary than in the dictionary of the notorious Ellochka the Ogress.

However, we have not yet mentioned the main achievement of Pithecanthropus. In this regard, I remember Greek mythology. The Greeks have a legend according to which the titan Prometheus brought fire to people, stealing it from the sky from the Olympian gods. Beautiful legend! But in reality it was a little different. The Prometheans turned out to be Pithecanthropus, outwardly not as attractive as the ancient god. And fire came from heaven itself. He came from the sky more than once or twice when lightning struck trees, causing forest fires. Fire also came from underground during volcanic eruptions. Every living thing fled in panic from the fire.

Pithecanthropus was also afraid of fire. But they had the most advanced intelligence at that time. And one of the most important properties of the mind is insatiable curiosity. Curiosity happens sometimes stronger than fear. Among the Pithecanthropus there were many daredevils who approached the fire to study its properties. They could notice that fire not only burns, but also warms, not only blinds, but illuminates the darkness. They may have noticed that the fire sets fire to some objects and does not touch others. It might have occurred to some of these researchers to set fire to branches or pieces of wood themselves and place them in the cave. Either for warmth in cold weather, or to illuminate the darkness of the night, or to scare away predators.

Natural fire rarely occurs, so over time, Pithecanthropus learned to maintain it, giving the fire new “food” - firewood, branches and dry grass. According to current ideas, the use of fire began 700,000 - 600,000 years ago. It happened somewhere in Europe or Asia. About 500,000 - 300,000 BC. the use of fire on these continents has already become commonplace. But the fire came to Africa much later.

At the very end of the Early Paleolithic, when life without fire began to seem impossible, Pithecanthropus learned to light a fire themselves - by rubbing two pieces of wood against each other, by striking sparks from a stone onto tinder, or by rotating a stick in a piece of wood. The use of fire was the second technological leap in human history, after the manufacture of tools.

Opening useful properties fire came at a very opportune time - after 35 million years of a warm climate on Earth, the time for ice ages came. The first ice age - Günz, was from approximately 1,000,000 to 900,000 BC, the second - Mindel, from 600,000 to 500,000 BC. The Günz period was not too harsh. Ice covered only the northern regions. It was warm in southern Europe and much of Asia. But Mindelsky turned out to be harsher. Without external heating, the life of Pithecanthropus in many places would become very problematic. With fire, they were not only able to hold on to the conquered lines, but also advance further. The colder weather forced them to come up with another way to warm themselves - to dress in the skins of the animals they killed. In other words, our heroes also had clothes for the first time.

Interestingly, around the time fire began to be used, more advanced biological species appeared (830,000 - 710,000 years ago), which are called classical Pithecanthropus. They are characterized by an increased brain volume - more than 1000 cubic meters. see. Thanks to fire, Pithecanthropus moved even further north - to the Rhine and Danube valleys, to Britain, to North Caucasus and to Altai.


More than a million years after the appearance of the first people of the type Homo habilis, ancient people Homo erectus - homo erectus(Fig. 1). These are Pithecanthropus, Sinanthropus, Heidelberg man and other forms.

Remains of ancient people

The discovery of Pithecanthropus by E. Dubois on the island of Java - the “missing link” in the human family tree - was a triumph of materialistic science. Excavations in Java were resumed in the 30s and then in the 60s of our century. As a result, the bone remains of several dozen Pithecanthropus were discovered, including at least nine skulls. The most ancient of the Javan Pithecanthropes, judging by the latest dating, are 1.5-1.9 million years old.

Ppithecanthropus (click on image to enlarge)

One of the most famous and expressive representatives of Pithecanthropus is Sinanthropus, or Chinese Pithecanthropus. The remains of Sinanthropus were discovered in northern China near the village of Zhou-Gou-Dian, 50 km from Beijing. Sinanthropus lived in a large cave, which they occupied probably for hundreds of millennia (only over such a long time could sediments up to 50 m thick accumulate here). Many crude stone tools were found in the sediments. Interestingly, the tools found at the base of the sequence do not differ from other tools found in its uppermost layers. This indicates a very slow development of technology at the beginning of human history. Sinanthropus kept the fire burning in the cave.

Sinanthropus was one of the latest and most developed ancient people; it existed 300-500 thousand years ago.

In Europe, reliable and thoroughly studied bone remains of ancient people close in time to Sinanthropus were found in four places. The most famous find is the massive jaw of Heidelberg Man, discovered near Heidelberg (Germany).

Pithecanthropus, Sinanthropus, Heidelberg man had many common features and represented geographical variants of one species (Fig. 2). Therefore, the famous anthropologist Le Gros Clark combined them into one common name- Homo erectus (upright man).

Homo erectus. Homo erectus differed from his predecessors in height, straight posture, and human gait. The average height of synanthropes was about 150 cm for women and 160 cm for men. Pithecanthropus of Java reached 175 cm. The arm of the ancient man was more developed, and the foot acquired a small arch. The bones of the legs changed, the hip joint moved to the center of the pelvis, the spine received some bending, which balanced the vertical position of the body. Based on these progressive changes in physique and growth, the oldest man received his name - Homo erectus.

Homo erectus still differed from modern humans in some significant ways; a low sloping forehead with supraorbital ridges, a massive, sloping chin and protruding jaw, a flat small nose. However, as one anthropologist noted, they were the first primates of which you would see and say, “These are not apes, they are undeniably human.”

Homo erectus differed most from other primates, his predecessors, in size and significant complexity of the brain structure and, as a consequence, more complex behavior. The volume of the brain was 800-1400 cm 3, the most developed were the lobes of the brain that control higher nervous activity. The left hemisphere was larger than the right, which was probably due to stronger development right hand. This typically human trait, due to the production of tools, is especially strongly developed in Sinanthropus.

Hunting is the basis of the Pithecanthropus lifestyle

Animal bones and hunting tools discovered at the sites of ancient people indicate that they were patient and prudent hunters who knew how to stubbornly wait in ambush along the animal trail and jointly organize roundups of gazelles, antelopes and even the giants of the savannah - elephants.

Rice. 2. Skulls: A - gorillas, B - Pithecanthropus. C - Sinanthropus, G - Neanderthal, D - modern man

Such raids required not only great skill, but also the use of hunting techniques based on knowledge of the habits of animals. Homo erectus made hunting tools much more skillfully than his predecessors. Some of the stones he chipped were carefully given the desired shape: a pointed end, cutting edges on both sides, the size of the stone was selected exactly to fit the hand.

But it is especially important that Homo erectus was able to notice the seasonal migrations of animals and hunted where he could count on abundant prey. He learned to remember landmarks and, having gone far from the parking lot, find his way back. Hunting gradually ceased to be a matter of chance, but was planned by ancient hunters. The need to follow wandering game had a profound impact on the lifestyle of Homo erectus. Willy-nilly, he found himself in new habitats, gained new impressions and expanded his experience.

Based on the structural features of the skull and cervical spine of ancient people, it has been established that their vocal apparatus was not as large and flexible as that of modern humans, but it allowed them to produce much more complex sounds than the muttering and squeals of modern monkeys. It can be assumed that Homo erectus “spoke” very slowly and with difficulty. The main thing is that he learned to communicate using symbols and to designate objects using combinations of sounds. Facial expressions and gestures probably played a significant role as a means of communication between ancient people. (The human face is very mobile, we even now understand the emotional state of another person without words: delight, joy, disgust, anger, etc., and are also able to express specific thoughts: agree or deny, greet, call, etc.)

Collective hunting required not only verbal communication, but also contributed to the development social organization, which had a clearly human character, since it was based on the division of labor between men - hunters and women - food gatherers.

The use of fire by ancient man

In the Zhou-Gou-Dian cave, where the remains of Sinanthropus and their numerous stone tools were found, traces of fire were also found: coals. ashes, burnt stones. Obviously, the first fires burned more than 500 thousand years ago. The ability to use fire made food more digestible. In addition, fried food is easier to chew, and this could not but affect appearance people: the selection pressure aimed at maintaining a powerful jaw apparatus has disappeared. Gradually, the teeth began to shrink, the lower jaw no longer protruded forward as much, and the massive bone structure required for the attachment of powerful chewing muscles was no longer necessary. The man's face gradually acquired modern features.

Fire not only expanded food sources many times over, but also gave humanity constant and reliable protection from the cold and from wild animals. With the advent of fire and the hearth, a completely new phenomenon arose - a space strictly intended for people. Gathering around a fire that brought warmth and safety, people could make tools, eat and sleep, and communicate with each other. Gradually, a sense of “home” grew stronger, a place where women could care for children and where men returned from hunting.

Fire made humans independent of the climate, allowed them to settle on the surface of the Earth, and played a vital role in improving tools.

Despite the widespread use of fire, Homo erectus could not learn how to make it for a very long time, and perhaps he never learned this secret until the end of his existence. “Fire stones,” such as flint and iron pyrite, have not been found among the cultural remains of Homo erectus,

At this stage of human evolution, many physical features of ancient people continue to be under the control of natural selection, primarily associated with the development of the brain and the improvement of upright walking. However, along with biological factors evolution, new social patterns begin to emerge, which over time will become the most important in the existence of human society.

The use of fire, hunting travels, and the development of the ability to communicate to some extent prepared the spread of Homo erectus beyond the tropics. From Southeast Africa he moved to the Nile Valley, and from there to the north along the East Coast of the Mediterranean Sea. His remains were found in the east - on the island of Java and in China. What are the boundaries of the ancestral home of humanity, the territory where the separation of man from the animal state took place?

The ancestral home of humanity

Numerous finds in the south and especially in the east of Africa of very ancient (up to 5.5 million years old) remains of australopithecines, Homo habilis and the most ancient stone tools testify in favor of the African ancestral home of humanity. Of significant importance is the fact that Africa is home to the anthropoids closest to humans - chimpanzees and gorillas. Neither in Asia nor in Europe has such a complete evolutionary series of primates been discovered as in East Africa.

The findings of Dryopithecus and Ramapithecus in India and Pakistan, the remains of fossil apes close to Australopithecus discovered in Southern China and northern India, as well as the remains of the most ancient people - Pithecanthropus and Sinanthropus, speak in favor of the South Asian ancestral home.

At the same time, finds of fossil remains of ancient people made in Germany and Hungary. Czechoslovakia, testify in favor of including southern Europe within the boundaries of the settlement of ancient people. This is also evidenced by the discovery of the remains of a hunting camp in the Ballone grotto in southeastern France, which dates back up to 700 thousand years. Of great interest is the recent discovery in northeastern Hungary of the remains of Ramapithecine monkeys, which were on the path of hominization.

So, many researchers do not give preference to any of the three named continents, believing that the transformation of apes into people occurred in the process of their active adaptation to the most diverse and changing environmental conditions. Probably, the ancestral home of humanity was quite extensive, including a significant territory of Africa, Southern Europe, South and Southeast Asia. New discoveries of the bone remains of our ancestors constantly force us to expand the boundaries of the supposed ancestral home of humanity. It should be noted that America and Australia were inhabited by modern people who came from Asia. physical type no earlier than 30-35 thousand years ago.



When did that very moment “X” happen when ape stopped relating to the animal world after setting foot on the path human development? According to a number of scientists, the oldest of people is recognized Pithecanthropus, who fought for the survival of his own species 1.0 - 1.8 million years ago. It is precisely this upright type of Homo erectus that adherents of Darwin’s theory consider to be a transitional link separating the world of monkeys and humans, like us all. True, not all historians are in a hurry to reject the theory that Pithecanthropus belongs to an independent species of living beings that inhabited our planet, but for some reason ceased to exist 26 thousand years ago.

First sightings: signs of apes and humans

The sensational discovery of the first remains by the Dutch anatomist and physician E. Dubois shocked the scientific world in 1891. At first, the scientist himself could not believe in luck, and the molar tooth he found (the third upper one) hastened to be classified as a monkey, although the length and shape were clearly human.

Rice. 1 - Remains of Pithecanthropus, discovered by Dubois in Java in 1891-1893: cranial vault, tibia in two projections and teeth

But very soon, on the island of Java in Indonesia, at a depth of 15 meters, a tibia bone was dug up, leaving no doubt that it belonged to a person. But the skull found there bore obvious signs of a monkey. Final doubts regarding these finds as the remains of a single creature were dispelled with the discovery of complete skeletons. Judging by the skull, one cannot help but notice differences with the structure of similar parts of modern humans:

  • thickness of the cranial bone, several times greater in thickness;
  • low and sloping forehead;
  • flattened occiput;
  • brain volume is about 900 cubic meters. cm;
  • sharp movement of the jaw forward;
  • a relatively complicated structure of the brain with uneven development of different parts;
  • thickness and roughness of the supraorbital ridges.

Pithecanthropus brain although it has not reached the size characteristic of modern man, it is already noticeably larger than that of a monkey. The main feature of the body structure, indicating the upright posture of this creature, are the tibia, which are completely different from those of monkeys. Judging by their length, which was 45.5 cm, it could be assumed that the height of Pithecanthropus reached somewhere around 170 cm. And the straightness of the tibia, not curved, like in modern humans, as well as the convexity of the popliteal fossa (flat in representatives of our time ), indicates an imperfect gait. But, at the same time, all this directly indicates the ability of Pithecanthropus to walk, albeit waddling, but always straightened, and not on all four limbs, like animals.

Despite the primitiveness of the features of the skull, it was possible to notice an imprint of Broca's area on it, which clearly indicated the inclinations speech development. But judging by the absence of a chin protrusion, there was no need to talk about articulate speech. Most likely, Pithecanthropus built communication with his fellow tribesmen through some semblance of meaningfulness in pronouncing individual sounds.

Excavations on the shores of Lake Turkana in Kenya were pleased with an amazing discovery. During archaeological research that began in 1968 by Richard Leakey and his colleagues, a well-preserved skeleton of a twelve-year-old boy (Fig. 2) was discovered (in 1982), walking along the paths of our planet 1.6 million years ago. Like all representatives of that species, his skull is similar to that of a Neanderthal, but other bones of the skeleton are almost identical to the anatomy of modern humans. His size can be judged by his height of 170 cm, which, given his age of 12 years, is justifiably surprising. To commemorate the discovery of scientists, the state of Kenya (in 1982) issued a whole series of postage stamps depicting Pithecanthropus.

Rice. 2 - Boy from Turkana

Secrets of life and lifestyle of Pithecanthropus

If we talk about Pithecanthropus lifestyle(from the Greek pithekos - monkey and anthropos - man), then his main occupation was the tireless search for food. In addition to collecting roots, berries and other fruits from flora, which could not completely satiate their fellow tribesmen, they had to hunt mammals, both small and large in size. Similar in structure to the Javanese Pithecanthropus Dubois, finds discovered in 1054-55. on the African continent (Algeria), already made it possible to lift a certain veil of secrecy regarding the image of the inhabitants of that time. Next to the bones of humanoid creatures, parts of the skeleton of rhinoceroses, elephants, hippopotamuses and giraffes were found. Stone tools were also scattered here.

The danger that awaited the Pithecanthropes at every step forced them to live in villages. But judging by the spacious dwellings, several generations of a large family coexisted in one room. Unlike the modern way of life, Pithecanthropus did not have too strict divisions in sexual partnerships. But it happened that a certain male showed aggression in defense of a particular female, causing his relatives to retreat and leave them alone.

In addition, living in large groups made it easier to hunt large animals that were distinguished by their remarkable strength. In addition to hunting, these primitive creatures were engaged in fishing. But more often than not, they had to catch fish with their bare hands. Unlike Australopithecus monkeys, Pithecanthropus's hands could already handle wood, bones and stone. Working on the creation of primitive tools, they had to bring materials split naturally to relative perfection or split the stone on their own and make chips on it.

Rice. 3 - Lifestyle of Pithecanthropus

According to scientists, clashes often occurred in the Pithecanthropus society, often leading to the death of certain members of the community. In order to coexist peacefully even in such a primitive society, it was necessary to make efforts to curb primitive instincts. It was for this purpose that certain norms of behavior had to be observed, which made it possible to transition to new level development of coexistence for all relatives. To control the implementation of certain rules, there is a need for leaders who are assigned a leadership role.

If most of While the male half of the population spent their lives hunting, women took care of everyday life, raised children, and cared for the wounded and sick. Including Pithecanthropus meat in the daily diet helps solve the problem of providing the body with reliable sources of replenishing the energy reserves necessary to solve physically difficult tasks. And eating different plants is a great way to learn about them. healing properties, which can be considered the first steps towards healing. Moreover, science has evidence of collective care for sick fellow tribesmen.

Even in those distant primitive times, Pithecanthropus begins to realize the importance of hygienic skills, such as removing the remains of eaten animals from the habitat or burying deceased relatives. But in the absence of abstract thinking, at that period of human development, everything goes without special rituals and the cult of the dead.

Tools

The problems that had to be solved on a daily basis at that time forced the modification of known tools and the creation of new ones. For example: the usual choppers are being replaced by hand axes, and piercings, scrapers and even spears are appearing in everyday use. The discovery of tools belonging to Pithecanthropus in 1936 made famous an American by origin, geologist G. Koenigswald, who explored the town of Mojokerto near the city of Sangiran. It was to him that the Earth gave 3 jaws and 3 skulls, one of which belonged to a child.

In addition, this scientist dug up tools, albeit roughly processed, but with blade flakes. A hand ax was a boulder or a piece of flint, the processing of which consisted of applying great force blows from both sides. Trimming the edges Pithecanthropus learned to create heavy wedge-shaped weapons(length - 10-20 cm; weight - 0.5-1 kg). At first glance, the subtle difference between a hand chopper and a chopper actually lies in the stability of the shape and the clear separation of the working edge and the heel. In addition to the surface, chipped with small chips, ease of use also depended on the rounded end of the chopper, which could be grasped by hand.

Rice. 4 - Tools of Pithecanthropus

Forced to work on processing wood and bone, Pithecanthropus widely used tools made from flakes. To sew together pieces of skins and other materials, punctures were used. In addition, wooden tools were also preserved in the peat layers, due to the fragility of the material, which have reached us in very small quantities. As examples of the use of wood, we can recall the yew spear, which thousands of years ago served man for hunting elephants and other animals. The length of this weapon reached 215 cm. And in order to make the combat end more durable, it had to be burned at the stake.

Judging by the center of gravity of such a spear, shifted downward from the middle, one can draw a conclusion regarding its use as a pike, but not as a throwing weapon. But the Earth preserved for our contemporaries not only wooden spears, but also the remains of clubs, special sticks used for digging up roots.

Dwellings

To shelter from bad weather and ensure the relative safety of their loved ones, Pithecanthropus was forced to settle in natural shelters (caves, grottoes, tree hollows). Besides, Pithecanthropus has already learned to build primitive dwellings from branches, resting on central pillars, prudently covered with the skins of killed animals. The dimensions of such dwellings are impressive, since their length reaches 15 meters, and the width, in almost all cases, is at least 5 meters. Not counting children, 25-30 adults could easily fit here.

Rice. 5 - Pithecanthropus's home

The skills of constructing primitive housing greatly facilitated the living conditions of nomadic life, which Pithecanthropus was forced to resort to when looking for sources of food. Judging by the excavations, already at that time people had the skills to use fire. This is exactly what can be judged from the remains of hearths made of stone. Moreover, such evidence is not isolated; it can be observed in a variety of settlements.

Migration

One can only speculate why Pithecanthropus, content with its habitat African continent, after 1.2 million years suddenly began to populate the territory of Eurasia. Penetration into the vast expanses of modern Europe dates back 700 thousand years to the present day. This event is evidenced by excavations in Germany (near Heidelberg), which ended with the discovery of the lower jaw of a physically developed, young Pithecanthropus. And in 1965, during archaeological research at the Vertescelles site (Hungary), science was enriched with another occipital bone of Pithecanthropus with a fairly developed brain. Evidence of the existence of Pithecanthropus is found throughout Europe. Our Fatherland is no exception.