Humanity is already 300 thousand years old, but its behavior has changed little since primitive times. What skills and advantages have enabled him to become the "crown of nature"? Did our ancestors interbreed with Neanderthals and Denisovans - other types of ancient people? Where are the last purebred Homo sapiens left on the planet now? How did the ancient migrations of the Ice Age help shape modern society? All these questions were answered by Doctor of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor of the Faculty of History of Moscow State University named after M. V. Lomonosov Vladislav Zhitenev.
Troglodytes with gadgets
You once said that the deeper we study the past of humanity, including through archeology, the more understandable its current behavior becomes. What did you mean?
Vladislav Zhitenev: The fact that the primitive people who lived in the Upper Paleolithic, in their behavior, were not much different from the modern ones. For about 300 thousand years of human existence, the past constantly covers it with its shadow. This happens in different ways and sometimes manifests itself in the most unexpected situations.
Take jewelry. Just as primitive people were weighed down with all sorts of trinkets, so in many of today's cultures, jewelry remains specific markers of success and prosperity. Moreover, this applies not even to a specific person, but to the whole family. It is such a non-verbal language to communicate status and well-being. We know cases when people spend almost all of their money on buying jewelry or a very expensive car, although they live in old shabby apartments.
Frame: the film Blue Lagoon.
And even when in these apartments for the last money they make luxurious repairs in the style of "expensive and rich".
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Also a good example. Yes, all these are signs of archaic forms of behavior. But the word “archaic” should be used here not in a negative sense, but in a neutral connotation - in the meaning of “very ancient”. But it's not just about human behavior. The very structure of society with its differences in the social roles of individuals - everything that began to form in the Paleolithic - in many of its basic characteristics still remains unchanged.
But what about social elevators?
They've been talked about a lot lately, but in most cases they only work up to a certain limit. This is how it was in primitive society, this is how it remained in antiquity and the Middle Ages, and this is largely preserved today.
As an archaeologist, can you give a specific example of such social attitudes that existed already in the Paleolithic?
In 2017, our colleagues published new paleogenetic studies of the famous Sungir burials, created more than 30 thousand years ago. Several burials were found there, including an adult man and two adolescents buried at the same time. Near one of the boys (as it was recently revealed that his death was violent), another man's bone lies separately. As paleogenetics recently found out, the child was a close relative - perhaps a great-grandfather or great-great-grandfather.
The analysis of the bones from the burial gave an amazing result. The man and one of the adolescents ate meat regularly, but the other boy and his relative, whose bone was found next to him, ate mostly only invertebrates and plant foods throughout their lives.
And what does this mean?
Signs of such a severe restriction in nutrition, perhaps, give us reason to believe that at an early stage in the development of practically modern humanity, family traditions already existed associated with a certain social role in society.
So this vegan boy was a hereditary priest?
Or a conventional shaman. We have a poor idea of their life, so any terminology here is conditional. Using the example of today's clergy, one can imagine how the process of this voluntary self-restraint takes place. But such findings clearly show that a significant part of the phenomena inherent in modern society were formed in the pre-literary era.
Primitive toilet
It turns out that a modern person psychologically remains the same troglodyte, only with gadgets?
That's a very difficult question. Neuroscientists would say better about psychology.
I mean that the touch of civilization in humanity is still thin.
This is unconditional. At least the entire world history of the 20th century speaks volumes about this. And even now we are not far away. Recently, for example, one colleague (I will emphasize right away that he is not from Moscow State University) wrote a denunciation against me. However, after a while he calmly shook my hand and smiled sweetly. But who would have thought that this person was capable of such a thing? Moreover, he is one of those whom we call "decent people with good faces and smart eyes."
But you are right - if you compare the behavior of modern people with primitive, then there are very few differences. This is what I can tell you as an archaeologist.
Can you give examples? Remember the perestroika film "Two arrows"? It was probably a satire on late Soviet society, but there this similarity is very clearly shown.
It's not just herd instinct as demonstrated in this film. There are also positive examples. For example, the Upper Paleolithic man always cleaned up after himself. At the studied sites of primitive people, we see that they regularly swept their territory, and put garbage in a separate place. And they did not arrange a toilet in their homes either.
Frame: film Two arrows. Stone Age detective.
Did you run into the forest?
We cannot say for sure, but it is clear that for such needs they moved away from the places where they lived. Even then, as far as possible, people tried to maintain personal and public hygiene. There are other examples of similar similarities. In the French cave of La Marsh, amazing drawings have been preserved, made about 15 thousand years ago. Some of them are very similar to modern caricatures, when the primitive artist deliberately gave hypertrophied forms to individual features of the body or face.
It turns out that already at that time people were drawing on each other something like modern caricatures. Selfless concern for others is also a very ancient phenomenon. Moreover, it is characteristic not only of modern humans, but also of their closest relatives.
Who? Neanderthals?
Yes. Take the burial of an elderly Neanderthal in the Shanidar Cave in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan. As specialists found out, throughout his difficult life he was disabled: in childhood he lost an arm, then gradually became blind and deaf, and then moved worse and worse. But it is clear that his relatives looked after him, otherwise he would never have lived to be 45-50 years old. Therefore, our previous ideas about Neanderthals are not entirely fair.
This word is still often used as a curse word.
Not so much even as a curse, but to demonstrate their intellectual or moral superiority.
Here's another example from Shanidar Cave. There is also an interesting burial of a young (20-25 years old) hunter from another group of Neanderthals. When he died, they put him on a mattress stuffed with herbs, and a hill of several hundred kilograms of flowers was poured on top. It made no practical sense. Moreover, in order to bring these flowers to the grave, one had to walk at least a kilometer.
This means that we can already talk about a certain ritual. We are all accustomed to flowers in cemeteries, but we do not realize how ancient this is, containing deep beginnings, including aesthetic ones.
The secret of Homo sapiens success
Since you have already started talking about Neanderthals, let's continue about them. Why did not they or Denisovans survive on the planet and began to dominate, but our ancestors - Cro-Magnons?
Science does not yet know the final answer to this question. Obviously, we are talking about a combination of several large factors. First, when mankind was still leaving Africa during the Upper Paleolithic revolution (70-90 thousand years ago), it sharply expanded the ecological niche it used.
What does this mean?
Relatively speaking, people have adapted to eat everything and live everywhere. They learned to eat a wide variety of resources, including those harvested from the water. The social structure has clearly changed - hence the emergence of primitive art. From the found decorations, ornaments of tools and household items, we see that we are not talking about social stratification, but about a qualitative social breakthrough, the scale of which science still has little idea.
That is, in comparison with other types of people, ancient mankind then somehow internally changed. And what is the second?
Secondly, compared to most Neanderthals living in small groups, Homo sapiens came to exogamy - a conscious rejection of closely related crosses.
But we know examples of some of the royal dynasties of Ancient Egypt, where incest was widely practiced.
Such cases did happen in the history of mankind, and even much later, but these are exceptions that confirm the general rule. In addition, the examples you cited led to sad results - all these dynasties eventually degenerated. In general, exogamy has significantly increased the genetic stability of our population - and humanity is still holding on to it.
How did this rule come about?
Science does not yet know this. Perhaps, unlike the small groups of Neanderthals, primitive people simply could afford it. They lived in separate groups, united in large tribes of 250-400 people, which sharply reduced the likelihood of closely related interbreeding.
Why did our ancestors live in such large communities?
This is the third reason. Most likely, thanks to the communication and communication skills formed in the process of powerful internal social reformatting. Communication is the key to our success and survival as a species. But it must be multifaceted and multidimensional: within a family, clan, tribe, or between larger communities.
Frame: film Million years BC.
Moreover, in communications between different communities, not only verbal but also non-verbal language plays a huge role. This is important for identification in the "friend or foe" coordinate system. And now it constantly manifests itself. Take, for example, when ships under different flags meet at sea or football fans collide with the symbols of rival clubs in the subway.
And, finally, fourthly, external factors strongly influenced ancient mankind. As recent paleogenetic studies have found out, genes derived from Neanderthals and Denisovans helped our ancestors to survive.
When they became brothers to us
That is, unlike close relatives, primitive people did not have a ban on interbreeding with them?
Yes, such crosses have brought them benefits, although it is from the Neanderthals that we inherited allergies and schizophrenia. The genes received from Neanderthals and Denisovans gave our ancestors the necessary vaccinations against hitherto unknown diseases and additional opportunities for the body. Who knows, if not for this, they would be able to adapt so successfully to the various natural and climatic conditions of the planet.
Do all humans have Neanderthal and Denisovan genes?
Almost all, but very few and in different ways. The irony is that for the champions of the so-called "racial purity" modern science is giving unexpected conclusions.
What kind? Isn't that right?
Rather, the opposite is true. Paleogenetics have proved that genetically the only purebred representatives of the species Homo sapiens live only in South Africa. These are Bushmen and related speakers of the Khoisan (so-called "clicking") groups of languages, whose ancestors never left the continent.
When these data were obtained relatively recently, geneticists faced another bioethical problem, because of which they did not dare to publish the results of their research for a long time. The fact is that almost all of humanity has Neanderthal genes. But traces of genes of Denisovans can be traced only in the indigenous population of East Asia.
Scientists feared that this data could become a weapon of racists?
Sure. Although, in fact, the contribution of the Denisovans to our genome is so insignificant that it gives no reason to talk about different subspecies of humanity. Two men who grew up in the same village, and whose ancestors also lived in it for several generations, are genetically different from each other more than the conventional Chinese from the conventional Irish. Even human races do not reach the subspecies - they differ only in the population characteristics of their representatives living in different regions of the world.
Is it true that the last Neanderthals lived in Gibraltar 15,000 years ago?
This is a controversial issue. If quite recently it was believed that the last Neanderthals disappeared 28-30 thousand years ago, now in the scientific world, under the influence of new data, a revision of previous dates is gradually taking place. Although many colleagues adhere to conservative ideas and believe that Neanderthals and our ancestors often crossed paths.
I am inclined to believe that by the time Homo sapiens migrated to Eurasia, there were already few Neanderthals left, so they could live in so-called refugia (mountain-forest shelters), practically without colliding with our ancestors. Similar refugia were found not only in Spain, but also in the Caucasus and Siberia, where the Neanderthals lived in an isolated state for a long time.
On a historical scale, 15 thousand years ago is the day before yesterday.
Sure. It's like with mammoths - we are used to thinking that they became extinct about 10-12 thousand years ago. But not so long ago it turned out that on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean, individual populations of mammoths survived until about 4 thousand years ago, when colossal pyramids were already being built in Ancient Egypt.
Cave Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals
It seems that in the past the dominant view was that our ancestors drove out or destroyed the Neanderthals.
That is unlikely. The latest archaeological evidence suggests that in the Paleolithic, people of the modern species mastered Eurasia not at all the way Europeans colonized America in modern times. It is not yet clear that Homo sapiens conquered the space of the planet with "fire and sword", destroying their former inhabitants. Although there could be some local clashes and conflicts, this cannot be completely ruled out.
There is also a theory that the Neanderthals were killed by a catastrophic natural disaster. For example, a powerful volcanic eruption in the Phlegrean fields in Italy about 40 thousand years ago.
At about the same time, the eruption happened not only in Italy, but also in the Carpathians and the Caucasus. It was a whole series of catastrophic natural events that caused a volcanic winter in Europe.
It's hard to say how all this affected the Neanderthal population. We know one thing for sure - Homo sapiens after that cataclysm not only survived, but also continued to develop.
And the Neanderthals?
I don’t think that this factor alone caused them to disappear. They were perfectly adapted to the harsh conditions of Eurasia during the last ice age.
Better than our ancestors?
Sure. Neanderthals were stronger and more resilient, but modern humans were better able to adapt. They expanded their diet, turned out to be more united, and also adopted the necessary biological characteristics from the Neanderthals to survive in the cold climate of Eurasia.
Frame: film Battle for Fire.
You have been studying the Kapova Cave in the South Urals for ten years now and once told that it has a lot in common with the caves in Spain and France.
Yes it is.
Does this mean that during the Ice Age, a single ethnocultural community existed throughout this vast space? That even then there was “Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals”, which Charles de Gaulle dreamed of?
Everything is a little more complicated here. Several years ago, I compared our data on found jewelry from the Upper Paleolithic era in Central and Eastern Europe with the research of French colleagues. As a result, it turned out that Western Europe (including Italy), Central and Eastern Europe differed significantly in the nature of the decorations, although their basic set was similar.
But recently, scientists have discovered two large caves in the Balkans, and even earlier in the Carpathians. It turned out that in the caves of the Franco-Cantabrian region (as in archeology it is customary to call the north of Spain and the south of France - approx. "Lenta.ru"), and in the Balkan and Carpathian caves, and in the Kapova cave in the South Urals, a similar style of wall paintings. Thanks to the hard work of the students from Moscow State University, our expedition found out on a number of grounds that the behavior of people in the sanctuaries of the Capova Cave was the same as in the caves of Spain and France.
That is, in spite of individual local peculiarities, something still united the people who lived in this vast space?
Yes. Imagine a modern Russian Orthodox man from Kostroma who finds himself in Africa at the Zulu festival. He will feel uncomfortable and will not know how to behave. But if this person comes to Ethiopia, he will not experience any discomfort in a local Christian church, just as he will not feel it in any Catholic cathedral somewhere in Latin America. There are differences, and they are significant, but at a basic level, there is something in common.
It was the same in the Upper Paleolithic. An analysis of recent finds allows us to conclude that primitive people migrated long distances - much further than we previously thought. In most cases, the caves with wall paintings served people not as dwellings, but as sanctuaries and gathering centers for representatives of the surrounding tribes to solve social and other pressing issues.
Secrets of the Kapova cave
In what direction did these migrations take place in Europe?
In different periods of human history, migrations were carried out in different directions. The level of communication of primitive people requires further comprehensive study. If we talk about the Upper Paleolithic, then on the basis of recent finds, it can be assumed that the movement of people, carriers of knowledge about cave sanctuaries, went from west to east - from the Pyrenees through the Balkans and the Carpathians towards the Urals.
What gives you reason to think so?
We see that these traditions of ritual behavior and wall painting arose, developed and modified precisely in the caves of Western Europe. And in the Kapova cave, they appeared ready-made. This is what can be said at the present moment, although excavations there continue to this day, and we have not yet explored its lower layers.
I can talk about all this for a long time. The excavation at Kapova Cave is an incredibly entertaining and sometimes dramatic plot. Kapova Cave is a national treasure of our country. Therefore, we are obliged to protect and preserve it both for our descendants and for future generations of researchers.
What specific finds in Kapova Cave provide evidence of long-distance migrations of primitive people?
Back in the 1980s, a Leningrad expedition led by Vyacheslav Evgenievich Shchelinsky discovered in the Kapova Cave ornaments made of shells that had obviously got there from afar. Then the malacologists found out where exactly - from the Volga-Caspian region. Of course, there was a possibility that these shells appeared in the cave as a result of inter-tribal exchange, but the question of their origin remained open.
When in 2017 our colleagues, who were working on clearing one of the walls of the cave from calcite incrustations (this is a separate story), accidentally discovered an image of a wild bactrian camel, everything fell into place. It is clear that only the person who actually saw it could draw the camel so plausibly. But paleozoologists unequivocally said that camels were not found in the South Urals at the end of the Ice Age - they lived near the Caspian coast.
Image of a camel in the Kapova cave of the Upper Paleolithic era. Photo: Moscow State University named after M. V. Lomonosov.
Modern people think that they have only now become mobile and able to travel long distances. And that their ancestors used to always sit in one place and never went beyond their village. But now we see that everything is much more complicated. The primitive world was closely connected with a variety of contacts. And indeed, Homo sapiens could not have populated almost the entire planet if it had not once left Africa.
So the history of mankind is a continuous history of migrations?
Here, too, everything is more complicated. Humanity is constantly in an unstable state, since its representatives differ greatly in their basic characteristics and life attitudes. There are people for whom it will always be interesting to know what is beyond the horizon. They have a craving for travel and wanderlust.
But there are many who do not care at all. Even in Moscow, we know examples when some residents of the so-called "sleeping areas" rarely go to the center, because they simply do not need it. I do not want to assess what is good and what is bad here - just people are arranged in different ways, everyone has their own psychotype. Perhaps this complexity makes us stronger.
Putin and Arkaim
Kapova cave, where you work, is located near another archaeological site - Arkaim. Is this really a unique object or was its significance deliberately inflated during the years of perestroika so that a reservoir would not be built on this territory?
Arkaim became a clear and illustrative example of how a new archaeological site was first popularized not very competently, and then they corrected their mistake and now they do it correctly. In the late 1980s, Soviet archaeologists discovered ancient settlements from the Bronze Age, which can indeed be called cities.
Apparently their inhabitants were well versed in stargazing. In fact, this is a unique culture that still requires further and comprehensive study. And here's what's interesting. After climatic changes (according to one version), the population of these cities, along with other representatives of the Andronov culture, migrated to the south and, according to some of my colleagues, reached India.
At one time, Arkaim was often compared with Mohenjo-Daro, Sumer and Ancient Egypt.
This is certainly not the case. These are all overblown sensations long debunked by science. Just in the early 1990s, to find money for further excavations, local archaeologists, unfortunately, contacted just about anyone. To finance further research of Arkaim, they decided to promote it, so all sorts of esoterics and other strange people quickly appeared in it.
And where the "connection with the astral" and all sorts of aliens begins, drugs inevitably appear, especially since the border with Kazakhstan is not far. Everyone suffered from the unfavorable background associated with this scourge: both archaeologists and local residents. But then the problem was solved.
How?
Paradoxically, Putin's visit to Arkaim in 2005 helped. When they were preparing for it, all drug addicts were quickly cleared out of there. And now Arkaim is an exemplary historical and cultural reserve, where scientific popularization is carried out competently and correctly.
Archaeologist Gennady Zdanovich and Vladimir Putin in Arkaim. Photo: Sergey Guneev / RIA Novosti.
New discoveries in science often not so much answer old questions as raise new ones. What questions have arisen after the latest archaeological finds, including in the Kapova Cave?
We will have to deal with the issues of ancient migrations for a long time. Another area of our future research is the study of the behavior of people of the Paleolithic era, their daily activities and rituals. It is necessary to find out how primitive society was actually arranged.
All this is important for understanding modern society - what our conversation began with. We are accustomed to the hierarchical structure of society, formed according to the principle of a pyramid. But we would like to know: was humanity originally arranged this way, or did alternative social technologies exist in our distant past?
As we study individual finds in the Kapova Cave, we come close to some of the answers. It takes more time to comprehend and analyze the material received. Then, probably, we will draw certain conclusions, collecting the necessary evidence base for this, and present them to the judgment of our colleagues.
Can you share at least some of these findings?
Besides what I told you, not yet. Let our colleagues find out about it first. I will only say one thing - most likely, many of the now widespread ideas about our ancestors are not only simplified, but also schematic.
Interviewed by Andrey Mozzhukhin
