Our land 50,000 years ago
During the third ice age, the outlines of Europe were completely different, not the same as now. Geologists point to differences in the position of land, seas and coastlines on the map. Vast areas to the west and northwest, now covered by the waters of the Atlantic, were then land, the North Sea and the Irish Sea were river valleys. The ice cap, which covered both poles of the Earth, pulled huge masses of water from the oceans, and the sea level dropped steadily, exposing vast tracts of land. Now they are under water again.
The Mediterranean then may have been a vast valley below the general sea level. In the valley itself there were two inland seas cut off from the ocean by land. The climate of the Mediterranean basin was probably moderately cold. The region of the Sahara, located to the south, was then not a desert with hot stones and sand dunes, but a humid and fertile area.
Between the glacier to the north and the Mediterranean Valley and the Alps to the south, a wild, dull edge stretched, the climate of which changed from severe to relatively mild, and with the onset of the fourth ice age again became harsher.
The advancement of the glacier southward reached its maximum in the fourth ice age (about 50,000 years ago), and then this process began to decline again.
The first Neanderthals
In the earlier third ice age, small groups of the first Neanderthals roamed this plain, leaving behind nothing that could now be evidence of their presence (other than the crudely hewn primary stone tools). Perhaps, in addition to the Neanderthals, at that time there were also other species of great apes, anthropoids, who could use stone tools. This we can only assume. Apparently they had many different wooden implements. By studying and using a variety of pieces of wood, they learned how to give the desired shape and stones.
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After the weather conditions became extremely unfavorable, the Neanderthals began to seek shelter in caves and rock crevices. It looks like they already knew how to use fire then. Neanderthals gathered around open fires on the plains, trying not to move very far from water sources. They were already intelligent enough to adapt to new, more difficult conditions. As for the ape-like people, then, as you can see, they could not withstand the tests of the coming fourth ice age (the coarsest, poorly processed tools were no longer met).
It was not only humans who sought shelter in the caves. During this period, there were cave lions, cave bears, cave hyenas. The man had to somehow drive these animals out of the caves and not let them back. Fire was an effective means of attack and defense. The first people did not go too deep into the caves, because they could not yet illuminate their homes. They climbed into the depths just enough to be able to hide from the weather and store food supplies. Maybe they were blocking the cave entrance with heavy boulders. The only light source that helped explore the depths of the caves could be torchlight.
Who were the Neanderthals hunting?
It was very difficult to kill such huge animals as a mammoth, a cave bear or even a reindeer with the weapons that the Neanderthals had: wooden spears, clubs, sharp fragments of flint that have survived to our time.
Probably, smaller animals served as prey for the Neanderthals, although on occasion they, of course, ate the meat of large animals. We know that the Neanderthals partially ate their prey in the place where they managed to kill it, and then took large marrow bones with them to the caves, split them and ate. Among the various bone debris at the sites of the Neanderthals, there are almost no ridges or ribs of large animals, but in large numbers there are split or shattered marrow bones.
Neanderthals wrapped themselves in the skins of killed animals. It is also likely that their women were engaged in dressing these skins using stone scrapers.
We also know that these people were right-handed, just like modern people, because the left side of their brain (responsible for the right side of the body) is larger than the right. The occipital lobes of the Neanderthals' brains, which are responsible for vision, touch and general condition of the body, were quite well developed, while the frontal lobes associated with thinking and speaking were still relatively small. The brain of the Neanderthal was no less than that of modern man, but it was arranged differently.
Without a doubt, the thinking of these homo representatives was not like ours. And the point is not even that they were simpler or more primitive than us. Neanderthals are a completely different evolutionary line. It is likely that they were absolutely unable to speak or uttered fragmentary monosyllabic sounds. They certainly didn't have anything that could be called coherent speech.
How a Neanderthal lived
Fire was a real treasure at that time. Having lost the fire, it was not so easy to light it up again. When there was no need for a large flame, it was extinguished, raking up the fire in one heap. They made a fire, most likely by striking a piece of iron pyrite on flint over a heap of dry leaves and grass. In England, inclusions of pyrite and flint are found next to each other where chalk rocks and clays coexist.
Homo neanderthalensis
Women and children needed to constantly monitor the fire so that the flame did not go out. From time to time they went in search of dry dead wood to keep the fire going. This occupation gradually developed into a custom.
The only adult male in each group of Neanderthals was probably an elder. Besides him there were also women, boys and girls. But when one of the teenagers became old enough to make the leader jealous, he pounced on the opponent and drove him out of the herd or killed him. When the leader was over forty, when his teeth were worn out and his strength left him, one of the young men killed the old leader and began to rule in his place. There was no room for the elderly at the fire. At that time, the weak and the sick faced only one fate - death.
What did the tribe eat in the parking lots?
Primitive people are usually depicted as hunters of mammoths, bears or lions. But it is unlikely that a primitive savage could hunt an animal the largest of a hare, rabbit or rat. Rather, someone hunted a man than he was a hunter himself.
Primitive savages were both herbivorous and carnivorous at the same time. They ate hazelnuts and groundnuts, beech nuts, edible chestnuts, and acorns. They also collected wild apples, pears, cherries, wild plums and thorns, rose hips, rowan and hawthorn, mushrooms; they ate the buds, where they were larger and softer, and also ate juicy fleshy rhizomes and underground shoots of various plants.
On occasion, they did not pass by bird nests, taking eggs and chicks, picking out the combs and honey of wild bees. Newts, frogs and snails were eaten. They ate fish, alive and asleep, freshwater molluscs. Primitive people easily caught fish with their hands, entangling it in seaweed or diving after it. Larger birds or smaller animals could be caught by knocking down with a stick or arranging primitive snares. The savage did not refuse from snakes, worms and crayfish, as well as from the larvae of various insects and caterpillars. The most delicious and nutritious prey, without a doubt, were bones, crushed and ground into powder.
Primitive man would not protest if his meat was not the first freshness for lunch. He constantly searched for and found carrion; even half-decomposed, it still went into food. By the way, the craving for moldy and semi-moldy foods persists to this day.
In difficult conditions, driven by hunger, primitive people ate their weaker relatives or sick children who happened to be lame, ugly.
No matter how primitive primitive man may seem to us now, it is possible to call him the most advanced of all animals, because he represented the highest stage of development of the animal kingdom.
No matter how much more ancient Paleolithic people did with their dead, there is reason to believe that later homo neanderthalensis did it at least with respect to the deceased and accompanied the process with a certain rite. One of the most famous Neanderthal skeletons found is that of a young man whose body may have even been deliberately buried.
Human and Neanderthal Skull
The skeleton lay in a sleeping position. The head and right forearm rested on several pieces of flint, carefully arranged like a pillow. Near the head was a large hand ax, and around were scattered many charred, split bovine bones, as if left after a funeral.
Throughout Europe, Neanderthals roamed, camped around campfires and died over a period spanning 100,000 years or more. Moving higher and higher along the evolutionary ladder, these people improved, straining their limited abilities. But the thick cranium seemed to fetter the creative powers of the brain, and to the very end the Neanderthal remained a low-browed, undeveloped creature.
There is an opinion of scientists that the Neanderthal type of man, homo neanderthalensis, is an extinct species that did not mix with people of the modern type (homo sapiens). But many of the scientists do not share this point of view. Some prehistoric skulls are viewed by them as the result of mixing Neanderthals with other types of primitive people.
One thing is absolutely clear - the Neanderthal was on a completely different evolutionary line.
Last Paleolithic people
When Tasmania was discovered by the Dutch, they found there a tribe isolated from the rest of the world, which in terms of development almost did not differ from the people of the Lower Paleolithic times. The Tasmanians were not the same type of people as the Neanderthals: this is proved by the structure of their skulls, cervical vertebrae, teeth and jaws. They had no generic resemblance to the Neanderthals. They were of the same species as us.
The Tasmanians represented only the Neanderthaloid stage of development in the evolution of modern humans. There is no doubt that over the course of many millennia (during which only scattered groups of Neanderthals were human beings in Europe), somewhere in other regions of the planet, modern humans developed in parallel with the Neanderthals.
The level of development, which turned out to be the limit for the Neanderthals, was only a starting point for others, while among the Tasmanians it remained in its original, unchanged form. Finding themselves far from those with whom one could compete or from whom one could learn, living in conditions that do not require constant exertion of forces, Tasmanians involuntarily found themselves behind the rest of humanity. But even in these margins of civilization, man did not stop in his development. The Tasmanians of the early 19th century were far less clumsy and undeveloped than their primitive counterparts.
Rhodesian skull
Summer 1921 - a rather interesting find was found in one of the caves in the Broken Hill area, South Africa. It was a skull without a lower jaw and several bones of a new species of homo (Rhodesian man), intermediate between the Neanderthal and homo sapiens. The skull is only slightly mineralized; apparently its owner lived only a few thousand years ago.
The discovered creature resembled a Neanderthal. But the structure of his body did not have specific Neanderthal characteristics. The skull, neck, teeth and limbs of a Rhodesian man did not differ much from modern ones. We do not know anything about the structure of his palms. But the size of the upper jaw and its surface show that the lower jaw was very massive, and the powerful brow ridges gave their owner an ape-like appearance.
Obviously, it was a human being with a monkey face. It could well have lasted until the appearance of a real person and even exist in parallel with him in South Africa.
In several places in South Africa, the remains of people of the so-called Boscopic type were also found, very ancient, but how much has not yet been reliably established. The skulls of the Boscopic people were more like the skulls of modern Bushmen than the skulls of any other peoples living now. It is possible that these are the most ancient human beings known to us.
Skulls found in Vadiak (Java), shortly before the discovery of the remains of Pithecanthropus, could very likely fill the gap between Rhodesian man and Australoid aborigines.
Wells Herbert