Pithecanthropus or ape-man ("Javanese man") is a fossil subspecies of man, at one time considered as an intermediate link in evolution between Australopithecus and Neanderthal.
Homo erectus
Still some half a century ago, the problem of classifying fossil hominids seemed to pose no difficulty, and the simplest scheme that illustrates the origin of modern man was in any school textbook: monkey - ape - man. True, none of the draftsmen of the schemes did not know what this very "ape-man" was - the notorious "missing link in the evolutionary chain." At different times, different researchers assigned this role to Australopithecus, a "skillful man", etc., but all these candidates were quickly discarded by life itself. And soon the scientific world almost unanimously rejected this very scheme, as primitive as Australopithecus.
Perhaps, only one ancient delusion, according to which the well-known Pithecanthropus was the first "real" representative of the human race, was able to hold out the longest, he is a Homo erectus! (Homo erectus).
Where did the "missing link" come from?
The discovery of Pithecanthropus is associated with the name of the Dutch physician and anatomist Professor Eugene Dubois (1858–1940). Like many of his contemporaries, Dubois was heavily influenced by Darwinism, of which the naturalist and philosopher Ernst Haeckel was a fierce propagandist at the time. Based purely on speculative reasoning, Haeckel drew the "evolutionary tree" of man, on which he placed a certain fantastic creature, which he called "the non-speaking monkey man." This figment of the imagination was intended to represent the missing link in the evolutionary chain between animals and humans.
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Haeckel's scheme, in fact, did not differ in any way from the geographical maps of the Middle Ages, on which the scholastics who had never been and had never seen anything with confidence placed the "Islands of the Blessed", "The Land of the One-legged", Gog and Magog, dog-headed people, 4-eyed Ethiopians and other rubbish. But since there were no other maps, travelers and mariners had no choice but to use these, as a result of which some died, while others accidentally discovered America, being sure that India was in front of them. The wretched schemas of Darwinists have played exactly the same role in the history of paleoanthropology.
Discovery history
Inspired by the problem of the "missing link", Dubois decided to find it by all means. But where to find it? The evolution of man from monkeys took place, most likely, in the tropics, argued Dubois, because it is there that the great apes still live today!
Armed with this, frankly, controversial idea, Dubois in 1884 began a search in the Sunda Islands (Indonesia). 7 years of fruitless work were eventually crowned with success: in 1891, near the village of Trinil (Java Island), Dubois found his right upper molar and part of the brain box of a creature, which he initially took for an apes. A year later, the left shinbone fell into the hands of Dubois. As an experienced anatomist, he realized at first glance that he was looking at the remains of a fossil man - just a man, not a monkey!
And then the thought came to him: what if we correlate this find with the previous one? After a careful study of the remains, there was no longer any doubt: they belonged to a creature of the same species, and this species could not be anything other than a very archaic and primitive, but still a man! Yes, the cranial cover is still very sloping, the supraorbital ridge is strongly developed, but the tooth is undoubtedly human, and the tibia clearly indicates the straightened bipedal gait of its owner.
Dubois decided that the long-awaited "missing link in evolution" had been found. There were no problems with determining the age of the find: the geological layer in which the remains that he discovered lay formed in the Middle Pleistocene and in terms of occurrence level approximately corresponded to the second ice age in the Northern Hemisphere - that is, the creature found by Dubois lived on Earth about 700 thousand years ago.
Invaluable discovery
1894 - Dubois published a detailed report on his find, calling his ape-man "Pithecanthropus erectus". Since that time, Pithecanthropus, sometimes called the "Javanese man", has become a true classic of paleoanthropology. But his discoverer had to take a full sip of grief with him. Just as it later happened with Darth, Dubois's discovery came under fierce attacks from scientific opponents.
At first, the researcher tried to defend his point of view alone, but then, hunted from all sides, he fell into despair, stopped publishing and hid his find in a safe, not allowing even specialists to approach it. And when, a few years later, the whole world recognized him as right, Dubois issued a statement in which he renounced his initial views, declaring them "unfounded." The unfortunate "father of Pithecanthropus" died during the Second World War, never realizing that he had made one of the most important discoveries in the history of human evolution.
New finds
New remains of Pithecanthropus were found only more than 40 years after the discovery of Dubois. The famous paleoanthropologist, Dutchman of German origin Gustav von Königswald in 1937 discovered a juvenile, that is, a child's, skull near the village of Mojokerto (East Java), which he unmistakably attributed to the human race. The age of the find was about 1 million years.
Description of Pithecanthropus
Then new finds followed. Thorough and continuous study of them dispelled the last doubts: Pithecanthropus is undoubtedly one of the earliest representatives of the genus Homo. Pithecanthropus was 165–175 cm tall and did not differ in any way from modern humans in terms of movement. True, he was clearly not burdened with intellect: the cranium, even in comparison with Australopithecus, looks somewhat heavy, although it is quite large (brain volume is about 880-900 cm3); the forehead is low, sloping; the supraorbital ridge protrudes forward and hangs heavily over the orbits. The jaws are massive (while the lower jaw is longer than that of a modern person), the chin is sharply cut. But the entire jaw apparatus looks absolutely "human".
In general, according to most of the signs, Pithecanthropus actually stands halfway between Australopithecus and modern man. And it could be considered the “missing link”. But…
Finds at Zhoukoudian Cave
The new findings have forced the scientific world to greatly hesitate in the belief that Pithecanthropus is the direct ancestor of modern man, although initially the future of this theory seemed cloudless. But in 1918-1927. Swedish scientists J. Anderson and B. Bolin found in China, in a limestone cave near the village of Zhoukoudian (about 40 km southeast of Beijing), the teeth of a fossil anthropoid. One of these teeth fell on the table of a professor at the Beijing Medical Institute, Englishman Davidson Black, and seemed very familiar to him. After rummaging through his memory, Professor Black recalled that he had seen something similar among the "dragon teeth" sold in pharmacies that sold traditional Chinese medicines. The dragon teeth vendors also named Zhoukoudian Cave as their place of origin.
Human ancestor, Pithecanthropus or Sinanthropus?
After carefully examining the finds, Black determined that they belonged to a primitive man standing quite close to the Javanese Pithecanthropus. The scientist christened him Sinanthropus, or "Peking Man".
New excavations undertaken in the Zhoukoudian Black cave, and later by other researchers, have revealed the remains of more than forty individuals of Sinanthropus - old and young, male and female. Their age was about 400-500 thousand years. But this entire unique collection disappeared without a trace in 1937. It was said that the ship on which the finds were transported from China to the United States came under fire from Japanese warships and sank. According to another version, the remains of fossil creatures on the mainland were destroyed by Japanese soldiers. After the war, scientists tried to find traces of the disappeared collection, but, alas, to no avail.
Meanwhile, the Zhoukoudian cave, up to the very last days, does not cease to regularly "supply" more and more remains of Sinanthropus - teeth, bones, fragments of skulls, etc. Many primitive stone tools have also been found there - flakes, chops, scrapers, etc. However, the most important discovery was a huge fireplace: it turned out that Sinanthropus already knew how to use fire!
However, he, most likely, did not know how to mine it: a colossal accumulation of ash and coal six meters thick led the researchers to the idea that the inhabitants of the cave, most likely, brought a flaming branch from a forest fire that happened in the neighborhood, and then for many years supported him. It is even difficult to say how many generations of Sinanthropus could have changed at this "eternal flame".
Without a doubt, such a lifestyle required some communication skills from the primitive herd. It is not yet necessary to speak of articulate speech, but Sinanthropus, in any case, knew how to think and convey certain information to his fellow tribesmen and, therefore, was already in many respects a man. However, this could not prevent him from devouring his own kind with appetite: many of the skulls found in the Zhoukoudian cave were broken by heavy objects. Researchers believe that the Sinanthropus were cannibals and hunted each other.
Using the most modern methods, scientists have studied Sinanthropus, as they say, up and down. The structure of the body "Peking man" differed little from Pithecanthropus. He kept upright, but was much smaller in stature - just over 150 cm. But the brain volume was noticeably higher than that of Pithecanthropus - 1050-1100 cm3! There is no doubt that on the evolutionary ladder "Peking man" is higher than "Javanese man", but they were contemporaries! And from whom then did modern man originate - from Pithecanthropus or from Sinanthropus?
Found new varieties of the genus Pithecanthropus
The picture became even more complicated when, in 1963 in Lantian (Shanxi province), Chinese archaeologists found a well-preserved lower jaw of a primitive man, and a year later, in the same area, near Kunwanglin, parts of the facial skeleton, a tooth and a cranial vault of the same species were found … These finds turned out to be even older than the Zhoukoudian - their age is about 1 million years. And the speech here, as it turned out, is all about the same Pithecanthropus - but already about its third kind! But, in comparison with his relatives, the "man from Lantian" was, as they say, a complete fool: his brain volume barely reached 780 cm3.
Remains of the earliest humans of the species Homo erectus have also been found in Africa and Europe. The oldest European find comes from a sand pit near the village of Mauer near Heidelberg, Germany. 1907, October 20 - the lower jaw, known among experts as the jaw of the "Heidelberg man", was opened here. This name was given to the find in 1908 by Professor O. Shetenzak. "Heidelberg man" was also called "paleoanthropus" or "protantropus". Today the generally accepted point of view is that the "Heidelberg man" is another representative of the Pithecanthropus genus. Its absolute age is estimated at 900 thousand years.
Another European find (teeth and occipital bone) was made in 1965 near the village of Vertesselles (Hungary). This fossil man in terms of development is close to the Peking Sinanthropus, and his age is 600-500 thousand years. Other finds of the remains of the species Homo erectus were made in the Czech Republic, Greece, Algeria, Morocco, the Republic of Chad and in the famous Olduvai Gorge, which is called the "gold mines of paleoanthropology."
Pithecanthropus is not the ancestor of modern man
The accumulated material made it possible for scientists to draw amazing conclusions: firstly, Pithecanthropus are much older than previously thought: the antiquity of the most archaic of them reaches 2 million years - that is, the first Pithecanthropus were contemporaries of the Australopithecines. Secondly, the species differences among different groups of Pithecanthropus are so great that it is time to talk not about a species, but about an independent genus Homo erectus, which includes several different species! And finally, thirdly, Pithecanthropus, aka Homo erectus, alas, is not the ancestor of modern man - these are two separate branches of evolution …
Simply put, “a thorough and objective assessment of the scale of differences between individual groups makes it necessary to preserve the generic status of Pithecanthropus, on the one hand, and Neanderthals and modern humans, on the other, while identifying several species within the Pithecanthropus genus, as well as identifying Neanderthals and modern humans as independent species..
The story of Pithecanthropus raised new and so far insoluble questions related to the origin of man before the scientific community … At least one thing is clear: the evolution of the human race was immeasurably more complicated than it seemed to many hotheads just a few decades ago.
A. Nizovsky