Perhaps even in our time on Earth there are at least two types of Homo sapiens. Some researchers think so, based on paleontological findings of recent years and other reliable sources.
Who are you Neanderthals?
Scientists know a lot about Neanderthals. But even more questions have arisen since the first discovery of the Neanderthal fossil remains. Questions of concern to scientists since then.
The term "Neanderthals" itself comes from the name of the first location of the European Pleistocene man (the Pleistocene is a geological era that began 3.5 million years ago). It happened in 1856 in the Neandertal valley near Dusseldorf. There, scientists found the skull, bones of the limbs, pelvis and ribs of this paleoanthropus (ancient man).
But it took almost ten more years for the professor of anatomy W. King to recognize the extinct representative of the genus Homo in the remains from the Neandertal Valley in 1864 and singled him out as a special species - Neanderthal man.
And a hundred years later, in 1966, the American anthropologist B. Campbell classified Neanderthal man as a species of Homo sapiens, and as a subspecies. There were many reasons for this. But the most important is the "blurring" of the boundaries between paleoanthropines and modern humans. Over the course of 300 to 35 thousand years BC. in the vast territory of Africa, Europe and Asia, there were various local groups of paleoanthropes.
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Moreover, many researchers put forward a hypothesis according to which there was a mixing of Neanderthals and Sapiens. "The chronological boundaries of the existence of classical Neanderthals - 70,000 - 35,000 years ago," - say, for example, scientists Elena Khrisanfova and Ilya Perevozchikov.
They lived next door
“The problem of the Neanderthal stage is the role played by paleoanthropes in the formation of modern humans,” stresses researcher Margarita Deryagina. The fact is that the beginning of the extinction of the Neanderthals chronologically coincides with the period of expansion of the ancestors of modern humans (neoanthropes), who migrated from Africa 45 thousand years ago.
So, did our ancestors mix with the Neanderthals or was there a period on Earth when two human civilizations existed in parallel, represented by different types of people?
According to the results of recent studies by a group of scientists from the University of Zurich (Switzerland), Neanderthals were not one of the evolutionary stages of Homo sapiens, but a species that existed about 40 thousand years ago in parallel with the ancestors of modern humans. Scientists came to this conclusion after studying parts of skeletons and skulls of primitive people, including Neanderthals.
The brow ridges, low forehead and more sharply defined "facial features" largely distinguish the skulls of Neanderthals from the structure of the skull of our "ancestor". This became especially obvious after the computer reconstruction of ancient remains, and it was found that all the characteristic features were manifested already from infancy.
The conclusions of the Swiss scientists are confirmed by the very recent studies of specialists from Stanford University. Their opinion is categorical: “Neanderthals and ancestors of modern people did not mix. Neanderthals became extinct without leaving their genes as a legacy to humanity."
“Genetic analysis of various races of modern humans, based on the same principles as the study of the hereditary substance obtained from the bone remains of a Neanderthal man (analysis of the so-called mitochondria DNA), allows us to assert: our ancestors are from Africa,” says Alexander Kulberg. Corresponding Member RAMS. - The beginning of their expansion coincides with the period of extinction of the Neanderthals, although they emerged as an independent branch of evolution, apparently, much earlier.
So, according to the data presented in the fall of 1997 at a conference in Washington, the footprint of a woman who already belonged to our species, left by her on clay soil 117 thousand years ago, was found in the south of the African continent. Consequently, already in those distant times, people appeared with anatomical characteristics that are fundamentally similar to those for a living person."
The famous Spanish scientist Juan Luis Arsuaga, based on his research in the Atapuerca mountains, near the city of Burgos, comes to the conclusion that representatives of these two branches of the human race, surviving other types of hominoids, coexisted on the Iberian Peninsula for at least 10 thousand years. Their total number was about 8 thousand.
And then, after the onset of the next ice age, a struggle began between them. According to Arzuaga, better organized and "technologically" more advanced Cro-Magnons gradually pushed the Neanderthals to the worst territories, where they were doomed to extinction.
Neanderthal is not as simple as it seems
Let's take a closer look at the external appearance and anatomical structure of the Neanderthals. Are they really so "technologically" hopelessly lagging behind the advanced representatives of the species Homo sapiens?
The physical type of the Neanderthals had good adaptation to the harsh conditions of the preglacial zone. Broad shoulders with comparatively short (male body length on average 160-163 cm), a high ratio of body weight to its surface (this made it possible to reduce heat loss from the body surface), strong development of muscles and bones, internal massiveness of the skeleton - all these signs indicate fitness to the cold or temperate climate of the beginning of the last glaciation.
The roughness and massiveness of the skeleton is explained by the need to withstand various power loads. Apparently, their life expectancy was short (20-25 years), and they rarely survived to the end of the reproductive period. At the same time, the Neanderthals already knew the burial rites of their relatives. The brain volume of Neanderthals reached 1500 cubic meters. cm is often more than that of a modern person!
Nevertheless, the famous historian, Professor Boris Porshnev, defined Neanderthals "as highly specialized ape-people." “Our fossil ancestors before Homo sapiens were not humans, but animals, creatures, from our point of view, repulsive, terribly antipathetic, but amazingly adapted to the feverish crisis of terrestrial nature in the Ice Age,” B. Porshnev noted in his works.
An important detail: judging by some specific features in the structure of the skull of the Neanderthals, they were right-handed. “The typical Neanderthal hand differs from the modern hand by the exceptional massiveness of the tubular bones, the widening of the wrist, and the presence of features that facilitate the opposition of the thumb,” E. Khrisanfova and I. Perevozchikov point out. "In other words, many of the hand traits reflect adaptations to forceful grip, which may have made the Neanderthal's hand less agile than its modern type."
This is evidenced by the exceptional thickness of the bones of the limbs and even the clavicles in an 8-year-old Neanderthal child. It would seem that everything is clear with this question. But…
In May 2013, staff at the University of California performed a 3D computer-assisted reconstruction of the thumb and forefinger of a Neanderthal. They took as a basis fossil bones found in the town of La Ferrassy in France. This work casts doubt on the existing theory, according to which the Neanderthals who lived in Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East 230-28 thousand years ago became extinct, because they did not have enough "sleight of hand" and could not fully use the necessary tools …
Until now, it was believed that they could not make grasping movements, similar to what we do when we pick up a pencil or tweezers. Therefore, most of the tools they owned that have come down to us are devoid of, for example, handles, they are just sharpened fragments of stones. Cro-Magnons, who settled in Europe about 30-40 thousand years ago, planted similar sharpened stones on bone handles. Neanderthals began to disappear around this time.
The results of the work carried out by American researchers indicate that the Neanderthals were not only able to use similar tools, but could also calmly touch the tip of their index finger to the tip of their thumb.
Are the Neanderthals alive ?
So, the reason for the disappearance of the Neanderthals was not at all their clumsiness and inability to use tools. What then? And in general, no one has yet proven with one hundred percent reliability that they are extinct.
“At the stage of paleoanthropes, or Neanderthals, cryptozoologists argue that individual individuals of Neanderthals could survive in hard-to-reach mountain-forest regions of the world and continued to live without any progressive changes,” says Vera Udaltsova, head. sector of the State Darwin Museum in Moscow, - After all, in the Stone Age there are Australian aborigines, and some South American tribes - relict types of people, take the same pygmies as an example.
It is worth remembering that even from the time of Pliny, descriptions of the fierce battles of modern people with paleoanthropes have come down to us. For example, Titus Lucretius Carrus in the 1st century BC. this is how he described the ancient people: "The same breed of people, but stronger, of course … the skeleton of the densest bones, powerful muscles … in body are similar to bristly boars."
The British primatologist Osman Hill and his student Odette Chernin, having analyzed the entire array of Himalayan information, came to the conclusion that a bipedal plantigrade mammal lives in the Himalayas, which is a species of great apes unknown to modern science. American primatologist Ivan Sanderson has published a book: "Bigfoot: the legend turned out to be a reality."
The Belgian zoologist Bernard Evelmans, the founder of the scientific direction of cryptozoology, the author of the acclaimed book "In the footsteps of unknown animals", showed that the Yeti is not the only species of large animals that were still considered mythical or, at best, hypothetical.
So the question remains open: did sapiens displace the Neanderthals (with or without mixing) or their evolutionary transformation into neoanthropes (complete or partial) about 40 thousand years ago?
And yet, the most common hypotheses for the extinction (or, say more carefully, the displacement of Neanderthals into hard-to-reach habitats) are considered two. First, the Neanderthals were killed by the ancestors of modern humans. Second, the Neanderthals became extinct as a result of the epidemic.
Neanderthals and AIDS
What kind of epidemic was it? Professor A. Kulberg put forward an interesting hypothesis on this score. According to his research, Neanderthals could already be sick … AIDS. This is how the scientist himself justifies it.
“Let us imagine that the common progenitor of man and great apes was a carrier of some kind of virus, transmitted in one way or another only to individuals of the same species. A long time passes. The paths of evolution of the initially single and then divided group of the most ancient primates diverge. New biological species gradually begin to form.
But what about the virus that infected their common ancestors? He settled in the descendants already belonging to different biological species. Naturally, the own descendants of that ancient virus also underwent a certain genetic transformation. But this transformation is not so great as not to reveal even today a reliable genetic similarity between the human immunodeficiency virus (AIDS) and a similar virus that causes the state of immunodeficiency in great apes …
It goes without saying that there can be no talk about the detection of either the immunodeficiency virus itself or its products in the bone remains of an ancient man. But they had this virus, they got infected from each other and died from AIDS … In this case, we are dealing with the most correctly documented ancient disease of an infectious viral nature”.
A. Warrior
“Interesting newspaper. Mysteries of Civilization No. 10 2014