Modern homo sapiens or homo sapiens arose on Earth about 60-70 thousand years ago. However, our species was preceded by many ancestors that have not survived to this day. Humanity is a single species, the number of individuals of which today is more than 6.8 billion people and continues to grow. It is projected to reach 7 billion people in 2011. However, such a rapid growth in the human population began quite recently - about a hundred years ago (graph). For most of its history, the number of people was no more than a million individuals on the entire planet. Where did man come from?
There are several scientific and pseudo-scientific hypotheses of its origin. The dominant hypothesis, which is essentially already a theory of the origin of our species, is the one that states that humanity arose in the equatorial region about 2 million years ago. At this time, the genus Homo emerged in the animal world, one of the species of which is modern humans. The facts confirming this theory include, first of all, paleontological finds in this area. On no other continent in the world, except Africa, have the remains of all the ancestral forms of modern humans been found. In contrast, we can say that fossilized bones of other species of the genus Homo were found not only in Africa, but also in. However, this hardly indicates the existence of several centers of human origin - rather, several waves of settlement of various species across the planet, of which, ultimately, only ours survived. The closest form of man to our ancestors is Neanderthal man. Our two species split from a common ancestral form about 500 thousand years ago. Until now, scientists do not know for sure whether Neanderthal is an independent species or a subspecies of Homo sapiens. However, it is known for certain that Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons (the ancestors of modern humans) lived on Earth at the same time, perhaps even their tribes interacted with each other, but Neanderthals died out several tens of thousands of years ago, and Cro-Magnons remained the only human species on the planet .
It is assumed that 74,000 years ago the strongest Toba occurred on Earth - in. The Earth became very cold for several decades. This event led to the extinction of a large number of animal species and greatly reduced the human population, but may have been the impetus for its development. Having survived this catastrophe, humanity began to spread throughout the planet. 60,000 years ago, modern man migrated to Asia, and from there to. 40,000 years ago populated Europe. By 35,000 BC it reached the strait and migrated to North America, finally reaching the southern tip 15,000 years ago.
The spread of people across the planet led to the emergence of numerous human populations that were already too distant from each other to interact with each other. Natural selection and variability led to the emergence of three large human races: Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid (a fourth race, the Australoid race, is often considered here).
Analysis of craniometric (that is, related to measurements of the skull) indicators of modern humans indicates that all people living on Earth today descended from a relatively small group of individuals who lived in Central Africa 60-80 thousand years ago. As the descendants of these people spread around the globe, they lost some of their genes and became less and less diverse. In a paper recently published in the journal Nature, the hypothesis about a single center of origin of modern man was confirmed by the analysis of not only molecular genetic data, but also phenotypic data (in this case, the size of the skull).
More and more data collected in recent years indicate that “modern” man formed in equatorial Africa 150-200 thousand years ago. Its spread across the planet began approximately 60 thousand years ago, when a relatively small group of people moved to the Arabian Peninsula, and from there their descendants gradually began to spread throughout Eurasia (moving primarily east along the coast of the Indian Ocean), and then throughout Melanesia and Australia.
The process of human settlement of our planet, according to this hypothesis, should have been accompanied by a decrease in the initial stock of genetic variability. After all, at each stage, it is not the entire “parental” population that sets off on its journey, but some small part of it, a sample that could not possibly include all the genes. In other words, there should be a founder effect—a sharp decrease in overall genetic diversity with the formation of each new group of migrants. Accordingly, as humans spread, we should discover the gradual disappearance of a number of genes, the depletion of the original gene pool. In reality, this can manifest itself in a decrease in the level of genetic variability, and the further from the source of settlement, the greater the degree. If the center of origin of the species (in this case Homo sapiens) not one, but several, then the picture will be completely different.
The hypothesis of a single center of origin for modern humans was recently confirmed by molecular genetic data collected as part of the international Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP). Genetic diversity in human populations did decline with distance from Central Africa, the presumed center of human origin (see, for example, Ramachandran et al. 2005). However, it remained unclear whether this effect could be detected by referring to phenotypic characteristics, for example, the anatomical features of modern humans.
Andrea Manica from the Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge (UK) together with colleagues from the Department of Genetics of the same university and the Department of Anatomy of the Saga Medical School (Japan) took on the solution to this problem. The material was based on skull measurements (craniometric indicators) collected all over the world. A total of 4,666 male skulls from 105 local populations and an additional 1,579 female skulls from 39 populations were analyzed. Data on male skulls are taken as a basis as they are more representative. Skulls older than 2 thousand years were not included in the analysis to avoid measurement errors associated with poor preservation of ancient bones.
The results of the study confirmed the hypothesis of a single center of human origin. With distance from central Africa, the variability of the main dimensional parameters of the skull decreased, which can be interpreted as a decrease in the initial genetic diversity. Additional difficulties of the analysis were associated with the fact that as man mastered new climatic zones, certain traits turned out (or did not turn out to be) useful and, accordingly, were supported or not supported by selection. This climatic adaptation also affected the size of the skull, but the use of special statistical methods made it possible to isolate this “climatic” component and not take it into account when analyzing the dynamics of the initial variability.
In parallel, in the same work, the degree of genotype heterozygosity was assessed for 54 local populations of modern humans. For this purpose, we used data on microsatellites (DNA fragments containing repeats), also collected as part of the HGDP program. When plotted on a map, these data show a distribution very similar to that revealed by phenotypic traits. As one moves away from a person's center of origin, heterozygosity (a measure of genetic diversity) decreases, as does phenotypic diversity.
Source: Andrea Manica, William Amos, François Balloux, Tsunehiko Hanihara. The effect of ancient population bottlenecks on human phenotypic variation // Nature. 2007. V. 448. P. 346-348.
See also:
1) Why man left Africa 60 thousand years ago, “Elements”, 06/30/2006.
2) The earliest history of mankind revised, “Elements”, 03/02/2006.
3) Journey of Mankind. The Peopling of the World. Bradshaw Foundation (see freely available map with animation showing the route of early man's dispersal from Africa).
4) Paul Mellars. Why did modern human populations disperse from Africa ca. 60,000 years ago. A new model (full text: Pdf, 1.66 Kb) // PNAS. 06/20/2006. V. 103. No. 25. P. 9381-9386.
5) Sohini Ramachandran, Omkar Deshpande, Charles C. Roseman, Noah A. Rosenberg, Marcus W. Feldman, L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza Support from the relationship of genetic and geographic distance in human populations for a serial founder effect originating in Africa ( full text: Pdf, 539 Kb) // PNAS. 2005. V. 102. P. 15942-15947.
6) L. A. Zhivotovsky. Microsatellite variability in human populations and methods for studying it // VOGiS Bulletin. 2006. T. 10. No. 1. P. 74-96 (there is a Pdf of the entire article).
Alexey Gilyarov
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Let me explain popularly about genetic drift. Suppose there is some large population, for example, 100,000 individuals of one species (let it be a person, but with the same success it could be a white hare, a hoodie, a forest geranium...). If we take a small random sample of 10 individuals from this large population, then obviously not all the genes present in the parent population will end up there, but those that do will, in the event of successful reproduction and an increase in the size of the daughter population, will be reproduced in many copies. If you take some other small sample from the parent population in parallel, then other genes may accidentally get there, which will also be reproduced in a large number of individuals if some new population arises from this sample. Accordingly, differences may arise between such daughter populations isolated from each other (which will also manifest themselves in the external appearance of individuals), which are not the result of natural selection (i.e., not adaptive, not adaptive), but obtained simply due to some random combination of circumstances. This phenomenon was independently discovered by Wright (who gave the name “genetic drift”), and by our compatriots, Dubinin and Romashov, who called it “genetic-automatic processes.” Populations of terrestrial animals and plants from remote oceanic islands often originate from literally a couple of individuals. Of course, The founder effect and genetic drift are especially pronounced in this case.
Human settlement of the American continent occurred no earlier than 25 thousand years ago. People crossed there from the very northeastern part of Asia along the “bridge,” a piece of land (Beringia) that then connected Eurasia to America. Then, 18 thousand years ago there was the last strongest glaciation (ice from the north reached south to latitude 55) and it completely cut off people who moved to the American continent (descendants of Asians) from contacts with the parent population. The formation of Indian culture began.
All xenophobes and nationalists of all stripes (it doesn’t matter whether they prefer the Aryan race, or Negroids, or Mongoloids) must be disappointed. Modern man descended from a very small group of people, with "Eve" being black. All of us people living on Earth are VERY CLOSE RELATIVES. For example, the genetic differences between different groups of chimpanzees living in different areas of Central Africa are much more significant than the differences between representatives of different races of Homo sapiens. The loss of genetic (and, as shown in the article discussed, phenotypic) diversity as we move away from our common homeland - Africa, is another powerful evidence in favor of the hypothesis of a single center of origin for modern humans. As in the case of humans, depleted genotypes resulting from the passage of the population through the bottle-neck (a stage of extremely low numbers) also exist in other groups of animals. For example, among all cats, the cheetah occupies a special place. All cheetahs are also very close relatives, which cannot be said about lions, tigers, lynxes and domestic cats. I apologize for the verbosity, but I hope everything is clear now.
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Dear Alexey Gilyarov,
It so happened that I read your note and the note “SENSATIONAL FIND REFUTED THE THEORY OF THE “EXIDUS FROM AFRICA”” (http://www.inauka.ru/evolution/article74070.html) in a row.
There we are talking about the discovery in China of a skeleton about 40 thousand years old, which, on the one hand, is similar to a modern person, and on the other hand, is clearly different from the African phenotype.
These data, in my opinion, are in obvious contradiction with the materials in your note, and it would be interesting to know how you can resolve this contradiction.
On the other hand, data on the genetic variability of the African genotype may have not only a “historical” but also a “bio-geographical” nature - for example, it can be assumed that Africans, IN PRINCIPLE, due to some local geographical or climatic reasons, are more active there is a process of genetic mutations which, in particular, manifests itself in phenotypic diversity. If such a (as yet undiscovered) process actually takes place, then, in theory, the thesis that the “more diverse” African genotype is a confirmation of the “seniority” of Africans should be corrected.
Personally, it seems to me that the state of affairs in the theory of human origins is somewhat similar to the situation with the taxonomy of chemical elements before the advent of the periodic table. The problem then was that scientists tried to “naturally” arrange all the KNOWN data “in a row”, leaving no room for the UNKNOWN ones, and THEREFORE they didn’t get anything useful. Likewise, the presence of conflicting theories of human origins, based on firmly established facts, suggests that EACH of these theories does not leave “gaps” for facts that are YET UNKNOWN - and is therefore incorrect.
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Dear Mikhail, unfortunately, in the note you are referring to, neither the source (the name of the journal and the coordinates of the article) nor even the names of the researchers in English transcription are given. Therefore, I cannot find the original publication about the Chinese find with which it all began, and it is simply impossible to judge from a journalistic text written without any understanding of the issue. So, if you find the coordinates of the original (and not secondary) publication, report it on the site! It is likely that this is not Homo sapiens at all, but some other representative of the hominid. If earlier for decades they talked about missing links in human paleontology, now there is even an excess of them. In any case, all major anthropologists agree that there was a period on Earth when several hominids CO-EXISTED at once, i.e. several types of ancient “people” (quotes - since people are understood in a broad sense, including, for example, Neanderthals, who coexisted with Homo sapiens in Europe for a long time, but then died out). So the remains of the “ancestors” are mostly representatives of lateral lines (who later became extinct), and not at all the real ancestors of Homo sapiens.
As for the assumption about some particularly high rates of mutation in African human ancestors, there is no basis for it. Still, let's follow Occam's rule and not create entities beyond the need.Answer
An early modern human from Tianyuan Cave, Zhoukoudian, China
(Late Pleistocene | Neandertals | mandible | postcrania | paleopathology)Hong Shang*, Haowen Tong*, Shuangquan Zhang*, Fuyou Chen*, and Erik Trinkaus
================As for Occam's razor... This is a VERY good technique, but you need to use it carefully, otherwise you can cut off what is clearly necessary :))
In the example with the periodic table, Mendeleev committed a very serious “violation” of this principle - and he turned out to be right.
Comparing the maps you provided with the maps of the settlement of Homo Sapiens (or at least with the dates of the settlement of Asia and Europe), I see an obvious contradiction. If we proceed from the theory of genetic drift, then the later a particular territory was populated, the less gene variability there should be. According to available data, Europe was settled later than Asia, and therefore should be "darker" than Asia. Or, more generally speaking, the cards you provided SHOULD have been “spotty”. But on them we see a “continuous gradient” - as if settlement from Africa went from south to north (Africa-Europe), and then from west to east (Europe - Asia). Don't such inconsistencies confuse you? If these maps were shown to me and no additional explanation was given about what was shown there, I would see there a clear indication of the manifestation of some planetary geophysical phenomenon and would ask what the situation is like in another part of the world (i.e. in America).
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Thank you very much for the link. Unfortunately, only abstract is open, from which you can learn a little. I’ll try to log in from the university computer, maybe I’ll get the whole text. As for your comments about the settlement of Europe and Asia, I cannot fully justify the author’s point of view. You need to ask them this. Look at the cards
which are referenced on Elements (particularly with animation!). People went to Europe quite early (but already from Asia). Yes, and in PNAS there are completely open works (if this is not the very last year). There are still inconsistencies, of course. This is not surprising, since just recently we knew nothing at all. The progress in knowledge that has been achieved literally over the last 10-20 years is surprising.Answer
I hope to see a review of this article in Elements.
Thank you very much for the animated map - this is exactly what I was looking for for a long time.
Have you ever come across maps (static or animated) on which archaeological evidence of people’s technological progress (stone tools, dwellings, etc.) would be plotted in chronological order? Or maybe there are resources somewhere that could be used to build such a map?
http://site/news/430144
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Yes, I read this article at one time. Unfortunately, it does not quite accurately correspond to the topic of discussion.
It says that the theory of displacement by the latest human ancestors (3rd wave of expansion, about 100 thousand years ago) is not true, and genetic data indicate that biologically we humans are descendants of all immigrants from Africa, starting around 2 million years ago.
If we take this fact into account (and I see no point in arguing with it), then I can well agree with the statement that a group of people from Africa settled in China a couple of million years ago, and by the time Homo Sapiens appeared, they had changed so much , which was no longer at all like her African ancestors. Maybe it was this group that gave rise to the synanthropes, and those, in turn, gave rise to the modern Chinese and Asians.
In fact, from my point of view, the issue is NOT whether Neanderthals could have interbred with Cro-Magnons, or whether representatives of the 3rd wave could have interbred with representatives of earlier "waves of expansion." All this, from my point of view, has NO significance in relation to the problem of the appearance of mind on Earth, since it relates to the evolution of the body, but not consciousness.
But what REALLY matters is finding out the reasons for the CULTURAL BLAST.
By “cultural explosion” we mean a SHARP time boundary (approximately 40-50 thousand years ago), after which people began exponential progress in technology, culture and environmental development. Actually, we can assume that Homo sapiens (i.e., the modern bearer of consciousness) appeared exactly then - about 50 thousand years ago, and not 150, and especially not 800 thousand years ago. From this point of view, all our ancestors (including the representatives of the 3rd “wave of expansion” mentioned everywhere) who lived before this “fatal point” have nothing in common with us in terms of their level of consciousness, although they are biologically “virtually identical” to us. I gave arguments in favor of this assumption in another discussion (see?discuss=430541). And no analysis of the DNA of MODERN people, unfortunately, will answer the reasons for this “gap in consciousness.”
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: By “cultural explosion” we mean a SHARP time boundary (approximately 40-50 thousand years ago), after which people began exponential progress in technology, culture and environmental development.
How was the absolute value of the level of technology, culture and environment assessed? Is there somewhere an illustration of a graph on which estimates of this level are plotted based on known facts, and from which one could draw a conclusion about the exponential growth at that time, and the point of its beginning, if there was one? Is there an analysis somewhere of changes in environmental conditions or other factors that could act as incentives to increase this level? Finally, it would be interesting to read what the incentives are for raising this level now. :-)
: Actually, we can assume that Homo sapiens (i.e., the modern bearer of consciousness) appeared exactly then - about 50 thousand years ago, and not 150, and especially not 800 thousand years ago. From this point of view, all our ancestors (including the representatives of the 3rd “wave of expansion” mentioned everywhere) who lived before this “fatal point” have nothing in common with us in terms of their level of consciousness, although they are biologically “virtually identical” to us. I gave arguments in favor of this assumption in another discussion (see?discuss=430541). And no analysis of the DNA of MODERN people, unfortunately, will answer the reasons for this “gap in consciousness.”
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>How was the absolute value of the level of technology, culture and environment assessed?...
Read the discussion to which I provided a link. The issues you raised were partially discussed there; in particular, I presented an indirect method with which one could quantify the rate of development of consciousness (i.e., get a visual graph, and not general reasoning). On this chart, if you plot it, the “starting point” will be quite clearly visible.
As for the “cultural explosion” itself, this is a fairly well-known fact. It’s just that after this time limit, the tools became more elegant and more perfect, the drawings became more realistic, everyday and cultural objects became more diverse, and, most importantly, over these 50 thousand years we “got” from a stone knife to spaceships (this also applies to the question of development of the environment). And ALL of our ancestors over a similar period of time only slightly improved the stone knife. Read the discussion - it probably answers most of the questions that first come to mind.
> Is there an analysis somewhere of changes in environmental conditions or other factors that could provide incentives to increase this level?
In the same discussion, I tried to show that, firstly, these conditions must be VERY specific (namely, they must imply a very strict evolutionary selection for the degree of development of consciousness, which we never observe in real living nature), and, in -secondly, during the period of time under consideration (40-50 thousand years ago) there were no conditions on Earth at all that suggested an increased rate of speciation. That is, based on logic and known facts, the human mind simply SHOULD NOT have appeared on our planet. But it did appear, and it makes you wonder about missing facts or incorrect assumptions underlying the logical analysis.
>> And no analysis of the DNA of MODERN people, unfortunately, will answer the reasons for this “gap in consciousness.”
> Firstly, is he really trying to answer _this_ question? As far as I understand, it doesn't concern him at all.
That's the point, it really "doesn't concern you at all"! But in the literature related to the problem of the emergence of people, there is a persistent substitution of concepts. There an equal sign is put between biological evolution (i.e. OBSERVED changes in the genotype and phenotype) and the evolution of consciousness. Researchers simply refuse to recognize the fundamental difference between these phenomena.
> Secondly, the fact that it does not show any fundamental break exactly about 50 thousand years ago is already part of the answer to this question. :-)
This is TOO crude a tool to be used to find such differences. It's like measuring bacteria with a student's ruler.
And then, if the emergence of human consciousness was the result of some small modification of the genome, then an analysis of the DNA of modern people will not show AT ALL when this modification occurred and whether it occurred in principle, because it is present in ALL people, and it is simply impossible to understand that this is precisely a modification of the “pre-human” genome.
> Wasn't the transition from bacterial colonies to single-celled ones no less of a rupture? Wasn't the transition from unicellular to multicellular organisms no less of a break? And so on.
These questions are also very interesting, but, firstly, they relate specifically to BIOLOGICAL evolution and, secondly, they have a fundamental difference from the question of the emergence of consciousness, because happened much more “naturally”, i.e. over fairly large periods of time (millions of years) and by trial and error. And, besides, they were not associated with such a completely unnecessary thing for survival as Reason.
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How dare people work with statistics... On the territory of Russia (except for the edge of Kamchatka, it seems) there is not a single fence of skulls, but then they boldly paint over its territory into a very specific temporary settlement zone!
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As one moves away from a person's center of origin, heterozygosity (a measure of genetic diversity) decreases, as does phenotypic diversity.
In other words, the further from Africa, the more stable the heterozygous and phenotypic characteristics are, i.e. the entire set of characteristics went through a longer and more careful selection and the sample became stable, which means that in these regions people are older than in Africa, where they are still very, very young, and so they change every year, like children when they grow up.
And in Africa, people lived, more precisely, on a line parallel to the equator, approximately at the latitude of North Africa, where glaciers periodically drove them. From there they then, not all of them, returned home as the weather warmed up. That’s why birds fly to nest in the North, also home, just like people. In Kenya, where they have been digging so enthusiastically since the discovery of "Lucy", there are simply unique conditions in the form of a shift of the continental plate. They dig not where they “lost” it, but under the “lantern”. All these remains of “ancient human ancestors” may well have nothing to do with us. By the way, genetic analysis has already knocked the Neanderthal out of the Darwinian pack, but how they just recently forced him on us as half-brothers! Africa, as the ancestral home of humanity, was apparently chosen for reasons of parity of civilizations and political correctness. Most likely there were several Adams, “of the same type.” Six basic mutations, out of 200 known today, are believed to be present in all men on Earth. Does this just indicate a common ancestor or does it indicate the conditions of their origin that are common to all? And are these markers of mutations? It is possible that this is really a “registration sheet”, but what and why? I cannot accept the explanation that nature created a useless zone, this is not in its traditions. Maybe 6 matches is the registration code of our “post office” - Earth? Ha ha!
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In fact, if you look at the maps included in the article under discussion, you can clearly see that “something is happening” in the African region, and the intensity of this something decreases as it moves away from the center (i.e. Africa). However, this phenomenon can be explained in several ways, and the simplest of them (in accordance with Occam’s principle) is that at the “epicenter” there is some MODERN geophysical phenomenon that is reflected in biological processes, in particular, in the frequency of mutations of human genome.
This hypothesis can be easily tested - it is enough to do the same “temporary scanning” of genes not only in humans, but also in other species that lived in Africa with him and have approximately the same distribution on the planet. If a similar picture is observed in them, it means that the matter is in geophysical processes, but if only in humans, it means that either the hypothesis is incorrect, or additional factors must be taken into account.
On the other hand, a molecular clock, although it does not give the exact time of occurrence of a mutation, whether you like it or not, it shows the SEQUENCE of mutations. Those. if in Africa this mutation STILL does not exist, but in Asia it ALREADY exists, it means that the mutation appeared AFTER this species appeared in Asia, and it is difficult to argue here. As far as I understand, it was judging by the SEQUENCE of a number of mutations that we came to the conclusion that we originated from Africa. Political correctness has nothing to do with it - roughly speaking, it’s just counting on your fingers.
Personally, what annoys me in all discussions about the origins of man is the fact that the conversation is conducted exclusively around the structure of the skull, skeleton or chromosomes, i.e. around something that can be dug up, measured, broken down and weighed. It's like judging a person's intelligence by the size and style of his clothes. More than size 50 is reasonable, less is not. There is a breast pocket - a sapiens, no - a monkey.
Reasonability is, first of all, an INFORMATIONAL phenomenon. And the ability to process information is NOT reflected in the skeleton, nor in the structure of the skull, nor in the _currently known_ features of the genome structure. Although biologists have already realized that the genetic sequence itself does not mean anything - what is important is HOW genes “interact” in the process of operation of a LIVING organism, and one cannot even dream of judging this from fossil DNA. So at the moment the entire “genetic history” of intelligence is not worth a penny. It just gives a rather rough picture of who came into this world after whom.
If we judge the emergence of this INFORMATION ABILITY (intelligence) in people by the ONLY reliable (but, unfortunately, indirect) material sign - objects of material culture, tools and rock paintings, then it turns out that intelligence arose SIMULTANEOUSLY throughout the ENTIRE planet approximately 40 years ago. 50 thousand years ago, i.e. among ALL people who at that time were settled over an area of thousands of kilometers from Africa to Australia. If we recognize this fact, then all “scientific” theories of the appearance of people instantly go down the drain, and we find ourselves faced with a very unpleasant choice - the intervention of “higher powers” or alien intelligence.?discuss=430541), I proposed a “reasonable compromise” - “random “viral introduction of “mind genes”, but it also doesn’t look very convincing. Although, from my point of view, this is the best that can be offered at the moment, if one firmly adheres to the materialistic point of view.
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That’s right, the count is just on the fingers, more precisely on point mutations of the nongenic zone of the Y chromosome. But there is one point! If we take, say, Egypt, the Middle East or Southern Europe as the conditional point of origin of the “most ancient mutation” - M168, then the strategic plan for the seizure of planet Earth by progressive humanity in the form of arrows on the map is drawn just as correctly. The fact is, for example, that 10-15% of non-Africans do not have the M89 (Arabian) mutator. And if we take as a basis the “exodus” through the Red Sea to the Arabian Peninsula, then everyone should have this “snip”. The genetic database at the time of the study included only about 50 thousand data, from, as you understand, 3 billion men on earth. Is this a sufficient sample? Don't know. I think no. But it already shows that the version of the thousand-year swim across the Red Sea is not accurate. The Australian aborigines have the last mutation M9, i.e. for almost 40 thousand years there were simply no others. The Indians also have M3 and there is also silence. How can the route of movement in time be drawn from the assumption - one snip per 5 thousand years. All these studies are conducted only in the USA. The USA is an ideologist of globalism. The most important principle of globalism is “all people are brothers.” It is also important that there is no elder among them. The only places more ideal than Africa would be Australia, Antarctica, and Atlantis. But it won't fit. Who suggested the idea of placing the ancestral homeland of man in Africa? Yes, still the same Mr. Darwin. "Monophilist", damn it. Neanderthal man (Nomo sapiens) was included in the linear chain of development of modern man (Nomo sapiens sapiens) with the rights, generally speaking, of a progenitor. This was recorded in Bol.Sov.Enz. black, damn it, “in Russian.”
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Dear Mikhail! There is no unambiguous picture of settlement based on the study of mutations. With the same success, the starting control point can be placed, for example, in Spain or Egypt, or even the Middle East. The picture will be the same. A "relatively small group of individuals" crosses Gibraltar into Africa, retreating before the glacier. It receives a basic mutation, and then splits into a southern migration, along the west coast of Africa, periodically “splitting off”, say, along rivers, deep into the continent. And to the east - along the Mediterranean coast to Egypt, where it again divides into the South African, migrating upstream of the Nile, and the Middle East. Up to this point, everyone has the same mutations. Then part goes to the Middle East (the M89 mutation is missing), and the other part, spinning around the Arabian Peninsula, receives it. You can continue further as planned today. The picture of mutations is the same. We also need to take into account global historical processes. Conquests of Macedon, Rome, Arab and Crusades, Mongol and others. They could very seriously correct the pattern of inheritance of mutations through the male line. There are many other points and ambiguities. Point mutations (snips) are strictly sequentially recorded or can occur within an interval (retrospectively). For example, repetitions of markers in the so-called. haplotypes can change in any direction. What is the nature of "snips"? Why do they arise? What, finally, is recorded in the nongenic zone of the Y chromosome, what information? After all, it is recorded and presented quite strictly with minor but stable corrections. In general, it is too early to make global generalizations.
I would like to note one more interesting point in passing. It turns out that Slavic haplotypes do not have Mongolian sources. Considering that the Y chromosome is clearly transmitted through the male line in an end-to-end manner, this means that there are no Mongols among the Slavic ancestors (within a reasonable time interval). So, “no matter how much Russian you scratch, you won’t find a Mongol.” What a gift to Fomenko, who proves, if I understand him correctly, that the Mongol yoke is a fiction! Funny, is not it?Answer
Dear Vagant,
I don't quite understand the increased attention paid to genetics in historical research. Well, we found out that Genghis Khan tried his best and today there are 2 million of his descendants running around the world, so what of this? Perhaps a line in the Guinness Book of Records, a curious fact, but nothing more. And as for the Slavs and Mongols - maybe they actually managed to take samples from those whose ancestors did not interbreed with the Mongol-Tatars. Again, so what? Does this cancel historical chronicles and excavation results? An interesting addition to existing data, and nothing more. It is quite possible that the Tatars simply took “their” children to the Horde, and, accordingly, we should not look for Mongolian genes among the Slavs, but Slavic genes among the descendants of the Horde. It turns out to be a funny slogan - “Russia is the homeland of the Tatars!” :) But personally, these “genetic excavations” are completely uninteresting to me.
But what is really interesting is the mystery of the appearance of Reason on our planet. And here the question of whether intelligence first appeared in one place and from there spread across the planet, or independently - in several places, is fundamentally important, including from a genetic point of view.
If the carriers of intelligence appeared in only one place (the theory of monocentrism), then this allows us to explain why all people represent one biological species and have approximately the same level of consciousness. At the same time, it does not matter at all where exactly it appeared for the first time and what paths it expanded. But this theory does not explain how the Mongoloids and Caucasians appeared, since there is no evidence of the transformation of Africans into these races (there are no transitional forms). In addition, archaeological evidence does not support the “conquest” of Asia and Europe by Africans. However, the same problem arises if we accept that the mind arose in any other, but only center.
If the polycentrists are right, and intelligence appeared in several places on the basis of the “local population” (and this is precisely what is confirmed by archaeological data!), then it is completely incomprehensible how the creatures, clearly different in genotype, which gave rise to the peoples of Africa, Asia and Europe, managed to transform into the same species. And it is even more unclear what could have caused such a transformation. This fundamentally contradicts everything that is known in genetics today. But maybe what we know is not all that really exists?
In addition, there is the problem of space-time. Judging by archaeological data, the transformation of Homo Sapiens into Homo Sapiens Sapiens occurred about 50 thousand years ago. A reliable indicator of this transformation is the “cultural explosion” - a change in household items, tools, and the emergence of painting and art. People at that time occupied a vast territory - from Africa to Australia. And, apparently, this transformation occurred almost instantly - over several thousand years. What kind of Genghis Khan had to walk along the coast so that everyone would simultaneously have “genes of consciousness”?
Thus, today we have the situation “Wherever you throw it, there’s a wedge everywhere.” And the genetic search for the “historical homeland” pursues only one goal - in no case to allow the public to think about the problems mentioned above. After all, if a solution is “found,” then you can declare that all problems have disappeared and simply ignore their existence. Instead of a painful search for answers to difficult questions, there is a link to “the latest scientific data,” which, despite their accuracy, in fact, does not prove or explain anything.
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Dear Mikahail! You even increased the bar to 50 thousand years. I remember being taught that this happened 35-40 thousand years ago. But that's not the point. It is important that some kind of abrupt “reincarnation” really happened or something. Then who (or what?) came out of Africa 80 thousand years ago? What should I call him? It is clear that this is not Homo sapiens sapiens yet, but there must be some kind of neoanthrope. If this is not a Neanderthal, then who? No answer! Geneticists say it's none of our business. But there are simply no sites of other neoanthropes aged 80-100 thousand years. The general “Eve” is generally attributed to 140-160 thousand years. Who is she then? She and “Adam” could mate, since there is a “common” offspring, which means they are one species. But this is already closer to the point of intersection with the last archanthropes. Is it possible that the mutations under study, common to everyone, are those “toggle switches” that turned on the mind, and arose as a result of a planet-wide cataclysm, regardless of place of residence and origin? There are still more questions for geneticists than answers. A hypothesis is just a hypothesis. It’s just that they’re “promoting” it too much.
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For me personally, there is no doubt that every living organism (roughly speaking, capable of reproducing independently) is a “receiver” of one or another “subtle fields”, about which Western science knows nothing so far. In my opinion, we are just on the threshold of opening these fields. Maybe they will be able to be detected and described by instruments in another 100-200 years. But for now, for “orthodox scientists” they are a strict taboo - like everything that cannot be included in the existing scientific paradigm.
In fact, there is more than enough evidence that biological organisms - from single-celled organisms to humans - constantly “listen” to their external environment. The most interesting and convincing argument in favor of this is the treatment of diseases using very weak millimeter radiation (a few to tens of microwatts per sq. cm), which does not have ANY thermal effect on tissues and, moreover, has a clearly resonant character. The theory of this effect has not yet been constructed, although the effect itself has been known for almost 30 years and thousands of people have been cured by this method. I talked about this in order to show that living beings have very complex mechanisms that work at the molecular genetic level, which are responsible for the “perception” of radiation coming from the surrounding space. Moreover, these mechanisms are so sensitive and selective that they can receive signals that are much lower than the level of thermal noise (which is also nonsense for orthodox physicists who are not familiar with the intricacies of living systems). And from here it’s already a stone’s throw to “receiving” signals carried by STILL unknown ultra-weak, and therefore not measured by hardware, fields.
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Modern homo sapiens or homo sapiens arose on Earth about 60-70 thousand years ago. However, our species was preceded by many ancestors that have not survived to this day. Humanity is a single species; on October 31 - November 1, 2011, its population reached 7 billion people and continues to grow. However, such a rapid growth in the Earth's population began quite recently - about a hundred years ago (see graph). For most of its history, the number of people was no more than a million individuals on the entire planet. Where did man come from?
There are several scientific and pseudo-scientific hypotheses of its origin. The dominant hypothesis, which is essentially already a theory of the origin of our species, is the one that states that humanity arose in equatorial Africa about 2 million years ago. At this time, the genus Homo emerged in the animal world, one of the species of which is modern humans. The facts confirming this theory include, first of all, paleontological finds in this area. On no other continent in the world, except Africa, have the remains of all the ancestral forms of modern humans been found. In contrast, we can say that fossilized bones of other species of the genus Homo have been found not only in Africa, but also in Eurasia. However, this hardly indicates the existence of several centers of human origin - rather, several waves of settlement of various species across the planet, of which, ultimately, only ours survived. The closest form of man to our ancestors is Neanderthal man. Our two species split from a common ancestral form about 500 thousand years ago. Until now, scientists do not know for sure whether Neanderthal is an independent species or a subspecies of Homo sapiens. However, it is known for certain that Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons (the ancestors of modern humans) lived on Earth at the same time, perhaps even their tribes interacted with each other, but Neanderthals died out several tens of thousands of years ago, and Cro-Magnons remained the only human species on the planet .
It is assumed that 74,000 years ago on Earth there was a powerful eruption of the Toba volcano in Indonesia. The Earth became very cold for several decades. This event led to the extinction of a large number of animal species and greatly reduced the human population, but may have been the impetus for its development. Having survived this catastrophe, humanity began to spread throughout the planet. 60,000 years ago, modern humans migrated to Asia, and from there to Australia. 40,000 years ago populated Europe. By 35,000 BC it reached the Bering Strait and migrated to North America, finally reaching the southern tip of South America 15,000 years ago.
The spread of people across the planet led to the emergence of numerous human populations that were already too distant from each other to interact with each other. Natural selection and variability led to the emergence of three large human races: Caucasian, Mongoloid and Negroid (a fourth race, the Australoid race, is often considered here).
A little theory about anthropogenesis
For many reasons, theoretical developments in the field of evolutionary anthropology are constantly ahead of the current level of evidence. Having developed in the 19th century. Under the direct influence of Darwin’s evolutionary theory and having finally taken shape in the first half of the 20th century, the stage theory of anthropogenesis reigned supreme for quite a long time. Its essence boils down to the following: man in his biological development has gone through several stages, separated from each other by evolutionary leaps.
- first stage - archanthropes(pithecanthropus, synanthropus, atlantropus),
- second stage - paleoanthropes(Neanderthals, whose name comes from the first discovery near the city of Neanderthal),
- third stage - neoanthropus(man of the modern species), or Cro-Magnon (named after the site of the discovery of the first fossils of modern humans, made in the Cro-Magnon grotto).
It should be noted that this is not a biological classification, but a stage scheme, which did not accommodate the entire morphological diversity of paleoanthropological finds already in the 50s. XX century Note that the classification scheme of the hominid family is still an area of heated scientific debate.
The last half century, and especially the last decade of research, have brought a large number of discoveries that have qualitatively changed the general approach to solving the question of the immediate ancestors of humans, understanding the nature and paths of the process of sapientation.
According to modern concepts, evolution is not a linear process accompanied by several leaps, but a continuous, multi-level process, the essence of which can be graphically represented not in the form of a tree with a single trunk, but in the form of a bush. Thus, we are talking about network-like evolution, the essence of which is this. that at the same time evolutionarily unequal human beings, who morphologically and culturally stood at different levels of sapientation, could exist and interact.
Dispersal of Homo erectus and Neanderthals
Dispersal map of Homo erectus during the Olduvai and Acheulian eras.
Africa is most likely the only region in which representatives of the species lived in the first half a million years of their existence, although they, undoubtedly, during the process of migrations could also visit neighboring regions - Arabia, the Middle East and even the Caucasus. Paleoanthropological finds in Israel (Ubeidiya site) and in the Central Caucasus (Dmanisi site) allow us to speak about this with confidence. As for the territories of Southeast and East Asia, as well as southern Europe, the appearance of representatives of the genus Homo erectus there dates back no earlier than 1.1-0.8 million years ago, and any significant settlement of them can be attributed to the end of the Lower Pleistocene, i.e. about 500 thousand years ago.
At the later stages of its history (about 300 thousand years ago), Homo erectus (archanthropes) populated all of Africa, southern Europe and began to spread widely throughout Asia. Although their populations may have been separated by natural barriers, morphologically they represented a relatively homogeneous group.
The era of the existence of “archanthropes” gave way to the appearance about half a million years ago of another group of hominids, which are often, in accordance with the previous scheme, called paleoanthropes and whose early species, regardless of the location of discovery of bone remains, are classified in the modern scheme as Homo Heidelbergensis (Heidelberg man). This species existed approximately from 600 to 150 thousand years ago.
In Europe and Western Asia, the descendants of N. heidelbergensis were the so-called “classical” Neanderthals - who appeared no later than 130 thousand years ago and existed for at least 100 thousand years. Their last representatives lived in the mountainous regions of Eurasia 30 thousand years ago, if not longer.
Dispersal of modern humans
The debate about the origins of Homo sapiens is still very heated, modern solutions are very different from the views even twenty years ago. In modern science, two opposing points of view are clearly distinguished - polycentric and monocentric. According to the first, the evolutionary transformation of Homo erectus into Homo sapiens occurred everywhere - in Africa, Asia, Europe with a continuous exchange of genetic material between the population of these territories. According to another, the place of formation of neoanthropes was a very specific region from where their settlement took place, associated with the destruction or assimilation of autochthonous hominid populations. Such a region, according to scientists, is South and East Africa, where the remains of Homo sapiens are of the greatest antiquity (the Omo 1 skull, discovered near the northern coast of Lake Turkana in Ethiopia and dating back to about 130 thousand years, the remains of neoanthropes from the Klasies and Beder caves on southern Africa, dating back about 100 thousand years). In addition, a number of other East African sites contain finds comparable in age to those mentioned above. In northern Africa, such early remains of neoanthropes have not yet been discovered, although there are a number of finds of very advanced individuals in the anthropological sense, which date back to an age significantly exceeding 50 thousand years.
Outside of Africa, Homo sapiens finds similar in age to those from Southern and East Africa were found in the Middle East; they come from the Israeli caves of Skhul and Qafzeh and date back to 70 to 100 thousand years ago.
In other regions of the globe, finds of Homo sapiens older than 40-36 thousand years are still unknown. There are a number of reports of earlier finds in China, Indonesia and Australia, but all of them either do not have reliable dates or come from poorly stratified sites.
Thus, today the hypothesis about the African ancestral home of our species seems most likely, because it is there that there is the maximum number of finds that make it possible to trace in sufficient detail the transformation of local archanthropes into paleoanthropes, and the latter into neoanthropes. Genetic studies and molecular biology data, according to most researchers, also point to Africa as the original center of the emergence of Homo sapiens. Calculations by geneticists aimed at determining the likely time of the appearance of our species say that this event could have occurred in the period from 90 to 160 thousand years ago, although earlier dates sometimes appear.
If we leave the controversy aside about the exact time of the appearance of modern people, it should be said that wide spread beyond Africa and the Middle East began, judging by anthropological data, no earlier than 50-60 thousand years ago, when they colonized the southern regions of Asia and Australia. Modern people entered Europe 35-40 thousand years ago, where they then coexisted with Neanderthals for almost 10 thousand years. In the process of their settlement by different populations of Homo sapiens, they had to adapt to a variety of natural conditions, which resulted in the accumulation of more or less clear biological differences between them, which led to the formation of modern races. It cannot be ruled out that contacts with the local population of the developed regions, which, apparently, was quite diverse in anthropological terms, could have had a certain influence on the latter process.
Lecture text.
The first event that historical science studies is the appearance of man himself. The question immediately arises: what is a person? The answer to this question is given by various sciences, for example biology. Science proceeds from the fact that man emerged as a result of evolution from the animal kingdom.
Biologists since the time of the famous Swedish scientist of the 18th century. Carl Linnaeus classifies humans, including their now extinct early species, as a member of the order of higher mammals - primates. Along with humans, the order of primates includes modern and extinct monkeys. Humans have certain anatomical characteristics that distinguish them from other primates, in particular great apes. However, it is not at all easy to distinguish the remains of early human species by anatomical characteristics from the remains of apes that lived at the same time. Therefore, there is debate among scientists about the origins of man, and approaches to solving this issue are constantly being refined as new archaeological finds appear.
Archeology is of paramount importance for the study of the primitive period, as it allows scientists to obtain at their disposal objects made by the ancient inhabitants of our planet. It is the ability to make such objects that should be considered the main feature that distinguishes humans from other primates.
It is no coincidence that archaeologists divide history into stone, bronze And Iron Age. The Stone Age, based on the characteristics of the tools of ancient man, is divided into ancient (Paleolithic), middle (Mesolithic) and new (Neolithic). In turn, the Paleolithic is divided into early (lower) and late (upper). The Early Paleolithic consists of the Olduvai, Acheulian, and Mousterian periods.
In addition to tools, excavations of dwellings and places of human settlement, as well as their burials, are of utmost importance.
On questions of human origins - anthropogenesis - There are several theories. Enjoyed great popularity in our country labor theory, formulated in the 19th century. F. Engels. According to this theory, the labor activity that human ancestors had to resort to led to a change in their external appearance, which was fixed in the course of natural selection, and the need for communication in the labor process contributed to the emergence of language and thinking. Labor theory is based on Charles Darwin's doctrine of natural selection.
Modern genetics has a slightly different opinion about the reasons for the evolution of living beings. Genetics denies the possibility of consolidating qualities acquired during life in the body if their appearance is not associated with mutations. Currently, different versions of the causes of anthropogenesis have emerged. Scientists have noticed that the region where anthropogenesis took place (East Africa) is a zone of increased radioactivity.
An increased level of radiation is the strongest mutagenic factor. Perhaps it was the effects of radiation that caused anatomical changes, which ultimately led to the appearance of man.
At present, we can talk about the following scheme of anthropogenesis. The remains of the common ancestors of monkeys and humans, found in East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, are 30 - 40 million years old. The remains of the most likely human ancestor have been discovered in Eastern and Southern Africa - Australopithecus(age 4 - 5.5 million years). Australopithecines most likely could not make tools from stone, but in their appearance they resembled the first creature to create such tools. Australopithecines also lived in savannas, walked on their hind limbs and had little hair. The Australopithecus skull was larger than that of any modern ape.
The oldest human-made stone tools (about 2.6 million years old) were found by archaeologists in the Kada Gona area in Ethiopia. Almost equally ancient items were discovered in a number of other areas of East Africa (in particular, in the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania). Fragments of the remains of their creators were also excavated in these same places. Scientists have named this oldest human species a skilled person ( Homo habilis ). Homo habilis was not very different in appearance from Australopithecus (although his brain volume was somewhat larger), but he can no longer be considered an animal. Homo habilis lived only in East Africa.
According to archaeological periodization, the existence of Homo habilis corresponds to the Olduvai period. The most characteristic tools of Homo habilis are pebbles chipped on one or both sides (hoppers and choppers).
The main occupation of man since his appearance was hunting, including quite large animals (fossil elephants). Even “dwellings” of Homo habilis have been discovered in the form of a fence made of large stone blocks stacked in a circle. They were probably covered with branches and skins on top.
There is no consensus among scientists regarding the relationship between Australopithecus and Homo habilis. Some consider them to be two successive steps, others believe that Australopithecus was a dead-end branch. The two species are known to have coexisted for some period.
There is no consensus among scientists on the issue of continuity between Homo Habilis and Noto egectus (homo erectus). The oldest discovery of the remains of Homo egectus near Lake Turkana in Kenya dates back to 17 million years ago. For some time, Homo erectus coexisted with Homo habilis. In appearance, Homo egestus was even more different from a monkey: its height was close to that of a modern person, and the volume of the brain was quite large.
According to archaeological periodization, the time of existence of upright walking man corresponds to the Acheulean period.
Homo egectus was destined to become the first human species to leave Africa. The oldest finds of the remains of this species in Europe and Asia are dated back to approximately 1 million years ago. Back at the end of the 19th century. E. Dubois found the skull of a creature on the island of Java, which he called Pithecanthropus (ape-man). At the beginning of the 20th century. In the Zhoukoudian cave near Beijing, similar skulls of Sinanthropus (Chinese people) were excavated. Several fragments of the remains of Homo egestus (the oldest find is a jaw from Heidelberg in Germany, 600 thousand years old) and many of its products, including traces of dwellings, have been discovered in a number of regions of Europe.
Homo egestus became extinct approximately 300 thousand years ago. He was replaced by Noto saieps. According to modern ideas, there were originally two subspecies of Homo sapiens. The development of one of them led to the appearance approximately 130 thousand years ago Neanderthal (Hotho Sariens neanderthaliensis). Neanderthals settled all of Europe and large parts of Asia. At the same time, there was another subspecies, which is still poorly understood. It may have originated in Africa. It is the second subspecies that some researchers consider the ancestor modern type of person- Homo sapiens. Homo sarins finally formed 40 - 35 thousand years ago. This scheme of the origin of modern man is not shared by all scientists. A number of researchers do not classify Neanderthals as Homo sapiens. There are also adherents of the previously dominant point of view that Homo sapiens descended from Neanderthals as a result of his evolution.