Expedition to the ancestors. Road between two glaciers
Neanderthal from Moustiers Cave, anatomist Solger, 1910. Chicago Museum
And he drove Adam out
and placed it in the east near the garden of Eden
Cherub and flaming sword turning,
to guard the way to the tree of life.
Genesis 3:24
and placed it in the east near the garden of Eden
Cherub and flaming sword turning,
to guard the way to the tree of life.
Genesis 3:24
Migrants and migrations. As you can see, in the Bible everything was very simple: God kicked Adam and Eve out of paradise, and they went, burning with the sun, wherever their eyes looked. But what made ancient, primitive people go great distances, cross rivers and forests and go to places completely unknown to them?
Well, we will, of course, talk about this too, but first let’s look at the species composition, so to speak, of the migrants who began moving from one place to another 50 years ago.
Survival of the fittest or the smartest?
The fact is that neoanthropes were not the only species of people 50 years ago. Of their contemporaries, the most famous are the Neanderthals, who were distinguished by large flat-headed heads with prominent brow ridges, powerful jaws, and a stocky build. In contrast, neoanthropes looked different: tall, with long limbs and a short torso, more adapted to hot climates.
Interestingly, the brain of Neanderthals was not inferior in size to ours. And the fact that they managed to settle in territories from the arid plains of the Middle East to the cold tundra of Central Europe also speaks of their intelligence. Having good stone tools, they could even hunt such large game as bison, wild horses and reindeer.
The concept of caring for one's neighbor...
But the most important thing is that they were already familiar with the concepts of good and evil, and they cared about their loved ones. The skeleton of a robust man has been found, whose corpse was carefully placed in a shallow grave in the Kebara Cave in Israel 60 years ago.
At the site of La Chapelle-aux-Saints in France and in the Shanidar Cave, bones of disabled people who suffered from severe arthritis, broken bones and blindness were found. All of them died at the age of no more than 40 years and for some time could not help but be a burden to their fellow tribesmen. However, they still fed them, instead of killing and eating them in the most rational way! Moreover, after death they were buried quite decently!
Handprints on a stone wall. Australia. Griffith University
Cave painting as a manifestation of intelligence
And it should also be noted that it was the Neanderthals (and they were named after the Neanderthal Gorge in Germany, where the third skull of this type was found) who began to bury the dead, often with signs of obvious ritual ceremonies. They almost certainly knew how to speak. But, apparently, Neanderthals were still in some ways lagging behind Homo sapiens sapiens; it was not for nothing that they were not the only species of people to populate the entire world.
In any case, it was the neoanthropes who demonstrated unprecedented adaptive capabilities in the conditions of a changing natural-geographical environment. But for some reason the Neanderthals were unable to do this. Perhaps the whole point is that neoanthropes had a developed imagination, as evidenced by their use of colored stones, exotic shells, amber and mammoth tusks to make various jewelry and figurines.
And, of course, they also did cave painting. Moreover, they went to paint in hard-to-reach places where it was impossible to do without artificial lighting. Most likely, this also had some special meaning that also had to... be invented! In any case, the art of ancient artists is simply amazing and testifies to extraordinary intelligence.
Figures with boomerangs in their hands. Australia. Griffith University
But at the sites of Neanderthals, only a few carved bones were found, and they used exotic materials very rarely and were not at all keen on cave painting.
And then about 27 years ago, having lived next to the neoanthropes for about 000 years, they disappeared. But Homo sapiens sapiens remained the only human species on the entire planet.
“We were here!” Gargas Cave in the Pyrenees
But there could be more of us, people of different species!
However, now we quite clearly understand that this success of the neoanthropes was not predetermined from the beginning. As we can see, for many thousands of years neoanthropes coexisted with representatives of Homo erectus in Asia and Neanderthals in Europe and the Middle East.
And there were also the so-called Denisovans, who lived side by side with the Neanderthals and migrated with them far to the north to their “Denisovan cave”. And their bone remains were found in China, that is, from somewhere in the west they went to the outskirts of Eurasia in China. So the competitors of our immediate ancestors were no worse adapted to their environment.
All three of these species lived in small groups. They used approximately similar primitive tools. And they also all suffered together from climate change and natural disasters - the eruption of Mount Toba about 70 years ago. And it turns out that there were much more similarities between them than differences.
However, the more developed social organization of neoanthropes significantly increased their ability to develop new territories, and they had more ability to adapt to environmental changes.
And just then another ice age began...
Map of caves with drawings in France and Spain
Hard life in a cold era
Note that over the past 800 years, there have been as many as eight glacial eras on planet Earth, interspersed with relatively warm and short (about 000 years) interglacial times.
Ice ages are periods of sharp cooling in extratropical regions. The average temperature in the Northern Hemisphere was 15 °C lower than today, and vast areas were covered with thick ice sheets. Due to the fact that a huge amount of water froze in them, the level of the World Ocean dropped by one and a half hundred meters. As a result, land passages appeared between islands and continents, connecting parts of the land into one single giant supercontinent.
Accordingly, the global decrease in humidity was also reflected in the tropics, where significant desertification occurred. During the advance of glaciers, northern plants and animals were pushed towards the equator, but during interglacial periods they returned back to the thawing lands.
Obviously, all these changes forced people to migrate as well. They left desertification zones, as well as too cold areas, to where the climate was more moderate and suitable for life. At the same time, the migration routes of our ancestors from Africa led east to Asia and, accordingly, north to Europe. They were helped in this by the development of methods for making fire, the invention of clothing and, most importantly, the improvement of social organization and methods of communication.
Migrations of primitive people of different species
Ice Age people
Glaciation reached its maximum approximately 20 years ago. At the same time, people occupied relatively narrow, but favorable zones for life. Throughout Eurasia, between the northern ice and southern deserts, from Alaska to northern Spain, tundras and steppes stretched, which in the summer turned into grass-rich pastures for large herds of mammoths, bison, horses and reindeer. That is, here you just had to learn how to make supplies for the winter, build warm dwellings (and they learned how to build them, including using mammoth tusks), and it became possible to survive the coldest and most hungry winter time!
But this image of a man was found in a cave in Sicily!
America - a hunting reserve
Apparently, similar conditions have developed in North America. By the time neoanthropes arrived there 15 years ago, the prairies were home to a huge number of different animals: bison with horns spanning up to 000 m; huge beaver-like rodents kasteroids; camelids; ground sloths; moose; two species of musk ox; felines no smaller than a lion; mastodons and three types of mammoths.
But the first Americans hunted so successfully that after 5 years almost all of these animals disappeared, including horses, which were brought back to the New World by Europeans after Columbus's voyages.
Pathways of ancient migrations
By the way, the penetration of people into North America is an extremely interesting question in itself.
The fact is that they could only get there in one way - through the so-called Beringia - a piece of land in the Bering Strait region, formed due to a drop in sea level. But in the area of Alaska and Canada they should also have been met by a glacier blocking the entire territory of Canada from the Atlantic Ocean of Alaska - the so-called Laurentian Ice Sheet. Another glacier, the Cordilleran Ice Sheet, stretched along the Pacific coast.
And so, as it turned out, there was a gap between them - a section of swampy tundra with a length of more than one and a half thousand kilometers. And it is obvious that primitive people passed it, purposefully moving south, and then, having passed this passage, they could already move anywhere. So, neoanthropic sites today are found throughout the American continent, both in North and South America, and even in Tierra del Fuego (Fels Cave).
Well, on the territory of the Eurasian continent to the south of the “mammoth steppe” there was a wide strip of arid steppes. A significant part of the Sahara, as well as the Middle East and Hindustan, was a desert, and people settled there only along the banks of large rivers like the Nile.
Similar conditions existed in Australia, where burials excavated along the Murray River resemble those of Egypt from the same era. By the way, moving around Eurasia at that time was easier than it is now. The Black Sea had no connection with the Mediterranean, and the Mediterranean had no connection with the Atlantic Ocean, that is, they were closed salt lakes. Sicily was connected to the Apennine Peninsula, the Japanese islands to the mainland. But the Caspian Sea was much larger in size than it is now.
A picture of a bison on a cave wall. Peace Museum, Liverpool
Last migrations of Stone Age people
Modern humans began to replace Neanderthals in Western Europe about 35 years ago. At the same time, they quickly reached a high cultural level. In southwestern France, the Pyrenees and northern Spain, hundreds of caves with images of animals and various symbols have been discovered - clear evidence of the importance of art in the life of Ice Age people.
Then, about 12 years ago, glaciers began to recede, making room for plants and animals to spread, followed by gatherers and hunters moving north again. There was plenty of food, people multiplied extremely quickly, so that by the 000th millennium BC. e. both in Central America and the Middle East they began to lack food. Therefore, they began to engage in the breeding and selection of edible plants and the domestication of animals, that is, the transition to agriculture and cattle breeding began.
The continental glacier melted about 4 years ago, after which the migration of people to the Arctic began.
Finally, 2 years ago they managed to explore all of Oceania, and 000 years ago they even sailed to New Zealand - 1 years before Captain James Cook!
To be continued ...
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