FAQ: Neanderthal

7 facts about fossil human form that lived 140-24 thousand years ago

Neanderthals is a remarkable phenomenon in the history of human origin. Neanderthals - it's kind of an alternative humanity, people who lived in Europe and western Asia (the Middle East to Central Asia, Altai, inclusive), which developed relatively independently and in isolation for hundreds of thousands of years, without kakih-to special ties with other mankind, which at the same time there elsewhere. Our ancestors at this time living in Africa, Asia, and Europe and Western Asia were Neanderthal territories.

1. Neanderthals emerged from their ancestors Homo heidelbergensis smoothly and gradually. They can be considered as the only super-indigenous Europeans. The ancestors of Neanderthals first colonized Europe and throughout the following centuries, millennia and hundreds of millennia existed there. Neanderthals during this time created their unique culture: it Mousterian (Mousterian culture), although some sapiens also used it, and the culture mikok. They had their own way of life: the Neanderthals were almost predatory. And in fact this is the most carnivorous of all the primates, which just is. Today, most modern populations of prey - it Eskimos that exist in Alaska, Greenland - which practically eat only meat. They are approaching the level of the Neanderthals.

2. Neanderthals are unique in that their brain volume was the same as ours, and if we assume a certain way, and even more than we have, on average. In other words, individuals were more, less, but the average value of them was a little more than we have. However, the structure of the brain have been different, it was more flat, with flattened frontal lobes, very large, with an enormous occipital lobes. To improve your brain and mental function - buy Cogitum, Semax, Nootropil, Peptide Cerluten, Picamilon, Pantogam.

The skull was quite peculiar: the huge eyebrows, large jaws, but not protruding, projecting his head sharply back. Neanderthals are characterized by their adaptability to very cold conditions of life, as they lived in the time of the alternation of glacial and interglacial periods. However, as indicated by paleontological reconstruction, most Neanderthals lived still in a more or less warm climate. Nevertheless, they lived in a rather cold climate, despite the fact that the culture they had quite low, making their body has become such exaggerated proportions: a very broad shoulders, wide hips, big barrel chest, a powerful musculature. Well, the closer the shape of the body to the ball and more muscular than it is better to warm up, the less heat loss. Again, most modern Eskimos approach to this option. But Neanderthals were more powerful.

That is the most Neanderthals were adapted to their habitat. They lived, hunted for thousands of years. And they hunted the mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, bison, cave bears, that is, the large animals.

3. About 40 thousand years ago the Neanderthals was dramatically less. Although before that they were few, because the Neanderthals were predators, and their is never enough. But, nevertheless, they become very small. And the last Neanderthals, as far as we know, became extinct about 28 thousand years ago. But in the interval between 40 and 28 were very small groups of scattered, mostly in remote areas of the mountains: the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Caucasus, the Balkans, that is, in the most inaccessible mountainous areas. Apparently there, which we did not reach the Cro-Magnons, ie the people of the modern building, which has sapiens came last. And in this time range from 40 to 28 thousand years replaced Neanderthals Cro-Magnon men, our ancestors sapiens.

here are several concepts that happened to the Neanderthals, where did they go. There are three major points of view. The first point of view, the main author of which is considered American anthropologist (although it is not invented, but developed fully). This view says that the Neanderthals were our ancestors, that they were of a certain stage of evolution, which gradually changed, evolved and became in the end a group of Cro-Magnon. But, despite the fact that this point of view in the middle of the XX century was sometimes even dominant among anthropologists, with the 70-ies of the XX century, it is not considered relevant in the present time, nobody sticks.

4. The problem is that the Neanderthals already morphologically very different from us. And when we examine the cave deposits, we see a sharp change and culture, and morphology. We do not have some sort of smooth transition. That is clearly there was a change. There was a second concept that Neanderthals were still literally exterminated Cro-Magnons. The question remains, how they did it, by force or not. And nothing they do not have the modern population. This point of view at the end of the XX century and at the beginning of the XXI century was dominant, but nevertheless, since the 30-ies of the XX century and beyond were found finds people with intermediate characteristics, which are often a sign like Neanderthals, but by parts like the Cro-Magnons. An example of this - Saint-Césaire in France, or Es Skhul in Israel, or Kafzeh there in Israel. In these areas they are almost sapiens but with Neanderthal traits. Accordingly, there was a third concept, which states that the Neanderthals were still metisize to modern man. That is, they were more or less independent, but some genetic contribution to modern populations they gave. Well, the question was when and where they have given this contribution. This view is in fact existed since the XIX century, but once on the third cast, it has always been.

5. Already in the XX century geneticists have decoded the genome of the Neanderthal. But the first Neanderthal Genome Project revealed that Neanderthals differ too much from us. And thus, it was alleged that they were nothing to us do not have, that is, it is made independent lines of evolution, which died out safely. But when was decoded (and it specifies the time, virtually every year there are new articles on this topic) gene not only mitochondrial, but also nuclear, it became clear that all the same modern humans have Neanderthal genes, but they are distributed very interesting, because sub-Saharan Africans almost do not have Neanderthal genes. And the rest of the world's population, not only that it is all entirely reducible to a single East African populations in the genetic sense, but also contains from 1% to 4% Neanderthal genes. This percentage can be considered in different ways: by nucleotides alleles. Most likely, because the Neanderthal admixture in approximately the same percentage found in Europeans, the Chinese, the Australian Aborigines, Papuans, American Indians, it turns out that this Neanderthal admixture mingled immediately when exiting the Cro-Magnons from Africa. That is, as soon as the Cro-Magnons came from Africa, Neanderthals immediately gave this same impurity. And in roughly equal percentages, it is everywhere. A majority of all the same Neanderthals disappeared without a trace.

6. There are several concepts of why they disappeared. It is flattering to think that Cro-Magnon man is somehow superior to the Neanderthals intelligence (physical strength is not exactly excelled), especially since the Cro-Magnon culture was markedly better than the Neanderthals. Neanderthals mowing natural disasters. One of these global disasters, which not only knocked down, how Neanderthals created, was the eruption of the volcano Toba in Sumatra. Grandiose eruption, one of the most powerful in the history of the planet, after which volcanic winter came almost two years. This was 73.5 thousand years ago. At this time, Neanderthals developed their hyper-arctic proportions. But their numbers declined. And to a greater extent, perhaps Neanderthals crippled other eruptions are much smaller, about 40 thousand years ago. Well, a little more 40-42 thousand years ago happened. Eruptions of the so-called Phlegrean fields in Italy and the eruption of Mount Kazbek in the Caucasus. Very powerful eruptions that an interval of 2000 years have poisoned the soil, air, water, and was also a volcanic winter, but in Europe and the Caucasus-wide, after which stated the reduction of species of hoofed animals, extinction, say, bison, and including Neanderthals . It turns out that the Neanderthals actually not so much inferior to Cro-Magnon man, but it just was not lucky with the place and time. And when the Cro-Magnons once again looked into the corner of his eyes to Europe, they found that there is almost no one, and can be populated in the empty area. On the other hand, there is a version that the heyday of the Upper Paleolithic (that is, the era of the first modern humans, Cro-Magnon, the order of thousands of years ago 40-30-20) connected with the competition the Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals. That is when they met, they began to compete and, respectively, and they both tried to overtake each other. Neanderthals were less successful. A Cro-Magnon man, which again flattered to think of us as we are descendants of the Cro-Magnon, ahead. And Neanderthals were by the side of the evolutionary and disappeared safely. A Cro-Magnon have replaced them.

7. Most recently, in the 2010s years, it was, in particular, the study of Neanderthal child skeleton of Mezmaiskaya cave in the Caucasus made Petrograd by archaeologists, anthropologists, which show that in Mezmaiskaya cave on the number of Neanderthals apparently just capital affect eruption volcanoes. That is one of the strongest evidence of the catastrophic hypotheses Neanderthals extinction. On the other hand, there is a parking lot in the European Arctic, showing that Neanderthals lived rather late, after these catastrophic eruptions. Maybe some groups of Neanderthals remained very late, when already almost all of Europe was occupied by Cro-Magnons. In fact, archaeological data from other regions show slightly different picture. In southern Europe, it may have been a mass extinction (it is possible that the first Cro-Magnons and there just died out safely), and in the north, in Siberia, for example, in Altai, some Neanderthal groups could persist for a long time. In Spain, known for such a situation with the "border of the Ebro": almost the same time, on the north bank of the Ebro lived Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals lived on the south - the most recent, but in very bad conditions (there were edaphic - dry, dry - steppe ). And there lived on the last Neanderthals. Revealing the last time the existence of the Neanderthals - it is now the most interesting point in this area.