Published the work of an international group of scientists, which included six Russians. It was thanks to their enthusiasm that the scientific community received at its disposal a unique find, and with it the most ancient genome of homo sapiens.
Nobody believed it!
This story is full of wonderful coincidences, and just plain luck. It started in 2008. Omsk artist Nikolai Peristov, specializing in bone carving, wandered along the banks of the Irtysh in search of working material - the remains of a bison, mammoth and other prehistoric animals. He organized such forays regularly: the banks of the river are destroyed, the earth reveals what has been hidden in it for centuries and millennia. That day, Peristov noticed a bone sticking out of the washed layer, threw it into a bag and brought it home. Yes, just in case.
The bone lay in the artist’s storage for two years until an acquaintance of his drew attention to it. Alexey Bondarev - forensic expert from the regional police department. He is a biologist by training, and paleontology is his hobby. Bondarev carefully examined the bone. From its appearance it was clear that this was not an animal or even a Neanderthal. 35 cm long, the bone most closely resembled a human femur. But how old is this person?
Alexey asked for help Yaroslav Kuzmin from the Institute of Geology and Mineralogy SB RAS, which is in Novosibirsk. He took the find unusually seriously. “Simply put, he believed that the bone could be very ancient, tens of thousands of years old,” Bondarev recalls. - The fact is that in our area the remains of a person from the Paleolithic era (over 10 thousand years ago) have never been found. And no one expected that they could be found at all. This never even occurred to scientists! Archaeologists knew only ancient sites of homo sapiens with stone tools and animal bones discovered on them. In general, it was believed that the first people came to the territory of the Omsk region no earlier than 14 thousand years ago.”
Yaroslav Kuzmin is a well-known specialist in radiocarbon dating (this is one of the methods for determining the age of biological remains). He sent the bone for examination to the University of Oxford, with which he has been collaborating for a long time. The British were delighted: the analysis showed that the bone material is 45 thousand years old! To date, these are the most ancient human remains, dated directly, and not by indirect signs (i.e., not by the environment in which they were found: tools, household items, etc.). The man from Ust-Ishim (he received his nickname from the name of the nearest village) is the oldest representative of the genus Homo sapiens discovered outside of Africa and the Middle East. And even in the north, at latitude 58! Scientists believe that it was the cold climate that helped preserve this bone.
Omsk artist Nikolai Peristov found a sensation on the river bank. Photo: From personal archive/ Alexey Bondarev
Cradle in Siberia
The discoveries didn't end there. Yaroslav Kuzmin involved geneticists in the case: the precious bone, accompanied by Russian scientists, went to Germany, to Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. They know firsthand about sensations from Siberia: it was at this institute that the DNA of the now famous “Denisovo” man from a cave in Altai was studied.
German anthropologists confirmed the conclusions of their colleagues about the age of the bone, and in addition, they discovered perfectly preserved DNA in it - the oldest at the moment. It took more than a year to assemble and read the genome. It turned out that Ust-Ishim man has 2.5% of Neanderthal genes - just like modern inhabitants of Eurasia. But the fragments of these genes are longer; foreign DNA is not as widely distributed throughout the genome as ours. Hence the conclusion: the Ust-Ishimets lived shortly after the crossing of humans with Neanderthals, and it happened somewhere 50-60 thousand years ago, along the road of Homo sapiens from Africa to Siberia.
“It is now clear that the history of the settlement of Asia was somewhat more complicated than previously thought,” emphasizes Yaroslav Kuzmin. - Coming out of Africa, some of our ancestors soon turned north - unlike those who settled in southern Asia. We also managed to find out the diet of the ancient Siberian. He was a hunter. His food was mainly ungulates - primitive bison, elk, wild horse, reindeer. But he also ate river fish.”
“I think this man looked almost the same as you and me,” adds Alexey Bondarev. - Dress him up, comb his hair, put him on a bus - no one will think that this is an ancestor who lived 45 thousand years ago. Well, maybe the skin will be darker.”
And most importantly, the man from Ust-Ishim turned out to be equally related to Europeans, Asians, and even residents of the Andaman Islands - aborigines who are hiding from the outside world and do not want to make contact with civilization. They, according to the theory of anthropologists, belonged to the early wave of migration from Africa. This means that, even if the Ust-Ishimite did not leave direct descendants (scientists do not exclude this), Siberia can safely be called one of the cradles of humanity.
Remains of modern man
In 1888, while digging a pit in the London suburb of Gelly Hill, having previously removed several layers of sand, loam and gravel, workers reached the chalk layer and suddenly came across a human skeleton embedded in the sediment. It was located at a depth of 3 m from the surface of the earth and approximately 60 cm from the top edge of the chalk layer.
Experts were called in to make sure that the skeleton was embedded in the chalk layer, after which the skull was removed. According to modern dating methods, the Gelly Hill deposits belong to the Holstein Interglacial Formation, that is, their approximate age is 330 thousand years. But the anatomical structure of the found skeleton corresponds to modern man, despite the fact that the official scientific version says that the first people with a modern anatomical structure (Homo sapiens sapiens) appeared in Africa only 100 thousand years ago, and they came to Europe about 30 thousand years ago, displacing the Neanderthals from there.
But in 1949, the conclusion was made public that the skeleton had been buried in Middle Pleistocene deposits recently and that the age of the unfossilized bones did not exceed several thousand years. The argument was based on the fact that the nitrogen content of the bones from Gelly Hill is approximately similar to that of relatively recent burials from other areas of England. Nitrogen is one of the components of protein and breaks down over time, but much depends on specific conditions. There are many recorded cases of protein being preserved for many millions of years. The bones, moreover, were found in viscous loamy deposits, which favored the preservation of protein.
In 1970, Canadian archaeologist Alan Lyle Bryan found a fossilized dome of a skull in a Brazilian museum. Powerful walls and massive brow ridges were characteristic of Homo erectus. The skull was discovered in a cave located in the Sacred Lagoon region of Brazil.
Brian showed photographs of the skull to several anthropophysiologists from the United States, and they refused to believe in the American origin of the find. But, according to Brian, a number of significant differences between the dome of the skull discovered in the Sacred Lagoon and known ancient skulls from the Old World confirm its Brazilian origin.
Meanwhile, the presence of hominids with the characteristics of Homo erectus in Brazil is a completely anomalous phenomenon from the point of view of official science. But then the most interesting thing began: an amazing skull from a Brazilian museum inexplicably disappeared. (Unfortunately, today there are several known cases of bones disappearing from museums that do not “fit” into Darwin’s theory.)
But that's not all. Many modern finds of bones in the “wrong” places are simply not documented, and it is even difficult to imagine how many opportunities for the development of science are lost.
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In 1934, the remains of an ancient man were discovered in India. It was named Ramapithecus, after the Indian god Rama. A comparison of the teeth of anthropoid apes, Ramapithecus and humans shows that Ramapithecus has significantly smaller fangs than apes, and in general it is close in jaw structure to humans. The absence of large fangs means that they no longer served as weapons, which could be used as stones and sticks.
The terrestrial life of Ramapithecus was combined with life in the trees (like chimpanzees); they could partially move on their hind limbs.
The age of the remains is estimated at approximately 14 million years. The remains of Ramapithecus were subsequently also discovered in Africa.
In 1924, in South Africa, an English researcher of Australian origin discovered ancient remains that belong to the so-called ape people who lived 3.5 - 4 million years ago. They are called australopithecines (from the Latin australis - southern).
Australopithecus is not a monkey, but an intermediate creature between man and ape. A feature of Australopithecus and other related forms discovered later was the ability to walk upright and a dental structure similar to that of humans.
The ability to move on two legs arose as a result of natural selection during the transition to life on the plain, however, australopithecines could not yet overcome long distances in this way. At the same time, the upper limbs were freed from movement and could be used for touching and grasping food. Some indirect evidence confirms the gregarious lifestyle of Australopithecines. The hunting tools were stones and clubs.
In 1960, in Tanzania, an English anthropologist discovered the remains of ancient creatures whose age was 2 - 2.5 million years. These creatures differed from Australopithecus by a slightly larger brain volume and the development of the ability to make simple tools and dwellings and maintain fire. This type of creature was called homo habilis, or dexterous man, skillful man. The factor immediately before the formation of a person is a highly developed brain and the rational activity associated with it. “Rational activity” means the ability to foresee the result of a particular activity, that is, goal setting, in other words. A monkey is able to split and break a stone and even, perhaps, choose from these pieces the one that it likes. But she cannot plan the shape of the stone in advance. Australopithecines apparently could not make tools.
So, between Australopithecus and Homo habilis there is just that line when a creature is able to plan the result of its activities.
A huge achievement of the theory of anthropogenesis is the knowledge of the time of the appearance of the first human population - 2.5 million years ago. This happened in South Africa.
The mistake of the stage theory was that one link was built on top of another. In fact, this is a tree, and here both coexistence and competition are necessary.
A Dutch doctor on the island of Java discovered the remains of the creature: a skull cap, a femur and teeth. He named it Pithecanthropus. He was distinguished by his noticeable height and skull size, and had a skeleton close to that of a human. Its age is approximately 650 thousand years.
In 1927, in China, near Beijing, the remains of another fossil creature, more advanced than Pithecanthropus, were found. He was called Sinanthropus (from the Latin Sina – China), which means “Chinese man”. Similar remains of ancient people were found in Germany (Heidelberg man), Algeria and other places. They were strongly built, powerful people, excellent hunters.
The Heidelberg Man was the first to set foot on European soil.
Already the first Heidelberg man in Europe built very good dwellings, made of stone.
Further evolution led to the emergence of ancient people, the first remains of which were discovered in 1856 in Germany in the Neanderthal Valley. The person who owned them was named after the valley by a Neanderthal. Neanderthal man undoubtedly descended from Heidelberg man. Anatomically, modern man also descended from Heidelberg man. But it is believed that it occurred not in Europe, but in Africa.
The first Heidelberg man was in Africa. One branch of it went through Gibraltar to Europe and gave rise to Neanderthal man, and the other through the Bosporus, Dardanelles and gave rise to modern man.
Heidelberg man either supplanted or simply exterminated Neanderthal man.
An international team of German researcher Krings extracted DNA from Neanderthal bones and compared it with the DNA of modern humans. The scientists concluded:
Neanderthal was infinitely far from us genetically.
So distant that, apparently, the divergence of the branches of Neanderthal and modern man occurred approximately 500 thousand years ago, if not more. Moreover, again in Africa. But mainly Europe and Asia were populated by the descendants of immigrants from Africa, people of modern physical appearance, the so-called man of modern anatomical type.
In 1868, in France, in the Cro-Magnon cave, a human skeleton was discovered, whose development was significantly superior to all ancient people. He was called Cro-Magnon. Presumably, the first Cro-Magnons appeared 80 thousand years ago and coexisted with Neanderthals for some time.
Not only knives, arrowheads and other complex tools made by the Cro-Magnons have been preserved, but also examples of rock paintings, which indicate the development of abstract thinking among them.
The modern type of man finally began to form about 10 thousand years ago.
For a long time it was assumed that human evolution had stopped biologically, it did not go any further, and humanity was evolving further only in historical terms. Russian scientist, Professor Savelyev, a brain specialist, came to the conclusion:
Even such a system as the brain has continued to evolve, at least over the last century, and obviously continues to evolve and will continue to evolve.
10. Animal Thinking
Modern science shares Darwin's opinion:
“The difference between the psyche of higher animals and man, no matter how great it is, is a difference of degree, not of quality.”
Confirmation of this was obtained by various methods. For example, American scientists have been teaching monkeys simple analogues of human language for about 30 years.
Thinking is the operation of concrete sensory and conceptual images.
One of the definitions of thinking was given by the Soviet psychologist Alexander Romanovich Luria. He said that thinking arises in a situation where the subject does not have a ready-made solution, that is, a habitual one, formed through learning, or an instinctive one.
In the 60s, the Laboratory of Physiology, Genetics and Behavior was organized at Moscow University. One of the first objects of experiments was crows. Several elementary logic problems have been developed. The first of them is the most popular, this is the so-called task of extrapolating the direction of movement of a stimulus that disappears from the bird’s field of vision. Hungry birds stick their heads through the gap and see two feeders in front of them - one with food and the other empty. Then the feeders move away and hide behind opaque barriers. A new situation arises for the animal, which must be resolved at the first presentation. The animal must mentally imagine the trajectory of the direction of movement of the food after disappearing from the field of view and decide which side to go around the screen to get the food. By presenting this task, a broad comparative description of the ability of elementary rational activity of animals was obtained. The greatest successes are achieved by predatory mammals and dolphins. And some birds solve this problem perfectly.
A hungry jay in one of the American laboratories tore a strip from a newspaper placed in a cage, bent it in half with its beak, and through the bars scraped up pieces of food that were lying outside.
One of the most important manifestations of animal thinking is the ability to make and use tools.
Currently being studied at Cambridge are the New Caledonian crow, an endemic species that in nature obtains food by regularly making and using tools of various shapes. Two birds, raised in captivity, in isolation from their relatives, were brought to the laboratory and asked to solve a new problem for them. The experimental setup was a transparent cylinder, at the bottom of which a bucket of food was placed. Sticks, short and long, straight and curved, were laid out nearby. In a significant majority of cases, the birds chose the hook to pick up the bucket by the handle and remove it from this cylinder.
And one day a completely unexpected situation arose when there was no hook among the tools offered for selection. And then one of the crows, nicknamed Betty, grabbed the wire, wedged it in the crack of the table, bent it, made a hook and hooked this very notorious bucket.
It turned out that the ability of primates, especially apes, to generalize and abstract is extremely high.
To study the ability of crows to generalize the feature “more elements” and to symbolize, selection by sample was used. The bird is presented with two feeders on a special tray. The feeders are covered with lids - cards (stimuli for choice). During the learning process, the bird learns that food (worms) is only in one of the two feeders, and tries to find it. The animal can find out which feeder contains the reinforcement by comparing the image on the sample card, which is located between the feeders, with the images on the choice cards. If a bird sees a set of, for example, four elements on a sample card and discards the card covering the feeder, which also shows four elements, it will find the desired worm. The number of elements on the cards reached 25. A series of experiments was given in which birds were given the opportunity to freely choose between two feeders covered with cards with images of numbers. The bird could choose any card and received the number of hearts that corresponded to the symbol or combination of symbols depicted on the card. So, the ability to symbolize, at least its rudiments, is present in such a specific group of vertebrates as birds.
American researcher Irene Pepperberg has been working with a parrot named Alex since 1978. She trains him with a specific method 0 “rival model”. Alex learns words by competing and imitating a second experimenter, who receives rewards if he pronounces the correct word and answers questions better than Alex. The parrot has learned a small vocabulary and uses it to actively answer questions. Through this dialogue, Irene tries to characterize the essence of the parrot's cognitive abilities. That is, the questions that experimenters ask birds using cards and some other stimuli, Irene asks Alex directly. For example, she shows him a certain number of objects and asks: how many are there? He answers - 5. And he can explain: “Two green and three red, one round and four cubes,” etc. This research is very multifaceted. This is very valuable work. It coincides with the data of Russian scientists about the ability of birds to generalize and abstract.
The bones found near the Jebel Irhoud cave belong to people who lived here about three hundred thousand years ago.
On the left is a tall and rounded skull of a modern person, on the right is a complete reconstruction of the skull of a person from Jebel Irhoud: a modern face is combined with an archaic flattened and elongated brain section. (Illustration: Philipp Gunz / MPI-EVA, Leipzig.)
Fragments of tools found in Jebel Irhoud. (Photo: Mohammed Kamal / MPI-EVA, Leipzig.)
There is no need to prove once again that people came from Africa: both archaeological finds and the results of genetic research lead to it. But Africa is very big. There is some place in it that modern people Homo sapiens, can call it their very first home?
Until now, Ethiopia was considered such a place - it was here that the remains of Homo sapiens, 160 and 195 thousand years old, were once found; so we had every reason to believe that all modern humans descended from a population that lived in the east of the African continent somewhere around 200 thousand years ago.
However, judging by the finds in the Moroccan cave of Jebel Irhoud, H. sapiens appeared and spread throughout Africa much earlier than previously thought. Jebel Irhoud has long been known for human remains and artifacts from the Middle Paleolithic period (about 200 thousand years ago - 50-25 thousand years ago). However, in the past, experts were not always able to accurately determine the exact age of what was found here.
Until recently, it was believed that six human fragments discovered back in the 60s of the last century belonged to Neanderthals, who lived here about 40,000 years ago. In 2007, one of the bone fragments (a child’s jaw) was “aged” to 160,000 years. And now in the article in Nature archaeologists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, together with colleagues from Morocco, the USA, Great Britain and Italy, describe a new portion of bones about 300 thousand years old.
These remains were found during another large-scale excavation that has been going on in Jebel Irhoud since 2004. The skulls, teeth and limb bones found belonged to at least five people: three adults, a teenager and a child. The age of the remains was determined more or less accurately thanks to quartz tools that were found right there and which were dated using the thermoluminescence method, when the age of an object is estimated by its luminosity when heated. The aforementioned child's jaw from the previous series of remains has aged again, so that its age is now estimated to be between 350 thousand and 220 thousand years ago. In general, it turned out that all the bones, both old and new, belong to Homo sapiens, and not to Neanderthal Homo.
Using computed tomography and three-dimensional reconstruction techniques, the researchers compared the findings from Jebel Irhoud with known remains of different species of people who lived between 1.8 million and 150 thousand years ago, as well as with different remains H. sapiens aged from 130 thousand years and younger. It turned out that in face and teeth the “Jebel Irkhudites” are quite close to modern people. At the same time, three skulls - two from the old series and one from the new one - with their flattened and elongated backward shape, look more archaic compared to the more rounded and tall skulls of modern people. According to the authors of the article, the features of the face and teeth were formed in H. sapiens quite early and then changed little, while the cerebral part of the skull continued to adapt to the evolving brain.
It is worth adding that the tools found with the new remains are similar to those found in different places on the continent and which also date back to the Middle Paleolithic period. You can also recall the 260 thousand year old skull from South Africa - some experts believe that it also belongs to H. sapiens. (We emphasize that we are talking specifically about Homo sapiens, and not about the species in general Homo.)
In general, everything indicates that Homo sapiens evolved, so to speak, throughout Africa, and it is hardly worth saying that any particular population in the east or west was the main one.
However, one way or another, the conclusions regarding the Moroccan finds will still need to be confirmed several times, since now not all archaeologists and anthropologists are ready to recognize the remains of Homo sapiens in the new bones.