From many other planets - the presence of intelligent beings on it - people. Where and when did the first man appear? People have been searching for an answer to this question for a very long time.
Human settlement of the Earth
There are two stages in the settlement of people around the planet. About 2 million years ago, ancient people began to penetrate from other areas and to other continents. This stage of exploration of the Earth ended approximately 500 thousand years ago. Subsequently, the ancient people became extinct.
Modern man (“Homo sapiens”) appeared only about 200 thousand years ago. It was from here that the second stage of human settlement began. They were forced to go to new unexplored lands primarily by concern for food. With the increase in the number of people, the territories where hunting was carried out expanded and edible plants were collected. Strong climate changes also contributed to the migration of people. The level 15-16 thousand years ago was 130 m lower than the modern one, so there were “land bridges” between individual continents and islands. The transition to a sedentary lifestyle occurred 11 thousand years ago. This contributed to the development of ancient civilizations. Many monuments of their culture have survived to this day.
Races
The long existence of people in various natural conditions led to the emergence of races - large groups of people with common, inherited external characteristics. By external signs all humanity is divided into four large geographical races.
Negroid race formed in hot regions of the Earth. Dark, almost black, skin, hard curly or wavy black hair, characteristic of these people, protects against sunburn and overheating of the body. The eyes are brown. A wide, flat nose and thick lips help regulate body temperature.
Australoid race According to the external characteristics of its representatives, it is close to Negroid.
Mongoloid have adapted to life in steppes and semi-deserts, where summer temperatures are high, strong winds and dust storms are frequent. Yellow protects the skin from excessive exposure to sunlight. The narrow shape of the eyes protects them from wind and dust. Mongoloids have straight, coarse hair, a large flattened face, prominent cheekbones and a slightly protruding nose.
Caucasian is divided into northern and southern branches. Southern Caucasians have dark skin, brown eyes and dark hair. The northern ones have white skin, light and soft hair, blue or gray eyes.
Mixed races. Over time, the proportion of people on Earth whose appearance contains signs of different races is growing. They form mixed races, the emergence of which is associated with the migration of people. These include mestizos - descendants of Europeans and Indians; mulattoes - descendants of Europeans and peoples of the Negroid race; sambo - descendants of Indians and peoples of the Negroid race; Malgash are descendants of the peoples of the Negroid and Mongoloid races.
Thus, the birthplace of modern man is Africa (Ethiopia, Tanzania, Kenya). It appeared approximately 3.5 million years ago. From here, people settled in two waves to southern Africa (South Africa) and through Georgia to Europe, Southeast Asia, India and China. The direction of migration through Georgia is confirmed by data taken in 2002. discoveries of three skulls and three jaws by a group of scientists from America, Spain and Switzerland under the leadership of David Lordkipanidze, a member of the Georgian Academy of Sciences.
The first wave dates back to 1.7-1.5 million years ago, the second 150-80 thousand years ago. From Southeast Asia, man spread across the islands of Oceania, to Japan (30 thousand years ago), Australia (60 thousand years ago), and to the island of Taiwan (30 thousand years ago). From China (possibly) to northern Asia, and to America (30-13 thousand years ago). From Europe there was also settlement to America (30-13 thousand years ago).
Modern human evolution.
There are several points of view on the evolution of modern man.
1 point of view - natural selection does not apply to humans.
2 – man is a biological creature that obeys social laws.
Currently, there are several generally accepted postulates.
A person is characterized by a set of genes - he is an individual of a population.
On the other hand, a person is a personality, a product of upbringing.
The physical environment acts on a person, but it acts very slowly and driving selection, as applied to a person, has practically no effect in the foreseeable period. Since the Cro-Magnon man, man has remained virtually unchanged. No subspecies or new species were formed.
The social environment affects a person, it acts very quickly. Human adaptation at the present stage is social adaptation.
Specifics of human evolution.
Man is so far the only species that has realized itself.
Man has universal adaptation compared to animals. This is the acquisition of culture. This adaptation provides access to a new adaptive zone. A person begins to live in a cultural environment. Culture is all the work and spiritual experience of people, passed on from generation to generation.
Raceogenesis
In every population you can find people who differ in anthropomorphic characteristics. This is individual variability. Traits of races characterize not an individual person, but a certain community of people associated with a certain habitat. Human variability is subject to environmental laws. N: narrow palpebral fissure - protection from sand and dust storms in desert areas and snow, the blinding sun reflected from it in the north; black skin – protection from ultraviolet radiation (it can only be burned with a dose of ultraviolet radiation 10 times greater than white skin); black skin has more sweat glands - protection against overheating, curly hair creates a natural helmet that protects against overheating. Environmental reasons have caused the appearance of similar symptoms in people living in similar conditions. N: a large layer of subcutaneous fat in people living in extreme conditions; narrow palpebral fissure in Mongoloids and residents of the far north, small stature in residents of tropical humid jungles, with a deficiency of microelements. Throughout the tropical zone, there are populations of people with alleles of abnormal hemoglobins, which in the homozygous state lead to anemia, but in the heterozygous state provide immunity to malaria.
There are 3 main races that are well known: Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid (they are also sometimes called trunks.
Caucasians – wavy or straight hair, often blond. Light skin. Men usually have a strong mustache and beard, a narrow face with a protruding nose (profiled), the width of the nose is small, and the nostrils are parallel to each other. The eyes are located horizontally, the fold of the upper eyelid is absent or poorly developed. The jaw part of the face does not protrude forward (orthognathic skull). Lips are usually thin.
Formed in Europe and Western Asia.
Mongoloids – coarse, straight, dark hair. The skin has a yellowish tint, the beard and mustache grow weaker than those of Caucasians. The face is wide, flattened, the cheekbones protrude strongly, the nose is flattened, the nostrils are located at an angle to each other. The eyes are narrow, the outer corner is higher than the inner (obliquity). The upper eyelid of typical Mongoloids is closed by a fold of skin, sometimes right up to the eyelashes; there is an epicanthus (a fold in the inner edge of the eye covering the lacrimal tubercle). Lips are medium in thickness.
Formed in Asia.
Negroids – curly black hair, very dark skin, brown eyes. Beards and mustaches grow weakly in men. The face is narrow, low, the nose is wide. The eyes are wide open, the fold of the upper eyelid is poorly developed, and the epicanthus is usually absent in adults. The protrusion of the jaw part of the face (prognathous skull) is characteristic. The lips are thick, often swollen.
Formed in Africa.
However, American Indians and Australians fall out of these groups based on characteristics.
The former are sometimes classified as Mongoloids by tradition. But they have a profiled face, and epicanthus is rare. Therefore, now they are often distinguished as a separate race. Merinids .
The inhabitants of Australia and nearby islands are dark-skinned, but their hair is not curly, but wavy, their beard and mustache grow profusely, and in terms of blood composition, they are closer to Mongoloids than to Negroids. Therefore, they highlight Australoids.
These five races or trunks are divided into many groupings. N: Southerners are Europeans of average height, dark-haired, have brown eyes, and Northerners are fair-haired, blue-eyed or gray-eyed, tall. Among the Negroids, the smallest people on earth are known - the pygmies of the Congo River basin (141 cm on average for adult men) and the tallest, living near Lake Chad (182 cm). The same can be said about other races. Therefore, anthropologists identify several dozen races of the second and third orders. There are also groups with transitional characteristics, the so-called contact groups. For example, in Russia, 45 million people belong to the transitional Caucasoid-Mongoloid type. In fact, there are practically no “pure” races now.
The main races arose a very long time ago, at the dawn of the formation of the Cro-Magnon man (the theory of monocentrism), and perhaps even earlier (the theory of polycentrism). Genetic methods allow us to conclude that the common ancestor of all races lived approximately 90-92 thousand years ago. Then there was a separation of 2 trunks: the large Mongoloid trunk, including the Amerinids, and the Caucasoid-Negroid trunk, including the Australoids. Australians entered the mainland around 50 thousand years ago. and they most likely retained more of the traits of their common ancestor. The separation of Caucasoids and Negroids occurred around 40 thousand years ago.
From the Mongoloids, the Amerinids arose in 3 waves of migration (16-40 thousand years ago, 12-14 and 9 thousand years ago). The first wave of migrants entered South America.
Nowadays the theory of monocentrism is considered the most recognized. But the problem of monocentroism-polycentrism is not the only one in anthropology. It is important to understand the causes of raceogenesis and its mechanism.
There are 2 main mechanisms for changing the gene composition (gene pool) of a population - natural selection and genetic-automatic processes (genetic drift). Selection preserves and distributes adaptive traits in the population; genetic drift in small populations can consolidate neutral traits that do not increase or decrease the probability of leaving offspring under given conditions.
Humanity is changing even now. The processes of gracilization and acceleration are especially noticeable. Gracilization - a decrease in the overall massiveness of the skeleton - is mainly due to the fact that a person is doing less and less physical, muscular work. Acceleration – acceleration of development of the whole organism. In infants, their weight doubles earlier, a year earlier than in the last century, milk teeth are replaced by permanent ones; over the past 100 years, 14-16 year old adolescents have become 15-16 cm taller. All these processes occur in parallel among representatives of different races. The races themselves are gradually losing their characteristic sets of characteristics due to the crossing of representatives of different races and isolation from the external environment in urban life. Racial traits cease to be adaptive; selection has little effect. In the future, the merging of all races into one is expected.
Man populated the entire planet not because he was a “super-successful” species, but because he was afraid of revenge and did not trust his former friends, says an archaeologist from the University of York.
For hundreds of millennia, the reasons for the movements of Stone Age people were natural or demographic factors. Cooling or warming, population growth - this is what brought huge masses of people into motion. These processes were not fast, and therefore the spread of the first people around the world was slow. However, about 100 thousand years ago something happened that sharply accelerated this process and expanded the geography of migrations. What was it?
Scheme of human settlement on the planet. Image: University of York / www.york.ac.uk.
Microplates from Pinnacle Point (South Africa) about 71 thousand years old. Photo: Simen Oestmo / www.york.ac.uk.
Dr. Penny Spikins ( Penny Spikins) from the department of archeology at the University of York (UK) believes that neither demographic nor natural factors can explain the scale and speed of migrations that occurred about 100 thousand years ago and after that. She notes that people were not stopped either by dangers along the way or by natural barriers. Man inhabits the cold spaces of Northern Europe, crosses large rivers, deserts, tundra and jungles, swims across seas (for example, to get to Australia or the islands Pacific Ocean). Why? What made people overcome all obstacles and go to God knows where?
Penny Spikins thinks she knows the answer to this question. In an article recently published in the journal Open Quaternary, she suggests that people were driven by distrust of each other and fear of betrayal. She writes that by the time she describes, people's obligations to each other become increasingly important for survival. The growing importance of this factor in human relations could not but lead to the opposite process - an increase in people who do not comply with obligations. Of course, people interested in their survival had to condemn and punish the “apostates.” They, in turn, could take revenge. Maybe it was distrust of former friends, fear of revenge on their part that motivated people? Perhaps it was precisely because of mistrust and revenge that people tried to get as far away from their offenders as possible, crossing vast spaces and overcoming difficulties, the archaeologist believes.
“A disgruntled ex-friend, comrade, or group of such people with poison arrows was good motivation for leaving and overcoming all dangers,” says Penny Spikins. She notes that human expansion around the world is often seen as a sign of our species' success. Meanwhile, behind mass migrations there may be another, “dark side” of human nature.
In his work, the researcher actively uses references to ethnographic research, but it must be taken into account that these analogies cannot be directly transferred to such distant antiquity. We can hardly imagine what was going on in the heads of Stone Age people; we have little understanding of what their worldview was, what they felt and experienced. Information about modern traditional societies, of course, allow us to try to penetrate this area, but such attempts will always remain hypothetical, proving their truth is very difficult, if not impossible.
Recently, several studies have appeared, the authors of which claim that human settlement modern look (Homo sapiens) occurred somewhat earlier than previously thought. Thus, based on genetic and anthropological analyses, an international group of scientists led by Professor Katerina Harvati ( Katerina Harvati) from the University of Tübingen (Germany) reported that it occurred about 130 thousand years ago. Moreover, they first moved through the Arabian Peninsula to Australia and the western Pacific Ocean. Much later, about 50 thousand years ago, another group of people left Africa and headed to Northern Eurasia.
How did man explore the Earth? It was a very difficult and lengthy process. Even now it cannot be said that our planet has been 100% studied. There are still corners of nature that have never been touched by humans.
Studying the development of the earth by man 7th grade secondary secondary school. This knowledge is very important and helps to better understand the history of the development of civilization.
How did man explore the Earth?
The first stage of settlement, during which ancient upright people began to migrate from East Africa to Eurasia and explore new lands, began about 2 million years ago and ended 500,000 years ago. Later, ancient people die out, and with the appearance of Homo sapiens in Africa 200,000 years ago, the second stage began.
The main settlement of people was observed along the mouths of large rivers - the Tigris, Indus, Euphrates, and Nile. It was in these places that the first civilizations, called river civilizations, arose.
Our ancestors chose such areas in order to establish settlements, which would later become centers of states. Their life was subject to a clear natural regime. In the spring, the rivers flooded, and then, when they dried up, fertile, moist soil remained in this place, ideal for sowing.
Dispersal across continents
The vast majority of historians and archaeologists consider Africa and Southwestern Eurasia to be their homeland. Over time, humanity has conquered almost all continents, with the exception of Antarctica. Where it is now located 30 thousand years ago there was land that connected Eurasia and North America. It was along this bridge that people penetrated to more and more new places. Thus, hunters from Eurasia, having passed through North America, ended up in its southern part. Man came to Australia from Southeast Asia. Scientists were able to draw such conclusions based on the results of excavations.
Main areas of settlement
When considering the question of how man developed the earth, it will be interesting to know how people chose places to live. Very often, entire settlements left their familiar corner and went into the unknown to search for better conditions. The newly developed lands made it possible to develop livestock breeding and agriculture. The number also increased very quickly. If 15,000 years ago about 3,000,000 people lived on Earth, now this figure exceeds 6 billion. The vast majority of people live in flat areas. It is convenient to lay out fields on them, build factories and factories, and develop populated areas.
There are four areas where human settlement is most dense. These are South and East Asia, eastern North America. There are reasons for this: favorable natural factors, a long history of settlement and a developed economy. For example, in Asia, the population still actively sows and irrigates the soil. The fertile climate allows you to harvest several harvests a year to feed a large family.
IN Western Europe And North America Urban settlement predominates. The infrastructure here is very developed, many modern plants and factories have been built, industry predominates over agriculture.
Types of economic activities
Economic activities affect and change the environment. Moreover, different industries affect nature in different ways.
So, agriculture became the root cause of the reduction in areas of the planet where natural conditions were preserved. More and more space was required for fields and pastures, forests were cut down, animals lost their home. Due to constant load, the soil partially loses its fertile qualities. Artificial irrigation allows you to get a good harvest, but this method also has its disadvantages. Thus, in arid areas, too much watering of the land can lead to salinization and a decrease in yield. Domestic animals trample vegetation and compact the soil cover. Often, in arid climates, pastures turn into desert.
Particularly harmful to environment rapid industrial growth. Solid and liquid substances penetrate into soil and water, and gaseous ones are released into the air. The rapid growth of cities necessitates the development of ever new territories where vegetation is destroyed. Environmental pollution has an extremely adverse effect on human health.
Human development of the Earth: countries of the world
People who live in the same territory, have a common language and the same culture form an ethnic group. It may consist of a nation, tribe, people. In the past, great ethnic groups created entire civilizations.
Currently there are more than 200 states on the planet. They all differ from each other. There are states that occupy an entire continent (Australia), and there are very tiny ones, consisting of one city (Vatican City). Countries also differ in population size. There are billionaire states (India, China), and there are also those where no more than a few thousand people live (San Marino).
So, considering the question of how man developed the Earth, we can conclude that this process is not yet completed and we still have a lot of interesting things to learn about our planet.
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, has brought large number finds that qualitatively changed the general approach to resolving the issue of human immediate ancestors, 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 clearly stand out - 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 maximum quantity 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.
Leaving aside the controversy about the exact time of the appearance of people modern type, then 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.
