The origin and way of life of the Cro-Magnons. Ancient Cro-Magnon man - characteristics of lifestyle, tools, interesting facts with photos and videos Cro-Magnon appearance

About 40 thousand years ago, neoanthropes- people of the present appearance, but more massive than modern people. Neoanthropes, or new people (from the Greek peoz. the newest person) is a generalized name for people of the current species (Home sapiens), fossils and now living.

The inhabitants of Europe, who are often referred to as the current species, who lived in the Upper Paleolithic era (from 50 to 20 thousand years ago) are called Cro-Magnons. The name of these people was given by a find in the grotto of Cro-Magnon in the valley of the river. Weser in France. There, in 1868, scientists discovered 6 human skeletons, ancient coals from fires, flint tools and sea shells, in which holes were made. The discovery that was found in the Cro-Magnon grotto was the first, after which a serious study of the ancient people of the modern type began, therefore all fossil neoanthropes are called Cro-Magnons.

The physical type of Cro-Magnons is characterized by the following features:

• tall (for men - above 180 cm);
• skull with large brain region;
• elevated rounded cranial vault;
• extensive, straight, wide forehead without continuous supraorbital ridge;
• less developed face than most fossil hominids;
• protruding chin.

The Cro-Magnons had a perfect culture, which is called the Upper Paleolithic. In Europe, the most famous cultures of the Upper Paleolithic are called Aurignac, Solutre and Madeleine, after the names of the places in France where the main finds were made.

Cro-Magnons made a real technological revolution in stone processing. Long and narrow plates were broken off from the prismatic core, from which various tools were then made. The Cro-Magnons began the development and study of new materials and fossils - bones and horns, which are sometimes called the plastics of the Stone Age. They had huge differences, for example, they had lightness, plasticity and ease of processing. With the advent of bone needles, awls and piercings, fundamentally new possibilities appeared in the processing of skins and in the manufacture of clothing. Animal bones of impressive size also served as material for the dwellings of ancient hunters and fuel for hearths. The technical equipment of people has grown - spear throwers, bows and arrows have appeared.

The Cro-Magnons almost ceased to depend on natural shelters such as caves and rock shelters, as well as other structures. They actively developed, engaged in extensive construction of dwellings where they needed - this created additional opportunities for long-distance migrations and the development of new lands. Only among the Cro-Magnons for the first time art appears - rock art, figurines made of bone and stone. The first drawings on the walls of the caves depicted animals, and only later in ancient painting and plastic art do plots appear, in which a person becomes a participant.

At that time, such a direction as - Art, apparently of magical significance, was actively studied and developed. Images of animals are accompanied by signs of arrows and spears, designed to facilitate the upcoming hunt. As a result, we can say that modern man, in the guise that he has in the modern world, has largely acquired all the qualities and experience precisely from the Cro-Magnon. Even in ancient times, this species was actively searching for food, shelter, studied new fossils, and developed. It was this active development that contributed to the further improvement of civilization.

Cro-Magnons are considered to be the ancestors of modern man, who lived on our planet in the era of the late (or upper) Paleolithic (40-12 thousand years ago). The name of this species comes from the Cro-Magnon cave, located in the southwestern part of France. It was there that in 1868 the archaeologist Louis Larte, during excavations, stumbled upon the remains of ancient people, which in their own way differed from the previously discovered Neanderthal skeletons and resembled Homo sapiens. The find, whose age was about 30 thousand years, immediately attracted the attention of scientists who studied the history of that period, because then nothing was known about the way of life of the Cro-Magnons. In subsequent years, their remains, along with tools, were also found in other territories (Mladech and Dolni-Vestonice in the Czech Republic, Payviland in England, Peshtera-cu-Oase in Romania, Murzak-Koba in the Crimea, Sungir in Russia, Mezhirech in Ukraine, Fish Hook, Cape Flats in Africa, etc.).

Emergence and migration

The origin of the Cro-Magnons has not been fully studied to this day. Previously, historians and anthropologists adhered to the Marxist theory of the emergence of this type of ancient man. According to her, the Cro-Magnon is a direct descendant of the Neanderthal. Many modern researchers question this theory. They are inclined to the version that Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons descended from a common ancestor, after which each of them began to develop separately.

Modern scientists have not been able to reach a consensus about in which part of the planet the first ancestors of modern man appeared and when exactly it happened. The most common version says that the Cro-Magnons formed into a separate species about 200 thousand years ago, and this happened in eastern Africa. After 70 thousand years, they began migrating to the Middle East in search of new lands for life. From here, one part of the Cro-Magnons settled on the coast of the Indian Ocean, while the other moved north and reached the lands of Asia Minor and the Northern Black Sea region. Homo sapiens appeared in Europe approximately 40-45 thousand years ago.

Appearance

What did the Cro-Magnons look like? Ancient man, fossil man, differed from modern individuals in the structure of the body and the size of the brain. In contrast, representatives of Homo sapiens resembled today's people, but were larger. Archaeological finds made it possible to find out that the Cro-Magnon men who inhabited ancient Europe reached a height of 180 cm (women were shorter), had wide faces and deep-set eyes. reasonable was 1400-1900 cubic centimeters, which corresponds to this indicator in modern people. The way of life of the Cro-Magnons, who had to survive in the harsh conditions of antiquity, contributed to the formation of their well-developed muscle mass.

Life

They lived in communities, the number of which reached 100 people. Their main occupations were hunting and gathering plant foods. They were the first to make tools from bones and horns. Along with this, the use of stone tools remained widespread among them. Lighter and more advanced products allowed them to get more food, sew clothes, invent devices aimed at facilitating their existence. Scientists are convinced that the ancient people of this era had a well-developed speech.

dwelling

The Cro-Magnons still continued to settle in the caves, but new types of housing had already begun to appear. They learned how to build reliable tents from animal skins, wood and bones. Such houses could be moved, thanks to which the lifestyle of the Cro-Magnons ceased to be sedentary. Wandering from place to place in order to develop new lands, they carried housing and households with them. Cro-Magnons were the first prehistoric people who managed to domesticate a dog and use it as an assistant.

The ancestors of mankind had a widespread cult of hunting. This is evidenced by numerous finds of animal figurines pierced by arrows found during excavations of their settlements. Its walls were decorated with images of animals and hunting scenes.

Food extraction

Hunting has firmly entered the life of the Cro-Magnon. The realities of the Stone Age were such that in order to feed themselves, it was necessary to kill. The ancient inhabitants of our planet hunted in well-organized groups of 10-20 people. The objects of their persecution were large animals (mammoths, wolves, woolly rhinos, bears, red deer, bison). Destroying the beast, they provided their communities with a large amount of skin and meat. The main tools for killing animals among the Cro-Magnons were spear throwers and bows. In addition to hunting, they were engaged in catching birds and fish (snares were used for the first lesson, and harpoons and hooks for the second).

In addition to meat and fish, the descendants of modern man ate wild plants. The food of Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons was very similar. They ate everything that nature gave them (bark, leaves and fruits of trees, stems, flowers and roots of plants, cereals, mushrooms, nuts, algae, etc.).

Burials

The Cro-Magnons had interesting burial customs. They laid the deceased relatives in the grave in a half-bent position. Their hair was decorated with a net, their hands with bracelets, and their faces were covered with flat stones. The bodies of the dead were sprinkled with color on top. Ancient people believed in the afterlife, so they buried their relatives along with household items, jewelry and food, being sure that they would need them after death.

Cro-Magnon Cultural Revolution

People who lived in the late Paleolithic period made a number of discoveries that allowed them to significantly surpass their predecessors in the cultural development. Their main achievement is the invention of a new method of processing flint, which went down in history under the name "knife plate method". This discovery made a real revolution in the manufacture of tools. The method consisted in the fact that separate plates were beaten off or squeezed out of the stone nodule (nucleus), from which various products were subsequently made. Thanks to the new technology, prehistoric people learned how to get up to 250 cm of working edge from one kilogram of flint (for Neanderthals, this figure did not exceed 220 cm, and for their predecessors it barely reached 45 cm).

An equally important discovery of the Cro-Magnons was the production of tools from animal raw materials. Spending a lot of time hunting, the ancient man noticed that the bones, horns and tusks of animals are distinguished by increased strength. He began to make qualitatively new products from them, which made his life easier. Bone needles and awls appeared, making it easier to sew clothes from skins. Animal raw materials began to be used in the construction of new dwellings, as well as to make jewelry and figurines from it. The development of new materials led to the invention of more advanced hunting tools - spear throwers and bows. These devices allowed the Cro-Magnons to kill animals that were many times their size and strength.

The lifestyle of the Cro-Magnons was not only about survival among the wild. Prehistoric people strove for beauty. They left many works of art to their descendants. These are wall paintings in caves, and tools decorated with unique ornaments, and figurines of bison, horses, deer and other animals made of flint, clay, bones and tusks. The ancient Cro-Magnons worshiped female beauty. Among the finds discovered by archaeologists, there are many figurines of the fair sex. For the splendor of forms, modern historians called them "Venuses".

One of the groups of fossil neoanthropes. Name comes from the grotto Cromagnon (Cromagnon) in the dep. Dordogne (France), where in 1868 it was discovered several. skeletons of people of this type. The bone remains of K. are known (since 1823) from the late Pleistocene of Europe. ... ... Biological encyclopedic dictionary

Modern Encyclopedia

- (from the name of the grotto Cro Magnon Cro Magnon, in France), the generalized name of the fossil people of the modern species (neoanthropes) of the Late Paleolithic. Known from bone remains discovered in all parts of the world. Appeared ok. 40 thousand years ago… Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

Cro-Magnons- (Cro Magnons), prehistoric. people of modern species (Homo sapiens) that inhabited Europe ca. 35 10 thousand years ago. K. had a more massive physique than modern. man, but otherwise the same anatomical. x ki. Appeared in Europe approx. 35 thousand years ago, and ... ... The World History

Cro-Magnons- (from the name of the grotto Cro Magnon, Cro Magnon, in France), the most common of the fossil people of the modern species (neoanthropes) of the late Paleolithic era. Known from skeletal remains mainly from Europe. Appeared about 40 thousand years ... ... Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary

Tsev; pl. (sing. Cro-Magnon, nza; m.). The general name of the people of the Late Paleolithic ● The name comes from the grotto of Cro-Magnon in France, where in 1868 the bones of the Cro-Magnon skeleton were found. ◁ Cro-Magnon, oh, oh. K th era, cave. * *… … encyclopedic Dictionary

A generalized name for people of the late Paleolithic era. The name comes from the Cro Magnon grotto in the Dordogne department (France), where in 1868 the French archaeologist and paleontologist L. Larte discovered K. S ... ... Great Soviet Encyclopedia

Cro-Magnons- the term is ambiguous: 1) in the narrow sense, Cro-Magnons are people found in the Cro-Magnon grotto (France) and lived about 30 thousand years ago; 2) in a broader sense, this is the entire population of Europe during the Upper Paleolithic from 40 to 10 thousand years ago; 3)… … Physical Anthropology. Illustrated explanatory dictionary.

- (by the name of the Cro Magnon cave in France, where the first fossils were found) people of the modern type that existed in Europe in the Upper Pleistocene and differed sharply from the Neanderthals. A new dictionary of foreign words ... Dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language

The general name of the people of the Late Paleolithic era. Name comes from the grotto Cro Magnon (Cro Magnon) in dep. Dordogne (France), where in 1868 the first finds of K. S. Anthropological were made. point of view K. belong to the modern. kind of person (Homo… … Soviet historical encyclopedia

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BC e) they settled in Europe, and lived simultaneously with the last representatives of the Neanderthals.

The beginning of the Upper Paleolithic era includes the so-called Paleolithic revolution- the transition to a more advanced technology for the production and use of tools, which occurred about 40 thousand years BC. During this period, there was an explosive flowering of human intellectual and cultural activity associated with the wide spread of people of a modern physical type, who replaced the ancient types of people. Bones were first found in the Cro-Magnon Grotto in France.

It is surprising that for tens of thousands of years, pre-Cro-Magnon humanity has not undergone any changes. At the same time, according to modern ideas, the formation of features of the Cro-Magnon skeleton requires isolation and a huge number of years.

Evolutionary anthropologists believe that the Cro-Magnon population was between 1 and 10 million people, and in 100 thousand years they should have buried about 4 billion bodies with related artifacts. A significant part of the burials of these 4 billion should have been preserved. However, only a few thousand have been found.

Another ambiguity is the extinction of the Neanderthal. One of the dominant hypotheses about the causes of its extinction is its displacement (i.e., destruction) by Cro-Magnon, a competitor for an ecological niche, which occurred about 30 thousand years ago.

Cro-Magnon food

It has been established that the diet of a person of the late Paleolithic era (40-12 thousand years ago), who lived in Europe, consisted of wild fruits, vegetables, deciduous plants, roots, nuts, and lean meat. The results of anthropological studies unequivocally show that in the course of human evolution, a large role was played by a diet containing little fat, very little sugar, but including a large amount of fiber and polysaccharides. The cholesterol content of bushmeat approximates that of livestock meat, but bushmeat contains an almost ideal ratio of saturated to unsaturated fatty acids. Late Paleolithic people consumed a lot of animal protein at the expense of meat, which contributed to physical development and rapid puberty, but not longevity. An analysis of the remains of ancient people revealed characteristic diseases caused by malnutrition, in particular, beriberi, and their life expectancy averaged 30 years.

One way or another, due to the fact that meat food prevailed in the Cro-Magnon diet, they were more stately than their descendants (and ancestors), who preferred plant foods.

Cro-Magnon culture

Religion

From the end of 40 thousand BC. the heyday of the Matriarchy also began - associated with the Cro-Magnons and known mainly from excavations in Europe. The worship of the mother goddess was not just a local cult, but a global phenomenon. material from the site

Cave painting (rock)

During the life of the Cro-Magnons, there is a flourishing of cave (rock) painting, the peak of which was reached in 15-17 thousand BC. (gallery of cave drawings of Lascaux and Altamira).

A fresco in Altamira depicts a herd of bison and other

Cro-Magnons - the origin of modern man

Cro-Magnons is the common name of the ancient representatives of modern man, who appeared much later than the Neanderthals and coexisted with them for some time (40-30,000 years ago). Their appearance and physical development were in fact no different from modern humans.

Approximately 40–30,000 years ago, the third greatest event in the life of our planet took place. The first, which happened several billion years ago, was the origin of life. The second is the beginning of humanization, the transition from ape to ape-man - about 2 million years ago. The third event is the appearance of a modern type of man, Homo sapiens - a reasonable man.

40-30,000 years ago, it appears and very quickly (quickly in this case, when a millennium is a trifle) takes the place of the Neanderthals.

Cro-Magnon skeletons found

As soon as an archaeologist from France Larte discovered 5 skeletons in the Cro-Magnon grotto under a thick layer of centuries-old deposits, he immediately guessed that he had met “acquaintances”. Shortly before this, the scientist became aware that, by order of the authorities of the Haute-Garonne department, 17 skeletons, accidentally found in the Orignac Pyrenean cave, were buried in the parish cemetery. Larte was able to prove without difficulty that the strict rules of Christian burial could be waived in relation to these people, and not only dug them back, but also established (using stone tools and animal bones from the Aurignac cave) that these were contemporaries of the same ice age, where the classic Neanderthals lived. The tools of the Aurignacian man are in a slightly higher, i.e. late, layer than the tools of the Chapelles.

Two caves, in which the most ancient people of the modern type were found, gave them their names: the first person began to be called Cro-Magnon, and the first large period of his history - the period (culture) of Aurignac.

Soon followed by dozens of discoveries of Cro-Magnon skeletons and sites throughout Western Europe and North Africa, and the ancient "reasonable man" appeared in all its splendor and splendor.

Parking lot Sungir

Sculptural portraits of a girl and a boy from the Sungir site

Sungir is an Upper Paleolithic Cro-Magnon site on the territory of the Vladimir region. There is a well-known paired burial of a boy aged 12–14 and a girl aged 9–10, lying with their heads to each other. What their bones could tell. As it turned out, the boy, despite his age, could throw a spear well with his right hand. The girl, judging by the development of her fingers and forearm, often made scrolling movements with her right hand. We know that the clothes of the Sungir people were covered with many beads made of mammoth bone, and there were holes in the beads. These holes, apparently, were drilled by a young Cro-Magnon woman.

The structure of the right humerus and cervical vertebrae show that the girl often raised her right arm up, and her head was constantly tilted to the left. In order for such features to appear on the skeleton already in childhood, the load must be very strong! According to anthropologists, the girl regularly wore weights on her head, and held them with her right hand. Perhaps during the transitions from camp to camp, which were made by nomadic groups of Cro-Magnons, the little Cro-Magnon was a carrier on a par with adults.

What was a Cro-Magnon

Cro-Magnons evoked admiration from their discoverers, mixed with envy: the first people - and immediately what!

They were Caucasians, of enormous height (on average 187 cm), with an ideal straight bipedal gait and a very large head (from 1600 to 1900 cm³). Such a large skull could still be considered a "relic of Neanderthalism", but this head already had a straight forehead, a high cranial vault, and a sharply protruding chin.

Cro-Magnon man did not know what metal was, did not suspect either agriculture or cattle breeding, but if we could transfer him through 400 centuries, he, apparently, would easily understand everything and could draw up an equation, write a poem, work on the machine and compete in a chess tournament.

Where did the Cro-Magnon come from?

A Cro-Magnon man appeared - for archaeologists and anthropologists - somehow at once: just here, in the caves of France and Italy, squat, powerful, invincible people lived, and suddenly they quickly, abruptly disappear, and people of the modern type are already hunting in their area. The newcomers are accompanied by an incredible technological revolution: instead of 3-4 primitive Neanderthal stone tools, about 20 stone and bone “devices” are used during the Aurignac period: awls, needles, tips, and so on. Immediately, as if from nothing, an amazing cave art appears.

This most powerful anthropological, technical and cultural upheaval now determines the entire human history. For billions of years, animals have existed only according to biological laws, improving, expanding the apparatus of adaptation, but not leaving the biological framework. But now a most important event occurs: the development of a group of animals has reached such a stage that they include in the mechanism of their adaptation, in addition to their own teeth and paws, also an inanimate object that does not belong to the body: a stick, a stone.

According to one version, the Cro-Magnon is the ancestor of all modern people, having appeared in East Africa approximately 130-180,000 years ago. According to this theory, 50-60,000 years ago they migrated from Africa to the Arabian Peninsula and appeared in Eurasia. The first group was able to quickly populate the coast of the Indian Ocean, and the second migrated to the steppes of Central Asia. The second group is the ancestors of the nomadic peoples and most of the Middle Eastern and North African population. Migration from the Black Sea to Europe began approximately 40-50,000 years ago, presumably through the Danube corridor. 20,000 years ago, all of Europe was already inhabited.

How has everything changed?

Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon

From now on, this creature no longer belongs entirely to biology, there is a gap in the "biological fence". The Oldowan pebble, the axe, the stone axe, the locomotive, the electronic computing device - these are already phenomena of the same order: a living being uses and combines inanimate objects. "Who" dominates "what".

The breakthrough of biology that occurs in a social animal multiplies, intensifies in the pack, creates new relationships in this pack. But, apparently, the biological factor, that is, the physical structure of the creature, does not immediately get used to, is consistent with the new "organs" - tools: for about 2 million years, the first ape-men change not only their inventory, but also their physical structure. A hand squeezing a broken pebble makes the brain think hard and increase, but not remaining in debt, the brain sends its signals to the hand: it also improves.

Over thousands of centuries, tools go from a rough stone, stick or bone to a Neanderthal axe, stone scraper and pointed point.

The brain during this period increases from 600–700 to 1500 cm³.

Gait - from semi-monkey to completely straight.

Hand - from a tenacious paw to a perfect tool.

The collective - from the animal pack to the first human social forms.

Some law of evolution, which we have not yet fully deciphered, causes the body of the ape-man to change along with his tools.

Comparison with modern man

Eventually there comes a point when biology and tools reach full agreement, a point from which brain and hand can do whatever work they want. The same brain and the same hand as a Cro-Magnon man will control a bow 20,000 years later, a plow 25,000 years later, and a few thousand years later - a locomotive, a car, an airplane, a rocket.

To move from a primitive ax to a more perfect one, it took from Pithecanthropus to become a Neanderthal. And in order to come from stone unpolished tips to the splitting of the atom, “nothing” was needed, that is, it seems that nothing fundamentally changed in the human body.

Instead of changing physically in the struggle for existence, man chose a different path. From now on, he began to improve "inanimate objects" and changed the structure of his society. Physical changes were replaced by faster and more painless - technical, social.

And how, in fact, can we know that the biological development of man has ceased?

Discussions on this topic have been going on for a very long time. It has been noticed that there are secular, millennial fluctuations in the physical structure of a person: the Cro-Magnon man was taller than us, now, as you know, humanity is again growing quite rapidly. Several thousand years ago, human bones were more massive, then they became more elegant, tomorrow, perhaps, they will again become massive and bulky. Undoubtedly, "brachycephalization" is going on, an increase in the number of short-headed people compared to long-headed ones.

The reasons for these changes are cryptic: food, a new way of life? The seriousness of these changes is also predictable: are these phenomena temporary, or tomorrow they will be covered by another change, or will a person still look different in a few tens or hundreds of millennia, not like now?

Guessing about the future, however, we have the right to say: over the past 30-40 thousand years, there have been gigantic changes in technology, but during the same time there have been no fundamental "bodily" changes.

Obviously, the “thousand-great-grandfathers” laid a good foundation!

Cro-Magnon culture

The Cro-Magnon created a rich and varied Late Paleolithic culture. There are descriptions of more than 100 types of complex stone and bone tools made with great skill, made by new, more efficient processing of stone and bone. To a large extent, the Cro-Magnons also improved hunting methods (driven hunting), hunting deer, mammoths, woolly rhinos, cave bears, wolves and other animals. They began to manufacture spear throwers (a spear could fly 137 m), as well as devices for catching fish (harpoons, hooks), and bird snares.

Cro-Magnons usually lived in caves, but at the same time, they built various dwellings from stone and dugouts, tents from animal skins, and even entire villages. Early neoanthropes could make sewn clothes, often decorated. So, at the Sungir site (Vladimir region), more than 1000 beads were found on the fur clothes of a man, and many other decorations were found - bracelets, rings.

The Cro-Magnon man was the creator of remarkable European primitive art, as evidenced by multi-color painting on the walls and ceilings of caves ((Spain), Montespan, Lascaux (France), etc.), engravings on pieces of stone or bone, ornament, small stone and clay sculpture. Amazing images of horses, deer, bison, mammoths, female figurines, called by archaeologists “Venuses” for their splendor of forms, various objects carved from bone, horns and tusks or molded from clay, can no doubt testify to a highly developed sense of beauty among Cro-Magnons. Cave art reached its peak approximately 19-15,000 years ago. Scientists believe that the Cro-Magnons could have had magical rites and rituals.

Probably, the life expectancy of Cro-Magnons was longer than that of Neanderthals: about 10% already lived to be 40 years old. In this era, the primitive communal system was also formed.

Cro-Magnon cave with wall paintings

In the south-west of France, near the city of Villonaire, Charente department, speleologists and archaeologists have discovered a cave with ancient wall paintings.

Cave researchers managed to find a unique and extremely valuable underground hall with rock art back in December 2005, but the unique cave was reported much later. Recently, scientists have increasingly adhered to such strong secrecy with valuable finds in order to prevent their destruction by unwanted visitors.

Work is underway to date the rock paintings. Experts do not exclude that they may be older than those in the famous Lasko Cave and Altamira Cave. According to the first impressions of experts, we are talking about a Cro-Magnon site, that is, a period of 30,000 years ago. According to scientists, the discovery in Villonera could be a revolution in science - it used to be believed that in such ancient times people did not resort to painting the walls of their underground dwellings.