Table 2. Caliber and number of shells fired by the main artillery of enemy ships and the number of hits in Jutland

European scientists studied the skeleton of a Neanderthal boy from the El Sidrón cave in Spain. They were able to establish that the vertebrae and skull of the child were far from completing their age-related changes, despite the fact that he was almost eight years old. At Homo sapiens at this age such changes are already completed. The discovery is rather unexpected, since longer childhood is usually associated with more high level development of a particular species, due to which its representatives, when growing up, need to assimilate a larger amount of information. The corresponding one is published in Science.

The authors of the work studied the skeleton of a boy from the El Sidron cave, dated 49,000 years ago. The age of the child at the time of death was determined from the teeth (and traces of eating on them) at 7.69 years. Despite this, he did not completely end the process of ossification of a number of vertebrae. The brain volume was only 87.5% of that of a standard adult Neanderthal. In children of a modern person, ossification of the same vertebrae occurs at 4–6 years of age, and by the age of 7–8 years, the volume of the brain is 95% of the volume of the brain of an adult.

New data show that Neanderthals matured much more slowly than modern humans. Typically, primate species that have more complex behavior tend to mature longer. The need for assimilation necessary information from older relatives, as well as a large brain, the development of which takes longer, slowing down the maturation of modern people in comparison with, for example, chimpanzees. Chimpanzees, on the other hand, are characterized by a longer maturation than more primitive monkeys. The brain volume of Neanderthals was indeed somewhat larger than that of a modern person, which could also be reflected in the longer duration of growing up.

At the same time, there are some bottlenecks in the method of work. The rate of maturation of the Neanderthal child in it is determined in comparison with modern children, and not with ancient Cro-Magnon children. Meanwhile, modern Homo sapiens markedly changed compared to their ancestors, former contemporaries of the Neanderthals. In particular, the average brain volume of the then people of our species was 5% larger than it is now. Since then, it has decreased markedly, since ancient people lived in a much more difficult conditions than we are. They had a weakly expressed specialization: everyone had to be able to make tools, clothes, hunt, know medicinal herbs and perform all the operations that specialists do today.

Today, due to his ever-increasing specialization, his mental capacity has been reduced and his brain volume has fallen from 1,500 to 1,425 cubic centimeters (if the specialization continues, he could shrink even more). That is, in theory, in the Paleolithic era, the formation of the brain of a human child could also take longer than today's children. It may have lasted about as long as that of the Neanderthal boy from the El Cidron cave.

It is unlikely that there will be a person who will take the liberty of making an unambiguous conclusion about whether the Neanderthals died out or were assimilated into subsequent species and generations of representatives of the human race. The name of this subspecies was determined by the Neandertal Gorge in West Germany, where an ancient skull was found. At first, the people working in this place suspected the criminal overtones of the find, and therefore got scared and called the police. But the event turned out to be more significant for history.

Period the rise of Neanderthal man(Fig. 1), who lived in Europe and Western Asia (starting from the Middle East - and ending with South Siberia), is considered a period of time, 130-28 thousand years, going back centuries. Despite the many signs of body and head construction, as well as the behavioral features that make Homo neanderthalensis similar to modern man, the most difficult living conditions left a peculiar imprint in the form of a massive skeleton and skull. But this fellow countryman from the past, specialized in a predatory way of life, could already be proud of the volume of the brain, which in its value exceeds the average indicators characteristic of even many of our contemporaries.

Rice. 1 - Neanderthal

The find at first did not make a proper sensation. The significance of this discovery was realized much later. It so happened that it was this type of fossil people that was given the greatest amount of work and time of scientists. As it turned out, even among the representatives of the human race of non-African origin living in our time, 2.5% of the genes are Neanderthal.

External features of the Neanderthal

Upright, but stooped and stocky representatives of this subspecies of Homo sapiens, who knew all the hardships of existence during the period of total glaciation, had a height of: 1.6-1.7 meters - for men; 1.5-1.6 - in women. The severity of the skeleton and solid muscle mass were combined with a volume of the cranium of 1400-1740 cm³ and a brain of 1200-1600 cm³. There was a feeling that a short neck was leaning forward under the weight of a large head, and a low forehead seemed to be running back. Despite the size of the skull and brain, which is almost the same as that of all of us, the inhabitants of the 21st century, the Neanderthal is distinguished by some flatness, a large width and flatness of the frontal lobes. The largest part of the brain is the occipital lobe, sharply leaning back.

Rice. 2 - Neanderthal skull

Forced to eat rough food, these people could boast of very strong teeth. Their cheekbones would surprise us with their width, and their jaw muscles with their power. But for all the size of the jaws, they do not protrude forward. But there is no point in talking about the beauty of the face by our standards, since the unpleasant impression of heavy brow ridges and a small chin is enhanced by the appearance of a huge nose. But such an organ is simply necessary to warm the cold air during inhalation and protect the upper and lower respiratory tract.

There is an assumption that Neanderthals had pale skin and red hair, while men did not grow beards and mustaches. The structure of their vocal apparatus is such that there is every reason to draw a conclusion regarding conversational capabilities. But their speech was partly like singing.

The resistance of people of this type to cold can be explained not only by the characteristics of their body, but also by hypertrophied proportions of the body. The impressive width in the shoulders, the width of the pelvis, the power of the muscles and the barrel-shaped chest, turned the body into some kind of ball, which worked on the intensity of warming and reducing heat loss. They had not only short arms, more like paws, but also a shortened tibia, which, given the density of the physique, inevitably led to a decrease in step and, accordingly, to an increase in energy consumption for walking (compared to people of our time - up to 32%).

Diet

The increased need to replenish the energy reserve is easily explained by the hardships of life at that time. Based on this, it becomes clear why they could not do without regular meat eating. For millennia, Neanderthals hunted together mammoths, woolly rhinos, bison, cave bears, and other large animals. Another item on the menu was roots mined with digging knives. But they did not eat milk, since German anthropologists managed to discover a gene belonging to the Neanderthal, because of which this product was not absorbed by the body of a mature person.

Dwellings

Of course, the most reliable and safe housing was the caves, where it was possible to single out a kitchen area with the remains of eaten animals, a sleeping place next to a large hearth, and also a workshop. But often they had to build mobile dwellings (Fig. 3) in the form of huts from large mammoth bones and animal skins. Usually Neanderthals settled in groups of 30-40 people, and marriages between close relatives were not uncommon.

Rice. 3 - Neanderthal mobile dwelling

Attitude towards death

During the time of the Neanderthals, the whole family participated in the burial of the dead. The bodies of the dead were sprinkled with ocher, and in order to block access to them for wild animals, large stones and skulls of deer, rhinos, hyenas or bears were piled on the grave, which served as part of some kind of ritual. In addition, food, toys and weapons (spears, darts, clubs) were placed next to the dead relatives. It was the Neanderthals who were the first in the history of mankind to put flowers on the graves. These facts confirm their belief in the afterlife and the beginning of the formation of religious ideas.

Tools for labor and cultural purposes

To collect roots, the Neanderthal skillfully wielded digging knives, and spears and clubs were used to protect themselves and their relatives, as well as for hunting, since they did not have throwing weapons and bows with arrows. And the decoration of various products was carried out with the help of drills. The fact that people, surrounded by a hostile world, lurking in many hardships and dangers, appreciated beauty, is evidenced by a flute of that time with 4 holes. Made of bone, it could give rise to a melody of three notes: “do”, “re”, “mi”. About the ideas of this subspecies of people about art, eloquently speaks of a find made near the town of La Roche-Cotard in 2003, which is a 10-centimeter stone sculpture in the form of a human face. The age of this product dates back to 35 thousand years.

It is not entirely clear how to perceive parallel scratches on the bones found near Arcy-sur-Cure, Bachokiro, in Molodov, as well as pits on a stone slab. And there are no questions about the use of jewelry from drilled animal teeth and painted shells. The fact that Neanderthals adorned themselves with compositions of feathers of different lengths and colors is evidenced by the remains different types birds (22 species) whose feathers were cut off. Scientists were able to identify the bones of the bearded vulture, red-footed falcon, black Eurasian vulture, golden eagle, wood pigeon and alpine jackdaw. At the Pronyatyn site in Ukraine, an image of a leopard 30-40 thousand years old, scratched on a bone, was found.

Neanderthals, who are considered to be carriers of the Mousterian culture, used disc-shaped and single-area cores in stone processing. Their techniques for making side-scrapers, pointers, drills, and knives were characterized by chipping wide flakes and using padding along the edges. But the processing of bone material has not received proper development. The rudiments of art are confirmed by finds with a hint of ornament (pits, crosses, stripes). The presence of traces of staining with ocher and the discovery of a semblance of a pencil in the form of a piece worn off as a result of use should be put on the same scale.

Questions of medicine and care of relatives

If you carefully examine Neanderthal skeletons(Fig. 4), which left traces of fractures and their treatment, it is impossible not to admit that even at this stage in the development of civilization, the services of a chiropractor were provided. Of the total number of injuries studied, the effectiveness medical care amounted to 70%. To help people and their animals, this problem had to be dealt with professionally. The concern of fellow tribesmen for their neighbors is confirmed by excavations in Iraq (Shanidar Cave), where the remains of Neanderthals with broken ribs and a broken skull were found under the rubble. Apparently, the wounded were in a safe place, when the rest of the relatives were engaged in labor and hunting.

Rice. 4 - Neanderthal Skeleton

Questions of genetics

Judging by the decoding of the Neanderthal genome from 2006, there is every reason to believe that the divergence between our ancestors and this subspecies dates back 500 thousand years ago, even before the races known to us spread. True, the similarity of the DNA of the Neanderthal and modern humans is 99.5%. Cro-Magnons are considered to be the ancestors of the Caucasoid race, between whom hostile relations developed between them and Neanderthals, which is confirmed by the remains of each other's gnawed bones at the sites. Necklaces made of human teeth, as well as tibias with a cut-off joint, used as caskets, also serve as evidence of the confrontation.

The struggle for territory is evidenced by the periodic transition of caves from Neanderthals to Cro-Magnons - and vice versa. Judging by the equivalence of technologies of both types, driving force their development could be climatic changes: with the onset of cold weather, the hardy and strong Neanderthal man prevailed, and with warming, heat-loving homo sapiens. But there is an assumption about the crossing between them. Moreover, by 2010 Neanderthal genes were found in the genomes of many modern peoples.

As a result of the comparison Neanderthal genome with analogues of our contemporaries from China, France, and Papua New Guinea, the possibility of interbreeding was recognized. How did it happen: did men bring Neanderthals into their tribe, or did women choose Neanderthals, known as good hunters? It suggests itself that the Neanderthals are some kind of alternative branch of human development, which has dissolved over the centuries. Who but them can be considered super native Europeans? It was the Neanderthal who first settled Europe - and for hundreds of millennia he reigned supreme here. In terms of the level of predatory nature, only the Eskimos can be compared with them, whose diet, almost 100% consists of meat dishes.

The fate of the Neanderthals: versions and assumptions

As an answer to the question regarding the extinction of the Neanderthals, any of the modern concepts can be taken into account. One of them is the opinion of Alyosha Khodlichka, an anthropologist and the United States, who considers Neanderthals our ancestors at one of the stages of human development. According to his hypothesis, there is a gradual transition of the Neanderthal to the Cro-Magnon group. Has the right to life and the theory regarding the extermination of one species by another. There is also a version regarding Bigfoot, as the last representative of the extinct subspecies. Or maybe the Neanderthals continued their race in the form of homo sapiens mestizos.

MOSCOW, September 22 - RIA Novosti. The brains of Neanderthal children continued to grow in size for a long time, which is completely uncharacteristic of modern people, paleontologists found out who published an article in the journal Science.

"We asked a simple question - did humans and Neanderthals grow the same way? We found that the brains of Neanderthal children continued to increase in size even at the age of seven and that in general they grew more slowly than Cro-Magnon children - at the same seven years, a small Neanderthal looked like a five to six year old human child," said Antonio Rosas of Spain's National Science Museum in Madrid.

Rosas and his colleagues made the discovery while excavating at the El Cidron Cave in northern Spain, where some of the last populations of Neanderthals on Earth lived some 50,000 years ago.

This cave attracted the attention of archaeologists, paleontologists and the public in 1994, when the remains of 13 Neanderthals were found in it, who lived there, according to various estimates, about 47-50 thousand years ago.

The absence of animal bones in the cave leads scientists to believe that either it served as a cemetery for the ancient natives of Europe, or its inhabitants were cannibals who deliberately hunted their own kind.

In the cave, as Rosas notes, the remains of not only adult Neanderthals, but also children were found, which allowed scientists to study how quickly they grew, comparing differences in the thickness and structure of bones, the volume of the skull and other anatomical features in children of different ages.

In general, as scientists note, the differences in anatomy and growth rates between Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals were minimal. This once again confirms that Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis come from one common ancestor who lived on Earth relatively recently.

On the other hand, such differences still existed, and they were most pronounced in the rate of growth and in the development of the brain and cranium. As shown by the measurements of Rozas and his team, the skull of a seven-year-old Neanderthal child was noticeably smaller than that of an adult - 1300 versus 1550 cubic centimeters. This suggests that the Neanderthal brain continued to grow until at least the age of seven.

For a person, this is completely uncharacteristic - the development of the brain, as a rule, is completed by the second year of life, and subsequently its volume does not increase. Moreover, all nerve cells are already present in the baby's brain at the time of his birth and their number does not increase in subsequent years. Only the number of connections between them and the volume of the so-called glial tissue, which protects neurons from damage, increases.

What could be the reason for such a difference between Neanderthals and humans? Scientists believe that it arose due to the fact that the first inhabitants of Europe lived in much more severe conditions than the ancestors of the Cro-Magnons. Brain growth in the womb or in the early years of life is resource intensive, and its relatively slow development in Neanderthal children may have helped them and their parents survive. A similar slowdown, according to scientists, occurred with the growth of Neanderthal bones.

For this reason, the Neanderthal boy, whose remains were found in El Cidron, by the eighth year of life, weighed only 26 kilograms with a height of 111 centimeters - that is, he lagged behind human children in development by about two years. In addition, scientists found traces of the fact that he suffered from malnutrition and a lack of trace elements.

It is not yet clear whether the slow maturation of Neanderthal children was one of the reasons for their extinction, but scientists plan to test whether Neanderthals really grew up slowly by studying the remains of other Neanderthal children from the southern corners of Asia, where the climate was more favorable than in northern Spain during the Ice Age. .

There is no movement, said the bearded sage.
The other was silent and began to walk before him.
He could not have objected more strongly;
All praised the convoluted answer.
But, gentlemen, this is a funny case
Another example comes to mind:
After all, every day the sun walks before us,
However, the stubborn Galileo is right.
(A.S. Pushkin)

Who is right, gentlemen? Our stubborn Galileo, who knows (sic!) that the Neanderthals "were not human"?

The problem is that a lot of people really think that way. Or rather, they believe it. There is no point in arguing, I will give only a few facts.

1. Classical Neanderthals lived in Europe and Asia Minor for about 40 thousand years (period 80-35 thousand years ago). Climatic conditions were more severe than now.
0. Modern man exists for only 15 thousand years (will it last 40?)

1. The volume of the brain of classical Neanderthals was about 1500-1800 cc.
0. The average volume of the brain of a modern person is about 1400 cubic meters. cm (Australoids 1200, Caucasians and Mongoloids up to 1600).
Next, I combined the reconstructions of Neanderthals with portraits of modern humans.

And here are the bearded wise men (yes, you are not looking at the mind, but at the middle floor of the face!)

Norris' resemblance to Neanderthals, it turns out, I'm not the only one to note (.).

About a hundred years ago, an ancient man had to look like that.

Modern patterns of mass culture are not far from the image of the "monkey man". In order for the mass audience to recognize the "cave dweller", it is necessary to make him homeless: shaggy, dirty and grimacing!

It is advisable to goggle your eyes: "Horror, how I'm afraid of the entih of their skulls!"

And don't be afraid of skulls. They need to be considered more closely. Here from left to right: Neanderthal - modern man (Cro-Magnonoid or Eastern Paleo-Caucasoid) - modern man (Australoid) - modern man (Northern Caucasoid). The Neanderthal skull is knocked out of this row, but not too much. Differences from the Australoid will be noticed only by a trained eye.

Then there will be no need to do such "dioxin" reconstructions ...
(NB: we have no politics - only gestalt anthropology)

Here is a map of Neanderthal finds. It can be seen that they lived in Europe and Asia Minor, in mountainous regions with a rather harsh climate.

In the Holocene, in our time, the mountainous regions of Europe are no longer inhabited by Neanderthals, but by people of the Paleo-European and Balkan-Caucasian race. Are they very different? Judge for yourself. On the left is a reconstruction of a Neanderthal, on the right is a young Pakistani.

On the left is a representative of the Caucasian type, on the right is a Paleo-European type.

On the left - a modern inhabitant of Western Asia, on the right - the Neanderthal period. And what bandanas they have!

On the sides - modern inhabitants of Western Asia, in the center - a classic Neanderthal (museum reconstruction).

This reconstruction of a Neanderthal I had to modify a little. However, the "citizen chief" of him turned out to be unimportant - clearly a disguised proletarian ... Still, high posts in our country are more often occupied by northern Caucasians or graceful Mediterraneans.

The skull of the Neanderthal (on the right) is prettier than that of the Australoid, but it is more archaic: the maxillae are more massive, the chin is sloping, the forehead is low (the back of the head and base have their own differences).

With Australoids, the situation is unusual. Their anthropological indicators (thickness of bones, width of the dental arch, height of the vault of the skull, etc.) are more "sapient" than the Neanderthals. The absence of a genetic hiatus makes them undeniably Homo sapiens recens.
However, the appearance of Australoids is even more ancient than that of Neanderthals - their gestalt is closer to Homo erectus. As well as the volume of the brain, which is SIGNIFICANTLY less than the Neanderthal (about 30%).

Personally, I treat Neanderthals with respect (albeit without love). And I have my own, secret idea about them.

My intuition (based on education and ecological extrapolations) tells me that the Neanderthals were quite extraordinary creatures - Europeans, after all! In terms of lifestyle, they are similar to the Arctic natives (who in pre-civilized times were almost the most advanced group in their race). The Neanderthals had a developed instrumental and magical culture with burials.

Classical Neanderthals are a strong branch of the human continuum, which has gone through its own, rather intensive evolution in parallel channels. During which Neanderthals took new refreshing genes and were selected. They did not die out at all, but still live - and not bad: where the climate and soils are perhaps the best on the planet. And the northern Caucasians have been trying for thousands of years to win back at least an inch of these territories from them. Arrange campaigns, shoot, bomb. While in vain!