Science confirms – 8. Collection of scientific articles. Андрей ТихомировЧитать онлайн книгу.
included changes in dozens and even hundreds of sections of the genome, and not just in one key gene.
The dragon’s skull. The Chinese have issued a new version of the origin of Homo sapiens
Several scientific groups announced the discovery of the remains of a species transitional between homo erectus, intelligent and its extinct relatives. It is possible that several sister evolutionary lines existed in China and the Middle East simultaneously with Homo sapiens. All this makes the history of the human race extremely complicated.
The discovery of a new kind of people
In 1933, during the reconstruction of the bridge in the Chinese city of Harbin, almost an entire skull of an ancient man was found. Only in 2018 it was transferred to the Geological University of Hubei Province. Three articles in the journal Innovation are devoted to the description of the find.
The skull is very massive, with archaic features that make it related to both the erect and Heidelberg man. At the same time, a large vault housed a large brain, a face almost like ours, only wider. A number of details resemble skulls found earlier in China. But the only preserved tooth looks more like Denisov’s.
All this explosive mixture of antiquity and modernity did not allow the find to be attributed to any known sapiens species, so the authors of the study decided that this was its sister line. She was named Homo longi, which means «dragon man».
The skull was located in layers formed 800—100 thousand years ago. Information about the exact location, stratigraphy has not been preserved, and to clarify the age, scientists analyzed the content of rare elements, the ratio of strontium isotopes in the inclusions of the rock. Compared with the results of studying the bones of humans and other mammals, presumably from the same horizons. In addition, micro-samples from the skull were dated using the thorium-uranium method. It turned out that the «dragon man» is at least 146 thousand years old. At that time, people of an unknown species lived on the territory of China, whose remains were found in Chinnyushan, Dali, Hualundong cave. And Denisovans lived in the high-mountain cave of Baishya.
The appearance of the «dragon man» was reconstructed. He was a round-faced man in his fifties with a low forehead, overhanging brow ridges and a wide nose. Most likely, the skin, hair and eyes were dark, like those of Neanderthals, Denisovans and early Sapiens.
When Homo sapiens left Africa
Some consider early humans in China to be transitioning from an upright man to an Asian lineage with modern anatomy. The authors of the work on Homo longi have a different opinion: the «dragon man» is an independent branch that arose in Africa about a million years ago.
Having no analysis of ancient DNA in their hands, scientists applied the Bayesian approach – a mathematical method that allows you to build an evolutionary tree based on heterogeneous source data. According to calculations, intelligent man lived on the territory of China already 400 thousand years ago. This contradicts the results obtained earlier.
In 1978, two incomplete human skulls and bone fragments were found during excavations in the Apidima cave in northern Greece. Anthropologists have determined that one belonged to early Homo sapiens, the other to a Neanderthal. The uranium-thorium method showed the age of the find – 210 thousand years. This is the oldest intelligent person outside the ancestral homeland. However, some researchers doubt that the skulls from Harbin and Apidima can be attributed to Homo sapiens, and criticize the dating.
And here is a new sensation – in Israel, several fragments of a 140—120 thousand-year-old skull were found in the Nesher Ramla cave. They combine archaic and advanced Neanderthal features, so scientists consider them as a special ancestral line of this kind of people. And given the general details with two more types of people, a hypothesis about a special line of Neanderthal ancestors, isolated about 400 thousand years ago and ended its existence in Nesher Ramla, suggests itself. At the same time, Sapiens had already settled in the caves to the north of them.
So far, the history of the human race is rather complicated and far from complete. The reason for this is a lot of finds not only in Europe and Africa, but also in the Middle East, in China. And, of course, this is not the limit. Different degrees of preservation, a variety of techniques open up a wide scope for interpretation. One thing is clear: for the last 200 thousand years, the planet has been inhabited by many populations of ancient people, including Homo sapiens. They actively migrated, exchanged technologies, and possibly interbred.
The earth, whether we want it or not, is invaded by monkeys who call themselves the first (primate from Latin. primatus is the first place, seniority) and whatever one may say, but the so—called intelligent people (Homo sapiens) are just one of the 200 species currently living – from lemurs to humans of the order of primates or monkeys. Well, what kind of monkeys, to one degree or another, many people know: loud, noisy, with a herd instinct, with a pronounced hierarchical system of dominance-subordination, matriarchy prevails in many species of monkeys. Emotions, grimacing, clowning, etc. in monkeys often prevail over reason. All this also takes place in man, the first monkey of the planet.
Finds of the remains of various humanoid creatures, such as Pithecanthropus, Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals, which modern science considers the ancestors of man, are not uncommon. Such finds are periodically made by archaeologists in very ancient layers – over 30, 50 and even 100 thousand years.
Modern science believes that the creation of man is associated with genetic mutations, ancient viruses. Various viruses embedded in the genome of ancient hominids (humanoid creatures) led to the formation of diverse humanoid creatures. Of these, eventually, in the course of an endless struggle for existence, the modern species – homo sapiens – won. At the same time, there were other types of hominid humanoid creatures, studies of recently discovered burial grounds in Kenya (east Africa) indicate that homo habilis (skilled man) and homo erectus (homo erectus) lived side by side. They could mate and, apparently, from this promiscuity (unlimited sexual relations), the modern species, homo sapiens, originated. And all the diversity of humanoid beings, modern races, is the result of an endless struggle for existence, when humanoid beings had sexual contacts with close species and not only, for example, various forms of sexual relations are known – bestiality, necrophilia, homosexuality, etc.
French scientists from the University of Rouen discovered a new strain of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in 2009. According to them, it is transmitted to humans from gorillas. This is the first recorded case of HIV infection from primates, with the exception of chimpanzees – three known types of immunodeficiency virus have passed to humans from these primates. The virus was detected in a French-born woman living in Cameroon. She did not eat monkey meat, so scientists believe that the infection occurred sexually from another person.
Scientists from the Russian Institute of Molecular Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences claim that ancient viruses made a human from an ancient hominid. «Genes, as can already be argued, are similar in humans and monkeys, they secrete ordinary proteins, but viruses change their ratio, distribution and the time spent on it,» explained Vyacheslav Tarantula, deputy director of the Institute. Almost simultaneously with the Russians, the Americans voiced their theory of the transformation of monkeys into Homo sapiens. According to biologists and plastic surgery specialists from the University of Pennsylvania, they managed to discover a single genetic mutation, thanks to which the earliest human ancestors began to differ from their ape-like predecessors. In fact, we are talking about the moment of a person’s birth on planet Earth. This mutation, scientists say, occurred about 2.4 million years ago in a gene that controls the development of jaw muscles and in modern humans is called MYH16. As a result of this seemingly small change in the genome, the jaw muscles of our ancestors began to weaken, which forced the unfortunate to change their habits, menus, and look for the first tools. They had to adapt to the new features of the body, learn how to cook food, somehow process it. It was the change in the jaw muscles, which, having become less powerful, exerted less pressure on the skull, provided a different