From whom did man actually originate? From whom man originated: the opinions of scientists

The origin of man is a mystery. Even Darwin's theory is not considered fully proven, due to the lack of transitional links in evolution. How else do people explain their appearance from ancient times to the present day.

Totemism belongs to the most ancient mythological representations and is considered the first form of awareness of the human collective, as well as its place in nature. Totemism taught that each group of people had its own ancestor - a totem animal or plant. For example, if a raven serves as a totem, then it is the actual progenitor of the clan, and each raven is a relative. At the same time, the totem animal is only a patron, but is not deified, in contrast to later creationism.

Androgynous

The mythological ones include the ancient Greek version of the origin of man from the Androgyns - the first people who combined the signs of both sexes. Plato in the dialogue "Feast" describes them as creatures with a spherical body, whose back did not differ from the chest, with four arms and legs and two identical faces on their heads. According to legend, our ancestors were not inferior to the titans in strength and skill. Puffed up, they decided to overthrow the Olympians, for which they were cut in half by Zeus. This reduced their strength and self-confidence by half.
Androgyny is present not only in Greek mythology. The idea that a man and a woman were originally one whole is close to many world religions. So, in one of the Talmudic interpretations of the first chapters of the Book of Genesis, it is said that Adam was created by an androgyne.

Abrahamic tradition

Three monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) go back to the Abrahamic religions, going back to Abraham, the patriarch of the Semitic tribes, the first person who believed in the Lord. According to the Abrahamic tradition, the world was created by God - Existing from Non-Being, literally "out of nothing". God also created man - Adam from the dust of the earth "in our image and likeness", so that a man would be truly good. It is worth noting that both in the Bible and in the Koran the creation of man is mentioned more than once. For example, in the Bible about the creation of Adam, in the beginning it says in the 1st chapter that God created man "out of nothing in his own image and likeness", in the 2nd chapter that he created him from dust (dust).

Hinduism

In Hinduism, there are at least five versions of the creation of the world and man, respectively. In Brahmanism, for example, the creator of the world is the god Brahma (in later versions identified with Vishnu and the Vedic deity Prajapati), who appeared from a golden egg floating in the oceans. He grew up and sacrificed himself, created from his hair, skin, meat, bones and fat the five elements of the world - earth, water, air, fire, ether - and the five steps of the sacrificial altar. Gods, people and other living beings were created from it. Thus, in Brahminism, by making sacrifices, people re-create Brahma.
But according to the Vedas, the ancient scripture of Hinduism, the creation of the world and man is shrouded in darkness: “Who truly knows who will proclaim here. Where did this creation come from? Further, the gods (appeared) through the creation of this (world).
So who knows where it came from?

Kabbalah

According to Kabbalistic teachings, the creator of Ein Sof created a soul that received the name Adam Rishon - "the first man." It was a construction, consisting of many separate desires, interconnected like the cells of our body. All desires were in harmony, since initially each of them had a desire to support each other. However, being on the highest spiritual level, similar to the creator, Adam took on a huge spiritual light, which is equivalent to the "forbidden fruit" in Christianity. Unable to achieve the goal of creation by this action alone, the primary soul split into 600,000 thousand parts, and each of them into many more parts. All of them are now in the souls of people. Through many circuits, they must carry out a “correction” and gather again into a common spiritual complex called Adam. In other words, after the "breaking" or fall into sin, all these particles - people are not equal to each other. But returning to their original state, they again reach the same level, where they are all equal.

Evolutionary creationism

As science developed, creationists had to compromise with natural science concepts. An intermediate stage between the theory of creation and Darwinism was "theistic evolutionism." Evolutionary theologians do not reject evolution, but consider it an instrument in the hands of God the creator. Simply put, God created the "material" for the appearance of man - the genus Homo and launched the process of evolution. The result is a man. An important point of evolutionary creationism is that although the body changed, the human spirit remained unchanged. This is the position officially held by the Vatican since the time of Pope John Paul II (1995): God created an ape-like creature by putting an immortal soul into it. In classical creationism, a person has not changed either in body or soul since the time of creation.

"Theory of ancient astronauts"

In the 20th century, the version about the extraterrestrial origin of man was popular. One of the founders of the idea of ​​paleocontact in the 20s was Tsiolkovsky, who announced the possibility of aliens visiting the earth. According to the theory of paleocontact, sometime in the distant past, approximately in the Stone Age, aliens visited the Earth for some reason. Either they were interested in the colonization of exoplanets, or the resources of the Earth, or it was their transfer base, but one way or another, part of their descendants settled on Earth. Perhaps they even mixed with the local genus Homo, and modern people are mestizos of an alien life form and natives of the Earth.

The main arguments on which supporters of this theory rely are the complexity of the technologies used in the construction of ancient monuments, as well as geoglyphs, petroglyphs and other drawings of the ancient world, which supposedly depict alien ships and people in spacesuits. Mates Agres, one of the founders of the theory of paleovisits, even claimed that the biblical Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed not by God's wrath, but by a nuclear explosion.

Darwinism

The famous postulate - man descended from a monkey, is usually attributed to Charles Darwin, although the scientist himself, remembering the fate of his predecessor Georges Louis Buffon, who was ridiculed at the end of the 18th century for such ideas, cautiously expressed that humans and monkeys should have some common ancestor, monkey-like creature.

According to Darwin himself, the genus homo originated somewhere around 3.5 million in Africa. It was not yet our compatriot Homo Sapiens, whose age is dated today at about 200 thousand years, but the first representative of the genus Homo - the great ape, hominid. In the course of evolution, he began to walk on two legs, use his hands as a tool, he began to progressively transform the brain, articulate speech and sociality. Well, the reason for evolution, like in all other species, was natural selection, and not God's plan.

2004 is the year of the monkey according to the Eastern calendar. Whether we like it or not, monkeys are remarkably similar to us. True, the similarity is some kind of caricature. Monkey habits amuse people. It is not for nothing that the cages with monkeys in the zoo are always crowded, noisy and fun.

However, the attitude towards them was not always so benevolent and condescending. The German zoologist A. Brehm in his famous "Life of Animals" has the following lines: "Of the ancient peoples, only Indians and Egyptians had sympathy for monkeys. monkeys. They are doomed by God for eternity to bear in themselves a disgusting combination of human likeness and demonic appearance. We Europeans are more inclined to see in them a caricature of a person, and not creatures resembling us in the structure of their body. "

Are these words true? And in general, on what basis did monkeys become our closest relatives?

The 18th century Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus was the author of the first scientific classification of wildlife. He introduced the term "primates", meaning "leading". In this detachment, Linnaeus placed the species, to which he came up with the majestic name Homo sapiens - Homo sapiens. In those days, little was known about primates. It is curious that Linnaeus himself had never seen a live monkey in his life, and his acquaintance with them was by correspondence. However, even then it was clear that primates were at a higher level of development compared to other mammals. But still, doubts about the correctness of the systematic position of man, apparently, did not leave Linnaeus, and he, in the end, singled out the species Homo sapiens into a special kingdom - the Kingdom of Man.

Who, then, was the first to say that man evolved from apes? This is usually attributed to Darwin. But the laurels of superiority do not belong to him. At the end of the XVIII century, the French naturalist Georges Louis Buffon published the work "Natural History", in which he expressed for the first time a seditious thought: people are descendants of monkeys. This caused a sharp reaction of indignation, and the book was publicly burned by the executioner. However, the word about the relationship between man and monkeys was uttered, and regardless of the author's desire, the hypothesis began to gain supporters.

As for Darwin, he was only trying to substantiate the position that there was some kind of link between man and monkeys - a common ancestor from which they descend. It is worth noting that at the time Darwin wrote his work, paleoanthropology, the science of the fossil remains of alleged human ancestors, did not yet exist. There was practically no material for study at that time, and Darwin believed that this was a matter for the future. And then he was right.

In 1856, parts of the skeleton of an extinct humanoid creature, named after the place of discovery, were found in the Neanderthal cave near Düsseldorf. The find became a worldwide sensation. For a long time, Neanderthals were considered our direct ancestors, and some theologians even declared them to be degraded descendants of the biblical Cain. In the same 1856, they found the bones of an even more ancient creature - driopithecus. Further, the finds rained down as if from a cornucopia. It was then that paleoanthropology was born.

The study of bones and remnants of material culture has revealed a lot about these unusual creatures. Neanderthals appeared in Europe about 120-130 thousand years ago. Reconstructions made from the bones give a clear idea of ​​their appearance: height up to 160 cm, rough and thick bones of the skeleton, a skull with a low forehead and a bulge at the back of the head, a roller above the eyes, a sloping chin, but at the same time extremely large, almost like a modern person, brain.

During their earthly existence, Neanderthals changed. But here's what is interesting: their early forms were closer in all respects to Homo sapiens than the forms that appeared later. Their line of development, as it became clear in recent years, did not have an evolutionary continuation, but reached a dead end. These amazing creatures, something, of course, similar to us, lived on Earth for about 100 thousand years and suddenly disappeared. Although some researchers put forward the version that the mysterious "Bigfoot" may be none other than a direct descendant of the Neanderthals, forced out into inaccessible areas with harsh living conditions.

So, most likely, Neanderthals represent a separate evolutionary branch that leads not to modern man, but to an evolutionary dead end. As the German researcher F. Klix wrote: "The path of development ... to modern man, at least in Europe, passed by the Neanderthals."

But if not them, then who?

35-40 thousand years ago in Europe, still densely populated by Neanderthals, new inhabitants suddenly appeared. According to the name of the place of the first discovery (France, Cro-Magnon Grotto, 1868), they were given the specific name Cro-Magnon Man. Judging by the anatomical features, it was a man of the modern type, the first representative of Homo sapiens on Earth.

When Neanderthal bones were first discovered in 1856, society was at a loss. The biblical story of God-created Adam did not fit well with these "monkey people." But the Cro-Magnon found twelve years later gave hope. The oldest man did not look like a monkey at all, he was even called the "prehistoric Apollo" - he was so slender compared to the Neanderthal.

The Cro-Magnons lived in a tribal society. They hunted, fished, collected plants. These courageous travelers reached the cold Arctic regions, having learned how to sew clothes and build dwellings. They made tools that were very perfect for those times, and not only stone ones, but also from bones, horns and tusks. The potter's wheel is their invention. But all these achievements pale in comparison with one more: the Cro-Magnons were the first artists in the world. 30-40 thousand years ago they painted the walls of their caves, decorated clothes, household items, tools with drawings. What has been preserved by time testifies to the highest level of their artistic skill.

So what conclusion about the origin of man can be drawn on the basis of almost 150 years of study of paleontological material? Here is the opinion of the authoritative American anthropologist Richard Lewontin, who writes: "Contrary to the exciting and optimistic statements of some paleontologists, no fossil species of hominids can be considered our ancestors ...". Of course, there are other points of view, but the fossil record indicates that a person appeared suddenly, or, as scientists say, saltationally, with a complex of those physiological features that he still possesses today.

Alas, the possibilities of paleontology were practically exhausted. But if fossils can't tell their story in detail, it means one thing: scientists need to look for fundamentally new approaches to solve the problem. And they were found.

In the 1980s there was a "silent revolution" in anthropology. Evidence has emerged that has radically changed previous ideas about the early stages of human evolution. We are talking about the outstanding discoveries of the young science of paleogenetics. Scientists have learned to extract information from the fossilized remains that belonged to ancient creatures. In addition, it turned out that in the man himself, or rather, in his genotype, traces of the evolutionary history of the species can be found. Alan Wilson, a professor at the University of California, conducted some of the most difficult research. For analysis, he chose the DNA of mitochondria - one of the organelles of the cell. Samples of 182 different types of DNA were collected from 241 people of 42 nationalities. After conducting a comparative analysis of DNA, Wilson came to the conclusion that all of today's six billion people descended from one woman who once lived in northeast Africa. The author of the discovery, which was a worldwide sensation, became the "godfather" of our progenitor, calling her "mitochondrial Eve."

Wilson was also able to determine the approximate time when "Eve" appeared on Earth. "Genetic clock" showed that she lived approximately 200-150 thousand years ago. Surprisingly, "Eve" turned out to be older than the Neanderthal, who was stubbornly imposed on her by the "evolutionary fathers."

Wilson's discovery caused a surge in research in the largest laboratories in the world. And all the independently performed works also spoke in favor of northeast Africa as the place where man first appeared. Later, the French scientist J. Lucott, as well as Stanford University professor P. Underhall, analyzed the male chromosome and confirmed the African origin of "Adam".

It turns out that our ancestors appeared on the African continent about 150-200 thousand years ago. About 100 thousand years ago, their descendants began to spread around the world, replacing all other hominids living there, but at the same time, which is very important, without interbreeding with them. About 40 thousand years ago they reached Europe.

So, the scientific data obtained in the last decade convincingly confirmed what was revealed in the biblical narrative for two millennia: "From one blood He made the whole human race to dwell on all the face of the Earth ..." (Acts 17: 26) - the origin of mankind from one pair of our distant ancestors. But how to reconcile the idea of ​​the creation of man by God with the data of modern anthropology? And can it be done at all? Many scientists answer - yes!

What does the Bible say about the creation of man? This is mentioned twice in the Book of Genesis - in chapters 1 and 2. The first chapter reports the following: "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" (Genesis 1:26). And the second says: "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul" (Genesis 2:7)

The second passage shows that man, unlike all other living beings, is created in two stages. In other words, a person becomes a Human only after the grace of the Holy Spirit has spiritualized his physical body.

The Hebrew word for man is "adam". Interestingly, the word "earth" sounds in the same language as "adamah". And this is not just land, the word "adamah" has a number of meanings: "processed, transformed, cultivated land, or matter." In addition, the word "adam" is similar in sound to the verb "adame" - "I will liken." It is this verb that is used when it is said that man is created in the likeness of God. Is it just for the sake of a play on words that these words are used in the Bible, a book in which there is nothing accidental? By the way, the Greek word "anthropos" - "man" has an interesting etymology. The prefix "ano" means "up", "tropo" - "to strive, turn around". Thus, the very name of a person contains an extremely important idea: a person is a creature striving upward, as if facing heaven.

But how, then, to explain all those types of creatures that once lived on Earth, which carried human-like features? It is possible that the Creator, controlling evolution, gradually led them to such a level of development of the brain and nervous system that could ensure the implementation of higher mental activity as an instrument of the spiritual principle. The physical body of a person has been improving for a long time, ripening, like a fruit ripens, in order to give birth to a new life.

Another comparison can be made. When a cultivated variety of a fruit tree is grafted onto a wild game, the graft receives from the tree that has adopted it the strength for growth and development, feeding on its roots, trunk, and leaves. At the same time, the breeder must gradually remove unnecessary wild branches. Ultimately, the shoots of the new variety will become the only ones on the trunk that accepts them - a tree of a new, fruitful variety will be obtained. But no one will argue that as a result of grafting, a cultivar has evolved from a wild variety.

Obviously, something similar took place with the appearance of man. Therefore, on the one hand, we have so much in common with representatives of our class (mammals), but at the same time there are fundamental differences from all other anthropoids that lived on Earth. Man is a new alien in the world. He absorbed everything that was honed by the chisel of evolution and carefully accumulated by nature. He is a precious branch of the evolutionary Tree of Life, grafted by the Creator himself.

It is believed that the first people lived in Africa. This is indicated by the found fossils and the results of genetic studies. However, scientists from China have a different point of view. They revised the theory of evolution, creating their own version. understands whether their research deserves serious attention or is it another example of marginal science.

Homo everywhere

There are two main hypotheses of the origin of modern man. The first - multi-regional - was proposed in 1984. According to it, the immediate ancestor of man - the archanthrope, or Homo erectus - came from Africa and settled throughout Eurasia during the early and middle Pleistocene. Some of its populations gave rise to all modern sapiens races: Caucasoids, Negroids, Mongoloids and Australoids. In addition, supporters of the multiregional hypothesis believe that Neanderthals, erectus, Denisovans belong to the same species - people (Homo) - and are simply its separate forms. And the common ancestor of people lived about 2.3-2.8 million years ago.

The main argument in favor of this hypothesis is the fossils of sapiens, archanthropes (the same erectus) and other ancient people. The remains found throughout Eurasia, according to supporters of this theory, testify to the regional continuity of certain human traits. In other words, modern man arose several times.

But there is a significant problem - multiregionalism contradicts scientific ideas about evolution. Yes, in evolutionary theory there is the concept of parallelism, when different types of animals, independently of each other, have common features. For example, the streamlined body shape and fins of sharks and dolphins. This makes the animals similar, but not close relatives. Or eyes: in squids, mammals and insects, they are so anatomically different that one cannot even assume the existence of some common “ancestral” organ. However, things are different with people.

The multiregional hypothesis is relentlessly refuted by genetic data. Back in 1987, an analysis of human mitochondrial DNA (it is inherited only from mothers) of a person showed that we are all descendants of one woman who lived about 200 thousand years ago, the so-called Mitochondrial Eve (has nothing to do with her namesake from the Bible). Naturally, she lived among other people, but only her mitochondrial DNA was inherited by all living Homo sapiens, including Asians, Australians and Africans.

This discovery is incompatible with multiregionalism. Humans had one ancestor, not several scattered across the planet. Yes, and 200 thousand years - much less than two million years. This, of course, does not answer the question of when sapiens originated: Mitochondrial Eve was a sapiens herself, like her parents. However, new information speaks in favor of the second main hypothesis of the origin of man - African.

All were blacks

This hypothesis suggests that the first anatomically modern humans appeared in Africa. From here came different branches of sapiens, including pygmies and bushmen. According to Alexander Kozintsev, a researcher at the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, it was on this continent that a kind of mini-version of multiregionalism could be realized. Apparently, many different African groups formed here, and some of them gave rise to sapiens. Moreover, representatives of different branches were in contact, which ultimately led to the formation of modern man as a single species.

Multiregionalism in its more global version is not capable of ensuring the genetic unity of all Homo sapiens. Otherwise, the supporters of this archaic hypothesis would have to assume that the populations of ancient people on different continents somehow interacted with each other. But there is no evidence of such intercontinental contacts in the Pleistocene.

Sapiens came out of Africa about 70-50 thousand years ago. Settling in Eurasia, they forced out the Neanderthals and Denisovans, occasionally interbreeding with them. If modern humans evolved from Neanderthals, as multiregionalists suggest, then their mitochondrial DNA would differ little from ours. However, as the decoding of the Homo neanderthalensis genome has shown, there is a deep genetic chasm between us and them.

War on Darwinism

Nevertheless, attempts to rehabilitate this hypothesis continue. Thus, the geneticist Shi Huang of Central South University in China and an ardent opponent of Darwinism decided to strike at the genetic evidence. He published a preprint of the article in the bioRxiv repository.

A Chinese scientist has criticized the molecular clock method used to estimate the genetic distance between different species. The point is the following. With the change of generations in the DNA of a certain species, neutral mutations accumulate at a constant rate, which do not affect its survival in any way (this matters, since harmful mutations are rejected, and beneficial ones occur quite rarely). Related species also accumulate mutations at the same rate. Therefore, species of the same genus more or less equally differ from each other, and species of different genera have more differences.

Thus, the molecular clock is not only a tool for identifying relationships between species. From them, you can roughly determine when one species separated from another. "About" is the key word.

The fact is that for all its usefulness, molecular clocks have a number of disadvantages. The main one is that the rate of mutations is not always constant. This is influenced by certain factors that can slow down or accelerate mutations. For example, new repetitive DNA sequences may emerge, representing "hot spots" of random changes. As a result, species that are close in evolutionary terms turn out to be more distant in terms of molecular clocks than species that are not so related. Thus, multiregionalists like to point out that there are more differences between the mtDNA of different chimpanzees than between the mtDNA of humans and Neanderthals. That is, the genetic abyss that separates us from H.neanderthalensis, allegedly ceases to mean something.

Shi Huang goes further and tries to prove that the generally accepted mechanism of evolution does not work. To explain why the molecular clock fails, he offers a controversial and purely speculative theory, which he calls the hypothesis of maximum genetic diversity. According to Shi Huang, mutations in genes act as a driving force only for microevolution, that is, the occurrence of small changes at the intraspecific level. During macroevolution, when new groups of organisms are formed, epigenetic programs become more complicated. The more complex they are, the more mutations can break them, so genetic diversity must decrease. As a result, complex organisms allegedly have a limit on the number of neutral mutations. This, according to Juan, explains why sapiens and Neanderthals differ to a lesser extent than chimpanzee varieties.

Turn upside down

Huang applied his dubious theory to redefine human evolution. Thus, Africans turned out to be closer to each other than to other groups of the human population. This conclusion contradicts the African hypothesis, because if people originally lived in Africa, then nothing prevented their individual lines from accumulating a large number of mutations. In addition, the Chinese scientist established the approximate time of separation of the main Eurasian human populations - about two million years ago. A very immodest date compared to the age of Mitochondrial Eve, but quite in line with multiregionalism.

Huang also suggested that there were two migrations out of Africa: Erectus with an ancestor of Neanderthals and Denisovans. And he came to the conclusion that modern Africans are closer to the latter than non-Africans. Mitochondrial Eve he moved from Africa to East Asia.

Interestingly, these conclusions are based on the exclusion of neutral mutations from genetic analysis, which allegedly distort the true picture due to epigenetic programs. Huang created a new version of the molecular clock - "slow", which takes into account changes only in conservative and hardly changing DNA sequences. By unjustifiably throwing away a whole piece of data, he literally turned everything upside down.

But the Chinese researcher did not take into account other possible explanations for the slowdown of the molecular clock. Thus, evolutionists refer to the generation time effect. Humans live longer than monkeys, so mutations in humans accumulate more slowly.

You can't compare the rate of mutation in humans and chimpanzees. Molecular clocks should be applied at the local level, that is, to estimate the time of occurrence of closely related species. Within the evolution of humans, the difference between Neanderthals and sapiens matters. On a larger scale, gross errors are possible. This once again reminds us how important it is to know the limits of applicability of scientific tools.

As for Shi Huang, his articles, including the one where he first proposes his hypothesis, have not been peer-reviewed by experts. Although supporters of multiregionalism support it, the Chinese geneticist has to limit himself to preprint repositories, where he can upload his drafts without fear of serious criticism from experts in the field of anthropogenesis.

The Australians were created by two Ungambiculami and a Flycatcher Lizard, separating with stone knives the coalesced lumps found at the bottom of the dried up Ocean. Manabush molded the Algonquians from the skeletons of animals, birds and fish, the Peruvians originated from coconuts, the chum, Nivkhs, Oceanians and Scandinavians were made from wood. The Masai woman was made by throwing pieces of meat at the primordial husband. Two progenitors of the Sioux were blinded by Sussostinako from the nodes of the world wide web, the Bushmen were created by the praying mantis Tzagn. The Chemehuevi and Mojave Indians are fashioned from the excrement of the Demiurge, which is why they have such a mischievous nature. Cashinahua believe that a monkey descended from a man, and from that - an earthen turtle, from a coat - a tapir, from a kuksiu - wild pigs. And indeed - in the places of settlement of Cascinahua, there are a lot of wild pigs. The union of male quadrupeds and female vultures produced the settled Indians; from the union of male biwombs and women came the Indians, hunters of large birds. Alien tribes were created from male noses and female vultures. Several male agoutis gave birth to Indians - not only alien, but also especially wild and cruel. In Central Africa, people came into the world white from a broken termite mound, and himba appeared from the Omumborombongo world tree split by lightning! Is there any doubt about this?

It is believed that the main task of anthropology is to study the "origin of man" or "the similarities and differences between man and animals." In fact, for half a century she has been ignoring this nonsense, and studying the diversity, ecology and evolutionary factors of primates. However, the Public demands the continuation of the banquet. Therefore, new "sensational" reports about the Origin appear regularly in the press.

Where did man come from on earth?

Students usually say “I flew from outer space!”, “God created!”, “I came from a monkey!”. And I'm amazed:
- From what other monkey?! From marmoset, capuchin, gorilla, mangabey? No. From none of them did man descend, that's for sure.
Did God create? And what skin color? They say it was hot in Eden - you need dark skin, otherwise you will burn. Are the fearful Papuans also a likeness of God?
There is doubt in the eyes of the audience. Like the European colonists, for whom the natives were half-people, “drafts of the Lord God”, whom it is not a sin to exterminate.

Then I say the correct answer. It's amazingly simple:
MAN HAS DESCENTED FROM ANCIENT PEOPLE.
Who walked "in skins and with spears")))

Where did the ancient people come from?
- How from whom? From ancient people.
- And the oldest ones? (Laughter in the hall)
- Also not from monkeys, but from bipedal primates. These are not monkeys.
- Bipedal primates evolved from arboreal primates. They were fanged, the size of a dog. They lived so long ago that you can’t even call them monkeys.
Next is the phrase:
- Arboreal primates evolved from omomids. Omomids - from adapis. Adapis - from plesiadapis (they are drawn in the cartoon "Dinosaur"), plesiadapis from early scandins, and those descended from trituberculates or even monotuberculates ...

"Man descended from apes" - newspaper wording, as if to say "elephants descended from bacteria." Darwin never said that. He spoke much louder:
The ancestor of man was an Ancient Member of the anthropoid subgroup - so said Darwin!

Back in the day, people didn't even know about it. But with confidence they judged the origin of man in order to substantiate the axiology of the tribe.

They used different versions of the origin of man. They can be reduced to five models.

1. CREATION. From raw materials. God or Great Spirit. A man is molded from clay (Europe), from excrement (America), carved from wood, snow (Siberia) ... This version is good as a motif of divine design and (in Western Eurasia) likeness to a deity. Version used by monotheists.

2. BIRTH from the body of a deity: from the womb, ear, or thigh, perhaps from a piece of meat cut off from the back. The version is good with the motive of consanguinity: a person, as a relative of God, inherits his property - the created world, which he can dispose of. It is rarely used, for example, as a motive for biological experiments of higher beings with their flesh.

3. ARRIVAL from other worlds. People flew in from other planets, descended from the clouds, sunken continents. The version is good in the spirit of travel. It is used by lovers of stories about aliens and "Atlantids", and is often used for the model of ethnogenesis. Thus, ethnocentrists claim that their people are chosen by the fact that their ancestors are Atlanteans, Hyperboreans, Lemurians, or aliens themselves. Experts also consider the arrival of races from "other worlds" - from sunken shelves.

4. METAMORPHOSIS. Other objects turned into people: stones, trees, animals, dust in the trunk of Omumborombongo. Totemists were descended from animals (sometimes from monkeys). The version of metamorphosis is not bad because it allows you to explain the changing world. It is used by those who say "man came from ..." - with any continuation.

5. THERE WAS NO ORIGIN. For example, no one knows where people came from. Or people have always lived, becoming either small or large. Or evolution is so uneven and gradual that the point of origin cannot be found. This is the best version: no need to be smart about anything.

Where is the truth and where is the lie? Nowhere. These are just versions of faith.

One aborigine firmly believes that man was created by the Ungambiculas, and another knows no less firmly: “There was no origin! And it couldn't be. The human race is eternal."
All of these versions are equally mythological: received from mentors, unprovable and describe something beyond reality.

What version of the origin of man does Science use?
- Of course, Metamorphosis! the students say. And this is not true.

Approximately two hundred years ago, all science was based on the version of Creation. However, this model stopped answering the questions “where?” and when?". In the newly discovered lands, the natives looked too unpresentable to be considered the Crown of Creation. The appearance of ancient people, recreated from the bones, was no better. Did God create them in his own image?

To solve this problem, science has partially switched to the version of Metamorphosis: people change, evolution takes place. There were "not people", became "people".

However, the idea of ​​Creation was not completely abandoned. She was moved into the models of Panspermia, the Big Bang, and later the Genetic Progenitors (Y-Adam and mt-Eve). Also among modern scientists there are many creationists who see a Miraculous Intervention in various evolutionary events.

Anthropologists, supporters of network evolution, adhere to the fifth version of the "Origin Was Not".

Humanity is viewed by them not as a tree growing from one point, but as a network-like continuum stretching over thousands of square kilometers of range and two to three million years of antiquity. Its branches-populations diverge, merge and disappear, like a river network somewhere in the lower reaches of the Volga. It is impossible to find a single source, a "Point of Origin" in this continuum. One can only single out "upper", "middle" and "lower". Especially since we only have circumstantial evidence. On the one hand, these are single samples of bone finds representing ancient Humanity. On the other hand, there are abstract schemes, cladograms, "genetic trees", on which nodes and branches are identified with real "ancestors".

Evolutionary anthropology tries to identify not so much the exact paths of succession as chronological stages:
1. Early people. Homo habilis, rudolfensis. 2.5-1.5 million years. Endocran 800 ml.
2. Archanthropes. Homo erectus. 1.5-0.5 million years. Endocran 1000 ml.
3. Paleoanthropes. Homo antecessor, heidelbergensis, neandertalaensis 0.7-0.03. Endocran 1100-1800 ml.
4. Neoanthropes. Homo sapiens. from 0.2-modernity. Endocran 1200-1900 ml.

Each layer has many variations, intermediate and transitional forms. Their genetic continuity is woven like turf. Where does this sod come from? Where does it start? And God knows...

The origin of man has long tormented the inquisitive minds of researchers. For a long time, the main task of anthropologists was the confirmation of Darwin's theory, and not the search for truth.

Whom they just did not appoint "the ancestors of man." From time to time we were presented with the so-called missing link. However, falsifications were quickly exposed, and the question of origin again remained open. But what if there was no transitional link between the monkey and man, and the monkey had nothing to do with it at all? The participants of the round table disagreed.

progenitor cell

Doctor of Medical Sciences, Head of the Department of Scientific Innovative Work of the South Ural State Medical University, Professor of the Department of Pathological Physiology Mikhail Osikov convinced Darwinist. The scientist is sure that man, of course, descended from apes:

A huge amount of evidence has been accumulated, which every year more and more confirms the well-known evolutionary theory. Nobel laureate Vitaly Ginzburg was an ardent opponent of the imposition of creationism. I fully agree with the scientist. All these biblical legends, delusional thoughts that there is no evidence of the origin of man from other animals, do not stand up to any scientific criticism. Disputes are provoked by people who simply do not want to penetrate into the depth of the issue. There is a lot of scientific and popular literature about the origin of homo sapiens, where everything is clearly and clearly written. Take any human cell and any protozoan, even a yeast cell. If we transplant our genes into it, it will begin to produce our proteins. This suggests that we all came from the same progenitor cell, the program is the same. I'm not talking about those findings that are gradually building the ladder of our development from the great apes.

We can talk about something with representatives of the clergy, we may have a misunderstanding, but I consider all these conversations meaningless, because faith is one thing, and science is completely different. I respect them, I welcome them, but I demand the same respect for science. Please - believe in miracles, in the one-time origin of a person, but all this is sheer nonsense, which has no actual confirmation.

The theory of panspermia suggests that the beginnings of life were brought to earth from outer space. On comets, they find the simplest organic matter, which can serve as the basis for the creation of living organisms. But this in no way contradicts the processes that then started and that Darwin spoke about. We are not talking about the fact that some complex living organisms were introduced. These could be microorganisms, spores, which later developed and led to the emergence of creatures, including us, in the conditions of the Earth.

Where is their intelligence from?

Head of the Laboratory of Biocenology and Monitoring of the Educational and Scientific Center for the Study of Nature and Human Problems of the Chel State University, Candidate of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences, paleozoologist Leonid Gaiduchenko does not exclude the possibility of artificial introduction of life on Earth:

Until the 18th century, humanity was fully satisfied with the doctrine that everything happened according to the will of God or the gods. But there came a time when that conviction was shaken. Geographical discoveries began, the works of natural scientists began to appear. The accumulated material seems to have shown that man could be formed from what is on Earth. It seems that even a normal logical chain was built, which Darwin well substantiated. His theory of the origin of man began to prevail. And when the great naturalists Marx and Engels started to fuss, the theory began to be recognized as fundamental at all. It really does a good job of explaining a number of points, but the evolution of man does not completely fall into this chain. Moreover, from time to time anthropologists make discoveries that allow us to reconsider or make adjustments to an established point of view. For example, the remains of people whose age is more than a million years have been found. And then it was proved that tools began to be made more than two million years ago.

Many questions were raised by the recent discovery of archaeologists under the leadership of academician Derevyanko in Altai. We found the phalanx of a human finger and determined that the DNA is absolutely unique to these places. There is a similar one only in island Southeast Asia. What is the connection? God knows. But there is a connection. What was ancient paleogeography like? How did you move from mainland to mainland? We often consider ancient people to be underdeveloped and unintelligent, but this is far from being the case. And the more information scientists receive, the more they are convinced: our distant ancestors had a society, and their own laws. Another question - where did they get the mind and knowledge? There is no answer yet.

In Darwin's theory, it is the emergence of intelligence that is the weakest link. As our psychoneurologists and zoopsychologists do not try to give an explanation, not everything is connected in a logical chain. Yes, a chimpanzee can pick up a straw and pick out the larvae. Well, I picked it out and threw it away - that's all. In humans, everything is more complicated. It is impossible to exclude the appearance of intelligence on an earthly carrier. However, it cannot be ruled out that the development of the mind was predetermined. We are accustomed to dividing matter into living and non-living. In general, this is the matter of the Earth, capable of generating life. Why can't the matter of another planet, the same Mars, have these properties? There is a beautiful theory of panspermia, which suggests the possibility of universal life. And then it turns out that rationality is the primordial property of matter. And in this sense, the confession of cosmonaut Georgy Grechko is curious. “I believe that they flew to us ...” - he said in an interview, referring to aliens.

To the theory of panspermia, which originated in Germany in 1868, scientists return from time to time. It really can't be discounted. It's just that in Soviet times it was believed that this theory is deeply bourgeois, and the West is always mistaken. Meanwhile, panspermia was not denied by all, even by our major academicians. Well, how can you deny when everything indicates that such a thing is possible? ... I began to observe the Chelyabinsk meteorite after the outbreak. The trace of the reversal in the dense layers of the atmosphere attracted everyone's attention. Meanwhile, I managed to see that from it steeply upwards, three to four times shorter than the entry trace, there was also an exit trace of one of the fragments. It turns out that when the car broke up, one of its fragments “jumped out”, went into space, and it is possible that it carried away some “earthly particles”, maybe even living ones ...

I do not reject the theory of artificial bringing of life to the Earth. However, for me, all theories of the origin of man are still unproven. Scientists are constantly looking for something, trying to interpret newly found or old materials. Sooner or later, the answer to the question "from whom did man originate", I think, will be found. But even if they do not find it, what will it change in the life of society and each of us? What is love - by and large no one knows, but people do not stop being born. The only thing I am sure of is that life, having appeared once on Earth, in principle, will never disappear. It will only change.

Truth needs no argument

Professor of ChelGU, Doctor of Law, historian Sergey Zharov convinced of the divine origin of man:

Each of us knows from whom a person came, another thing is that we cannot agree. In general, this is not a biological or even historical issue, but a worldview one. To begin with, it would be necessary to agree that there is a person. If we share the point of view about its dual essence - biological and divine, then there are no more questions. And it doesn’t matter at all what kind of creature our biological shell originated from. Darwin believed that man evolved from apes. But this monkey is not there, we cannot find it.

According to divine theory, it does not matter who was the biological ancestor of man. It is important that a person has such features that distinguish him from the entire animal world - a spiritual component and the ability to think. Some animals have this ability, but they cannot draw conclusions, they are devoid of logic. It is not for nothing that man is called the crown of creation.
Each nation has its own idea of ​​where the creature called Homo sapiens came from. According to the Bible, God fashioned man from clay. The Scandinavians once believed that the first person was licked by a sacred cow from sea salt ... Honestly, I don’t care what kind of monkey was our ancestor and whether this monkey was. For me, the purpose of human origin is more important. The mind cannot act purposefully. The Lord wanted to make man the king of nature, the master of this earth. And so it happened. The trouble is that in the end the predator turned out. I like the idea from the movie The Matrix. A person begins to multiply uncontrollably, devours all the resources and then grabs his head. This is how viruses behave. They die out en masse after they have devoured everything ... At the same time, it does not turn out to call a person reasonable.

My thirst for knowledge is not universal. It does not apply to "warts in Brazil," as Mayakovsky wrote. Although this is also important in a sense, because any research, any new fact is a brick in the general wall of understanding the world. However, I am more interested not in the origin, but in the existence of man.

For 150 years already we have been confidently marching towards self-destruction. And the first thing we did was create universal medicine. The same Darwinian natural selection does not work with the human species. And besides this, there is also Christian morality, on which most of us grew up. Yes, all life is sacred. But let's face it. Today, a huge number of people do not have consciousness. They, like monkeys, live anew every day. The Lord could have found some other creature to breathe a soul into him. Simply, apparently, as a receptacle for the soul, the human body was best prepared.

- It turns out that the Lord made a mistake in man? We only consume, but do not create and multiply?..

Why not? Here I am creating. From time to time I create new knowledge, I write books. True, not all of my students are happy about this, because they have to read more (laughs). A serious scientist never proves anything foaming at the mouth, only politicians can afford it or narrow-minded people. No wonder they say that the truth does not need a dispute at all. In a dispute, you can only embitter your opponent.
Theology is recognized as one of the branches of science in Russia. Scientific councils meet, there are scientific degrees - candidate, doctor of theological sciences. But the point is not in the degrees, but in the very recognition of theology as a science. It is she who points out the path from which mankind turned in the last century and is confidently approaching the abyss. But back in the 11th century, Metropolitan Hilarion wrote: the Law was given to the creature in order to create a man out of it, and Grace was already granted to man in order to show him the way to God. Our consumer society is the path of man back to the creature. That is why there is no more urgent problem today than preventing the end of its existence.