From monkey to man: ten steps. If man evolved from apes, then why don't modern apes evolve anymore? Word definitions for evolution in dictionaries

Perhaps, contrary to the views of traditional evolutionists, the process went just like that. And there is a lot of evidence for that.

The doctrine of evolutionism is simple. All living organisms have a single earthly ancestor. Another thing is that this ancestor did not look very presentable. Crawled in the earth's mud a billion so two and a half years ago. During this period, a lot of water has flowed under the bridge. The "ancestor" also did not waste time - everything adapted, adapted. and now he is no longer recognizable: he has become a man!

Failure in history

If we take the history of man over the past tens of millions of years, then evolutionists are surprising here too. They argue that small and dim-brained primates have successfully evolved into larger ones. A striking example of the latter is the fossil ape, the proconsul. It is tipped by evolutionists as the common ancestors of modern gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans and humans.

Everything would be fine, but the proconsuls all died out eight million years ago. And now none of the evolutionists knows how to fill the resulting vacuum in the fossil record. This unfortunate gap has been called the "dark period of anthropogenesis." And it lasted about 3.5 million years, before the appearance of the first Australopithecus.

Australopithecus walked on two legs no worse than you and I. They had a human posture, pelvis and foot, as well as human teeth prone to caries, but simian faces with protruding jaws. Therefore, a transitional link is still missing to confirm the doctrine of evolutionism. It is necessary to answer the question: so who lived in the "dark period" and who is the ancestor of Australopithecus? Maybe then none of the higher humanoid primates lived on Earth at all?

It can be assumed that it was during this period that aliens appeared on Earth. They looked like gods. At least as people. It took 3.5 million years of "darkness" for these human aliens to turn into Australopithecus. Their brains were reduced to 400 cm 3 . That's how many australopithecines have. Jaws from a long and hard earthly life moved forward, and the faces of aliens became similar to monkeys. Australopithecus growth has decreased. They were covered in fur. However, they still retained the ability to move normally on two legs. But this did not guarantee their survival. Australopithecus died out a million years before the advent of modern man.

What does idleness lead to?

We can also assume that aliens have appeared on our planet repeatedly, each time turning into human-like primates over time. This bold version allows us to take a different look at modern African pongids - chimpanzees and gorillas, as well as their Asian cousins - orangutans.

The ancestors of modern great apes could have looked quite human at the moment of their triumphant appearance on Earth. It may very well be that they looked exactly like that - like people, and not like monkeys. They confidently walked on their own two feet, had pink skin, a large head and a meaningful look. It may very well be that their delicate, portly bodies were protected by a shiny and durable spacesuit.

However, life on Earth is conducive to idleness. The suits were thrown off and forgotten. Former aliens began to multiply in the conditions of the earth's atmosphere. There was not enough fruit for everyone. And in order to pluck the most ripe, I had to climb trees. To do this, the aliens spoiled their human foot, ideally suited for upright walking. They "torn" the metatarsal ligament connecting all five heads of the metatarsal bones. Because of this, they were able to move their thumb to the side and grasp the branches with their toes in the same way as with the fingers of their hands.

True, it may be that the former aliens climbed the trees not because of ripe fruits, but hiding in the crowns of the tree from their opponents. However, one does not exclude the other. Why is it gloomy to walk under the trees in the shade, waiting for an apple to fall on your head, when you can cheerfully jump along the branches, playing catch-up under the rays of the tropical sun.

Where did the waist go?

So, hypothetical aliens have not stood the test of time. They took the beaten path, like their distant predecessors - the Mesozoic monkeys, who climbed trees much earlier than them.

For several million years of earthly life, the appearance of aliens has changed. As unnecessary - from idleness - their brains shrunk, but impressive fangs appeared. It is in modern men that the 600th Mercedes is a sign of dominance, and in anthropoid males, fangs have become such a sign. No self-respecting female can resist the white-toothed smile of her boyfriend!

Gorillas have a bony sagittal (longitudinal) crest on their heads. Powerful chewing muscles are attached to it. Such a new acquisition is also quite understandable. To get enough, gorillas have to chew the leaves all the time. They need powerful jaws. At the same time, you can painfully bite one of the opponents or enemies.

Pongids - large great apes - walk on the ground on two legs rather uncertainly. When moving, they have to rely on bent knuckles all the time, which they use like crutches. Their foot parted at the seams, ceasing to serve as a reliable basis for the body. From such a transformation, the back bent, the waist disappeared altogether, the pelvis increased, and the head hung forward, and in order to keep it in a vertical plane, it was necessary to acquire powerful neck muscles. The arms of the humanoids lengthened, while the legs, on the contrary, shortened and became crooked and unstable. The body was covered with fur. And this marked the final stage of bodily restructuring and the final transformation of man into an ape.

Why is the gorilla numb

The monkeys, apparently, were not satisfied with these bodily changes. To top it all, they also lost meaningful speech. The fact that modern Pongids once had it is evidenced by an enlarged left speech hemisphere. Its volume somewhat exceeds the right - non-speech. A similar relationship exists in humans.

In addition, humanoids have Wernicke's area in the cerebral cortex, which is responsible for understanding speech, and Broca's area, which is responsible for pronouncing speech sounds. This is rather strange. After all, humanoids do not speak and do not understand speech. For communication, 70 sounds are enough for them, which they use without thinking about more.

True, we note that some Pongids are well trained in the language of the deaf and dumb. So, the gorilla Koko mastered about 400 gestures-words and invented many new ones. How to explain such a strange circumstance?

Obviously, the ancestors of gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans once spoke and understood meaningful speech. However, over time, they lost this ability. The motor and sensory speech fields of the brain are occupied in them not at all with the analysis of sounding speech and not with the reproduction of sounds.

Wernicke's field in pongida works on the vestibular sense. It settled in the temporal lobes of the brain after the monkeys climbed the trees. In order to navigate well in a three-dimensional habitat, among the branches, additional analyzers are needed, but there was no longer room for them in the brain. I had to sacrifice the available sensory speech representations. An additional vestibular sense has come to the vacated place, which helps the monkeys to navigate well in a three-dimensional environment. It was necessary to sacrifice something - here the monkeys sacrificed the ability to understand speech. But it strengthened the ability of the monkeys to climb and jump in the canopy of trees. They do it quite confidently, without fear of breaking loose and breaking their neck every moment. It is clear that the ability to produce speech sounds disappeared by itself. It is completely useless without understanding this very speech. Thus, the monkeys are not numb from a good life.

People of the "dark period"

Agree, it is somehow sad to look at monkeys, realizing that they are not ancestors, but degraded descendants of people. But what can you do, life is life!

You can make a more general assumption: it is likely that monkeys have appeared on our Earth many times. And completely independent of each other. And their ancestors were not at all smaller and dim-witted primates such as proplio-pithecus, but alien people.

Just a few years ago, hardly anyone would have believed in the likelihood of such a scenario. But in 2002, a French paleontological expedition in Chad discovered the skull of an anthropoid primate. He received the name "Sahelanthropus of Chad". He lived about 7 million years ago. Sahelanthropus features small teeth, especially canines, a facial angle similar to that of a human, a parabolic jaw, and upright posture.

Sahelanthropus looked almost human, but had a chimpanzee-like skull. The volume of the brain also corresponded to the volume of the brain of a chimpanzee - about 350 cm 3. The strange mosaic of human and simian features can be explained by the fact that Sahelanthropus has not yet fully degraded from man to ape. This find falls just in the middle of the "dark period of anthropogenesis." That's who, it turns out, lived in the "darkness"!

In 2009, a detailed study of another fossil upright primate, the Ardipithecus, became known. He lived about 4.5 million years ago. He also walked on two legs, had small “human” teeth. In addition, the pelvic bones of Ardipithecus were more similar to the pelvis of a person than a monkey. At the same time, the big toe was already turned to the side. The foot itself had a rather rigid structure. These signs indicate that Ardipithecus has not yet gone far from its original human state along the path of degradation.

Obviously, both Sahelanthropus, and Ardipithecus, and Orrorin, close to them, are the ancestors of modern anthropoid apes or any fossil forms similar to them. But sa-helanthropus, ardipithecus, orrorin can in no way be human ancestors due to the fact that their simian features are not fully developed, and the human ones have not yet completely disappeared.

The fact that monkeys could appear more than once is also evidenced by the recent discovery of Getmanov's sumi-nii. This animal, similar to a lemur, with opposed fingers and toes, with a tenacious tail, lived in Permian times. Suminia jumped not on trees, but on giant horsetails and ferns. And it was 260 million years ago!

So, alien people, obviously, visited our planet back in the Carboniferous period. They will continue to fly. The only question is: what will become of modern man and will he not turn into a monkey, like his predecessors?

But, acquiring an increasingly civilized appearance, a person tried not to perceive a chimpanzee or a gorilla as his likeness, because he quickly realized himself as the crown of creation of the almighty creator.

When theories of evolution appeared, suggesting the initial link in the origin of Homo sapiens in primates, they were met with incredulity, and more often with hostility. Ancient monkeys, located at the very beginning of the pedigree of some English lord, were perceived at best with humor. Today, science has identified the direct ancestors of our biological species, who lived more than 25 million years ago.

common ancestor

From the point of view of modern anthropology, the science of man, of his origin, it is considered incorrect to say that a person descended from a monkey. Man as a species evolved from the first people (they are usually called hominids), which were a radically different biological species than monkeys. The first great human - Australopithecus - appeared 6.5 million years ago, and the ancient monkeys, which became our common ancestor with modern anthropoid primates, about 30 million years ago.

Methods for studying bone remains - the only evidence of ancient animals that have survived to our time - are constantly being improved. The oldest ape can often be classified by a jaw fragment or a single tooth. This leads to the fact that more and more new links appear in the scheme, complementing the overall picture. In the 21st century alone, more than a dozen such objects were found in various regions of the planet.

Classification

The data of modern anthropology are constantly updated, which makes adjustments to the classification of biological species to which a person belongs. This applies to more detailed divisions, while the overall system remains unshakable. According to the latest views, man belongs to the class Mammals, order Primates, suborder Real monkeys, family Hominid, genus Man, species and subspecies Homo sapiens.

The classification of the closest "relatives" of a person is the subject of constant debate. One option might look like this:

Squad Primates:
- Half-monkeys.
- Real monkeys:
  - Dolgopyatovye.
  - Broad-nosed.
  - Narrow-nosed:
    - Gibbon.
    - Hominids:
      - Pongins:
        Orangutan.
        Bornean orangutan.
        Sumatran orangutan.
    - Hominins:
      - Gorillas:
        Western gorilla.
        Eastern gorilla.
      - Chimpanzee:
        common chimpanzee.
      - People:
        A reasonable person.

Origin of monkeys

Determining the exact time and place of origin of monkeys, like many other biological species, occurs like a gradually emerging image on a Polaroid photograph. The finds in different regions of the planet supplement the overall picture in detail, which is becoming clearer. At the same time, it is recognized that evolution is not a straight line - it is rather like a bush, where many branches become dead ends. Therefore, it is still a long way to build at least a segment of a clear path from primitive primate-like mammals to Homo sapiens, but there are already several reference points.

Purgatorius - a small, no larger than a mouse, animal lived in trees, eating insects, in the Upper Cretaceous and (100-60 million years ago). Scientists put him at the beginning of the chain of evolution of primates. It revealed only the beginnings of signs (anatomical, behavioral, etc.) characteristic of monkeys: a relatively large brain, five fingers on the limbs, lower fecundity with no seasonality of reproduction, omnivorousness, etc.

Beginning of hominids

Ancient apes, the ancestors of anthropoids, left traces starting from the late Oligocene (33-23 million years ago). They still retain the anatomical features of narrow-nosed monkeys, put by anthropologists at a lower level: a short auditory meatus located outside, in some species - the presence of a tail, the lack of specialization of the limbs in proportion and some structural features of the skeleton in the area of the wrists and feet.

Among these fossil animals, proconsulids are considered one of the most ancient. The peculiarities of the structure of the teeth, the proportions and dimensions of the cranium with an enlarged brain section relative to its other parts allow paleoanthropologists to classify proconsulids as anthropoid. This species of fossil monkeys includes proconsuls, kalepithecus, heliopithecus, nyanzapithecus, etc. These names were most often formed from the name of geographical objects near which fossil fragments were found.

Rukvapitek

Most of the finds of the most ancient bones of paleoanthropologists are made on the African continent. In February 2013, paleoprimatologists from the United States, Australia and Tanzania published a report on the results of excavations in the Rukwa River Valley in southwestern Tanzania. They discovered a fragment of the lower jaw with four teeth - the remains of a creature that lived there 25.2 million years ago - this was the age of the rock in which this find was discovered.

According to the details of the structure of the jaw and teeth, it was established that their owner belonged to the most primitive anthropoid apes from the proconsulid family. Rukvapitek - this is the name of this hominin ancestor, the oldest fossil great ape, because it is 3 million years older than any other paleoprimates discovered before 2013. There are other opinions, but they are connected with the fact that many scientists consider the proconsulids to be too primitive beings to define them as true humanoids. But this is a question of classification, one of the most controversial in science.

Dryopithecus

In the geological deposits of the Miocene era (12-8 million years ago) in East Africa, Europe and China, the remains of animals were found, to which paleoanthropologists assigned the role of an evolutionary branch from proconsulids to true hominids. Driopithecus (Greek "drios" - tree) - the so-called ancient monkeys, which became a common ancestor for chimpanzees, gorillas and humans. The places of the finds and their dating make it possible to understand that these monkeys, outwardly very similar to modern chimpanzees, formed into a vast population, first in Africa, and then spread across Europe and the Eurasian continent.

About 60 cm tall, these animals tried to move on their lower limbs, but mostly lived in trees and had longer “arms”. The ancient dryopithecus monkeys ate berries and fruits, which follows from the structure of their molars, which did not have a very thick layer of enamel. This shows a clear relationship of driopithecus with humans, and the presence of well-developed fangs makes them an unequivocal ancestor of other hominids - chimpanzees and gorillas.

Gigantopithecus

In 1936, several unusual monkey teeth, remotely similar to human ones, accidentally fell into the hands of paleontologists. They became the reason for the emergence of a version about their belonging to beings from an unknown evolutionary branch of human ancestors. The main reason for the appearance of such theories was the huge size of the teeth - they were twice the size of the teeth of a gorilla. According to the calculations of experts, it turned out that their owners had a height of more than 3 meters!

After 20 years, a whole jaw with similar teeth was discovered, and the ancient giant monkeys turned from a creepy fantasy into a scientific fact. After a more accurate dating of the finds, it became clear that huge anthropoid primates existed at the same time as the Pithecanthropes (Greek "pithekos" - monkey) - ape-men, that is, about 1 million years ago. The opinion was expressed that they were the direct predecessors of man, involved in the disappearance of the largest of all monkeys that existed on the planet.

herbivorous giants

An analysis of the environment in which fragments of giant bones were found, and a study of the jaws and teeth themselves, made it possible to establish that bamboo and other vegetation served as the main food for Gigantopithecus. But there were cases of discovery in caves, where they found the bones of monster monkeys, horns and hooves, which made it possible to consider them omnivores. Giant stone tools were also found there.

A logical conclusion followed from this: Gigantopithecus - an ancient anthropoid ape up to 4 meters tall and weighing about half a ton - is another unrealized branch of hominization. It has been established that the time of their extinction coincided with the disappearance of other anthropoid giants - African Australopithecus. A possible reason is climatic cataclysms that have become fatal for large hominids.

According to the theories of the so-called cryptozoologists (Greek "cryptos" - secret, hidden), individual individuals of Gigantopithecus survived to our times and exist in areas of the Earth that are difficult for people to reach, giving rise to legends about the "snowman", yeti, bigfoot, almasty and so on.

White spots in the biography of Homo sapiens

Despite the successes of paleoanthropology, in the evolutionary chain, where the first place is occupied by the ancient apes, from which man descended, there are gaps lasting up to a million years. They are expressed in the absence of links that have scientific - genetic, microbiological, anatomical, etc. - confirmation of the relationship with previous and subsequent types of hominids.

There is no doubt that gradually such white spots will disappear, and sensations about the extraterrestrial or divine beginning of our civilization, which are periodically announced on entertainment channels, have nothing to do with real science.

So, if humans evolved from apes... sorry, ancient non-human apes, then why didn't all the other non-human apes evolve into humans?

They didn't, for the same reason that not all fish went on land and became quadrupeds, not all unicellular became multicellular, not all animals became vertebrates, not all archosaurs became birds. For the same reason why not all flowers become daisies, not all insects become ants, not all mushrooms become porcini, not all viruses become flu viruses. Each type of living creature is unique and appears only once. The evolutionary history of each species is determined by many causes and depends on innumerable accidents. It is quite unbelievable that two evolving species (for example, two different species of monkeys) have exactly the same fate and come to the same result (for example, both turned into a man). It is as incredible as the fact that two writers will write two identical novels without agreeing, or that two identical peoples speaking the same language will independently arise on two different continents.

It seems to me that this question is often asked simply because they think: well, how can it be, because being a person is more fun than jumping through branches without pants. The question is based on at least two errors. First, he suggests that evolution has some goal to which it is striving relentlessly, or at least some "main direction." Some people think that evolution always moves from the simple to the complex. The movement from simple to complex in biology is called progress. But evolutionary progress is not a general rule; it is not typical for all living beings, but only for a small part of them. Many animals and plants in the course of evolution do not become more complicated, but, on the contrary, are simplified - and at the same time they feel great. In addition, in the history of the development of life on earth, it happened much more often that a new species did not replace the old ones, but was added to them. As a result, the total number of species on the planet gradually increased. Many species died out, but even more new ones appeared. So is man - added to the primates, to other monkeys, and did not replace them.

Secondly, many people mistakenly believe that man is precisely the goal towards which evolution has always striven. But biologists have not found any evidence for this assumption. Of course, if we look at our family tree, we will see something very similar to the movement towards a predetermined goal - from unicellular to the first animals, then to the first chordates, the first fish, the first quadrupeds, then to the ancient synapsids, the animal-toothed lizards, the first mammals , placental, primates, monkeys, anthropoid and, finally, to humans. But if we look at the pedigree of any other species - for example, a mosquito or a dolphin - we will see exactly the same “purposeful” movement, but not towards a person, but towards a mosquito or a dolphin.

By the way, our genealogies with the mosquito coincide all the way from unicellular to primitive worm-like animals and only then diverge. With the dolphin, we have more common ancestors: our pedigree begins to differ from the dolphin only at the level of ancient placental mammals, and our more and more ancient ancestors are at the same time the ancestors of the dolphin. We are pleased to consider ourselves "the pinnacle of evolution", but the mosquito and the dolphin have no less reason to consider themselves the pinnacle of evolution, and not us. Each of the living species is the same peak of evolution as we are. Each of them has the same long evolutionary history, each boasting many diverse and amazing ancestors.

From monkey to man

Man was preceded by "pre-humans", whose descendants are monkeys ... It would seem that the epic of the Quiche Indians sets out the view adopted by modern science. But it seems so only at first glance. As in the book "Popol-Vuh", and in any sacred book and any myth always talks about some kind of "act of creation." “Unsuccessful people” were created, then modern people were created. The idea of evolution, gradual change, movement and formation, the transition of quantity into quality is alien to any religion, any mythology. Everything appears in finished form, nothing changes and does not develop.

“The first people who came out of the earth appeared with the same jewelry on their bodies, with their lime box and also chewing their betel nut. The event itself, the very fact of leaving the earth was mythical, that is, one of those facts that are not happening now, but human beings and the country that sheltered them were the same as they are at the present time, ”writes about the mythology of the Papuans famous ethnographer B. Malinovsky. But the same can be said about the biblical creation of the world and man, and about any religion in the world.

Dialectical philosophy, starting with Heraclitus, and then the natural sciences, put forward an idea completely opposite to religion: everything flows, everything changes. Charles Darwin created the evolutionary doctrine of the change of living beings on Earth. And the logical conclusion of this teaching was his theory of the origin of man from the great apes.

The similarity of man with gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans - that, in fact, is the main evidence that Darwin had. At the disposal of science was only one jaw of a fossil ape - driopithecus ("tree monkey"), found in 1856 in France. Later, archeology produced new arguments.

In India, 300 kilometers from Delhi, the remains of great apes that lived tens of millions of years ago were discovered. On the territory of Georgia, in the area of Udabno, in 1939 a new species of fossil ancestors or relatives of man was discovered - udabnopithek ("monkey from Udabno"). In Europe, North, East, South Africa, in South Asia, archaeologists have found the remains of new species of great apes. It became clear that 10, 15, 20, 40 million years ago they were widespread on our planet. And some of the branches, some of the species of monkeys entered the path of humanization, while other species gave rise to modern gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans.

Between a man and a great ape, there must be some kind of intermediate species “ape-man”, Pithecanthropus (from the Greek words “pithekos” - “monkey”, “anthropos” - “man”), suggested the German scientist Ernst Haeckel, a student and follower of Darwin.

In 1891, after a long selfless search, the Dutch doctor Eugene Dubois found teeth, a femur and a skullcap of a Pithecanthropus on the island of Java. Haeckel's hypothesis was brilliantly confirmed. Later, new finds of pithecanthropes were made on the island of Java, in North, South and East Africa. In 1907, in Germany, not far from the city of Heidelberg, the jaw of a creature close to Pithecanthropus was found. In the Zhou-Kou-Dian cave, 54 kilometers from Beijing, in the 20-30s of the 20th century, archaeologists found many bone remains and skulls of Sinanthropes (“Chinese man”), standing one step closer to modern man than Pithecanthropus.

Between the great ape and man there was an “ape man” ... It turns out that there was another link in evolution between the Pithecanthropus and modern man - the paleoanthrope (“ancient man”), or Neanderthal (named after the place of the first find - the Neandertal valley, in Germany). To date, about a hundred remains of this ancient man, who inhabited the planet 40-200 thousand years ago, have been found. He was replaced by "homo sapiens" ("reasonable man") - our immediate ancestor.

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The understanding of the qualitative difference between man and animals will be fully achieved if we understand the main driving forces, thanks to which the most ancient ancestors of man passed the path that brought their descendants closer to the emergence of the species "reasonable man".

The mystery of the origin of these qualitative differences has long baffled many researchers. Scholars have taken extreme positions on this issue. Some believed that a person is just a wiser animal, in which there is nothing fundamentally new, since all its features, including the spiritual sphere, obey the laws of the genetic program. Others insisted on the point of view that man is distinguished from animals by the soul - something supernatural, some kind of immortal substance that is introduced from the outside into the born body.

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Most anthropologists today believe that the common ancestors of humans and great apes were arboreal rather than terrestrial. But from time to time they descended to the ground, because among the monkeys of the Old World there are practically no ones who would not do this.

The separation of the branch going to us from the common trunk of primates occurred, apparently, about 20 million years ago.

Life in the trees left a good legacy for human ancestors. See for yourself which of the animals we consider the most "intelligent"? Pinnipeds, cetaceans (especially dolphins) and monkeys have a large relative weight of the brain. The question naturally arises as to why they are. First of all, because the vital activity of these animals proceeds in three dimensions, and not on a plane, as in terrestrial mammals. Life in three-dimensional space requires a fairly high development of the nervous system. And that is why the brain of, say, an otter in relation to the body weight of the animal is much larger than the brain of other members of the mustelid family.

In addition, the relative weight of the brain is much higher in those animals that have highly developed forelimbs or their analogues: a trunk, a tenacious tail, like a South American spider monkey - coats adapted for exploring the environment. Among the broad-nosed monkeys of the New World, in general rather primitive, the koata looks much "smarter" than their counterparts. And all because of the fact that he has, so to speak, a "fifth hand."

And then came the period of drought on Earth. Dry tropical steppes - savannahs began to advance on tropical rainforests. Some of the anthropoids left after the forest, others began to develop a new natural zone. But it was not the transition to life in the steppes that "forced" them to walk on two legs. Modern apes, leading a terrestrial lifestyle, still remain four-legged creatures. And at the same time they feel very good. For example, a hussar monkey in a gallop develops a speed of up to 50 kilometers per hour on the ground! Even a gorilla, leaning on its forelimbs while running, quite calmly catches up with a person.

And in general, from a biological point of view, walking on two legs is a rather irrational and energetically extremely unfavorable thing. But that's not all. Bipedal locomotion gave rise to many intractable contradictions in the organism of our ancestors, with which further evolution could not always "cope".

Have you ever wondered, say, why such a completely natural phenomenon as childbirth proceeds so easily in quadrupeds and so hard and painful in women? But the fact is that strong sacro-sciatic ligaments that fix the pelvis, which is necessary for upright walking, deprive the sacrum of mobility, making childbirth difficult. Another example. A person is tired of standing for a long time, carrying heavy loads, sometimes leading to flat feet and dilated veins in the legs. It is also known that in all tetrapods, the horizontally located viscera press only on the wall of the abdomen, while in humans they primarily press on each other and on the pelvic bones. As a result - relatively frequent hernias, appendicitis and many other troubles.

In short, one does not have to be too great a specialist in this field to understand that we have not yet had time to fully adapt to upright posture.

But if walking on two legs is not so rational, and sometimes even harmful, then what, then, nevertheless forced the human ancestor to stand on its hind legs? He just needed to free his forelimbs for other functions. We all know that even birds walk on two legs only because their forelimbs are adapted for another purpose, namely for flight.

How did our ape-like ancestors suddenly "decide" to acquire tools? I would like to give one example. Once, scientists observed monkeys living on a small island, and noticed that they quickly learned to wash bananas in the sea. Soon they began to wash in water and wheat grains specially mixed with sand.

At first, they patiently fished grains out of the sand, and then, having collected a full handful of the mixture, they simply dipped it into the water. The sand sank to the bottom, and light grains floated up, and resourceful animals could only collect them from the surface of the water and eat them calmly.

And since the front limbs of the monkeys were occupied during this operation, the monkeys learned to walk on their hind legs in just one generation.

The use of various objects as tools is quite widespread in the animal world and does not in itself speak of rational activity. For example, the woodpecker Galapagos finch picks out insects from the cracks with a cactus thorn clamped in its beak, African vultures break ostrich eggs with stones, and cracks down on sea urchins and sea otters just as well. But only our ancestors entered into single combat with the nature around them, using specially made tools in this struggle, and won.

Apparently, the early Australopithecus were the first to use tools consciously. It is common knowledge that they were bipedal. This is evidenced by the structure of the pelvic bones. And despite the fact that australopithecines are much smaller than gorillas - they hardly weighed more than 50 kilograms, their brain volume slightly exceeded the brain volume of a gorilla and was just over 500 cubic centimeters.

It is possible that already at this stage the process of hair loss began. After all, in dry, sun-hot savannahs, it turned out to be not only useless, but sometimes harmful. Therefore, gene changes manifested in the offspring, leading to underdevelopment of body hair, were supported by selection. And the hairy individuals of Australopithecus, incapable of running fast due to overheating, became prey for saber-toothed tigers and other predatory animals.

What were the Australopithecus tools? It is believed that the main tools of our distant ancestors, in addition to raw stones and sticks, were large bones, jaws and antelope horns.

The question involuntarily arises: is it possible to consider Australopithecus people? No, they are still not people. After all, they did not make tools, but used as them, so to speak, ready-made objects, selected in nature. And the labor activity of a rational being is, first of all, the manufacture of tools. And not with teeth and fingers, but with other objects.

Judging by various finds and studies, Australopithecus had several species, if not genera. That is, the evolution of erect walking monkeys went in different ways, and on one of them, approximately 3 - 5 million years ago, the first stone tool was made, the time of creation of which can be considered the time of the emergence of the mind.

The most ancient tools were found in the so-called "pebble culture", traces of which were discovered in Africa as early as the 20s of our century. This is a pebble made of quartz or lava, treated with chips at an acute angle. With the help of such chips, an ordinary pebble turns into a cutting or chopping tool.

Of course, the first tools are primitive, they lack repetitive forms completely. But the main thing is not this, but that the ancient man began to work consciously, and this became the basis for the appearance of goal-setting activity in him. I am sure that one cannot in any way agree with the opinion that all these transformations were the result of a completely ordinary adaptive biological evolution, proceeding only under the formative influence of natural selection.

It is known what enormous significance for science and worldview was Darwin's attempt to understand the origin of man - the highest stage of development of the animal world on Earth. However, neither Darwin himself nor his modern followers took into account that from the moment when human ancestors embarked on the path of social and labor relations, qualitatively new conditions arose for evolution to proceed.

Now we can no longer accurately predict what creatures capable of goal-setting activity would have become if it were not for the factor that determined their further development. I have in mind the work that marked the beginning of the social and practical activities of people and radically changed the form of human adaptability to environmental conditions. Goal-setting activity made it possible to use nature for human needs. Thus, the category of social inheritance left a seal on the entire path of progress of our ancestors, passing along a new channel, and the result of it was the emergence of a rational person, possessing such an important quality as the readiness from the moment of birth to enter into the social form of the movement of matter.

The beginnings of labor activity, and later labor itself, the whole complex of the social in the history of our ancient ancestors developed according to objective laws discovered by historical materialism. This development for a long time came into conflict with the fact that the level of biological features of the brain, hands, motor skills of movements, anatomy of the larynx, etc., reached by that time, was clearly not high enough. Biological progress was required in order to organically ensure the economical, necessary correspondence of the reflecting, that is, the organism, in relation to the reflected - social and labor activity.

Conscious, goal-setting, transforming activity as a necessary condition for human existence - that was the basis for the formation of all purely human properties.

Compared to animals, whose needs are limited to purely physiological functions, a person has a need for clothing and housing, spiritual needs have appeared. The biology of the animal acquired a subordinate character in relation to the new human essence.

In the course of evolution, during which biological and social factors were intertwined, with a preponderance of the latter, the volume and structure of the brain increased, the anatomical foundations of the hands were created, the skeleton and muscular apparatus were rebuilt. Apparently, in the same period consciousness arises. This process of biological transformation following the growth of social needs has been called harmonizing evolution. This form of biological evolution appeared for the first time in the history of the organic world of our planet.

Analyzing the origin of man, F. Engels in his work "The Role of Labor in the Process of the Transformation of Apes into Man" proved the importance of labor activity for replacing ordinary biological evolution in humans with evolution of a fundamentally different nature. He emphasized that it was labor that created man, and showed how labor contributes to the liberation of the hand and upright posture, improves and transforms the functional purpose of the human hand. "The hand, therefore, is not only the organ of labor, it is also its product."

Simultaneously with the change in the hand, as we have already found out, bipedalism and labor caused a change in other parts of the body and the whole human organism. The need for communication in the process of social labor led to the corresponding development of the larynx and the appearance of speech.