How ancient people killed mammoths. Life in an ancient mine: how did our ancestors hunt mammoths? Mammoths began to die out due to warming

Teenagers who have read books about the life of primitive people are sure that there are no secrets in this hunt. It's simple. Bristling with spears, the savages surround the huge mammoth and deal with it. Until recently, many archaeologists were convinced of this. However, new discoveries, as well as analysis of previous findings, force us to rethink the usual truths. Thus, archaeologists from the Institute of Prehistoric and Early History at the University of Cologne studied 46 sites and hunting sites of Neanderthals in Germany and examined thousands of animal bones found here. Their conclusion is clear. Ancient hunters were very prudent people. They weighed all the consequences of their actions, and therefore were in no hurry to rush at the huge beast. They deliberately selected prey of a certain type, and attacked individuals that weighed less than a ton. The list of their trophies includes wild horses, deer, and steppe bison. At least it was 40–60 thousand years ago(this is the age of the studied finds). But it was not only the choice of victim that was important. Primitive people did not wander aimlessly through forests and valleys in the hope that they would get lucky. No, hunting became for them something like a military operation that had to be carefully prepared. It was necessary, for example, to find a place in the forest or steppe where it would be possible to strike the enemy with the least losses. The steep banks of the rivers were a real find for the “Lovitva commanders.” Here the ground suddenly disappeared from under the feet of the intended victim. The invisible spirits of the rivers seemed to be ready to help the people who came here in everything. It was possible to hide near a watering hole and, jumping out from an ambush, finish off the unwary animals. Or wait near the ford. Here, stretched out in a chain, the animals, one after another, carefully probing the bottom, move to the other side. They move slowly, cautiously. At these moments they are very vulnerable, which both Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals knew well when they collected their bloody catch. The cunning and prudence of the ancient hunters is easily explained by their weakness. Their opponents were animals that sometimes weighed ten times more than they did. And they had to fight in close combat, staying close to the beast, enraged with pain and fear. After all, before the invention of the bow, primitive man needed to get close to his prey. The spears struck from about fifteen meters away, no further. They used a pike to beat the beast from about three meters away. So, if an operation “Ford” or “Waterhole” was planned, the fighters had to hide somewhere behind the bushes, close to the water, in order to reduce the distance separating them from the beast to the limit with one jump. Composure and precision meant life here. Haste and failure are death. To rush, as if in a bayonet attack, with a sharpened stick at an adult mammoth is like death. But people hunted in order to survive. The myth about the brave men who, with a spear in their hand, blocked the path of ancient elephants, was born immediately after the Second World War. It did not arise out of nowhere. In the spring of 1948 in the town of Lehringen, in Lower Saxony, during construction work a skeleton was discovered forest elephant, who died 90 thousand years ago. A spear lay between the animal’s ribs, said amateur archaeologist Alexander Rosenstock, who was the first to examine the find. This spear, which broke into eleven pieces, has since been considered the main argument of those who depicted the insane courage of primitive people. But did that memorable hunt take place? A recent study has refuted the obvious findings. In that distant era, at the place where the remains of the elephant were discovered, there was the edge of a lake. It was connected by channels with other surrounding lakes. The current rolled objects that fell into the water, for example the same spear, transferring them from one place to another. It looks like they weren't even going to hunt with this spear. Judging by the blunt end, they dug the ground on the shore, and then dropped it into the water, and the current carried it into the lake, where it rested on the carcass of an animal that blocked its path. If there was a hunt that day, there was nothing heroic about it. An old elephant was dying on the shore of the lake. His legs gave way and his body sank to the ground. A young man resolutely emerged from the crowd of people watching from afar the last convulsions of the beast. I took the spear. Got closer. I looked around. Hit. Nothing dangerous. The elephant didn't even move. With all his strength he drove a spear into him. He waved to the others. You can cut up your prey. This is also a plausible scenario. What about the other finds? Torralba in Spain, Gröbern and Neumark Nord in Germany - skeletons of mammoths killed by people were also found here. However, the first impression was again deceptive. Having re-examined the animal bones, archaeologists found only characteristic traces of processing them with stone tools - obviously, traces of cutting up carcasses, but this does not prove that primitive people personally killed this prey. After all, the thickness of the skin of an adult mammoth, which reached approximately 4 meters in height, ranged from 2.5 to 4 centimeters. A primitive wooden spear could, at best, inflict a lacerated wound on an animal, but not kill it - especially since the “right of the next blow” remained with the enraged elephant. And was the game worth the candle? In fact, the mammoth was not such a profitable prey. Most of his carcass would simply go rotten. “Neanderthals were smart people. They wanted to get the maximum amount of meat with a minimum risk for themselves,” archaeologists unanimously note. Neanderthals lived in small groups of 5–7 people. In the warm season, such a tribe needed half a month to eat 400 kilograms of meat. If the carcass weighed more, the rest would have to be thrown away. Well, what about anatomically? modern man, settled in Europe 40 thousand years ago? It is not for nothing that he is a “reasonable being” by definition. Maybe he knew the secrets of hunting mammoths? Archaeologists from the University of Tübingen examined the bones of mammoths found in caves near Ulm, where the sites of the people of the Gravette culture were located (by the time it arose, the Neanderthals had already become extinct). Analysis of the findings gave an unambiguous result. In all cases, carcasses of baby mammoths aged from two weeks to two months were cut up. Employees of the Paris Museum of Natural History explored another site of people of the Gravette culture, located in the town of Milovic in the Czech Republic. The remains of 21 mammoths were discovered here. In seventeen cases these are cubs, and in another four they are young animals. The Miloviche site was located on the slope of a small valley, the bottom of which was made of loess. In the spring, when baby mammoths were born, the frozen ground thawed, and the loess turned into a mess in which the young mammoths got stuck. Their relatives could not help them. The hunters waited for the herd to leave and then finished off the prey. Perhaps people deliberately drove mammoths into this “swamp”, frightening them with torches. But what about the brave men? Was there really no one who, with a spear at the ready, desperately rushed at the mammoth, not sparing his belly? There must have been some brave souls too. Only heroes - they are heroes to die young, for example, under the feet of an angry elephant. We, in all likelihood, are the descendants of those prudent hunters who could wait in ambush for days until a lone mammoth calf died in the trap where it fell. But we, their descendants, are alive, and what remains of the heroes is usually only a memory.

It is still unclear why they became extinct. And although they lived on the Arctic Wrangel Island until the time of the construction of the Egyptian pyramids, there is no written evidence about the reasons for the disappearance of mammoths from our planet.

If we discard assumptions about the fall, eruption and other natural disasters, the main reasons will be humans.

In 2008, an unusual accumulation of bones of mammoths and other animals was discovered, which could not have appeared as a result of natural processes, such as hunting by predators or the death of animals. These were the skeletal remains of at least 26 mammoths, and the bones were sorted by species.

Apparently, people for a long time they kept the bones that were most interesting to them, some of which bear traces of tools. And people are running out of hunting weapons ice age there was no shortage.

How were carcass parts delivered to the sites? And Belgian archaeozoologists have an answer to this: they could transport meat and tusks from the butchering site using dogs.

Mammoths went extinct about 10 thousand years ago during the last Ice Age. Some experts do not rule out that humans also changed the climate... by destroying mammoths and other northern giants. With the disappearance of large mammals that produce large volumes of methane, the level of this greenhouse gas in the atmosphere should have decreased by about 200 units. This led to a cooling of 9–12°C about 14 thousand years ago.

Mammoths reached a height of 5.5 meters and a body weight of 10-12 tons. Thus, these giants were twice as heavy as the largest modern land mammals - African elephants.

In Siberia and Alaska, there are known cases of the discovery of mammoth corpses that were preserved due to their presence in the thickness of permafrost. Therefore, scientists are not dealing with individual fossils or several skeleton bones, but can even study the blood, muscles, and fur of these animals and also determine what they ate.

Mammoths had a massive body, long hair and long curved tusks; the latter could serve the mammoth for obtaining food in winter time from under the snow. Mammoth skeleton:

In terms of its skeletal structure, the mammoth bears a significant resemblance to the living one. Indian elephant. Huge mammoth tusks, up to 4 m in length, weighing up to 100 kg, were located in the upper jaw, protruded forward, curved upward and diverged to the sides. Mammoth and mastodon are another extinct gigantic proboscis mammal:

It is interesting that as they wore out, the mammoth’s teeth (like those of modern elephants) were replaced with new ones, and such a change could take place up to 6 times during its life. Monument to the mammoth in Salekhard:

Most known species mammoths - woolly mammoth (lat. Mammuthus primigenius). It appeared in Siberia 200-300 thousand years ago, from where it spread to Europe and North America.

The woolly mammoth is the most exotic animal of the Ice Age and is its symbol. Real giants, mammoths at the withers reached 3.5 m and weighed 4-6 tons. Mammoths were protected from the cold by thick, long hair with developed undercoat, which was more than a meter long on the shoulders, hips and sides, as well as a layer of fat up to 9 cm thick. 12-13 thousand years ago, mammoths lived throughout Northern Eurasia and a large part of North America . Due to climate warming, the habitats of mammoths - the tundra-steppe - have decreased. Mammoths migrated to the north of the continent and for the last 9-10 thousand years they lived on a narrow strip of land along the Arctic coast of Eurasia, which is now mostly flooded by the sea. The last mammoths lived on Wrangel Island, where they became extinct about 3,500 years ago.

In winter, the coarse wool of the mammoth consisted of hair 90 cm long. A layer of fat about 10 cm thick served as additional thermal insulation.

Mammoths are herbivorous; they ate mainly herbaceous plants (cereals, sedges, forbs), small shrubs (dwarf birch, willow), tree shoots and moss. In winter, in order to feed themselves, in search of food, they raked snow with their forelimbs and extremely developed upper incisors - tusks, the length of which in large males was more than 4 meters, and they weighed about 100 kg. Mammoth teeth were well adapted for grinding rough food. Each of the 4 teeth of a mammoth changed five times during its life. A mammoth ate 200-300 kg of vegetation per day, that is, he had to eat 18-20 hours a day and constantly move around in search of new pastures.

It is assumed that living mammoths were colored black or dark brown. Because they had small ears and short trunks (compared to modern elephants), the woolly mammoth was adapted to life in cold climates.

Thanks to mammoths, the rulers of the northern circumpolar steppes and tundras, ancient man survived in harsh conditions: they gave him food and clothing, shelter, and shelter from the cold. Thus, mammoth meat, subcutaneous and abdominal fat were used for nutrition; for clothing - skins, sinews, wool; for the manufacture of dwellings, tools, hunting equipment and equipment and crafts - tusks and bones.

During the Ice Age, the woolly mammoth was the largest animal in the Eurasian expanses.

It is assumed that woolly mammoths lived in groups of 2-9 individuals and were led by older females.

The life expectancy of mammoths was approximately the same as that of modern elephants, i.e. no more than 60–65 years.

“By its nature, the mammoth is a meek and peace-loving animal, and affectionate towards people. When meeting a person, the mammoth not only does not attack him, but even clings and fawns over the person” (from the notes of Tobolsk local historian P. Gorodtsov, 19th century).

The largest number of mammoth bones are found in Siberia. Giant mammoth cemetery - New Siberian Islands. In the last century, up to 20 tons were mined there annually elephant tusks. Monument to mammoths in Khanty-Mansiysk:

In Yakutia there is an auction where you can buy the remains of mammoths. The approximate price of a kilogram of mammoth tusk is $200.

Unique finds.

Adams' Mammoth

The world's first mammoth was found in 1799 in the lower reaches of the Lena River by hunter O. Shumakhov, who reached the Lena River delta in search of mammoth tusks. The huge block of frozen earth and ice where he found the mammoth tusk completely thawed only in the summer of 1804. In 1806, M. Adams, an associate professor of zoology at the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, who was passing through Yakutsk, learned about the find. Having gone to the place, he discovered the skeleton of a mammoth, eaten by wild animals and dogs. The skin was preserved on the mammoth’s head; one ear, dried eyes and brain also survived, and on the side on which it lay there was skin with thick, long hair. Thanks to the dedicated efforts of the zoologist, the skeleton was delivered to St. Petersburg that same year. So, in 1808, for the first time in the world, a complete skeleton of a mammoth was mounted - Adams' mammoth. Currently, he, like the baby mammoth Dima, is on display at the museum of the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg.

In 1970, on the left bank of the Berelekh River, the left tributary of the Indigirka River (90 km northwest of the village of Chokurdakh in the Allaikhovsky ulus), a huge accumulation of bone remains was found that belonged to approximately 160 mammoths that lived 13 thousand years ago. Nearby was the dwelling of ancient hunters. In terms of the quantity and quality of preserved fragments of mammoth bodies, the Berelekh cemetery is the largest in the world. It indicates a massive death of weakened and snow-drifted animals.

Currently, paleontological materials from the Berelekh cemetery are stored at the Institute of Geology of Diamond and Precious Metals of the SB RAS in Yakutsk.

Shandri Mammoth

In 1971, D. Kuzmin discovered the skeleton of a mammoth that lived 41 thousand years ago on the right bank of the Shandrin River, which flows into the channel of the Indigirka River delta. Inside the skeleton was a frozen lump of entrails. Plant remains consisting of herbs, branches, shrubs, and seeds were found in the gastrointestinal tract. So, thanks to this, one of the five unique content remains gastrointestinal tract mammoths (cut size 70x35 cm), we managed to find out the animal’s diet. The mammoth was a large male, 60 years old, and apparently died from old age and physical exhaustion. The skeleton of the Shandrin mammoth is located at the Institute of History and Philosophy of the SB RAS.

Mammoth Dima

In 1977, a well-preserved 7-8 month old mammoth calf was discovered in the Kolyma River basin. It was a touching and sad sight for the prospectors who discovered the baby mammoth Dima (he was named after the spring of the same name, in the valley of which he was found): he was lying on his side with mournfully outstretched legs, with closed pelvises and a slightly crumpled trunk.

The find immediately became a world sensation due to its excellent preservation and possible reason death of a baby mammoth. The poet Stepan Shchipachev composed a touching poem about a baby mammoth who had fallen behind his mammoth mother, and an animated film was made about the unfortunate baby mammoth.

Yukagir mammoth

In 2002, near the Muksunuokha River, 30 km from the village of Yukagir, schoolchildren Innokenty and Grigory Gorokhov found the head of a male mammoth. In 2003 - 2004 the remaining parts of the corpse were excavated. The most well preserved are the head with tusks, with most of the skin, the left ear and eye socket, as well as the left front leg, consisting of the forearm and with muscles and tendons. Of the remaining parts, cervical and thoracic vertebrae, part of the ribs, shoulder blades, the right humerus, part of the viscera, and wool were found. According to radiocarbon dating, the mammoth lived 18 thousand years ago. The male, about 3 m tall at the withers and weighing 4 - 5 tons, died at the age of 40 - 50 years (for comparison: the average life expectancy of modern elephants is 60 - 70 years), probably after falling into a pit. Currently, anyone can see a model of the mammoth’s head in the Mammoth Museum of the Federal State Scientific Institution “Institute of Applied Ecology of the North” in Yakutsk.

Baby mammoth Lyuba

In Siberia, the perfectly preserved remains of a mammoth that died approximately 40 thousand years ago were found. Paleontologists are about to make a series of important discoveries. For example, how could this species survive in such harsh climatic conditions, in permafrost.

The mammoth that died in the Siberian tundra was approximately 1 month old. They called him Any. It remained buried for thousands of years under a thick layer of ice. The body is so well preserved that scientists now hope to extract and analyze its DNA to finally understand what caused the extinction of this species 10 thousand years ago.

Mammoth Museum

On the territory of Yakutia, in rock strata frozen hundreds of meters, many unique finds were found - bone remains, entire corpses of mammoths and other fossil animals - for example, in 1968 the remains of the Selerikan horse were discovered, in 1971 - the Mylakhchinsky bison with remains of soft tissues and wool, in 1972 - the skeleton of the Churapcha rhinoceros with remains of skin and wool and others. To study and exhibit them, the world’s only Mammoth Museum, Institute of Applied Ecology of the North, was created in Yakutsk in 1991. The museum’s collection contains more than 2,000 bone remains of large animals of the mammoth fauna. So, here you can see 3 fully restored skeletons of a mammoth, a woolly rhinoceros and a bison, a mummy of a wild horse, part of a mammoth skin and other interesting finds.

The unique exhibits of the museum - the remains of mammoths and mammoth fauna as unique prehistoric relics - have been declared a national treasure of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia). Thanks to the many years of efforts of Yakut scientists, the world got an idea of mammoth fauna Ice Age, Currently, the Mammoth Museum is very popular both among the local population and visiting Russian and foreign guests.

IN last years The museum, together with Kinki University (Japan), the International Science and Technology Center (Moscow), and the French agency La Paz, is working on the implementation of two large international projects on the study of macro- and microorganisms extracted from permafrost, and the construction of the World Museum of Mammoth and Permafrost. permafrost in Yakutsk. The author of the project is architect Thomas Lizer (USA). According to the project it will be unique museum complex in the open air, reflecting the era of mammoths - the giants of the cold plains of ancient Yakutia.

Some experts, such as paleoecologist Felisa Smith from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, do not rule out that humans also changed the climate... by destroying mammoths and other northern giants. “With the disappearance of large mammals that produce large amounts of methane, the level of this greenhouse gas in the atmosphere should have decreased by about 200 units,” explains Smith. “This led to a cooling of 9–12°C about 14 thousand years ago.” The relationship between climate and mammoths is not denied by geophysicist Sergei Zimov, head of the North-Eastern scientific station located in the lower reaches of the Kolyma. “Do you think a man couldn’t kill a mammoth? Nothing? – he asks and then he himself, not without irony, answers: “I rolled up the mammoth’s wool with a long roller, urinated; There is frost all around - here comes the spear. I used the same wool to fasten the stone to the shaft, and did the same with the ax.”

In 2008, an unusual accumulation of bones of mammoths and other animals was discovered, which could not have appeared as a result of natural processes.

The life of ancient man was very difficult and dangerous. Primitive tools, constant struggle for survival in a world of predators, and even ignorance of the laws of nature, inability to explain natural phenomena- all this made their existence difficult, full of fear.

First of all, a person needed to survive, and, therefore, get food for himself. They hunted mainly large animals, most often mammoths. How did ancient people hunt with simple tools?

How the hunt took place:

• Ancient people hunted only together, in large groups.
• First, they prepared so-called pit traps, at the bottom of which they placed stakes and poles so that the animal that fell there could not get out, and people could finish it off to the end. People studied well the habits of mammoths, who went approximately the same way to a watering hole to a river or lake. Therefore, holes were dug at the places where mammoths moved.
• Having discovered the beast, people screamed and drove it from all sides into this hole, once in which the beast could no longer escape.
• A captured animal became food for a long time for a group of people, a means of survival in these terrible conditions.

Imagining the picture of how primitive people hunted, one can understand how dangerous hunting was for them; many died in fights with animals. After all, the animals were huge and strong. Thus, a mammoth could only kill a person with a blow from its trunk and trample him with its massive feet if it caught up with him. Therefore, one can only wonder how they hunted mammoths with only sharpened sticks and stones in their hands.

As the most ancient religious scripture tells us, “The earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the deep, and the Spirit of God hovered over the waters.” But, however, let’s leave the consideration of religious texts to theologians and approach the matter as ordinary atheists, because it is difficult for a deeply religious person to be absolutely impartial in science.

The most common misconception

The most common misconception: an atheist is a person who denies the existence of God.

Theism is a doctrine about God, and it is opposed by another doctrine - atheism; it is not based on the denial of God, but simply excludes him from its explanation of the world. The spirit of antitheism is alien to atheism; it does not proclaim the struggle with God as its task.

But the concept of God exists, just as the concepts of logic, dialectics, conscience and the like exist, therefore to say that there is no God would be incorrect. But this concept is not part of the atheist's worldview. He is not guided by this concept in Everyday life, does not compare his actions, thoughts, feelings against it; his spiritual experiences take place outside the concept of God...

Personally, I can neither confidently deny nor confirm the existence of unknown forces that give us reason for mystical fantasies. In religious matters, the closest thing to me is the position of one great physicist, who said: “There is no God, but there is something much more serious.” Therefore, let us approach the matter somewhat atheistically, because it is difficult for a deeply religious person, as well as one who completely denies God, to be absolutely impartial in science.

In the book I do not affirm anything unconditionally, but if I assume something, it means that I have sufficient grounds for it. I always try to express myself precisely, so in the story you will find quite a lot of words expressing varying degrees of confidence: it seems, probably, perhaps, apparently, convinced...

The book is devoid of “scientific” in the academic understanding of the term, but this does not mean at all that it is based on the author’s naked imagination. No, it contains a lot of factual material, to which the author gives his own interpretation. For a better understanding of the author’s idea, I would like to immediately make two very important warnings.

First. The sequence presented in the book historical events in time coordinates is different from what is generally accepted in historical science! The text must be read, assuming that humanity developed consistently, without leaps and regressive failures, because such a course of historical events is dictated by the logic of development human society. Therefore, do not try to immediately link the events presented to famous years, look for their place in the generally accepted system of chronological coordinates. You can do this later, but through the prism of my version.

And second. BY PUBLISHING THE BOOK THE AUTHOR DOES NOT PURSUIT ANY POLITICAL OR RELIGIOUS GOALS! THE CONVERSATION IS ONLY FOR THE GOOD OF TRUTH AND HUMANITY. QUOTES FROM RELIGIOUS BOOKS OR ORAL TRADES OF DIFFERENT TIMES AND PEOPLES ARE USED ONLY AS A SOURCE OF HISTORICAL INFORMATION.

Based on logic, common sense and knowledge of human nature, I want to outline my vision of the development of our civilization. By “our civilization” I mean earthly classical, primarily European history, from which Russian culture stems, from the Ancient World to the present day. The history of prehistoric man does not interest us.

While working on the book, I proceeded from the assumption that traditional history is familiar to the reader, and he is able to calmly and soberly analyze even the most unexpected hypotheses. But no mysticism, charlatanism, “flying saucers” or thoughts about the “other world” can be found in the book; this is a purely historical study. Although some evidence real story more breathtaking than tales of the underworld!

For a person who is prejudiced or has a damaged psyche (Russophobe, anti-Semite, etc.), it is probably better not to read the book at all, so as not to get upset again. And I will try to tell the rest as interesting as possible, without lengthening the story as much as possible.

The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine!

How long ago did our planet appear? How many years has man existed on Earth? Is it possible to solve historical mysteries that are now considered unsolvable? There is a whole army of people who have devoted their entire lives to answering these and similar questions, and it would be dishonest on my part to take away a piece of their bread. But, on the other hand, I can’t help but notice that this “army” has given so many answers that, if desired, one can defend the correctness of one or a completely contrary judgment, and even obvious absurdity can be easily defended with references to authoritative sources. In general, as Byron wrote in Manfred, “Science is the exchange of some ignorance for another.” Therefore, I offer my thoughts with a light heart, without fear of being challenged. And who is undeniable? Only God, who in the beginning created the firmament of the earth, from which everything began.

“The earth was chaotic and empty, darkness spread over the abyss, and the Spirit of the Almighty hovered over the waters...”

According to generally accepted ideas, the Earth is the fruit of internal cosmic processes, the result of the “work” of the cosmos. A bright red clot of hot cosmic gases absorbs streams of flying stones and dust... Getting into this clot, the stones melt, hiss, and evaporate gases. Now the basalt, then the granite base appeared - the earth's solid (cast) - and the liquid component appeared; the young planet is covered with a kind of fog - the future air. The active phase of formation is replaced by gradual attenuation and cooling of the surface. This was the period of emergence biological life. Then - according to the same officially accepted ideas in science - primitive organisms appeared in the water, they crawled onto land and developed into different creatures, of two sexes at once: something became a dinosaur with a female dinosaur, something developed into a mammoth with a female mammoth, which -it became a creeping reptile with... well, with a female creature of the same species; and some cunning " gastropod“managed to turn into a monkey on land. She lived carefree for millions of years, but suddenly she wanted to work “by the sweat of her brow” - to plow the land, to get the harvest... And it was from her that man came... Everyone knows this version from school, and I will not analyze it in detail.

Recently, the following information circulated on the Internet: an international group of scientists, as a result of many years of work, came to the conclusion that the Earth was suitable for life immediately after its origin. They claim that our planet arose in its current form and since then has practically not changed its original appearance. According to researchers, the planet, immediately after its origin, was ready to shelter living beings, and all statements that at first the Earth was completely covered by oceans, and then the continental crust melted on it, where the inhabitants of the waters then got out, are erroneous.

In the rocks of the Western Australian Jack Hills mountain range (it is considered the oldest on Earth, its age is 4.4 billion years), the rare earth metal hafnium was discovered in combination with zirconium crystals. According to the analysis, scientists have established that the continental crust differs from that located under the oceans in structure and thickness and was formed 4.4–4.5 billion years ago, that is, almost immediately after the birth of the planet. Before this, it was believed that it gradually melted out of the oceanic one.

"It looks like the Earth formed in one moment," said one of the researchers, Stephen Moizis of the University of Colorado. Under his leadership, a study was conducted proving that water immediately appeared on the surface of the planet approximately 4.3 billion years ago, and did not condense from the atmosphere over 3.8 billion years, as previously thought.

“New data suggests that the Earth’s crust, oceans and atmosphere existed from the very beginning, and the planet was already suitable for life,” Moizis is convinced.

I don’t want to consider the question of human origins at all.

There are many conjectures on this score, up to the spontaneous appearance of the protein in the exosphere (the uppermost, near-cosmic layer of the atmosphere) and its settling on the surface of the planet. There are also hypotheses about the coming of man to Earth from other planets, for example from Sirius, Mars, Phaethon, and even suggest that from the satellites of Jupiter. But the question of the origin of man on Earth in no way concerns our topic, and therefore I immediately go to the given: once upon a time man arose.

Numerous ancient documents testify that initially the existence of man on our planet was truly heavenly: he did not know hunger, cold, disease... But it is also quite obvious that a period came when our ancestor suddenly became forced to fight for survival, for his existence and with many through efforts to get out of the state of animal relations with the outside world.

I leave outside the scope of my story the difficult path that ancient man had to go through. I can only note in passing that the official picture of the life of ancient man does not satisfy me at all. Moreover, it is largely illogical, unsubstantiated and harmful to building a correct idea of ancient world. For example, from school we know that ancient man hunted mammoths. And even the modern Big Encyclopedic Dictionary confirms this:

“MAMOTH is an extinct mammal of the elephant family. Lived in the 2nd half of the Pleistocene in Eurasia and North America. He was a contemporary of Stone Age man. Height 2.5–3.5 m. Weight 3–5 tons. Extinct at the end of the Pleistocene as a result of:

a) CLIMATE CHANGE and

b) HUNTING HIM MAN.

In northern Siberia, in the Kolyma basin, in Alaska and other places on the planet, mammoths with soft tissues, skin and wool preserved in permafrost layers were found.”

But let's think about it. The remains of mammoths are found all over the world: both in warm latitudes and in cold ones. What kind of “climate change” caused all the mammoths to become extinct overnight, during, as paleontologists say, “one cosmic minute”?

Let’s answer another question: “For what reason did ancient man need to hunt mammoths?” It’s hard to imagine a more meaningless activity! Firstly, even the skin of a modern elephant is up to 7 cm thick, and the mammoth also had a thick layer of subcutaneous fat. Try to use a stick and a stone to pierce the skin, which does not burst even from the tusks of five-ton males when they fight among themselves.

Secondly, even if you took such a skin from a dead mammoth, sew yourself a “suit” from it and run around in it, and I’ll see how long you can last.

Thirdly, mammoth meat is rough, stringy, and low in nutrition. Why did ancient man need to eat very tough mammoth meat, if there were plenty of fruits, vegetables, roots, fish in the rivers, as well as animals and birds with more tender meat?

Fourthly, in pictures of ancient hunts in history textbooks, a poor mammoth sits dejectedly in a pit, and people throw stones at his head. Stupidity without comment. But here’s a hole... Who dug the hole? Even an average individual needed a hole of at least five to seven cubic meters. Try to dig a hole for at least a baby elephant. Don’t take an iron shovel; it didn’t exist then.

Fifthly, the mammoth must also be directed and driven into the pit. Mammoths, like elephants, are herd animals. For the sake of an experiment, gather all your acquaintances and try, with sticks in your hands, to approach and recapture one of its members from a herd of wild African elephants (by the way, not yet tamed!).

And also sixthly, seventhly and eighthly... Why is this outright absurdity repeated from generation to generation?

There is quite a lot of evidence that the traditional picture of everyday life ancient man, to put it mildly, is not true. An article was published in the magazine “Alphabet” (No. 1, 2002), it states that “...European archaeologists did sensational discovery, and now we know how Paleolithic women dressed. Contrary to popular belief, the ancestors wore not only smelly leather and skins. Prehistoric women had in their “wardrobe” hats and hair nets, belts and skirts, panties and bras, as well as bracelets and necklaces made from plant fibers.

There were real fabrics, in the production of which quite weaving technologies were used. And although there was no single fashion in the vastness of Eurasia, the best examples of weaving from the Paleolithic times can compete with products of the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages. What a Neolithic! Modern thin cotton is almost no better than Paleolithic cotton.

Hitherto our distant past was presented to us in the form of compositions in historical museums: monkey-like men in skins with clubs are driving mammoths, the same beast-like women with saggy breasts are nursing children and roasting meat on fires. Looks like it's time to reconsider this picture. New data convincingly proves that the role of women in prehistoric society was much more significant than we previously thought. If the ancient ladies knew how to sew and wear precious woven clothes with grace, one must think that their position in society was far from slavish, but rather equal. And their husbands must have had some kind of artistic taste. Otherwise, for whom would primitive fashionistas dress up?”

Here is the text. Now let’s give ourselves the trouble to think. I quote an article from the most modern electronic encyclopedic dictionary Cyril and Methodius:

“Paleolithic - from Paleo... and... Lithuania, the ancient Stone Age, the first period of the Stone Age, the time of the existence of fossil man (paleoanthropes, etc.), who used beaten stone, wood, bone tools, was engaged in hunting and gathering. The Paleolithic lasted from the emergence of man (over 2 million years ago) until approximately the 10th millennium BC.”

If an inexperienced reader wants to know when man appeared on Earth, he will find a variety of figures: from 10 thousand to two million years ago.

Moreover, due to age, I can trace how this figure has changed. When I was studying at school, it was known that man originated 35–40 thousand years ago, then this figure slowly increased to 70, 100, 140, 200 thousand. Then the American film “One Million Years BC” appeared on cinema screens, and there people were already running around the earth and, mooing inarticulately, fighting off annoying dinosaurs; The film's consultants are America's most respected historians. Now the figure has reached two million. Who is bigger?

The reader must understand that chronological figures are the holy of holies for the historian. If I change the number of the supposed appearance of man on Earth, then with the change in number the whole picture of earthly life changes from the very first day to the present day. And if in fact modern definition I am asked to find out that two million years ago paleanthropes ran around our planet - apes(so primitive that the only tools they had were stone scrapers and the bones of killed animals), and at the same time, it turns out, they wore panties and bras, which in terms of the fineness of weaving are not inferior to modern underwear, then I understand that in the officially accepted picture of prehistoric The world is in complete confusion.

Typically, archaeologists and paleontologists proceed from the fact that the original man was a carnivore, with rough features: animal hands, a massive jaw, a forehead hanging over the eyes. There is a feeling that there was no man as such (thinking) in essence, there was a beast; It turns out that evolution had to work hard, “correcting” the mistakes of the Creator.

I can vividly imagine how the ancestor of the gentlemen who claim the above is tearing raw meat with his teeth - but this is by no means a person! Then he digestive system for some reason suddenly becomes delicate (probably raw meat contributes to the transformation of an animal into a human), and he begins to bake the meat on the fire (naturally, he does not have iron cauldrons for cooking food), and his young child eats the same thing... Find the person , whose stomach is capable of digesting the coarsest food, feed him in this way, and in a maximum of a year he will die from such nutrition. But they want to assure us that man has been eating this way for hundreds of thousands of years and has acquired the appearance of modern people.

Thank God, not a single modern encyclopedia no longer claims that Pithecanthropus, Sinanthropus, Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon and the like were an intermediate link between ape and man. Moreover, a team of European scientists led by Svent Pääbo conducted a study at Stanford University, which proved with high probability that there was no mixing of early humans and Neanderthals. After isolating mitochondrial DNA from four Neanderthals and five contemporary European humans, scientists found no evidence of a significant genetic transition. It is quite possible that man could have been created in a different natural “perform” (in the canine family: a dog, a wolf, a jackal, a coyote, a dingo, a fox, and an arctic fox), and with a different cardiovascular system (pressure and air density were once different, the Earth’s magnetic field was many times stronger), and on the other respiratory system, (the Earth’s atmosphere did not always consist of the nitrogen-oxygen mixture familiar to us; the oxygen content in air bubbles in ancient amber was 28%), but de facto the weakest, most unadapted species for life on this planet - homo delicatus - managed to survive and adapt. an elegant person. When you begin to list all the “unsuitability” of a person for life in these earthly conditions, you want to exclaim: “How could a person even appear here and survive!” And suddenly, with amazing clarity, you begin to understand that man, in all respects, was not created for this planet... Or it should be admitted that when he appeared, conditions on Earth were different!

But the main thing for me is not arguing with learned men, God be with him: they hunted, and so be it, if you really want to believe in it. The existence of primordial man is not the subject of this book, and if necessary, I will limit myself to remarks of a purely informative and puzzling nature.

There are theories going back to J. Cuvier, according to them, the life of mankind proceeds in cycles: it reaches the peak of its development and then, either due to geological reasons, or due to a bad character, destroys itself, descending to a primitive state, and then passes again historical path. As for the bad character, this is true, the rest is doubtful.

In the statements of biologists, one can always read the idea hidden in the subconscious that the gene code of living beings is in a process of constant change (oh, these evolutionists), and all species are in constant mixing. No, gentlemen, on Earth each species has its own independent path. Hyenas do not turn into wolves, and jackals do not turn into arctic foxes. And not a single monkey within known to mankind millennia has not even come half a step closer to man external signs, nor at the genetic level.

It would be more correct to say that only those living beings exist on earth that CAN exist in data physical conditions. Those who are not adapted for life on this planet cannot appear at all or will inevitably disappear IF THE EARTH'S ENVIRONMENT THAT IS USUAL TO THEM CHANGES, THAT IS THE CONDITIONS OF THEIR EXISTENCE.

The truth is obvious: each species existed on Earth on its own and did not turn into anyone. And many species of living beings were forced to disappear in an instant for a very compelling reason. Namely: a very strong geocosmic catastrophe.

I BELIEVE THAT TWO CATASTROPHES ON A UNIVERSAL SCALE HAVE CHANGED THE PATH OF EARTHLY CIVILIZATION.

Over the past twenty years, I have probably read everything that has been written about disasters, and I know that many disasters have occurred on earth. But it is unlikely that they were destructive for humanity.

I MEAN CATASTROPHES THAT RADICALLY CHANGED NOT ONLY PHYSICS, GEOGRAPHY, HISTORY OF THE EARTH, BUT ALSO THE ESSENCE OF ALL LIFE ON THIS PLANET, AND MAN HIMSELF INCLUDING.

For convenience, I will continue to refer to each of them as “catastrophe”. Or sometimes - “cataclysm”.