Chapter 9 Where is the cradle of mankind①

Where are human beings born?This is a debated question.Multi-ancestors claim that each race has a different origin, that is, there is more than one birthplace of human beings.But the current science supports the theory of a single ancestor, and the birthplace of human beings can only be in one place, only in a limited area.So where is the cradle of mankind? ① Originally published in "How Do People Know Their Own Origin" Volume 2, China Youth Publishing House, 1980 edition. Polar regions, Oceania and America cannot be the cradle of mankind It seems that the polar regions cannot be the cradle of mankind.

Antarctica, which is covered with ice and snow, sleeps in the long night in winter, the temperature is as low as minus 60 degrees Celsius, and only the colorful aurora flickers in the steel blue night sky.It was only in the 19th century that explorers set foot on the continent in the far south.There are very few fossil materials here. Except for ferns found in coal seams, the remains of amphibians and water dragons were found in strata 200 million years ago in 1967 and 1969, indicating that the climate there was warm at that time. .But no traces of ancient humans and cultural relics have ever been found.

Human ancestors are also not found in the Arctic, because the islands in the Arctic Ocean, as well as the frozen soil and forest tundra in the south, are far away from the discovery of ape fossils and far away from the distribution area of ​​modern primates.Although there are Eskimos living in the Arctic region, the history of the Eskimos does not exceed four or five thousand years at most. Oceania is also unlikely to be the birthplace of human beings. Oceania includes mainland Australia, the island of New Zealand and many archipelagoes in the South Pacific.Australia separated from the European continent about 100 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period.Most of them are desert areas, not rich in resources, and animals are rare. The main mammals are only some primitive types such as marsupials and platypus.No primate fossils other than humans have been found so far.The human bone fossils that can be found, according to the radiocarbon 14 method, are no more than 22,000 years old, which is too far away from the origin of human beings.

The island of New Zealand and other archipelagos are even less likely to be the birthplace of humankind. As for the American continent, it seems that it will not be the cradle of mankind. People call America the New World.Leaving aside the wild man "Sasquatch" in Indian legends, in America, there are neither great apes nor conclusive fossil evidence of them, not even catarrhine monkeys (whether modern living or ancient fossils) representative) has not been found.In the early Tertiary period, platysmus monkeys were developed here, and some primate fossils similar in nature to platysmus monkeys were found in the Miocene strata of Argentina and Colombia, indicating that they are similar to the catarrhine monkeys of the Old World irrelevant.

When it comes to the history of human habitation in America, some people have speculated that the fauna in the mid-Pleistocene once distributed to America through the Bering land bridge in the ice age (due to the sharp drop in the sea level in the ice age, land appeared in the Bering Strait), so it cannot be ruled out that the upright It is possible that people followed their prey to the American continent, but so far no cultural relics and human remains from the Middle Paleolithic or earlier have been found here.Some scientists believe that the earliest humans may have crossed the Bering land bridge from northern Asia during the last ice age.It was also suggested that the earliest inhabitants of the Americas came from Oceania, based on the fact that the language and individual cultural factors of the local people in South America were similar to those in Oceania, but this statement was not accepted by most people.

According to archaeological research, the history of human beings living in the Americas did not exceed 40,000 years. They expanded from north to south on the American continent, and it was only 10,000 years ago that they reached the southern tip of America.Although it has been reported recently that ancient stone tools were found in ancient deposits in southern California, the age may be 60,000 to 80,000 years ago.Even if this report is confirmed, humans have not lived in the Americas for more than 100,000 years.The time of the origin of this high human being is too far away. The possible cradles of mankind are Europe, Africa and Asia. Below we discuss the possibilities of these three continents respectively.

Possibility of European origin is hard to say Europe, especially Western Europe, was once considered the cradle of mankind, because the fossil remains of Paleolithic cultures (including the earliest Abwehr culture) and humans were first found in Europe.From 1823 to 1925, there were 116 individuals of Paleolithic human bones unearthed in Western Europe, including Heidelbergers in the Homo erectus stage, while more Neolithic human bones were discovered, with 236 cases.Therefore, people open the map and see that Europe, especially Western Europe, is full of ancient human sites.At that time, except for Homo erectus in Java, no ancient human sites had been found in other parts of Asia and Africa.Combined with the fact that the "Pildown Man" hoax was raging in the 1920s, many people believed that the center of human origin was in Western Europe.

But with the discovery of vast amounts of material from both Asia and Africa, the possibility of Europe as the birthplace of mankind has become difficult to say.This is because: First, the Tertiary strata in Europe lack fossil evidence of human ancestors, such as Rama ape and Australopithecus.It is said that there is a tooth specimen of the Rama ape type among the materials of the Fonton species found in Germany, but such a small amount of fossil materials cannot explain the problem.In addition, a wood ape material was also found in the middle of the Miocene strata in Austria 16 million years ago, named the wood ape-Darwin species, and some people think it is the ancestor of human beings.Now after research, it is believed that although its molars have some human-like characteristics, the basic nature is still ape.In the last century, fossil materials of mountain apes were found in the early Pliocene lignite layer in Tuscany, Italy. More materials were found after 1954, and even nearly complete skeletons were found.Some characteristics of the mountain ape are similar to humans, such as small canine teeth, short and less prominent face, some people think it is upright, and claim that it should belong to the human family.However, research in recent years has shown that its arms are longer than its legs, and its palms are curved, so the shape of its joints shows that they are very flexible, indicating that the mountain ape is not upright, but may have arms, and may be the ancestor of gibbons.It has been reported recently that someone has studied the teeth of the mountain ape, and believes that it has nothing to do with humans or any apes, and may be a specialized branch of the ape's evolutionary line.

Second, although the Abwehr culture of the early Paleolithic Age was found in Europe, it was also found in many regions such as the African continent, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, and it was widely distributed.Not only that, but there are cultural relics in Africa earlier than the Abwehr culture.There are also quite a lot of cultural sites belonging to the early Pleistocene in Asia.In recent years, although gravel tools have been found near Prague in Czechoslovakia, Bujonasti in Romania, and Menton in southern France, together with animal bones from the early Pleistocene, the authenticity of these ancient tools is still worth studying.Even if it is true, it can only show that humans were widely distributed in the early Pleistocene, but the time of human origin is earlier than that.

However, the situation has changed in the past two years.Australopithecus fossils of the Rama ape type have been found in Greece, Turkey, Hungary and other regions, so some people believe that the possibility that southern Europe is one of the origins of human beings should not be ruled out. But in general, the possibility of Europe as the birthplace of human beings is not very great. The possibility that Africa is the cradle of humanity cannot be ruled out As early as 1871, Darwin speculated in his book "The Origin of Man and Sexual Selection" that human beings evolved from some kind of ancient ape in the Old World.According to the law of animal distribution, that is to say, the existing mammals in every major region of the world are closely related to the extinct species in the same region, and he concluded from this that ancient Africa must have lived in ancient Africa and great apes , an extinct ape closely related to the black ape.The great apes, especially the black apes, are the closest relatives to humans, so it is more likely that the ancestors of humans first lived in Africa than in other continents.

This conjecture of Darwin was not confirmed by scientific materials in the 19th century.But many scientists support him. In the 1920s, Australopithecus fossils were found in Africa, and many fossil apes and ancient human remains were found here one after another. Since the 1950s, especially since the 1960s, the materials found for Australopithecus, Australopithecus, and Homo erectus are even richer and more colorful. According to radioisotope dating, some Australopithecus lived more than 4 million years ago.These materials provide factual support for the claim that Africa is the cradle of humanity.Moreover, some people believe that Africa has a vast territory and varied terrain, including tropical jungles, savannahs with sparse trees, semi-desert areas, high mountains, and huge rift valleys. Formation can play a catalytic role, and it is an ideal area for human origin. However, some people disagree with the claim that humans originated in Africa. Their reasons are: First, they believe that Darwin ignored the issue of animal migration. The appearance of great apes in Africa does not mean that humans must have originated in Africa. On the contrary, according to the law of animal migration, their ancestors should have gone far away from the modern distribution area To find. Secondly, to promote the transformation of apes into humans generally requires external motivation, which is the change of the regional environment, such as a forest area becoming a woodland grassland area.Since the Miocene in the African region, according to current scientific research results, the environmental changes have not been drastic. Although the terrain is changeable, there is still a lack of "external stimulation" for the transformation of ancient apes into humans. In addition, from a geographical point of view, Africa obviously does not belong to the most important part of the entire Old Continent, but is actually just a peninsula protruding from the European continent.In terms of animal geographical distribution or flora division, the African and Asian continents live together in the "Palearctic".Therefore, the fossil apes found in Egypt, Algeria and other places in North Africa are closely related to the materials found in the Asian continent, and it is very likely that the ancient fossil representatives in North Africa came from Asia. Among the scholars who advocate the origin of Africa, there is another school of thought that the place of origin is in South Africa, because the early types of Australopithecus were excavated in South Africa.Opponents point out that South Africa is too far away from other parts of the Old World, and it is in a secluded corner. It is unlikely that Australopithecus would use this place as the center to migrate to other regions, but the possibility of moving from other places is obviously much greater. In any case, the material found in the African region is so rich that its importance in solving the problem of human origins cannot be ignored.At present, many scientists believe that the possibility of Africa as the birthplace of human beings cannot be ruled out. Asian origin more likely The theory of human origin in Asia was put forward as early as 1857.People who advocate the origin of Asia also have different opinions on which part of Asia human beings originated from. Some people have suggested that it is Central Asia, which is the claim of American paleontologist Laidy who first proposed the origin of Asia. In 1911, another paleontologist, Matthew, listed various reasons in a speech entitled "Climate and Evolution", emphasizing that the Central Asian Plateau is the cradle of mankind and has a great influence.Since then, people have continued to support this proposition, such as Gregory, Bu Dasheng, Osborn and so on. After the discovery of "Peking Man" in my country in 1927, the theory of the origin of Central Asia became even more popular. In the 1930s, a Central Asian delegation was organized to search for the remains of human ancestors in the Mongolian Gobi. Those who advocate the Central Asia theory expound their reasons, focusing most on those aspects used to oppose the African theory.First, Africa lacks "external stimuli", but Central Asia does. That is, the rise of the Himalayas makes life in the highlands of Central Asia more difficult than in the lowlands. For animal evolution, the response to stimuli is the most beneficial , these external stimuli can promote the formation of human beings.Second, according to the migration law of mammals, the least advanced types are often excluded from the dispersal center, while the most vigorous types continue to develop near the place of origin. Discover the most primitive human beings.It happened that the only early human fossil found at that time was the Javanese Homo erectus, which fits well with this hypothesis. Some ethnogeographers also advocate the theory of Central Asia, believing that Africa, Europe, and the Americas were originally three peninsulas attached to Asia. If you spread out the map, you can see that the distribution of races from Central Asia to all directions is very smooth. , with Central Asia as the distribution center, and gradually expand to the surroundings in a hierarchical manner, it can be distributed to these continents. Among those who advocate the theory of the origin of Central Asia, they have their own opinions on the specific location.For example, Osborne thinks it is Mongolia and Tibet, Gregory thinks it is Mongolia and Xinjiang, and Chinese anthropologist Liu Xian thinks it is Xinjiang and Tibet. In addition to the Central Asia theory, some people also advocate the North Asia theory. In 1889, based on the saying that the Eskimos were the oldest human race in the north, someone put forward a hypothesis: the primitive tribes of human beings originated in the north, and after being severely oppressed by the great ice age in the north, they centered on North Asia and moved to the north. Various aspects especially southern migration.But this hypothesis is not supported by scientific facts. In recent years, there have been more and more people advocating that humans originated in South Asia.This hypothesis was first proposed by Haeckel in the book "History of Natural Creation". Haeckel also drew a drawing to show the way that various races migrated from the center of South Asia to the outside. Those who advocate the origin of South Asia believe that, first of all, besides black apes and great apes in Africa, there are brown apes and gibbons in South Asia, whose fossil remains are found in many places in South Asia.As we mentioned earlier, some people have recently used molecular biology research methods to prove that brown apes are more closely related to humans than African apes, which provides a favorable argument for the South Asian origin theory. Second, the Rama ape, which is now regarded as the direct ancestor of human beings, was found in large numbers in the Upper Miocene or Lower Pliocene strata in the Sivalik Hills of South Asia.In South Asia and Southeast Asia, representatives of the Australopithecus type and possibly even the "capable man" type and the stone tools they used were found. According to some analysis, they may be comparable in age to the materials in East Africa.Remains and cultural relics of early Pleistocene Homo erectus have also been found in this area, not to mention many representatives of the middle Pleistocene Homo erectus stage.Some paleoanthropologists have proved that the birthplace of human beings is likely to be in South Asia based on the distribution of the discovery sites of Rama ape, Australopithecus and early Pleistocene humans in the world. In the early 1970s, Chinese archaeologist Jia Lanpo drew a map of the distribution of Rama ape, Australopithecus fossils, and early human culture. Haritayanggarh in Ram, and Kaiyuan, Yunnan, my country to the east, connect these three points to form a triangle, and South Asia is just in the center of this triangle.Early Pleistocene human fossils and cultural sites include: Sterkfontein, South Africa in the southwest, Menton, France in the northwest, Xihoudu, Ruicheng, Shanxi, my country in the northeast, and Sangilan, Java in the southeast.Connect these places to form a quadrilateral, and the central part of this quadrilateral is exactly equal to the triangular area where Rama apes are distributed.This schematic diagram illustrates the situation where humans originate in South Asia in the central area and then radiate in all directions.Therefore, some scientists believe that South Asia is more likely to be the cradle of mankind. Recently, some people who advocate the theory of South Asia, such as Kong Nihua, even narrowed the origin area to the Sivalik Hills area, on the grounds that the human ancestor Rama ape was found here (he believed that the Kenyan ape was not the Rama ape), and from this area Equivalent distances to Sangiran in Indonesia and the Orduwe Gorge region in East Africa, both of which have found equally ancient human remains and cultural relics.This distribution of human primitive ancestors is very similar to that of another ancient animal, the stegodont, which was also found in the Sivalik Hills. There are still many difficulties in solving the problem of the birthplace of human beings According to the brief analysis in the above sections, first of all exclude all those areas without higher primates (including human ancestors) in the late Pliocene and before that, and the most likely remaining place as the birthplace of human beings is in Asia. the region between.Many scientists suggest that it is in the tropical forest area near the equator on these two continents.If the scope is narrower, many people think it is East Africa or South Asia.Where is the possibility more likely?More fossil materials and in-depth analysis are yet to be studied. It must be noted that there are many difficulties in solving the problem of the birthplace of mankind.The birthplace of humans we are talking about here refers to the area where the human system (Hominidae) began to diverge from the ape system (Pimidae).The further you go to the lake, the more difficult it is to distinguish the physical characteristics of human ancestors from the ape ancestors, and the stone tools used by human ancestors in the transitional stage are also more difficult to distinguish from natural broken stones.Moreover, it is speculated that the activities of human ancestors from accidental to frequent use of "natural tools" may not be limited to a single location, but occurred independently in several places in a relatively large area. This is even more so from using "natural tools" to consciously making tools, so it's hard to pinpoint where human origins first occurred.Once people realize this shift in making tools, it spreads out quickly, and it's hard to pinpoint exactly where the shift was made. It seems more realistic for us to explore a limited area rather than one or two specific locations. Where is the cradle of mankind?Although it is difficult to solve this problem, with the deepening of practice, our understanding will continue to develop, and the truth will always be gradually revealed.