Primitive people must have noticed their resemblance to monkeys . But, acquiring an increasingly civilized look, a man 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 the theories of evolution appeared, which suggested in primates the initial link of the origin of Homo sapiens, they were met with disbelief, and often hostile. The 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 species that lived more than 25 million years ago.
Common ancestor
To say that a person descended from a monkey, from the point of view of modern anthropology - the science of man, about his origin, is considered incorrect. Man as a species evolved from first humans (they are usually called hominids), which were a radically different biological species than monkeys. The first great-man - Australopithecus - appeared 6.5 million years ago, and the ancient monkeys, which became our common ancestor with modern humanoid primates, about 30 million years ago.
Methods of studying bone residues - the only surviving evidence of ancient animals - are constantly being improved. The oldest monkey can often be classified by jaw fragment or one tooth. This leads to the fact that more and more new links appear in the scheme of human evolution , 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 humans belong. This applies to more detailed units, but the overall system remains unshakable. According to the latest views, the person belongs to the class Mammals, order Primates, suborder Real monkeys, family Hominids, genus Man, species and subspecies Homo sapiens (Nomo sapiens).
Classifications of the closest “relatives” of a person are a subject of constant debate. One option might look like this:
- Squad Primates:
- Half monkeys.
- Real monkeys:
- Long-fifths.
- Broad-nosed.
- Narrow-nosed:
- Gibbon
- Hominids:
- Pongs:
- Orangutan.
- Bornean orangutan.
- Sumatran orangutan.
- Hominins:
- Gorillas:
- Western gorilla.
- Eastern gorilla.
- Chimpanzee:
- Common Chimpanzee.
- Dwarf Chimpanzee.
- People:
The origin of the monkeys
Determining the exact time and place of origin of monkeys, like many other biological species, occurs like a gradually appearing image on a polaroid image. Findings in different regions of the planet detail the overall picture, which is becoming clearer. It is recognized that evolution is not a straight line - it is rather like a bush, where many branches become dead ends. Therefore, to build at least a segment of a clear path from primitive primate-like mammals to Nomo sapiens is still a long way off, but several reference points already exist.
Purgatorius is a small animal no larger than a mouse; the animal lived on trees, feeding on insects, in the Upper Cretaceous and Paleogene period (100-60 million years ago). Scientists put it at the beginning of the chain of evolution of primates. He revealed only the rudiments of signs (anatomical, behavioral, etc.) characteristic of monkeys: a relatively large brain, five fingers on the limbs, less fertility with no seasonal reproduction, omnivorous, etc.
The beginning of hominids
Ancient monkeys, the ancestors of anthropoids, left traces dating back to the Late Oligocene (33-23 million years ago). They still retain the anatomical features of narrow-nosed monkeys, put by anthropologists to 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, proconsulides are considered one of the most ancient. Features of the structure of the teeth, the proportions and sizes of the cranium with the cerebral region enlarged relative to its other parts allow paleoanthropologists to classify proconsulides as humanoid. This type of fossil monkey includes proconsuls, calepithecus, heliopithecus, nyanapithecus, etc. These names were formed most often from the name of geographical objects near which fossil fragments were discovered.
Rukvapitek
Paleoanthropologists make most of the finds of the oldest bones on the African continent. In February 2013, a report by paleo-primatologists from the United States, Australia, and Tanzania was published on the results of excavations in the Rukva River Valley in southwestern Tanzania. They discovered a fragment of the lower jaw with four teeth - the remains of a creature who lived there 25.2 million years ago - that was exactly 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 belongs to the most primitive anthropoids from the family of proconsulids. Rukvapitek - this was the name of this ancestor of hominids, the oldest fossil anthropoid ape, because it is 3 million years older than any other paleo-primates discovered before 2013. There are other opinions, but they are related to the fact that many scientists consider proconsulids to be too primitive creatures to define them as real humanoid. But this is a matter of classification, one of the most controversial in science.
Dryopithecus
In geological deposits of the Miocene epoch (12-8 million years ago) in East Africa, Europe and China, animal remains were found to which paleoanthropologists have assigned the role of an evolutionary branch from proconsulides to true hominids. Dryopithecus (Greek: "drios" - a tree) - this is the name of the ancient monkeys, who became a common ancestor for chimpanzees, gorillas and humans. The places of finds and their dating make it possible to understand that these monkeys, which look very similar to modern chimpanzees, formed into a large population, first in Africa, and then spread throughout Europe and the Eurasian continent.
With a height of about 60 cm, these animals tried to move on their lower extremities, but mostly lived on trees and had longer “arms”. Ancient monkeys dryopithecus fed on berries and fruits, which follows from the structure of their molars, which had a not very thick layer of enamel. This clearly shows the kinship of Driopithecus with humans, and the presence of well-developed canines makes them the unambiguous 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 belonging to their creatures from an unknown evolutionary branch of human ancestors. The main reason for the emergence of such theories was the huge size of the teeth - they were twice as large as the teeth of a gorilla. According to the calculations of experts, it turned out that their owners had a height above 3 meters!
After 20 years, a whole jaw with similar teeth was discovered, and the ancient giant monkeys from an eerie fantasy turned into a scientific fact. After a more accurate dating of the finds, it became clear that huge humanoid primates existed at the same time as the Pithecanthropus (Greek "Pithekos" - monkey) - monkey-humans, that is, about 1 million years ago. The opinion was expressed that they were the direct predecessors of man involved in the extinction of the largest monkeys that existed on the planet.
Herbivorous giants
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 giant drinkers. 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 omnivorous. Giant stone tools were also found there.
The logical conclusion came from here: the giant petitechka is an ancient anthropoid ape up to 4 meters tall and weighing about half a ton - another unrealized branch of hominization. It was established that the time of their extinction coincided with the disappearance of other humanoid giants - African Australopithecus. A possible reason is climatic disasters, which have become fatal for large hominids.
According to the theories of the so-called cryptozoologists (Greek “cryptos” - secret, hidden), some individuals of giantpithecus survived to our times and exist in areas of the Earth that are difficult for people to see, creating legends about the Bigfoot, Bigfoot, Almaty, and so on.
White spots in the biography of Homo sapiens
Despite the successes of paleoanthropology, in the evolutionary chain, where the ancient monkeys from whom man came first, there are failures 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 in the history of human origin will disappear, and the sensations of an extraterrestrial or divine beginning of our civilization, which are periodically announced on entertainment channels, have nothing to do with real science.