Soviet school education represented human anthropogenesis in this way, trying to “fit” it into a materialist theory: a monkey, Pithecanthropus, Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon. University science did not diverge from school, it simply added Latin terms: hominids, Homo habilis (semi-monkeys who made simple tools), Homo erectus (Pithecanthropus, moving most of their lives on two legs), Homo sapiens (Neanderthals who have their first religious beliefs) and Homo sapiens sapiens (Cro-Magnons, completely similar in modern body structure and brain volume to modern people). It is believed that, starting with the Cro-Magnon, the evolutionary development of man as a biological creature froze.
Such a simplified idea of the origin of the human race suggested that the three main stages (Pithecanthropus, Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon) successively succeeded each other, evolving and transforming in a jump-like manner. Thus, Marxist theory explained that Homo habilis (that is, Skillful) needed free hands to make tools, so it became upright and evolved into Homo erectus. And this theory explained the appearance of a rational man by the need to improve hunting tools. Thus, all three species of ancient people were considered the stages of development of Homo sapiens sapiens, namely, our direct ancestors.
However, the found remains and the carbon analysis determining their age break this theory down. For example, the skeletons of Australopithecus, Homo habilis and erectus date from the same century. Fossils also indicate that Homo erectus, Neanderthal man and Cro-Magnon were contemporaries and in some places coexisted next to each other. This allows scientists to speculate that Homo erectus was simply a dead end in evolution, and homo sapiens appeared from nowhere. The “missing link” in evolution fuels theories about the divine or cosmic origin of man.
Who is he - this erect man? For the first time his remains were discovered in Java in 1893, then they called him a pithecanthropus. Then in China, in 1920, the owner of the ancient skeleton was named Sinantrop - the Chinese representative of this species. Later, scientists decided that between the Chinese, the Javanese and the skeletons found in 1985 in Narikotom (East Africa), there are many similarities, and united them into a group of “upright” or “archanthropes”.
It is believed that he first appeared 1 million 650 thousand years ago in Africa. For two hundred thousand years, he settled in the vast expanses of Eurasia, reached the Great Sunda Islands, in particular Java. Homo erectus compared with Skillful, demonstrates a huge, truly revolutionary leap in development. He could use fire, making primitive dwellings and clothes. But the main thing that distinguished the ancient bipedal people from their predecessors (or contemporaries) was that they became hunters. Skillful man was a scavenger. Its guns were intended to split the bones of animals that were dead or killed by other predators. It was mainly pebbles (Olduvai pebble culture), which was simply split, and bone marrow was picked out with a sharp chip.
The Acheulean type of culture that Homo erectus created is a complex of stone tools that require spatial thinking and certain skills transferred from the master to the student. Studies of skulls show that Homo Erectus had a brain twice as large as Skillful, but smaller than Neanderthal. His height was one and a half meters, sometimes 80 cm, and the weight ranged from 40 to 70 kilograms. Since the Pithecanthropus hunted and hunted together, we can assume the beginnings of verbal speech, although they have no chin.
Was Homo erectus a special species, or just a “race”? Could he interbreed and give common offspring with Homo habilis or Neanderthal? So far, no such remains combining the features of these three races or species have been found. One way or another, but these intelligent creatures did not survive the Great Icing. Already 20 thousand years ago, both Pithecanthropus and Neanderthals left the historical arena. When the glacier retreated, only one species of people remained on Earth - Homo sapiens sapiens.