Archaeologists in China recently discovered a relatively complete fossil of ancient human skulls dating from 8, to 1, years ago at a Paleolithic site in Xuchang, Henan. This discovery fills a gap in the study of the origin of modern people in China. National Cultural Heritage Administration, China named the human being discovered this time as "Xuchang Man".
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: baike. Baidu./view/17971.htm What is the mystery of human origin?
Life is a science, and human research on life has never stopped for thousands of years.
The origin of human beings can be said to be the most troublesome problem in academic circles. Anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, biologists, chemists and even philosophers and religionists have all studied the origin of human beings from various angles. However, there is still no most convincing statement so far.
There are many myths and legends about the origin of human beings, and some of them are quite similar.
who is the same ancestor of human beings? Where is the legendary snowman? Are there any savages in the vast Shennongjia?
human beings have created many great civilizations in the history of the world, and the creation of these miracles is attributed to our unique brain. However, although mankind has created various miracles, the understanding of the human brain is full of unsolved mysteries, waiting for us to explore and solve.
do you know where we humans came from? So far, there is no real answer except some beautiful legends and all kinds of unconfirmed speculations. It ranks with the origin of the universe and the origin of the earth as three mysteries of origin.
There is a fairy tale about the origin of human beings in our country: After Pangu created the world, I don't know how long it took, but Nu Wa suddenly appeared between heaven and earth. Nu Wa was helpless and lonely in the desolate world. When she came to the water's edge, she saw her reflection and had a whim. She made a clay doll out of the mud by the water's edge according to her own shape and put it on the ground. When the wind blew, it came to life. Later, Nu Wa named him "Man".
Egypt, like China, is also an ancient civilization, and its theory of human origin is even more peculiar. According to the Egyptian Myth, human beings are called by God. Egyptians believe that the almighty God Nu existed in Egypt and before the appearance of the world. He created everything in heaven and earth. He called "Taifuna" and there was rain. Call "Soapy" and there will be wind; Call "Habi" and the Nile will flow through Africa. He called again and again, and the world was enriched. Finally, he called out "men and women". In a blink of an eye, many people appeared, and these people established Egypt. When the creation work was completed, Nu transformed himself into a man, ruled the earth and mankind, and became the first Pharaoh in Egypt.
According to Germanic mythology, the ancestors of the Germanic people were created by Odin and other gods. When the gods were walking by the sea, they saw two trees growing on the sandbar, one of which was tall and majestic, and the other was graceful, so they cut down two trees to create men and women respectively. Odin first gave him life, and other gods gave him reason, language, skin color and blood, etc.
In Christian western countries, people mostly believe that God created man. It is recorded in Genesis of the Old Testament that it took God five days to create the universe. On the sixth day, he said, "I will make man according to my body, according to my style ..." So he squeezed the dust on the ground into a human shape and blew air into his nostrils, creating a man named Adam. God saw that Adam lived alone, so he made a woman out of one of his ribs. Adam said, "This is the bone in my bone and the flesh in my flesh, so call him a woman."
However, legends are just legends after all, lacking credible scientific basis. Therefore, this topic is still controversial.
in the 19th century, Darwin put forward the theory of evolution, which became a new clue for human beings to explore their own origins in the 19th century.
Darwin, a simulation diagram of human evolution, was a master of British academic circles in the 19th century. Suffering from chronic diseases, he devoted his life to exploring the laws of nature. In 1859, his book Origin of Species came out, which is a summary of his personal observation of biological phenomena all over the world for many years. It expounds the role of natural selection in species change and puts forward the general laws of species origin and evolution.
The publication of the Origin of Species fundamentally attacked the religious myth that God created man and the feudal ethics supported by the theory of God's creation. At that time, the recalcitrance of conservative forces and the great shock of social and ideological circles made Darwin, who had always paid attention to not crossing the natural science field, excited. In order to reveal the mystery of human origin with objective facts, he made a furious search for all kinds of factual basis. Finally, in 1871, 12 years after the publication of the Origin of Species, he published the masterpiece "The Origin of Human Beings". Darwin believes that the general theory of the origin of species is also fully applicable to a natural species like man. He not only confirmed that human organisms evolved from some structurally lower forms, but also further proposed that the characteristics of spiritual civilization, such as human intelligence and human psychological foundation, also gradually developed from low order to high order like the origin of human structure. The Origin of Man laid the foundation of anthropological research.
Darwin believed that human beings originated from ancient apes. After a fierce academic and religious debate, the scientific community gradually accepted this theory. Later, after continuous exploration, scientists formed a modern theory of human origin on the basis of Darwin's theory. In their view, human beings evolved gradually from ancient apes under the influence of nature over millions of years. As a theory, the theory of evolution has many reasonable scientific cores. However, it is a hypothesis and has its defects. Many discoveries in archaeology cannot be explained by the theory of evolution. For example, in 1913, German anthropologists discovered a complete modern human skeleton in the strata of the Tanshania Gorge 1 million years ago.
American scientist Max found the footprints of an adult wearing sandals and a child's barefoot on a trilobite fossil in Cambrian sedimentary rocks in Antelope Springs, Utah. The trilobite was a creature 25-54 million years ago and has long since disappeared. Chemical experts from the University of Utah identified it as a human footprint.
Four people's footprints were found on the Triassic rock surface in Fuyuan County, Yunnan Province, China. According to research, these footprints were left 235 million years ago.
in 1976, Mary D. Leakey, a famous archaeologist, also found a set of footprints with characteristics very similar to those of modern people. These footprints are printed on volcanic ash sedimentary rocks, which have a history of 3.4-3.8 million years according to radioactive determination. Paleontologists have confirmed that its soft tissue anatomical characteristics are obviously different from those of apes.
what about these archaeological discoveries? They seem to be contrary to Darwin's view of biological evolution. According to Darwin's evolutionary hypothesis, forest apes have evolved for millions of years to become today's human beings, but scientists have not been able to find the middle process of these millions of years, nor can they find any evidence of the existence of people between apes; According to the usual understanding, human beings only developed to the most primitive state about 1 thousand years ago, and it has been recorded in writing for only 5 thousand years. According to Darwin's theory of evolution, it was impossible for human beings to exist hundreds of millions of years ago, let alone a high degree of human civilization.
With the development of the times and the progress of science and technology, scientists constantly put forward new ideas and express their views on the origin of human beings.
In 196, Sir Alice Hardy, a British anthropology professor, put forward a new hypothesis. According to the fact that there was almost no fossil data in this period from 4 million to 8 million years ago, he thought that human ancestors lived in the sea instead of on land. In the history of human evolution, there has been an aquatic sea ape stage for millions of years, and many "traces" left by that stage can still be found in human beings-many anatomical and physiological characteristics of human beings can not be found in other land primates, but they also exist in aquatic mammals such as seals and dolphins. For example, all terrestrial primates have thick hair on their body surfaces, except for human panels, which are the same as sea animals; Primates have no subcutaneous fat, while humans have thick subcutaneous fat, which is the same as sea animals; The position of fetal hair of human fetus is obviously different from that of other primates, but it is equivalent to that of aquatic animal fetus. The physiological phenomenon of human lacrimal gland secreting tears and discharging salt is unique among primates, but all sea animals have it.
Sir Hardy consulted a large number of historical materials and pointed out that sea water flooded large areas in eastern and northern Africa four to eight million years ago. The sea separated the group of ancient apes living there, and some of them evolved into sea apes in order to adapt to the rapidly changing natural environment. Millions of years later, the sea receded, and the sea apes who had adapted to aquatic life returned to land, and after millions of years of evolution, they became human beings. After many vicissitudes, sea apes have evolved into human beings in the water. These characteristics have created conditions for important evolutionary steps such as walking upright, freeing hands and communicating with each other. This makes them have a more obvious advantage after returning to land, surpassing other apes and evolving into the highest intelligent animals on earth.
In addition, David Dimmer, a biologist at Santa Cruz University in California, thinks that life on earth, or the early forms of life, may have originated in the vast universe.
The international biological community agrees that the origin of life depends on the function of cell membrane to a great extent. In his experiments, Dimmer found that the cell membrane still has "vitality" even in a cold, radiation-filled vacuum universe. This shows that the harsh cosmic conditions have not stopped the evolution of life, and it is entirely possible that life originated in the vast universe outside the earth.
Faced with so many hypotheses, contradictions and mysteries, we should not only ask, how did human beings originate? I believe that this secret will be solved one day. Humans appeared about tens of thousands of years ago.
At present, we can't answer this question accurately. What we can do now is to answer you from another aspect-the earliest discovered human in the world-Lamarcus. In 191, people first discovered the fossil of Lamarcus, which is a fragment of the maxilla, in the Xiwalik Mountain area bordering Pakistan and India. In 1934, it was named Lamarcus. In the sixties and seventies, the fossils of Lamarcinopithecus were found in Kenya, Greece, Turkey, Hungary, Pakistan and Yunnan Province of China. It has been identified that Lamarcinopithecus lived about 14 million to 8 million years ago. Archaeologists infer that Lamarcinopithecus has been able to walk upright on two feet initially. They live in the open space or the edge of the forest and mainly eat plant fruits, but they may also eat a little meat. It is the earliest human being discovered in the world at present. Myth of the origin of human beings
Prometheus, the creator and beneficiary of human beings in Greek mythology, is a man, and he first created only men, but no women. It was only after Zeus made Herstas create Pandora to punish mankind that the first real female human was born in the world. And what deserves our attention is that Pandora was created to make human beings suffer. These are all reflections of the ancient Greek thought of promoting men and restraining women. However, with the Greek nation marching to the sea, men went fishing or doing business across the sea for weeks or even months. If they returned to land, they could not continue their productive labor without the care and good rest of their wives. Over time, men and women have formed an indispensable and interdependent relationship, and women's social status has gradually picked up. Reflected in mythology, among the twelve most important gods in Greece, five were female gods, among which Athena, the goddess of wisdom, and Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty, helped Prometheus create human beings. Themis, the goddess of justice, also gave instructions to human beings from the Oracle, so that the reborn human beings were able to reproduce and survive again.
It is said that after Pangu opened up heaven and earth, I don't know how many years passed, Nuwa suddenly appeared between heaven and earth. Nu Wa felt lonely in this desolate world. One day, she looked at herself in the water, thinking that it would be great if there were a few people like herself between heaven and earth talking to each other, so she unconsciously grabbed the dirt and got into the water. Squeeze out a clay doll according to your own shape, put it on the ground, and when it blows in the wind, it becomes a living thing, so he is named "Man".
In the past, Nu Wa kept making people one after another, but the progress was slow. Finally, he felt tired. When he thought about how to make people quickly to fill the vast land, he leaned back against the cliff, conveniently took off the rattan, and lazily stirred it in the mud mixed with water. Then he threw the rattan and scattered many mud spots. These mud spots fell to the ground and became people after the wind blew. The theory of human origin
and the region of human origin
Where did humans first originate? There are five theories in history.
First, the origin of Western Europe.
second, the theory of the origin of North Asia.
Third, the theory of the origin of Central Asia.
Fourth, the theory of the origin of Asia.
Fifth, the theory of African origin.
We believe that, firstly, the origin of human beings is multi-source, not single-source; It is multi-line, not single-line. Secondly, the discovery and research from apes to human fossils further demonstrates the value of Engels' basic view on the three stages of human production. It clears the fog of legend and makes human beings see the ancient life and civilization of their ancestors. Third, we should see that the development of human civilization is unbalanced. From the discovery of human fossil remains and the earliest civilized areas, there is a phenomenon that time is not balanced with the development of civilization, which is related to the geographical environment of each region. The central theory of human origin is untenable. Fourth, the region where human civilization came into being was in an isolated and isolated state at the earliest, at a few scattered points on the earth. With the progress of production, from paleolithic to Neolithic, to the era of combining stone and stone, as well as the development of three social divisions of labor and the activities of nomadic livestock industry, human activities have developed from point to line to civilization from one region to another. The exchange of civilizations has promoted the development of civilizations in various regions.
Three stages of human origin
Anthropologists in China divide the development process of fully formed human into four stages: early ape-man, late ape-man, early homo sapiens and late homo sapiens.
early ape-man (about 3.8 million to 1.8 million years ago). At present, the fossils found include human fossils from Letoli formation in Garuxi River basin of Tanzania, dating from 3.77 million years ago to 3.59 million years ago. Hadar fossils in northeastern Ethiopia are dated 3.5 million years ago; "KN" in Kubifra, Lake Kenyatkana