What is the confusion of modern people about the origin of human beings?

Up to now, there are many theories about the origin of human beings, including legends, and all parties have produced evidence to prove that their statements (or theories) are correct, but none of them can fully explain all kinds of problems in the process of human origin, so it is not surprising that people have all kinds of questions. Although people's questions seem more or less naive, they can't be denied, because after all, they can't come up with a convincing conclusion. It seems that the inquiry about the origin of human beings will continue, and anthropologists still have a long way to explore.

Great ape, the direct ancestor of mankind?

Great ape is a primate living in ancient times, weighing more than 270 kilograms and about 2.74 meters tall. People know that it has not existed for a long time. Is it really the direct ancestor of mankind?

1935, a Dutch paleontologist found three strange teeth in a Chinese medicine shop in Hong Kong. These are some molars. They look like human beings, but they are several times larger than human molars. He believes that this kind of tooth fossil may represent a huge ancient ape named Great Ape.

1945, another American expert studied the molars of three great apes in detail, and thought that great apes were not apes but people, and should be renamed as "giants", which was the direct ancestor of Peking man and Java Homo erectus, and modern people gradually degenerated from "giants".

After this view was put forward, it was a sensation and people talked about it. If so, the distant ancestors of human beings are simply "monsters", which is very sensational.

By 1954, although Dutch paleontologists had collected as many as 20 great ape teeth in Chinese medicine shops in Hong Kong and Nanyang, they were only regarded as Chinese medicine (dragon teeth) in pharmacies. It is difficult to know the exact source of these fossils and to determine their age. If you want to prove them, you must find great ape fossils in the strata.

There are many caves in the south of China, where bones and teeth of ancient animals are often buried. 1956, vertebrate paleontology Institute of Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences sent a team to Guangxi to investigate and found three great ape tooth fossils in Niushuishan black hole, daxin county. Soon, according to a clue provided by a farmer, nearly a thousand teeth of the mandible of three great apes were found in the Great Ape Cave in Lengzhai Mountain, Liucheng County. From 1964 to 1965, more than ten great ape teeth were excavated in a cave in Blary Mountain, Gan Wei, Wuming County, Guangxi. 1970 In recent years, anthropoid tooth fossils have also been found in Jianshi County, Hubei Province and Bama County, Guangxi Province. In addition, in 1968, in Pilars Pu, 200 kilometers north of New Delhi, a local resident named Lamb gave a mandible of the great ape to the geologist who was investigating, which he dug up from a nearby field several years ago.

People can know the approximate life time of the great ape by studying the geological age of the strata that produced the great ape fossils. It is now clear that Liucheng is the earliest age of the great ape fossils in many places in China, which lived in the Early Pleistocene from about 3 million years ago to 6,543.8+0 million years ago. The era of great apes was late; The apes of Daxin, Wuming and Bama were the latest, living in the Middle Pleistocene about 654.38+0 million to 500 thousand years ago. It is said that the mandible of the Indian pilaster was collected in the stratum in the middle Pliocene 9-5 million years ago. Then, if these great apes are arranged in the order of life times, they are: pilar Pujupiter-Liucheng Great Ape-Jianshi Great Ape-Daxin, Wuming and Bama Great Ape. They lived about 9 million to 500 thousand years ago.

Discovery and excavation of great ape fossils in Liucheng

1957 In the summer, a farmer in Shechong Village, Fengshan Town, Liucheng County dug mud in the nitrate cave of Lengzhai Mountain near Shechong Village, and accidentally dug out the mandible of a great ape, which is the first mandible of a great ape found in the world. This mandible is particularly thick, with 12 teeth on it. Represents an elderly woman. The researchers carried out a protective excavation of the cave. After the excavation from 1957 to 1963, three mandibular fossils of great apes and more than 1 000 scattered teeth of great apes were excavated. These 65,438+0,000 great ape teeth represent at least 75 great ape individuals. Of the three mandibles, two belong to the elderly and one belongs to the young. Great apes attract people's attention because of their huge teeth. Many people ask: How can a great ape with such big teeth be the direct ancestor of human beings?

A western scholar gave a positive answer. He believes that the great apes in Liucheng probably predated the earliest humans by 654.38 million+years. If the great ape can pass on one generation every 654.38+00 years, it can reproduce 6.5438+million generations in 654.38+00 years. After some calculations, he proposed that although the teeth of great apes are very large, as long as the teeth of each generation of great apes are reduced by 0.00l mm, they can reach the point of the earliest teeth of human beings.

In fact, this "detailed account" is quite different. Let's just say that this scholar only knows the apes in Liucheng, and he doesn't consider that there are apes later than this era. Now we just need to compare the teeth of these great apes in different times, and we can know whether the teeth of great apes will be smaller from generation to generation as some people say.

Facts speak plainer than words. The teeth of the great ape in Liucheng are "well-deserved" and indeed quite big, but there are even bigger great apes in Wuming. The tooth size of Jianshi great ape is between the two. It is said that the teeth of pilar great ape are smaller than those of Liucheng great ape in China. If these great apes are arranged in the order of teeth from small to large, they are: pilar Great Ape-Liucheng Great Ape-Jianshi Great Ape-Daxin, Wuming and Bama Great Ape. It is not difficult to see that this order is exactly the same as that of the Times from morning till night. This shows that the teeth of apes change with the times from morning till night, but not from big to small, but gradually increase from childhood. By 1 10,000 to 500,000 years ago, humans had appeared on the earth, and at this time, the teeth of the great ape had become the largest. So it is hard to imagine that the great apes will suddenly become human at this time, and there is no other convincing evidence that the great apes earlier than this time will become human.

What we can see from the tooth development of the great ape is that the difference between it and human beings is getting bigger and bigger, not smaller and smaller. This shows that apes cannot be the direct ancestors of human beings.

People naturally think that since the great ape has such big teeth, it must have a big mandible, a big skull and a huge body.

It is for this reason that some people think that the extinction of great apes is because they grow bigger and bigger, and finally they starve to death because they can't get enough food. But some people think that this is not necessarily the case. Because in higher primates, large teeth do not necessarily increase in proportion to the body. For example, modern gorillas have bigger teeth than people, but their bodies are not much taller than people.

At present, it seems uncertain to calculate the length and weight of the great ape only from the teeth and mandible. Only by finding the limb bones of the great ape can the calculation be possible. Unfortunately, only its teeth and mandible have been found so far. Therefore, the calculation that the great ape weighs more than 270 kilograms and is 2.74 meters tall is not very credible.

All higher primates, including humans, have 32 teeth. There are 8 teeth on both sides of the maxilla or mandible, which are symmetrically arranged left and right: 2 incisors, 2 canine teeth 1 tooth, 2 premolars and 3 molars. Human premolars and molars (collectively called buccal teeth) are used for grinding and chewing, while canine teeth and incisors (or incisors) are used for cutting.

With the discovery of more and more great ape fossils, people began to pay attention to the dentition of great ape, not just to the observation of sporadic teeth. It has been noticed that the highland baboon, a kind of baboon living in Ethiopia, is somewhat different from the common baboon in dentition and mandible morphology. The molar crown of highland baboon is very high and wears away quickly; The occlusal surface of molars is larger, the buccal teeth are larger, the incisors are smaller, the canine teeth are weaker and the mandible is thicker. However, the dentition and mandible of ordinary baboons are just the opposite. The former is a herbivore and the latter is an omnivore. Some people think that highland baboons mainly eat coarse plant food (grass stalks, seeds and tubers, etc.). ), so they should have well-developed buccal teeth for grinding and chewing, strong masticatory muscles and huge mandible to enhance mechanical movements, while front teeth are relatively unimportant. Interestingly, from the dentition and mandible of the great ape, we can also see the characteristics similar to those of the highland baboon: large buccal teeth, relatively small incisors, severe wear of molars and premolars, molarization of premolars, thick mandible and so on. Therefore, some people think that the eating habits of apes may be similar to those of highland baboons-they feed on rough and hard plant seeds. It is different from modern apes, which mainly live in the Woods and feed on leaves and fruits, and its tooth shape is also different from that of apes.

It is speculated that a primate developing towards human beings once had the same living environment as apes in its early days, so it also showed some characteristics similar to apes and plateau baboons in dentition and mandible, but different from apes: its incisors and canine teeth developed towards the cutting machine, and the functions of grinding and chewing were only reserved for premolars and molars. And apes, not only premolars, canine teeth and even incisors are used for grinding and chewing.

These conditions, to some extent, explain why the molar teeth of the occasional great ape are similar to those of human beings, but at the same time, we can see that the great ape is developing in a different direction from human beings. It seems that apes and humans are like two cars on the development track of primates. The car of this road of apes has reached the end point about 1 10,000 to 500,000 years ago; And the human "train" continues to roll forward. So some people think that in the primate evolutionary system, the great ape is an extinct branch.