Ancient people's brains could have looked like monkeys

Ancient people's brains could have looked like monkeys
Ancient people's brains could have looked like monkeys
Anonim

New research suggests that even after the ancients began to leave Africa, they may have had brains more like those of great apes than those of modern humans.

The modern human brain could have formed as a result of evolution about 1.7 million years ago

For decades, scientists believed that the organization of brain structures, as in modern humans, arose about 2.8 million years ago. But analysis of fossilized human skulls, which have preserved brain imprints, suggested that the formation of the brain occurred much later.

What distinguishes modern humans from our closest living relatives, the great apes? This is the brain. To learn more about how the modern human brain evolved, the researchers analyzed the surface of the brain, recreated from footprints on fossils from 1.77 to 1.85 million years old. These skulls were found during the archaeological excavations of Dmanisi on the territory of modern Georgia. They have been compared to bones from Africa and Southeast Asia, which are between 2 million and 70,000 years old.

Scientists have paid special attention to the frontal lobes of the brain, which are responsible for the manufacture of instruments and language. People from Dmanisi and Africa had an ape-like frontal lobe organization 1.8 million years ago - a million years less than previously thought, noted paleoanthropologist Philippe Guntz of the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany, who was not involved in this study.

This suggests that people possessed a relatively primitive brain even after they began to settle around the planet about 2.1 million years ago. Modern humans began migrating from the continent about 210,000 years ago.

Still, don't underestimate the intelligence of the early humans, says paleoanthropologist Marcia Ponce de Leon of the University of Zurich: "These people left Africa, made various tools and took care of the elderly."

Much remains controversial about the reconstruction of ancient brains from skulls, notes paleoanthropologist Bernard Wood of George Washington University, who was not involved in the study. The prints may not be clear enough. “I think this is just the beginning of the discussion,” says Wood.

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