The remains of pithecanthropus were found in Eurasia, Africa. They were still very primitive, these people. And they had to undergo many changes in order to get closer to modern man. But they were already different from monkeys, even the most highly developed: they had free hands and walked straight on the ground. Let it not be as straight as modern people, but without getting on all fours like monkeys.
By the 20s of the last century, none of the scientists doubted that nature took a long time to create this amazing creature – man. Until a certain time, purely biological factors played a decisive role in its formation. But it was with the conscious and necessary use of tools for life, with the manufacture of tools, even the most primitive, that a fundamentally new segment of the path began, which led our ape-like ancestor to the heights of modern culture.
Science has established that, in addition to the most ancient people – pithecanthropus, in times closer to us, the earth was inhabited by so-called Neanderthals. Back in 1856, in Germany, in the Neanderthal Valley, a skull cap with a massive supraorbital roller and a low cranial vault and the upper part of the femur were found. Controversy immediately erupted around this find. And it did not seem very true that these bones belong to some ancient human race. But then scientists became convinced of this.
Neanderthal remains have been found in Eurasia and Africa.
Stocky, stooped, with very strong arms and short legs, the so-called "classic" Neanderthal used fire, knew the value of tools and weapons, perfected them.
About 40-50 thousand years ago, the earth was inhabited by Cro-Magnons and Grimaldians, people of the modern type. The monkey features disappeared. The creation of the most complex and most delicate nervous system in the animal world has been completed. Different parts of the cerebral cortex have united into a single functional system. Cro-Magnons and Grimaldians had a human type of thinking and, accordingly, human speech. These first modern people had straight legs, a fairly straight spine, and the face of a modern person. The brain was practically no different from the modern one.
Found back in 1924 in South Africa, Australopithecines have already passed the main milestone on the path of their evolution about 5 million years ago: they moved more or less freely on their feet. True, Australopithecines were not our direct ancestors. Now there are several species of Australopithecus, of which the most progressive is the so—called Zinjanthropus, who lived a million and a half years ago on the territory of modern Tanzania (East Africa). And there, in 1960, the first skull of a creature that lived 250-300 thousand years before the zinjanthropus was found and therefore called the prezinjanthropus. This creature, according to most scientists, was already a man!