How the first man appeared. The first and present people on earth

The origin of man is a mystery. Even Darwin's theory is not considered fully proven, due to the lack of transitional links in evolution. How else do people explain their appearance from ancient times to the present day?

Totemism

Totemism is considered one of the most ancient mythological ideas and is considered the first form of awareness of the human collective, as well as its place in nature. Totemism taught that each group of people had its own ancestor - a totem animal or plant. For example, if a raven serves as a totem, then it is the actual progenitor of the clan, and each raven is a relative. In this case, the totem animal is only a patron, but is not deified, unlike later creationism.

Androgynes

The mythological version includes the ancient Greek version about the origin of man from the Androgynes - the first people who combined the characteristics of both sexes. Plato in his dialogue "Symposium" describes them as beings with a spherical body, whose back was not different from the chest, with four arms and legs and two identical faces on the head. According to legend, our ancestors were not inferior to the titans in strength and skill. Having become proud, they decided to overthrow the Olympians, for which they were cut in half by Zeus. This reduced their strength and self-confidence by half.
Androgyny is present not only in Greek mythology. The idea that man and woman were originally one is close to many world religions. Thus, one of the Talmudic interpretations of the first chapters of the Book of Genesis says that Adam was created androgynous.

Abrahamic tradition

The Abrahamic religions include three monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), which go back to Abraham, the patriarch of the Semitic tribes, the first person to believe in the Lord. According to the Abrahamic tradition, the world was created by God - the One from Nothingness, literally “out of nothing.” God created man, Adam, from the dust of the earth “in our image and likeness,” so that man would be truly good. It is worth noting that both the Bible and the Koran mention the creation of man more than once. For example, in the Bible about the creation of Adam, it first says in chapter 1 that God created man “out of nothing in his own image and likeness,” and in chapter 2 that he created him from dust (dust).

Hinduism

In Hinduism, there are at least five versions of the creation of the world and man, respectively. In Brahmanism, for example, the creator of the world is the god Brahma (in later versions identified with Vishnu and the Vedic deity Prajapati), who emerged from a golden egg floating in the world's oceans. He grew up and sacrificed himself, creating from his hair, skin, meat, bones and fat the five elements of the world - earth, water, air, fire, ether - and the five steps of the sacrificial altar. Gods, people and other living beings were created from it. Thus, in Brahmanism, by making sacrifices, people recreate Brahma.
But according to the Vedas - the ancient holy scripture Hinduism, the creation of the world and man is shrouded in darkness: “Who truly knows, who will proclaim here. Where did this creation come from, where did it come from? Further, the gods (appeared) through the creation of this (world).
So who knows where it came from?”

Kabbalah

According to Kabbalistic teaching, the creator Ein Sof created a soul that received the name Adam Rishon - “the first man.” It was a construct consisting of many individual desires interconnected like the cells of our body. All desires were in harmony, since initially each of them had a desire to support each other. However, being on the highest spiritual level, similar to the creator, Adam took on enormous spiritual light, which is equivalent to the “forbidden fruit” in Christianity. Unable to achieve the goal of creation with this one action, the primary soul split into 600,000 thousand parts, and each of them into many more parts. All of them are now in the souls of people. Through many circuits they must carry out a “correction” and reassemble into a common spiritual complex called Adam. In other words, after the “breaking” or the Fall, all these particles - people are not equal to each other. But returning to their original state, they again reach the same level, where they are all equal.

Evolutionary creationism

As science developed, creationists had to compromise with natural science concepts. The intermediate stage between the theory of creation and Darwinism was “theistic evolutionism.” Evolutionary theologians do not reject evolution, but consider it to be a tool in the hands of God the creator. Simply put, God created the “material” for the emergence of man - the genus Homo and launched the process of evolution. The end result was a man. An important point evolutionary creationism is that although the body changed, the spirit of man remained unchanged. This is precisely the position that the Vatican has officially held since the time of Pope John Paul II (1995): God created an ape-like creature by putting an immortal soul into it. In classical creationism, man has not changed in body or soul since creation.

"Theory of Ancient Cosmonauts"

In the 20th century, there was a popular version about the extraterrestrial origin of man. One of the founders of the idea of ​​paleocontact in the 20s was Tsiolkovsky, who announced the possibility of aliens visiting the earth. According to the theory of paleocontact, once in the distant past, around the Stone Age, aliens visited the Earth for some business. Either they were interested in the colonization of exoplanets, or the resources of the Earth, or this was their transfer base, but one way or another, part of their descendants settled on Earth. They may have even interbred with the local genus Homo, and modern people They are mestizos of an alien life form and the aborigines of the Earth.

According to Darwin himself, the genus homo originated somewhere around 3.5 million in Africa. This was not yet our fellow tribesman Homo Sapiens, whose age today is dated back to approximately 200 thousand years, but the first representative of the genus Homo - an ape, a hominid. In the course of evolution, he began to walk on two legs, use his hands as tools, he began to have progressive brain transformations, articulate speech and sociality. Well, the reason for evolution, like all other species, was natural selection, and not God's plan.

Modern tupai give us some insight into what early primates might have looked like.
Life in the trees.

Early primates quickly became skilled tree climbers. To live in trees, you must first of all correctly judge the distance and cling tightly to the branches. The first task is solved by forward-facing eyes: this gives the animal binocular vision. To solve the second problem, tenacious fingers are needed. Both of these properties are the most important distinguishing characteristics of primates. They all have a finger-
The fingers on the hands are mobile, and the thumbs give the proper grip. Some apes, like humans, are also able to connect the tips of the large and index finger, forming the letter "o". This type of grip is used for very delicate manipulations. More importantly, primates have developed a large “thinking” part of the brain that coordinates vision and hand movements.

How it all began

Today there is only one species of people: homo sapiens (“homo” is Latin for “man”, and “sapien” means “thinking”). However, scientists today believe that from the moment the first hominids (human-like animals) appeared on Earth in different time There were several different species of such creatures. Between 15 and 7 million years ago, Ramapithecus lived in Africa, Europe and Asia. They were ape-like animals, about 1.2 m tall, with a flat face and teeth similar to those of humans. They may have spent part of their lives on the open plains, foraging for food using sticks and stones. Ramapithecus is probably one of the first hominids, but it does not appear to have been our direct ancestor. Today, scientists find in it more similarities with orangutans.

Our closest living relatives are the great apes. Gorillas and chimpanzees live in forested areas of West and East Africa. Gibbons are found in the rain forests of Southeast Asia, and orangutans inhabit the rainforests of Kalimantan and Sumatra. Of these, gibbons are the least human-like.
Very useful thumbs.

Why are thumbs needed? Have a friend tape your thumbs to your palms so that you can't move them. Now try to take an object with one hand, say, a pencil or a cup. Or try to hold as many objects as possible. You will very quickly see how important it is for all these manipulations to have thumb, separated from all others.

"Southern Monkeys" from Africa

One of the earliest fossil finds associated with the “ape-man” is the skull of a child. It was dug up in 1924 near Taung, in what is now Botswana. This skull had both ape and human features, and its owner was named Australopithecus afarensis. Since then, many other fossil remains of australopithecines ("southern apes") have been found. All findings indicate that the brain of these animals was not very large (about 500 cm"), and large molars were used for grinding plants and fruits. Australopithecines were short (about 1.2 m in height)." Some were dense and stocky in build, others were fragile and graceful. Some scientists believe that these were
males and females of the same species. Some people refer to them as various types Australopithecus. The "Southern Monkeys" are the subject of much debate and their origins are still unclear.

"Lucy", the "southern monkey", found in 1974
These are some fragments of the skull bones of Sinanthropus - one of the “straightened people”. Scientists managed to assemble these fragments into a single whole and restore the complete skull of Sinanthropus. He had a supraorbital ridge, like apes, and a protruding jaw. There was a bony protrusion along the top of the skull, and at the back there was a thickening in the form of a kind of ridge. Both the skull and brain of Sinanthropus are larger than those of Homo habilis.
The story of "Lucy".

In 1974, American anthropologist Doi Johansen made an outstanding discovery when he dug up the remains of a young female “southern ape” just over 1 m tall in Ethiopia. She was named “Lucy.” "Lucy's" brain and teeth resembled those of a monkey, but she probably walked on her crooked legs in an upright position. Before this discovery, scientists believed that the “southern apes” lived on Earth about 2 million years ago. However, the age of the remains of "Lucy" was determined to be approximately 3-3.6 million years. This means that the “southern monkeys” appeared on the planet more than a million years earlier than previously thought.

"Skillful Man"

At the same time that the “southern apes” were roaming Africa, another group of homipiids was developing side by side with them. They appeared a little later, about 2 million years ago. These were already the first real people, or “Habilids”. Perhaps their ancestors were more slender australopithecines. Homo haoilis ("handy man") was about the same height as the "southern apes", but had a larger brain - about 700 cm. "We know that "handy man" used a whole set of tools, which included fragments of stones , cutting and chopping tools (like knives), scrapers, as well as “tools” for making new tools.

The missing synanthrope.

Sinanthropus is a type of homo erectus. He lived in China about 500,000 years ago. In the 30s XX century scientists have discovered a rich collection of fossil remains of this ancient man in one of the caves near Beijing. In total, fragments of 45 skeletons were found, including pieces of 14 skulls, 14 lower jaws, 150 teeth, as well as bones of 14 children. In 1941, shortly before the war between America and Japan, it was decided to send these finds to America. Scientists did not want such a valuable cargo to fall into the hands of Japanese soldiers. However, the bones never arrived at their destination. They disappeared without a trace on the way to the ship that was supposed to take them to safety. The location of the remains of Sinanthropus 110 is unknown to this day.

Here is a photograph of the "Piltdown Man" skull, discovered in Sussex, England, at the beginning of the 20th century. Today it is recognized as one of the greatest hoaxes in the history of science.
Neanderthals.

Even before the last “straightened people” disappeared from the face of the Earth, another species of human beings appeared on it. Homo sapiens ("thinking man") first appeared about 250,000 years ago. After another 180,000 years (that is, 70,000 years ago), Neanderthal man settled in Europe. Compared to their predecessors, Neanderthals were larger in all respects, hiding behind a wide, convex forehead was a brain like that of a modern person - 1330 cm." We know a lot about Neanderthals. They lived during the Great Ice Age, so they had to wear clothes, made from animal skins, and shelter from the cold in the depths of caves. The average life expectancy of men was about 30 years, and women were 23 years old. Most of them were right-handed. There are some signs that Neanderthals believed. afterlife: They solemnly buried the dead and even laid flowers on their graves.

Hunters of ancient people
Louis Leakey (1903-1972), Mary Leakey (b. 1913) and their son Richard (b. 1944) discovered many fossil remains of ancient people in the Oldowan Gorge in Tanzania. Their first important discovery was the discovery of Australopithecus, nicknamed the “nutcracker”. Later they discovered the first “skilled man”, and also found the remains of several “straightened people”. Lately, Richard Leakey has been excavating in other areas of Africa.
These unique fossilized prints were discovered by Mary Leakey in 1978 in Tanzania. Their age is estimated at 3.75 million years, and they were imprinted in a layer of volcanic mud and ash, which later hardened. The result was something like a “plaster cast” of the feet of our distant ancestors who went out for a walk - a kind of prehistoric “family picnic”.
The man who never existed.

In 1912, several skull fragments and a broken jawbone of an ancient man were discovered near Piltdown in Sussex, England. At that time, the find became a real sensation, but soon some experts began to be overcome by doubts. In 1953, the Piltdown bones were carefully examined to determine their age. The result was unexpected. It turned out that the jaw bone belonged to a 500-year-old orangutan, and the skull belonged to an ordinary one. to modern man. The bones were coated with a special coating, and the teeth were carefully filed to give them a prehistoric appearance. All this turned out to be a skillful fake. Piltdown Man went down in the history of science as a hoax, exposed only 40 years after it took place. The “joker” himself was never found.

Head of a Neanderthal man.
A look into the future.

At first, human evolution occurred very slowly. It took almost 7 million years since the appearance of our ancient ancestors for humanity to reach the stage at which it learned to create the first cave paintings. But as soon as the “thinking man” firmly established himself on Earth, all human abilities began to develop rapidly. In just 100,000 years separating us from the first rock paintings, man has become the dominant form of life on Earth. We even managed to leave our home planet and begin space exploration.
It is difficult to say what people will be like after 10,000 years, but it is possible. increase
It’s arrogant to say that they will change a lot. In general, we have changed a lot over the past 400 years, and even since the beginning of this century. Today's soldier would hardly fit into knightly armor of the 15th century type. The average height of a medieval warrior was 16^ cm. Nowadays, the average height of British soldiers is 172 cm. There is no way that the current supermodel could squeeze into the dress that her great-great-grandmother wore. Even if she managed to bring her waist to 45cm, like her Victorian relative, she would still be 30cm taller! If our evolution continues in the same direction as it has so far, our faces will become increasingly flatter and our lower jaws will become smaller. Our brain will become larger, and we ourselves will most likely grow up. Well, because many of us. prefer a sedentary lifestyle, it is possible that our, so to speak, lower body will also increase!
As the Great Ice Age came to an end, modern people began to transition to a new way of life. Over time, they began to found settlements where large communities arose. The dawn of civilization was approaching. 10,000 years ago there were only about 10 million people in the entire world. However, about 4,000 years ago their numbers began to increase rapidly. By 55 BC, when Julius Caesar invaded the British Isles, the population globe reached 300 million people. Today it is already 4 billion and continues to grow.

The “southern apes” may have already used stones and bones as tools, but the “skilled people” were the first to learn how to make these tools. A piece of stone held between the thumb and all the other fingers served quite well. cutting tool. The flatter stones were probably used to scrape meat from bones. Tools with sharp edges were made using stone chippers. Homo erectus invented more modern tools: they were made from flint fragments. Even more subtle “tools” were created by Neanderthals. They processed flint fragments using other stone tools, which they held with two fingers - the thumb and forefinger.
"A cut above."

Recent studies have shown that our ancestors switched to upright walking, that is, walking on two legs, probably in order to avoid overheating. On the hot African plains 4 million years ago, walking on two legs gave them a number of advantages. For a person in an upright position, the sun's rays fell vertically on his head, instead of “frying” his back. Because the top of the head has much less surface exposed to the sun than the back, our ancestors should have been less likely to overheat. This means they sweated less, which means they needed less water to survive. This allowed ancient people to become “head and shoulders above” other animals in the struggle for existence.

This is what scientists believe our long-vanished relatives looked like. As you can see, our ancestors gradually became taller and the further they went, the less they looked like monkeys.
Where should the hair be?

The transition to upright walking had other important consequences. For example, the bipedal animal no longer needed thick hair, which protected other inhabitants of the savannas from the merciless rays of the sun that fell on their backs. As a result, with the exception of the hair that covered the part of our ancestors’ body most exposed to the sun’s heat - namely the head - they turned into the notorious “naked monkeys”.

Beneficial coolness

Having started to move on two yogas, the ancient people seemed to have opened another extremely important “evolutionary door”. In an upright position, a much larger part of the animal’s body moves away from the hot soil, and therefore from the heat that it emits. As a result, the body and head with the brain it contains overheat significantly less than if they were located closer to the ground. The cool wind, usually blowing 1-2 m above the ground, provided additional cooling of the body.
When scientists created powerful supercomputers, they had to equip them with a special cooling system. After all, large computers work very intensively and generate a huge amount of heat. It must be removed to prevent the computer from overheating. The same thing happens with the brain. By switching to upright walking, our ancestors thereby moved their own brains to a cooler environment, and this, combined with a very effective “cooling system,” allowed the brain to develop into a larger and more active one.

The man who came in from the cold
On September 19, 1991, a man whose age is 5300 years old returned to our world. Two tourists walking in the Austrian Alps suddenly came across the body of a man sticking out of the ice. There were scraps of clothing on the body, shoes on the feet, next to it were a quiver with two arrows, an axe, a flint for striking fire, a small flint dagger, something like a bag or backpack, a set of needles and a mass hunting equipment. The Ice Man is the oldest corpse ever found. He lived on Earth almost 1000 years before the Egyptians began building their pyramids, and 3000 years before the first Romans appeared.

Every person at a certain period of his life thought about the fact that centuries-old attempts to reveal this secret have not yet led to results; scientists are still debating on this topic. It is logical that the truth must be sought in the most ancient sources, which are closest to the moment of the origin of life.

Theory one: God created humanity

One of the first legends that sounded authentic were the stories that people were created, that is, by God. Many peoples believed that the first were made of clay. It is not known for certain why this particular material was considered “human.” Most likely, this is due to the fact that clay is a radioactive substance, which is explained by the presence of uranium in its composition, and during decay it can release significant amounts of energy. The ancestors claimed that this was the energy that was used to create living beings. The legends about the first woman and man are known throughout the world.

Theory two: hermaphrodite people

According to other myths that tell how the first one appeared, they originated from certain hermaphrodite creatures. The adherents of this theory were the peoples of Africa and Sudan. They believed that the division of people by gender occurred after a huge number of years.

Theory three: aliens

Modern versions of how people were born linked this fact with the presence of alien life. People believed that unearthly beings came to Earth and artificial methods gave rise to life on the planet.

Theory four: living cell

For a long time, many scientists rejoiced, believing that they had solved the mystery of how people appeared on Earth. It seemed quite obvious to them that the emergence of humanity was associated with the formation of a living cell.

They were building various models when a living cell was born from inanimate matter under the influence of chemical processes. It was argued that this living particle was located in the earth's ocean, which at that time was simply seething with chemical reactions.

It was later proven that everything necessary for the emergence of life was in space long before the formation of the Earth. Scientists insisted that the appearance of a living cell was a coincidence and unforeseen biochemical processes, which explain how 1 person came to be.

However, there were people who actively refuted this version, since the content of the genetic code is an abstract record that is impossible to predict. who first discovered the genetic code, argued that a living cell could not arise on its own. But even if we assume that this happened, there is no explanation for why such a variety of living forms arose that arose as a result of a single cell.

Adherents of this theory cited the development of Darwin as an example of how people were born, who believed that all living things were formed as a result of random and chaotic mutations. As a result of natural selection, forms that were unsuitable and unadapted to life died. And those strongest who survived continued to survive and develop.

Today, such a theory of how people appeared on Earth does not stand up to criticism. Despite numerous excavations, it was not possible to find a single creature from which another creature could have arisen. If Darwin were right, we would now be seeing strange and wonderful monsters.

The recent discovery that most genetic mutations have a clear direction has finally disqualified the "chance" theory. And the rest of the mutations, which are caused by disorders in the body, cannot carry anything constructive.

Theory five: evolution

The assumptions of this theory are that the ancient ancestors of humans were great apes, or monkeys. The modification had 4 stages:

The flaw in this theory was that scientists were unable to explain in detail how mutations could contribute to the emergence of complex life forms. So far, not a single type of beneficial mutation has been discovered; they all lead to gene destruction.

Theory six: Hyperboreans and Lemurians

Esoteric history has its own interpretation of how people appeared on Earth. It is argued that before modern humanity, the planet was inhabited by huge giants called Lemurians and Hyperboreans. However, the theory was criticized because, according to this, this simply could not happen. Our planet does not have enough resources to feed such giants. And this is not the only refutation. If the growth of these creatures really reached enormous sizes, they would not be able to lift themselves, and with a sharp movement the force of inertia would knock them down. In addition, their vessels would not withstand such a load, and the blood flow would break through their walls.

This is only a small part of the theories, but practical experience shows that each person chooses a version according to his worldview.

Numerous studies have proven that initially all embryos are female, and only during the period of hormonal changes some of them transform into the male sex. Many scientists believe that this is due to changes in the male genotype, which lead to abnormalities in the Y chromosome. It is she who determines the male gender. According to these data, after some time the planet will be inhabited by hermaphrodite women. US experts support this theory, as they were able to prove that the female chromosome is much older than the male one.

With the help of modern research, a huge number of facts have been discovered, but even they do not provide a clear explanation of how and where man appeared. Therefore, people have no choice but to choose the most acceptable theory of the origin of life, trusting their intuition.

Scientists, theologians, philosophers - everyone has been trying since ancient times to answer the question of where man came from on Earth. At the same time, theorists were divided into three camps: some believe in God's providence, others in Darwin, and others in alien intervention.

According to Darwin's theory, man descended from Neanderthal man, that is, he gradually evolved from a monkey to a humanoid creature. But how did Cro-Magnons, tall, slender and beautiful, appear instead of the bestial Neanderthals forty thousand years ago? After all, the study of the genetic code of the Neanderthal man showed a very big difference with the genetic code of the Cro-Magnon man, that is, man modern type.

Perhaps this mystery can be solved with the help of ancient legends, in which there are always references to certain gods who came from the sky, flying deities who descended to Earth and took as wives the most beautiful girls. “They began to go in to the daughters of men, and they began to give birth to them,” the ancient texts say.

Similar facts are described in many sources and even in the Bible. There is a version that these long-standing contacts led to the mixing of blood and the birth of healthy, beautiful people.

Mysterious aliens in ancient times intervened in many earthly events; they often reconciled warring tribes and stopped wars. The writings of the prophet Ezekiel narrating events that took place at the beginning of the sixth century BC, in particular, tell about the incident when he was on the Chebar River among the migrants.

At that moment, people were thinking about how to get to the other side of the river. Suddenly a phenomenon unusual for that time appeared: “...a large cloud, fire, and spreading glow appeared. The likeness of four animals flew out of the fire; they had an appearance similar to that of a human.

They had wings, and underneath they were visible ordinary hands. The wings touched each other, keeping them in the air. If the movement of the wings stopped, then they seemed to cover the bodies of these creatures.” One can only envy the accuracy and detail of the description of those events.

The Bible mentions the most ancient encounters between man and aliens, and describes in detail the “angels” who visited the city of Sodom. According to biblical texts, these “angels” needed food and shelter, and physiologically they were so similar to people that the local “men” almost “dishonored” them. The "Angels" had to flee the city. After this, Sodom was destroyed. Holy Scripture talks about angels as humanoid creatures.

However, it may very well be that everything is just the opposite - the Cro-Magnon man, that is, a modern type of man, who miraculously appeared on Earth overnight, is “angel-like.” This fantastic hypothesis is still waiting to be confirmed.

It is believed that humanity in a civilized form, that is, when it began to use writing, appeared about five thousand years ago. By the standards of the Universe, this is a very short period of time. Official science prefers to delicately sidestep the issue of the existence of previously highly developed civilizations.

There is constant emphasis on the fact that the current generation of people is the only one on the planet that has reached the pinnacle of development in technical terms, although many indirect evidence suggests that this is not so.

In addition to Atlantis, described in their dialogues by Plato and Herodotus, and the legendary northern country Hyperboreans, there were also mainland states that at the same time reached unprecedented prosperity. Even with all the disdainful attitude of many historians towards such mythical peoples, some artifacts confirming their existence have been found, and many of them are on the territory of modern China. In contrast

from the island states that ceased to exist due to natural disasters and went under water, the territory of the ancient Chinese empire was preserved much better. Archaeologists have discovered pyramidal structures similar to those in Egypt and South America.

By the way, not so long ago, Novosibirsk scientists confirmed the existence in ancient times of a single Arctic continent - Arctida-Hyperborea. According to their research, published in the international journal Precambrian Research, Franz Josef Land, the Spitsbergen archipelago, the Kara Sea shelf and the New Siberian Islands used to be one continent.
At the same time, researchers were able to prove that the continent of Arctida existed twice, with a difference of 500 million years.

Previously, it was believed that after the collapse of the continent, the relief acquired modern look. However, recent studies have shown that 250 million years ago, parts of the continent were reunited again, and only after the second collapse were those outlines formed coastline which we can see now.

This is a discovery once again confirmed that Indian and Slavic legends about a distant northern ancestral home are not a myth, but a description, although very ancient, but quite real events the past of humanity, in contrast official version stories.

The ancient Egyptians, Chinese, Atlanteans, Hyperboreans, peoples of the South American or African continents were united by the possession of technologies that were fantastic even for our time. Scientists still have not been able to find the answer to how they managed to lift giant blocks during the construction of the pyramids or install giant statues on Easter Island.

And there are many such examples. Take at least the mythical Tower of Babel mentioned in biblical history. The described structure is reminiscent of modern skyscrapers, and accordingly, it is impossible to build it without accurate calculations of loads and analyzes of the rocks under the structure.

Made only from stone, without metal frame, the building would not be able to support even its own weight or would tilt, as happened with the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It is possible that the structure in Babylon (like the pyramids) also had a completely different purpose in technical terms. There is no reliable evidence that the tower had a round base, so it is possible that the Babylonians also built a pyramid. Subsequently, as we know, the building was destroyed, and the city itself fell into decay.

The legends of all these peoples always mention certain gods who came from the sky... and then follows a description of some apparatus, identified by contemporaries with some fantastic creature.

Why does no one know exactly how and when man appeared on Earth? After all, knowledge about nature and the teachings of great philosophers came to us thousands of years later. But knowledge about how the pyramids were built has disappeared. Knowledge about the first man also disappeared. Maybe they were deliberately “erased” from people’s memory?

So where does the human race come from? With each subsequent discovery in genetics, there are fewer and fewer supporters of Darwinism, and there is more and more evidence of the impossibility of the independent origin of species.

The version of the intervention of extraterrestrial intelligence is the most relevant today, especially since it is quite organically linked with religious teachings, not only current ones, but also those that have long been artifacts.

The origin of man is a mystery. Even Darwin's theory is not considered fully proven, due to the lack of transitional links in evolution. How else do people explain their appearance from ancient times to the present day?

Totemism

Totemism is considered one of the most ancient mythological ideas and is considered the first form of awareness of the human collective, as well as its place in nature. Totemism taught that each group of people had its own ancestor - a totem animal or plant. For example, if a raven serves as a totem, then it is the actual progenitor of the clan, and each raven is a relative. In this case, the totem animal is only a patron, but is not deified, unlike later creationism.

Androgynes

The mythological version includes the ancient Greek version about the origin of man from the Androgynes - the first people who combined the characteristics of both sexes. Plato in his dialogue "Symposium" describes them as beings with a spherical body, whose back was not different from the chest, with four arms and legs and two identical faces on the head. According to legend, our ancestors were not inferior to the titans in strength and skill. Having become proud, they decided to overthrow the Olympians, for which they were cut in half by Zeus. This reduced their strength and self-confidence by half.
Androgyny is not only present in Greek mythology. The idea that man and woman were originally one is close to many world religions. Thus, one of the Talmudic interpretations of the first chapters of the Book of Genesis says that Adam was created androgynous.

Abrahamic tradition

The Abrahamic religions include three monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), which go back to Abraham, the patriarch of the Semitic tribes, the first person to believe in the Lord. According to the Abrahamic tradition, the world was created by God - the One from Nothingness, literally “out of nothing.” God created man, Adam, from the dust of the earth “in our image and likeness,” so that man would be truly good. It is worth noting that both the Bible and the Koran mention the creation of man more than once. For example, in the Bible about the creation of Adam, it first says in chapter 1 that God created man “out of nothing in his own image and likeness,” and in chapter 2 that he created him from dust (dust).

Hinduism

In Hinduism, there are at least five versions of the creation of the world and man, respectively. In Brahmanism, for example, the creator of the world is the god Brahma (in later versions identified with Vishnu and the Vedic deity Prajapati), who emerged from a golden egg floating in the world's oceans. He grew up and sacrificed himself, creating from his hair, skin, meat, bones and fat the five elements of the world - earth, water, air, fire, ether - and the five steps of the sacrificial altar. Gods, people and other living beings were created from it. Thus, in Brahmanism, by making sacrifices, people recreate Brahma.
But according to the Vedas - the ancient sacred scripture of Hinduism, the creation of the world and man is shrouded in darkness: “Who truly knows, who will proclaim here. Where did this creation come from, where did it come from? Further, the gods (appeared) through the creation of this (world).
So who knows where it came from?”

Kabbalah

According to Kabbalistic teaching, the creator Ein Sof created a soul that received the name Adam Rishon - “the first man.” It was a construct consisting of many individual desires interconnected like the cells of our body. All desires were in harmony, since initially each of them had a desire to support each other. However, being on the highest spiritual level, similar to the creator, Adam took on enormous spiritual light, which is equivalent to the “forbidden fruit” in Christianity. Unable to achieve the goal of creation with this one action, the primary soul split into 600,000 thousand parts, and each of them into many more parts. All of them are now in the souls of people. Through many circuits they must carry out a “correction” and reassemble into a common spiritual complex called Adam. In other words, after the “breaking” or the Fall, all these particles - people are not equal to each other. But returning to their original state, they again reach the same level, where they are all equal.

Evolutionary creationism

As science developed, creationists had to compromise with natural science concepts. The intermediate stage between the theory of creation and Darwinism was “theistic evolutionism.” Evolutionary theologians do not reject evolution, but consider it to be a tool in the hands of God the creator. Simply put, God created the “material” for the emergence of man - the genus Homo and launched the process of evolution. The end result was a man. An important point of evolutionary creationism is that although the body changed, the human spirit remained unchanged. This is precisely the position that the Vatican has officially held since the time of Pope John Paul II (1995): God created an ape-like creature by putting an immortal soul into it. In classical creationism, man has not changed in body or soul since creation.

"Theory of Ancient Cosmonauts"

In the 20th century, there was a popular version about the extraterrestrial origin of man. One of the founders of the idea of ​​paleocontact in the 20s was Tsiolkovsky, who announced the possibility of aliens visiting the earth. According to the theory of paleocontact, once in the distant past, around the Stone Age, aliens visited the Earth for some business. Either they were interested in the colonization of exoplanets, or the resources of the Earth, or this was their transfer base, but one way or another, part of their descendants settled on Earth. They may have even mixed with the local genus Homo, and modern humans are a cross between an alien life form and the aborigines of Earth.
The main arguments on which supporters of this theory rely are the complexity of the technologies used in the construction of ancient monuments, as well as geoglyphs, petroglyphs and other drawings ancient world, which allegedly depict alien ships and people in spacesuits. Mates Agres, one of the founders of the paleovisit theory, even argued that the biblical Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed not by God’s wrath, but by a nuclear explosion.

Darwinism

The famous postulate that man evolved from apes is usually attributed to Charles Darwin, although the scientist himself, remembering the fate of his predecessor Georges Louis Buffon, who was ridiculed at the end of the 18th century for such ideas, cautiously stated that humans and apes must have some kind of common ancestor, ape-like creature.

According to Darwin himself, the genus homo originated somewhere around 3.5 million in Africa. This was not yet our fellow tribesman Homo Sapiens, whose age today is dated back to approximately 200 thousand years, but the first representative of the genus Homo - an ape, a hominid. In the course of evolution, he began to walk on two legs, use his hands as tools, he began to have progressive brain transformations, articulate speech and sociality. Well, the cause of evolution, like all other species, was natural selection, and not God’s plan.