The skull of a man from the Petralona cave called into question the theory of the origin of mankind (10 photos)

In northern Greece in 1959, a shepherd found a hole in rock near the village of Petralona, ​​leading to a cave. He himself does not climb inside took a risk and turned to his fellow villagers for help.





A group of enthusiasts discovered a cave with stalactites in which subsequently found a wide variety of finds: fossils, remains of ancient wood, wool of extinct animals and tools. But The most important find was a skull embedded in the wall.






In a good way, she was supposed to become part of the public property, that is, to replenish the public museum exposition. But Dr. Aris Poulianos intervened. At one time, the scientist and teacher became the author of a rather controversial work called The Origin of the Greeks.



Aris Poulianos

In the book, he tried to prove that the Greeks are a separate ethnic group, which has no connection with the Slavic peoples. The scientist took up exploration of the cave and the find, which was given the name Petralona Man. In the course of the work, the scientist managed to find out that the Petralonian man developed completely autonomously in the European environment, and he had no ancestors who came from Africa.



Poulianos found opponents who recognized his theory erroneous, since the find was only 60 thousand, and not 750 thousand years old. But stratigraphic analysis of the cave and deposits, as well as two more skeletons, found later, showed that we are really talking about a figure of about 700 thousand years.



Researchers working on the skull confirmed that it had There are differences from both Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. In this way, the presence of clear European features in such an ancient find contradicts African theory of human origins.






The Petralona cave is distinguished by its unique design. in the vault there was a large hole where for hundreds of years various animals ranging from small turtles to large rhinos. Under it, a whole mountain of bones was preserved. The cave was used by the ancients people, representatives of several generations. Archaeologists have found signs of 20 cultural layers.



Cast from the skull



The remains can be used to study the periods of climate change on the planet, in due to which the species diversity of flora and fauna changed.

As for Dr. Poulianos, the results of his research The authorities tried to keep it closed. The entrance to the cave was closed. And in 2012 on an elderly scientist and his wife were attacked. How Poulianos claimed that the hooded men beat the elderly couple and threatened that will appear again if a scientist publishes at least one more word from his theory. Who needs to hide evidence and why? contradictions between classical anthropological theory and human evolution? This question remains open.