Cro-Magnon: The First Early Modern Humans to Settle in Europe

By History Titans

Discover the Cro-Magnon and the origins of our species!
Have you ever wondered how humans evolved? Have you often wondered if we descended from Neanderthals? Did you always believe that there was something special about our species? If your answer was "Yes" to any of these questions, this book is a great choice for you.
Cro-Magnons were known as Early Modern Humans, but they are much more than that. They are the link that connects us to our earliest ancestors. Better yet, they're a testament to how powerful and fascinating nature can be.
In this book, you will:

Learn all about our ancestors, from Cro-Magnon to Australopithecus.

Understand how scientists came to know what they know about our origins.

Journey in time and space to the continent where all humans emerged.

Explore the inner workings of natural selection and learn how we've managed to become the only remaining human species.

What science knows about us and our origins is fascinating. Moreover, it's crucial for you to know so you can better understand yourself and your reality. The best part is that it's all been condensed and compiled for you in this captivating read.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Creek Ridge Publishing
• Release date: Apr 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201505110

History Titans

History Titans creates a variety of concise historical educational content.

Book preview

Introduction: The Discoveries That Revealed a Mystery

The cave stayed unknown and closed off for thousands of years. A rock fall and collapse, such as happens in limestone areas with hollows and underground water channels, had sealed it before the pyramids of Egypt were even thought of. Then, after the ground caved in again in 1868 and a tree was uprooted, the earth had opened up once more to reveal a tunnel beneath the countryside of Cantabria in northern Spain. The locals knew there were hollows in the ground in various places, so it wasn’t particularly interesting to them. In 1879, Modesto Cubillas told the local landowner, Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, about the cave and unwittingly started a chain of events that led to a sensational discovery we are still evaluating in the twenty-first century.

The late 1800s were an age of empire-building, revolution, and discovery. Many of the explorers and scientists of that period were amateurs. Some were wealthy and had time and money to pursue their hobbies and interests. Others were just doing their everyday academic or professional work, and yet others were poor and had limited resources. However, all of them were curious and eager to discover new knowledge. Sanz de Sautuola was a lawyer by profession, but the existence of a cave on his land was fascinating, and he decided to explore it. It was impressive and comprised a long and extensive system of grottoes. The story is told that he took his eight-year-old daughter, Maria, to see what he had found. Carrying a dim lamplight of the Victorian era, she wandered about and happened to look up.

What she saw was a collection of detailed, accurate, and beautifully executed paintings on the roof of the cave, representing bison (as we know now) and some other animals. They were not flat or like photographs. In the spluttering light, they seemed to move, to jump out at you. They had almost a 3-D quality about them. So she rushed excitedly to tell her father what she had seen.

By 1880, scientists and intellectuals were quite aware that human beings had been drawing on the walls of caves, using weapons, making clothes, or erecting totem poles, for example, and using all kinds of artifacts for thousands of years. As interesting as these people may have been - or still were in many parts of the world where the Industrial Revolution hadn’t reached then - they all seemed to be rather primitive. Not only this, but when the learned people of that time considered what the dawn of civilization might be, at once the pyramids of Egypt, the ruins of Mesopotamia, the ancient constructions of China, or the spectacular temples of the Maya in the Americas might have come to mind. All of these were within historical times. The Greeks wrote about Egypt, and the origins of their own ancient culture, the Old Testament of the Bible mentions Egypt, Babylon, and Assyria. Thinking of these examples and unaware of the scientific discoveries taking place at that time, it was easy to suppose that nobody did anything very sophisticated and cultured until a few thousand years before their time.

How wrong they were! I don’t deny the magnificent achievements of these and other past civilizations, but the story of human history is much longer and far more amazing than 19th-Century Europeans or Americans would have generally been aware of. This book is going to introduce you to the Cro-Magnons, or Early European Modern Humans, as they tend to be called these days. Who were they? Why did they set off such controversies? And what can we say for certain about them and their remarkable, ancient culture? All this and more will be explained to you in the chapters that follow.

Chapter 1: Humanity Begins to Understand the Prehistoric Past

If you read the Bible carelessly and forget that it is a library of different books written over thousands of years, you may be forgiven for thinking that it started a few thousand years ago and that it tells you everything that happened from the beginning of humanity until now, in the way a school history book does. That’s what the reasonably educated public of the late 1800s often did, and people are still doing it now. They don’t realize that Scripture starts in legend and mystery and then goes through a long journey of ancient oral traditions, all the way into written traditions.

Remains of early humans had been discovered all during the 1800s, but historians and scientists were largely unaware of what they were finding. In 1822, when amateur geologist Reverend William Buckland described the bones found at Paviland in South Wales, he thought they were the remains of a woman from the