UDC 572

M. N. Kandinov 1, M. B. Mednikova 2, M. V. Dobrovolskaya 2, A. P. Buzhilova 2

1 Vernadsky State Geological Museum of the Russian Academy of Sciences

11/2 Mokhovaya St., Moscow, 103009, Russia

2 Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences

19 Dm Ulyanova str., Moscow, 117036, Russia

E-mail: medma_pa@mail.ru

HOMO HUMERUS FROM KHOROSHEVSKY ISLAND: HISTORY AND PALEONTOLOGICAL CONTEXT OF THE FIND*

In memory of Academician T. N. Alekseeva

The scientific collections of Russian academic museums contain objects of great scientific value, many of which have not yet been properly studied. The article is devoted to the circumstances of the discovery of the fossilized humerus of Homo, which was considered lost for 80 years. For the first time, a handwritten document reporting the discovery of the cranial cap and humerus on Khoroshevsky Island is published. The geological and paleontological context is analyzed, which does not exclude the Late Ashelian or Early Mousterian age of the paleofauna associated with human remains.

Introduction

Working with the collections of academic museums has always been and remains the most important area of cooperation between institutes and museums of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Careful storage of clearly documented exhibits allows researchers of various scientific schools to return to the analysis of materials at a new methodological level, which enriches the source study capabilities of scientific collections of museums. The Museum Council of the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences has always paid great attention to supporting museums. Since 1992, it has been headed by Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences T. I. Alekseeva. With her usual energy and enthusiasm, Tatyana Ivanovna was able to significantly improve the quality of support for museums, and she founded the annual almanac "Museums of the Russian Academy of Sciences". In 2008, T. I. Alekseeva would have turned 80 years old. In memory of this remarkable scientist, organizer of science, our colleague and teacher, we offer the reader the story of the rediscovery of the most important anthropological find, which was made possible only thanks to the joint work of the staff of the Geological Museum of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. We are talking about a fossil anthropological object from the territory of the Volga region, which has not yet received an exhaustive and unambiguous interpretation in the works of domestic and foreign specialists in evolutionary anthropology.

A separate paper is devoted to the anthropological characteristics of this find, which will be published in one of the next issues of the journal.

Geological and paleontological context of the Khvalynsk finds

The history of the find is recreated thanks to a handwritten text by geologist V. F. Orekhov, entitled " Finding the human cranial vault together with bones

* The study was funded by the Bioarchaeological Institute (San Francisco).

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Fig. 1. Fragment of a manuscript by V. F. Orekhov, which reports the discovery of fossil Homo bones on Khoroshevsky Island: "And in the midst of this chaos... I found part of a human cranial vault..."

mammoth and rhinoceros on Khoroshevsky Island near Khvalynsk, Saratov province. Preliminary message. 1927"* (fig. 1):

In the summer of 1926, we worked together with the head of the Department. The Khvalynsky Museum of K. Y. Gross examined the "Crow Island" seven kilometers south of Khvalynsk, and in the northern part of the island a human humerus was found along with the bones of a mammoth and a rhinoceros.

Back in 1921, K. Y. Gross collected here, in addition to mammoth bones, several bone points. Therefore, the task of 1927 was to survey the coasts and islands in this area in order to find the root location of the bones of fossil animals. In early September of this year, a hunter of my acquaintance, who works in the Alekseevskaya [ ... ], informed me about the discovery of some large bones on the "Khoroshevsky Island". On September 11, I took F. I. Neyasov with me as an assistant and went to explore the indicated island. The so-called "Khoroshevsky Island" is located 25-30 kilometers south of Khvalynsk, near the village of Alekseyevka, currently it is a large sandbank adjacent to the left-bank floodplains; only an oblong lake shows the former borders of the island, which was not so long ago vegetation. Mammoth and rhino bones were constantly found here. In the spring, the northern part of this island was washed away in a flood, and large sands and gravel were found, in which there are a large number of belemnites (Absolutus Panderianus, etc.), ammonites and shells of Griphaea and Ostrea, fragments of fossilized tree trunks, bones of: Elephas primigenius, Rhinoceros tichorinus and many other animals. The lower jaw of elasmotherium, a saiga skull, skulls, horns and other bones of deer and bull, a fragment of the lower jaw of Ursus Spelacus and bones of some other predators were found. Artificially chipped tubular bones with characteristic fractures are found in large numbers. And in the midst of this chaos, which covers an area of about 25-30 desyatins, I found a part of the human cranial vault almost black in color, consisting of the frontal and parietal bones with strongly protruding brow arches and a flat sloping forehead of the Neanderthal type [ ... ]. At a distance of two meters from the site of the skull discovery, a fragment of the humerus and a bone point were found, made from deer antler. All the bones are quite well preserved and have a dark gray and black color, very heavy in weight. There are no signs of water on the bones, which excludes the assumption that the bones were brought here by water from another place.

September 15, together with zav. We went to Khoroshevsky Island for the second time through the K. Y. Gross Museum, where we once again collected abundant geological and paleontological material. For transportation to Khvalynsk of all the material collected during two excursions, the City Council was given our steamer.

After that, I explored the coasts of other islands and floodplains, as well as the left mainland bank of the Volga from the village of Novotroitsky to the Mal River. Irgiza. [The study area is located between two left-bank tributaries of the Volga, the Chagra and Mal rivers. Irgiz... These two steppe rivers originate far away in the steppe and receive on both sides tributaries of small rivers and streams, in the steep banks of which bones of extinct animals are found.]

The bank of the Volga between these rivers is steep, with a height of 15-30 meters and consists of tertiary and quaternary clays and sands, which, as shown by the peasants of the left-bank villages, often washes the bones of the "mammoth" (any large bone found in the clays or sands of the peasants of the Khvalynsky district is called "mammoth"). Especially often washes bones between the villages of Makhovka and Klepidin farms.

In the area of D. Flywheels are sharply protruding dune sands, in which flint microliths and archaic ceramics are found.

The rapid and strong autumn water temperature in the Volga River prevented further investigation.

V. Orekhov

* Storage of funds of the Vernadsky State Geological Museum of the Russian Academy of Sciences. It is quoted with the original spelling preserved.

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This handwritten document indicates that geologists found two human humerus bones in the area of Khvalynsk: the first one - on Voronye Island, the second-on Khoroshevsky Island. The fragment identified by us represents the second find, which is clearly indicated by the inscription on the label, most likely made in the late 20s of the XX century, and the preservation of the sample (its characteristics will be given below).

Special attention should be paid to the fact that the mentioned bone was located 2 m from the cranial cap, which later became known as "Khvalynskaya". Unlike the humerus, which was considered lost for 80 years and has never been studied by anthropologists before, the fate of the cranium was more successful [Bader, 1940, 1952a; Gremyatsky, 1948, 1952], and at the moment it is stored in the Research Institute and Museum of Anthropology of Moscow State University. Both the humerus and the humerus from Khoroshevsky Island were brought to Moscow and handed over for research to the leading Russian expert of that time, geologist Academician A. P. Pavlov. However, he died in 1929 and did not have time to describe the finds, after which the skull vault was returned to the Khvalynsky Museum of Local Lore and was kept there until it was transferred to the anthropologists of Moscow State University in 1939. The humerus, which we managed to find, remained an exhibit in the collection of fossil samples of Academician A. P. Pavlov, passing over time to the funds of the Geological Society of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Vernadsky Museum of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Fully aware that the skull and postcranial fragment may belong to different individuals and even different epochs, we nevertheless present the main results of the anthropological study of the Khvalyn skull cap, since this information may be important for clarifying the context of our find.

The beginning of the anthropological study of the Khvalyn skull cap was laid by the German anthropologist G. Weinert. In the 1930s, a cast of the cranium was sent to him for review. The researcher attributed the discovery to Madeleine, but did not give a detailed argument (Weinert, 1935). In parallel, E. Eickstedt (1934) defined the cranial cap as Neanderthal. It is noteworthy that he singled out craniological materials similar to those found in Khvalynsk, Podkumk, and Tabga (Galilee) as a special eastern variant of the Neanderthal race, which had less pronounced features compared to the western Neanderthal race. Accordingly, E. Eickstedt considered the " eastern variant "as late and suggested that it was in the east that the transition" from the Neanderthal to the Aurignacian type " took place, from where the latter migrated to Western Europe.

The most detailed description of the Khvalyn skull cap was given by M. A. Gremyatsky (1948, 1952). In his opinion, although the general character of the fragment leaves no doubt that it belongs to modern humans, a number of features deviate towards Neanderthal forms (in particular, the development of the supraorbital part of the frontal bone, its relief, the ratio of the glabellar and cerebral parts, the values of the bregmatic and frontal angles, the ratio of the interorbital diameter and the internal orbital width of the face, bregmatic height)..

It is necessary to mention the opinion of V. P. Alekseev, which also extended to the Khvalyn skull, which he considered chronologically late: "The genetic continuity of modern and Neanderthal species is also illustrated by quite numerous finds of transitional forms that are craniologically related to the modern type, but at the same time carry a number of primitive features... But the morphological age of these finds, which is later than the Upper Paleolithic, only increases their significance for the discussion of the continuity of the modern and Neanderthal species" (1978, p. 166).

Relatively recently, the skull cap from Khvalynsk became the object of attention of S. V. Drobyshevsky. In particular, according to him, the Khvalynsky person, regardless of his gender, exceeded the average indicators of the massiveness of the frontal bone in general and the supraorbital relief in particular, as well as the latitudinal dimensions of the skull of a modern person. "Attitude... Neanderthals are ambivalent. Based on the results of analysis of profile morphograms... Khvalynsk is closer to the Neanderthal type than to the modern one. However, multivariate analyses... Significant differences are revealed between the group of Podkumok-Khvalynsk-Skhodnya and Neanderthals... Podkumok, Khvalynsk, and Skhodnya are most closely related to the group of Upper Paleolithic sapiens, more precisely, to forms with primitive and progressive features at the same time, for example, Skhul V, Przedmosti III, and to a lesser extent, Przedmosti IX, and Sungir I" (Drobyshevsky, 2001, p. 90).

In addition to the above-cited text by geologist V. F. Orekhov, which helps clarify the circumstances surrounding the discovery of Homo skeletal fragments on Khoroshevsky Island, special studies undertaken to geologically characterize the "bone-bearing layers" of the Volga region are of great interest (Fig. 2).

The stratigraphy of the Volga finds attracted the attention of O. N. Bader (1940, 1952a). In 1939, the archaeologist visited the island, which he found in his RA-

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Fig. 2. Modern map of the Volga region with the designation of flooded areas.

Botakh calls himself Khoroshensky*, and talked with the director of the Khvalynsky Museum K. Y. Gross. In the summary article of 1952 O. N. Bader does not mention the name of geologist V. F. Orekhov, giving priority to the discovery of Quaternary fauna in this place to K. Y. Gross, from which we can conclude that the above-cited report of V. F. Orekhov remained unknown to archaeologists and anthropologists, because it was addressed to A. P. Pavlov, being an accompanying document to fragments of the skull and humerus.

In an earlier publication, O. N. Bader reproduces a written comment by K. Y. Gross, which is not as detailed as the note by V. F. Orekhov, since, as we now know, the director of the regional museum was not present when the Khvalyn skull cap and humerus were found:

"Neanderthaloid skull cap... it was found together with a fragment of the human humerus during museum surveys in the coastal sands of Khoroshensky Island in the autumn of 1927, apparently washed out of the root horizon, which has not yet been found, despite the museum's annual surveys. This discovery was prompted by the first faint traces of the Paleolithic, which I personally found in the form of four copies of bone awls and then another human humerus " [1940, p. 74].

In determining the age of the bone-bearing layer, O. N. Bader relied on the work of paleontologists who studied the fauna of the island and other Volga sections with similar stratigraphy (Pavlova, 1926; Belyaeva, 1935, 1939). In addition to Homo bones, skeletal remains of Ursus spelaeus (cave bear) and Camelus sp. were found and described on Khoroshevsky Island. (camel), Canis lupus (wolf), Equus caballus (horse), Elephas primigenius (mammoth), Cervus elephus (red deer), Saiga tatarica (saiga antelope), Elasmotherium (Elasmotherium), Rhinoceros thichorinus (woolly rhinoceros), Bison priscus (fossil bison), Cervus megaceros (big-horned deer), Cervus tarandus (reindeer), Cervus alces( elk), Felis spelaea (cave lion), Rhinoceros mercki (Merck's rhino)**. The paleontological material coming from Khoroshevsky Island was so interesting that it attracted the attention of the leading paleontologist of that time, M. V. Pavlova. She visited the island in 1930 and noted that very ancient fossil bones lay directly on the surface devoid of woody vegetation and had a black color.

In 1929, Khoroshevsky Island was also explored by the largest Moscow archaeologist V. A. Gorodtsov, who later informed O. N. Bader that he had collected several hundred pounds of fossil mammal bones on the surface there. He did not find any ancient remains of material culture, except for fragments of Khvalynsk ceramics from the Bronze Age. V. A. Gorodtsov found two more human skulls on the island, which, according to his assessment, are quite modern and most likely dated by him to the Bronze Age. In the same year, he examined the humerus in the Khvalynsky Museum, also attributing it to a later time. Presumably, it was a bone from Voronyi Island, found by K. Y. Gross in 1921. The collection collected by V. A. Gorodtsov, which included, in particular, the remains of a cave lion, was investigated and published by V. I. Gromova (see: [Bader, 1940, p. 75]).

* As we found out, both names were quite equal. In the geological and paleontological literature, the island is called Khoroshevsky, and in the works of anthropologists, after O. N. Bader, it is called Khoroshensky. However, now it is unprincipled, since this land area is completely flooded with the waters of an artificial reservoir.

** To avoid confusion with zoological nomenclature, we present the species names of fossil animals from Khoroshevsky Island in the form given in the first publications of the paleontologists who studied them.

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According to an oral report by E. I. Belyaeva, who conducted a survey of the island as part of an expedition of the Paleozoological Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1935. The species composition of the paleofauna identified earlier was confirmed, no new Homo bones were found; however, some of the bones had "broken" epiphyses, and some large elephant bones gave the impression of being split (see: [Tam same, p. 76]).

As for the cranial vault and the femur found under the supervision of O. N. Bader in 1939*, he himself associated these findings with the most recent complex of mammoth fauna. There were no clear criteria for such a conclusion, the researcher relied only on the opinion of contemporary anthropologists: "The possible date of these finds in the language of archaeological periodization can now be determined only in the most general terms, namely: not earlier than the late Mousterian and not later than the Solutrean time. The lower date limit is based not on the Neanderthal, but only on the Neanderthaloid character of paleoanthropological remains. The reason for the upper limit of the date is the relatively early extinction of the mammoth in the Madeleine period in the south of the USSR, a mammoth still well represented on Khoroshensky Island "(Bader, 1952a, p. 197).

Today, we should take into account the scientific and historical context in which such conclusions were drawn: This was a time when the Pitledown forgery was still recognized by the most serious researchers and few doubted the stadial origin of modern man from the European Neanderthal (Gremyatsky, 1948). In accordance with the scientific ideas of 50 years ago," archaic "anthropological finds were perceived as earlier in their structure, and" progressive " ones were perceived as later. The idea of uneven hominid evolution, which explains the simultaneous existence of anatomically archaic and more "advanced" forms on the globe and is one of the main postulates of evolutionary anthropology today, at the time of the publication of Khvalynskaya Calotta, has not yet won a sufficient number of supporters. Let us not forget that the time frame of the anatomically modern Sapiens lineage (which is evidently dated to 200 Ka BP today [McDougall, Brown, and Fleagle, 2005])is also quite similar until recently, they were evaluated quite differently.

O. N. Bader, with his usual thoroughness, reproduced the characteristics of all the faunal complexes of Khoroshevsky Island, which makes it possible to assess the possible antiquity of the finds. These assemblages are similar to the fauna of the Tunguz Peninsula, which was located 30 km below Sengilei before the Volga flood (Bader, 19526). Regarding the large location of Quaternary fauna bones in the northern "pebble" part of the peninsula, O. N. Bader referred to the study of D. I. Yakovlev [1928], who wrote about the excellent preservation, absence of traces of roundness, and frequent integrity of the thinnest bone plates of skulls. This indicates that they were washed out of the ancient layers lying here. The deposition of faunal remains could have occurred at a very long time, because the erosion of the ancient coastal massif between the site of the bones and the right bank of the Volga continued for quite a long time.

Based on the paleozoological definitions of M. V. Pavlova, V. I. Gromova, V. I. Gromov, N. I. Nikolaev, and E. I. Belyaeva, three complexes of the Volga paleofauna were identified at different times (Nikolaev, 1937; Bader, 19526, p. 184). The remains of a representative of the thermophilic fauna, the Merk rhinoceros (Rhinoceros mercki), which was also found on Khoroshevsky Island, are considered to be the oldest, Mindel-rissky. The second complex, which is more numerous, belongs to the second half of the Mindel-Riess. This is the so-called Khazar fauna, represented by the species Elasmotherium sibiricum( Elasmotherium), Camelus knoblochi (Knobloch camel), Cervus euryceros (deer), Bison priscus (fossil bison), etc. The third complex of the mammoth and Siberian rhinoceros fauna is defined as the Riess-Wurmian one. It includes the bones of Elephas primigenius (mammoth), Rhinoceros thichorinus (woolly rhinoceros), Bos primigenius (bull), Saiga( saiga antelope), Cervus tarandus (reindeer), and cave predators.

Regarding the fossilized calcaneus of Homo from the Tunguz Peninsula, O. N. Bader, not being constrained by the categorical judgment of anthropologists this time, admitted that it can be included in any of the three faunal complexes mentioned - "this will be the time between the Angelic and Aurignacian-Solutrean epochs inclusive" (19526, p. 184).

In the absence of absolute dates, basic information about the age of finds can be obtained from the results of dating geological deposits and fossil fauna. This is based on the research of the leading Russian geologist of the first half of the XX century, N. I. Nikolaev (1937). In his detailed publication devoted to determining the age of Pleistocene fauna from various regions of the Volga region, he proved that the layers of pebbles containing numerous bone fragments and rarely found human remains are very rare.-

* The femur discovered by then student N. Y. Lutovinova in a pebble outcrop was fossilized to the same extent as the remains of the fossil fauna. Naturally, it is impossible to directly correlate the discovery made 12 years later without a clear stratigraphic reference with the cranial cap and shoulder fragment. O. N. Bader refers to M. A. Gremyapsky's conclusion that the femur, like the cranial cap, belongs to Homo sapiens, but "with a number of primitive features" (Bader, 1940, p. 76].

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These skeletons are associated with the base of Terrace II and date back to the Riess-Wurmian period, and overlap with deposits of the Wurmian era, and argued that the age of the finds is older than the Upper Pleistocene.

Conclusion

Numerous publications describing the stratigraphy of terraced Quaternary deposits in the southern part of the Middle Volga, as well as verified data on the chronological affiliation of paleofauna complexes from the bone-bearing pebbles of Khoroshevsky Island and adjacent territories, allow us to judge with a certain degree of reliability the age of the humerus diaphysis of the fossil Homo. Based on geological and paleontological descriptions, we can assume that bone-bearing pebbles contain redeposited remains of fauna belonging to a wide chronological interval from the late stages of the Acheulean epoch to the Late Mousterian. The localization of the discussed anthropological find gives grounds to date it to the same time.

List of literature

Alekseev V. P. Paleoanthropology of the Globe and the formation of human races: Paleolith. - Moscow: Nauka, 1978. - 282 p.

Bader, O. N., The discovery of a neanderthaloid human skull cap near Khvalynsk and the question of its age, Byul. society of nature testers. - 1940. - Vol. 18 (2). - pp. 73-81.

Bader O. N. O drevnykh ostavkakh cheloveka iz ostrov Khoroshenskogo pod Khvalynskom [On ancient human remains from Khoroshensky Island near Khvalynsk]. Mosk. un-ta. - 1952a. Issue 158: Fossil man and his culture on the territory of the USSR. - P. 193-198.

Bader O. N. On the remains of a fossil human from the Tunguz Peninsula on the Volga. Mosk. un-ta. - 19526. - Issue 158: Fossil man and his culture on the territory of the USSR. - P. 181-186.

Belyaeva E. N. Some data on quaternary mammals from the Lower Volga region based on the materials of the Pugachev Museum // Tr. of the Quaternary Commission of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1935, vol. 4, pp. 47-53.

Belyaeva, E. N., A note on the remains of Quaternary mammals of the Tunguz Peninsula, Byul. society of nature testers. Department of Geology. - 1939. - Vol. 17 (6). - pp. 85-89.

Weinert G. Proiskhozhdenie chelovechestva [The origin of humanity], Moscow: Biomedgiz, 1935, 80 p.

Gremyatsky M. A. Problema mezhdunarodnykh i perekhodnykh formov ot neanderthalskogo tipa cheloveka k sovremennomu [The problem of intermediate and transitional forms from the Neanderthal type of man to the modern one]. Mosk. un-ta. - 1948. - Issue 115. - p. 33-77.

Gremyatsky, M. A., Fragment of the Khvalyn skull cap, Uchen. zap. Mosk. un-ta. - 1952. - Issue 158: Fossil man and his culture on the territory of the USSR. - pp. 199-206.

Drobyshevsky S. V. Skullcaps from Skhodni, Podkumka, and Khvalynsk - post-neanderthaloid forms of Eastern Europe. Institute of Entrepreneurship, 2001, 133 p .

Nikolaev, N. N., On the age of the Quaternary Volga mammalian fauna, Byul. society of nature testers. Department of Geology. 1937, vol. 15, pp. 487-516.

Павлова М. В. Кладовище кісток потретинних осанців на лівом березі Волги між Сенгилеем та с Новодгивочим // Tr. fiz. - checkmate. Department of Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. - 1926. - Vol. 3, issue 1. - pp. 5-23.

Yakovlev, D. N., Description of the Tunguz Peninsula and location of Quaternary animal bones on it, Izv. Geologicheskogo komiteta. - 1928. - N 5. - p. 533-550.

Eickstedt E. Rassenkunde und Rassengeschichte der Menschheit. - Stuttgart: Theiss, 1934. - 246 S.

McDougall L., Brown E. H., Fleagle J. G. Stratigraphic placement and age of modern humans from Kibish, Ephiopia // Nature. - 2005. - Vol. 433. - P. 733 - 736.

The article was submitted to the Editorial Board on 19.05.08.

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