Translated material
Human evolution in ten turtles
About a unique exhibition, which will open at the end of March at the State Biological Museum. K.A. Timiryazeva, says one of its organizers, as well as the creators of the popular science site “Anthropogenesis” ( http://antropogenez.ru ) Alexander Sokolov .
When in 2010, Stanislav Drobyshevsky and I made the Anthropogenesis.ru portal, we wanted to somehow influence the situation with the popularization of evolutionary anthropology in our country. The situation was, frankly, bad, but in a few years we managed to do a lot. And yet I was constantly not left by a feeling of some kind of satisfaction: photographs and even videos are good, but. I would like something that you can not only see, but also “feel”. Of course, the catalog turned out to be large and detailed, now it has 450 paleoanthropological finds. However, readers in letters did not stop asking: where in Russia you can see something “alive”? At least in the capital?
In fact, Russian museums, where there is at least something on anthropogenesis, can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Their expositions have long ceased to replenish and reflect the situation at best in the late 70s (for example, the latest exhibit in one of the largest museums in Moscow, in the Anthropogenesis section-this is the skeleton of Lucy, found, I recall, in 1974). The students of the same exhibition see the same set-several skulls, several stone weapons. Of course, this is better than nothing. However, what can the guide answer to the disappointed sigh of the teenager, overfed with TV and the Internet: "And that's all?"
For three years, the idea of a small one, but the exhibition, which we conditionally called "10 skulls that shocked the world," was nurtured by itself. This exhibition will open at the end of March in Moscow, in the State Biological Museum named after K.A. Timiryazeva (Malaya Georgian, 15).
We decided to present to our visitors a number of classic finds that have never been exhibited in Russia. (Of course, we do not put the skulls ourselves, but their exact copies. The originals of these finds are stored in the collections of museums in Kenya, Indonesia, France, etc. And it is unlikely that they will ever be collected in one place.)
At the same time, we want our exhibition to be not just a gathering of rarities, but to tell visitors a story. The story that began when the savannahs replaced the forests in Africa, and the early Australopithecus uncertainly stepped on the ground. Our visitors will see the skull of Australopithecus of Afarsky; They will see the famous “Rudolfian man” Homo rudolfensis ; They will see the legendary “boy from Turkana” for the age of one and a half million years; They will see the most complete skull of the Javanese Pithecanthropus and other antiquities.
Each exhibit has its own story, which can be judged by the vicissitudes of the fate of our distant ancestors. For example, the poor cub Australopithecus from Towng became a victim of a huge eagle (traces of claws are preserved on the skull); The Cro -Magnon Sungir 1 was killed by a dart in the neck (this was found out by making an X -ray of the cervical vertebra). The ancient man from Dmanisi (Georgia) loved to pick a stick in his teeth, and Homo Ergaster from Kenya anger a half million years ago abused the Liver, which led to hypervitaminosis A - the bones of the skeleton were deformed. However, mercy knocked on their hearts - an old man from Dmanisi, having lost all his teeth, about lived for several years thanks to the care of fellow tribesmen.
The general background for the exposition will be the “evolutionary tree”, on the “trunk” of which are the main exhibits, and the auxiliary are located on the side branches.
We plan to devote the evolution of the brain to a separate showcase; Visitors will see endocrains - casts of the inner cavity of the skull, along which paleoanthropologists study the structure of the brain of our distant ancestors.
In order to breathe life into our heroes, talented reconstructors-Roman Evseev and Oleg Osipov work on the appearance of the ancient hominids. Thanks to their efforts, visitors will be able, as they say, “look into the eyes” of fossil species of man. And the computer animation specialist Sergei Krivoplyasov is even ready to revive one of the characters in the exhibition. But this is a surprise ...
We relate to the exhibition trepidation, because this is our first-first child. The scientific editor of the portal Stanislav Drobyshevsky personally oversees the manufacture of exhibits dummies. I dictate an audio excursion on the microphone (which visitors of the exhibition can listen to, armed with special headphones).
By the opening of the exhibition (March 29-30, 2014) we timed up a series of popular lectures: to those who showed the quickness and registered on the site (Zalchik in the museum is small, so we are forced to limit the number of participants), Alexander Markov, Stanislav Drobyshevsky, Maria Mednikova, Svetlana Borlak and other famous scientists.
But if someone cannot get to the opening, do not worry! We will remove everything in the video, and then publish on the portal and on social networks. The exhibition will last until the fall, but this will not end - we plan to continue it within the framework of the All -Russian festival of science in Moscow, and then we hope to bring to St. Petersburg.
