Ancient people had a very superficial understanding. Question about primitive people. Artificial fire production. Economic life

Where did the word “soldier” come from? The question is not easy. If we dig deeper, we will find that the ancient Romans gave birth to it, we will even find a connection between the “soldier” and the “soldo” - a coin, a salary that soldiers received in exchange for their willingness to shed blood. Well, where does “soldo” come from? Isn’t it possible to look for the origins of this word in table salt? That's it - in salt!

In Ancient Rome, as throughout the world at that time, the salt trade was given great importance. The main trade road of the empire was called “Via Salaria”, the Salt Road. Roman soldiers escorted the precious cargo down the Tiber from Ostia, where salt was mined. And one of them who “earned his salt” received a salary and became a “soldare” - a person who was on salt allowance, that is, simply a mercenary.

The English word “salary” has exactly the same roots, meaning, as is now easy to guess, again “salary”. It is a direct descendant of the Latin "salarium", which is nothing more than the money that soldiers in the Roman Empire received to buy salt. Later, the term acquired a broader meaning: they say, money in a barrel, and that’s the end of it. As the Roman statesman Cassiodorus rightly noted, salt is necessary for everyone, while many can do without gold.

In general, funny transformations took place in etymology with salt. For example, who would have thought that “sweet” is the same as “salty”?! But that’s how it was. This is us, in our time, if the food is too salty, we wrinkle our nose. In ancient times, when salt was worth its weight in gold, “salty” meant, first of all, “tasty.” Salty - sweet - sweet - this is such a metamorphosis...

Gold Rival

People came to eating table salt in the Neolithic, when they learned to cultivate the land. They liked the new occupation: it provided a constant and reliable piece of bread - both literally and figuratively. Agriculture began to crowd out hunting and gathering, and the carbohydrate diet immediately affected the well-being of primitive man: the proportion of meat and fish in the diet decreased, and these are the main suppliers of salts for the body. To this day, Eskimo hunters do not know salt; raw meat is enough for them. To this day, the African Maasai tribe does not have a salt problem either, a consequence of eating the blood of livestock. This was how it was for the time being among all nations, but humanity did not stand still, and it still lacked something.

Fire, the greatest acquisition of the mind, was also a bad joke (if we keep in mind the gastronomic aspect): when fried, meat retains salt, but when boiled, it loses it. But no grains could compensate for this deficiency. A substitute for natural salts was needed. In a word, if the thousand-year process is expressed in a few words, it turns out that the stomach turned to the mind with an urgent demand: “Find me something, I don’t know what yet.” And the painful search eventually yielded results. In any case, it was then, during the era of transition to sedentarism, that the development of rock salt deposits began.

But why is salt still worth its weight in gold?! After all, it is one of the most common minerals. There are deposits of sodium chloride on every continent - and in huge quantities. Even in Antarctica, scientists have found millions of tons of frozen salt. Alas, in ancient times people had very limited access to the riches of the earth's interior. When extracting salt, they were content with salt springs and salt marshes, and evaporated sea water in the sun. But the ocean, advancing, flooded the coastal dams, ruining many years of work, maintaining a constant shortage of salt. The underground deposits still had a long time to wait in the wings. Even when the tools already made it possible to extract salt by drilling, this method did not immediately gain recognition due to unpleasant surprises. Often, instead of a brine solution, a sharp-smelling, thick black liquid burst out of the ground, for which prospectors were not immediately able to find practical use. It was oil. People needed salt, and they paid for it in gold: ounce for ounce.

Germanic pagans, according to the ancient Roman historian Tacitus, deified salt springs. Two tribes, who could not share such a source, even started a war for the right to pray in this place consecrated by the gods: after all, the wonderful salt was believed to contribute to the establishment of better mutual understanding between earth and heaven.

At all times, salt has attracted those in power. Rulers of different eras jealously guarded their rights to it; often the death penalty was imposed for violating the monopoly in the salt trade. In China, salt was taxed as early as two thousand years BC. And the Roman consul of Libya, Solinator, managed to cover all the costs of waging the Second Punic War with the help of a salt tax. The tax gave the consul not only money, but also a name, and the salt fraud provided him, albeit an unseemly, but still a place in history.

In the Middle Ages, alchemists became interested in salt - with its help they tried to solve the thankless task of turning lead into gold, but in vain. Precious salt cargoes were a strong temptation for pirates - many merchant ships never delivered the goods to Europe.

Ancient chronicles describe in detail the ritual of the African salt trade. The tribes that lived on the territory of what is now Sudan did not have their own salt, but they mined gold.

And there were salt deposits in the west, in the Sahara. Here on the way from Mauritania to Sudan lay Timbuktu, an ancient trading center, the legendary “supplier” of medieval gold caravans in the Mediterranean. However, salt was not traded in Timbuktu either. The secret market was even further away, in the jungle, many days' journey from the city.

Heading to the salt market, the Moorish merchants moved along the river bank with an entire army of black porters, each carrying a block of salt on his head, announcing his approach with the beating of drums. Having arrived at the place, the merchants put the salt in piles and left. Then their “partners” appeared: next to each salt heap they poured gold and, in turn, disappeared into the forest. The Arabs were returning. If the merchant was satisfied with the amount of gold, he took it. If the payment was insufficient, the merchant took a little from his pile of salt and again retreated. The operation could be repeated more than once or twice, but, naturally, no incidents occurred due to an extra “penny” or a missing crystal: the buyer and seller did not even see each other. It was literally a “secret” market. Finally, the merchants took all the gold and, to the beat of drums, which this time meant the end of the bargaining, they set off on their way back.

A lot of gold thus passed into the hands of Arab merchants over the long centuries of the existence of this market. Now Timbuktu has lost its former commercial importance, but caravans with salt still come here along their unchanged ancient route: African miners still remain faithful to the traditional trade. For example, the Afar tribe mines salt in the Danakil depression, in the bed of a disappeared ancient sea. The salt layer there lies close to the surface, protruding outward in places. Using ordinary thick sticks, the Afars uproot blocks from the ground and break them into pieces. Then the salt will go to the merchants, and caravans will take it south. When salt reaches the Ethiopian Highlands, its price will already rise thirty times.

In Central Africa, salt still has a huge payment value: in some places in the bazaars you can still pay with briquettes of grayish crystals. And in the last century, for 120 of these “bricks” in Ethiopia, for example, you could buy a bride.

In the Boran tribe, the groom pays a salt ransom to the bride's relatives. But getting the desired product is not easy, especially since boran salt... is grown. They use a salt lake formed at the bottom of the crater of an extinct volcano. The branches are dipped into the lake water and then air dried. The resulting tiny crystals are collected and again immersed in the saline solution - as a seed. When the time comes to harvest, the miner himself climbs into the lake to get the grown druses. During this procedure, the body is covered with a crust of salt, and subsequently ulcers often form on the skin - a kind of occupational disease of salt miners.

However, one should not think that the use of salt as a monetary equivalent is the lot of past centuries only. Until recently, in Ethiopia, salt “ingots”-briquettes were used on a national scale. When the Italian army occupied Addis Ababa in 1936, entire deposits of these briquettes were discovered in the Ethiopian Bank. They were listed in the catalog, had a special name and were stored in safes along with gold.

Let us now move from Africa to Europe. Here, too, salt played an interesting role in the history of peoples. For example, in France the “gabel” salt tax was notorious. The monarch's subjects were obliged to buy salt only from the royal warehouses, and how much salt they needed was decided by His Majesty himself. The rate depended on the extent to which the royal treasury was empty. Thanks to such a simple and “witty” solution to the problem, the French king could not fear ruin. The hated “gabel” became one of the reasons for the French bourgeois revolution and was destroyed along with the monarchy.

True, after 15 years the tax was revived: Emperor Napoleon also needed money. And during Bonaparte’s flight from Moscow in the winter of 1812, salt starvation spread in the retreating army. Lack of salt reduced the vitality of people. Epidemics raged, wounds did not heal, every tenth person died. The archaic salt tax, however, lasted even until the 40s of this century.

In Vietnam, right up to the declaration of independence of the country, the French colonialists maintained a monopoly on salt and opium: putting the salt trade on a par with the “golden” opium industry says a lot.

Queen Kinga's Dungeon

Salt has many merits for man. For example, it was she who founded the American city of Syracuse. During the war between the North and South, it, born almost out of nowhere, was already known as the capital of the salt mining industry. The Erie Canal, which bore another name: “the ditch that salt dug,” was dug especially to serve the thriving fishery. Construction was not cheap, but the salt tax alone returned half of its cost. In addition, the canal opened the way for Americans to Ohio, to new lands. It all started with the fact that the Indians complained to the missionary Father Simon La Mona that evil spirits had moved into their spring. Pater was a smart man. He boiled the “possessed” water and evaporated the evil spirit from it - ordinary rock salt. Its discovery gave rise to a profitable business. True, the salt business in Syracuse died out long ago, but the Erie Canal remained.

Even where the salt industry fell into decline, it left a noticeable mark: a city or a canal, a trade route or just a mine. The heritage is rich - after all, even empty mines can be put to good use. In the state of Louisiana, huge underground galleries of former salt mines are intended to be used as oil storage facilities.

On the vast territory of the former salt mines in Hutchinson (Kansas), there are spacious warehouses - something like storage rooms for any valuables and for any period of time. Agricultural firms store stocks of seeds of each new variety underground so that they are not threatened by any above-ground disasters. The most important business papers of various corporations, microfilms of documents, and secrets of technology are stored in a separate safe room. There is also a huge film library, where among more than one hundred thousand films you can find all the best works of world cinema - from early silent films to modern large-scale productions. The list of treasures does not end there: there are also works of painting, stamps and coins, and furs.

Underground warehouses in Hutchinson even offer services such as storing the bride's wedding dress. For a certain fee, you can rent it out for 21 years so that your daughter, when she gets married, does not spend money on a dress. If you wish, they will take the dress for a second term. The company guarantees that it will look like new on your granddaughter, and if you consider that fashion has a habit of returning, then the style will not become outdated in half a century. The secret to the longevity of things is salt. An atmosphere saturated with it creates excellent conditions - optimal humidity and temperature.

Salt mine air can treat asthma. And it heals - such a sanatorium has existed in Poland for thirteen years. It was founded in a salt mine in Wieliczka, near Krakow, by Dr. Mieczyslaw Skulimowski. He was the first to draw attention to the healing properties of the air in the mine and still heads this hospital. Now the Wieliczka salt mines are known throughout the world, but not only thanks to the doctor’s discovery. The pride of the mine is the sculptures made of rock salt, carved by the hands of ordinary miners. The first sculptures appeared here in the seventeenth century. Having discovered salt in a new quality, the masters began to decorate each underground section they traversed with sculptural images, most often in memory of some legendary figure. The simple and austere chamber is dedicated to Copernicus. There are luxurious halls and a chapel. The salt in Wieliczka is gray in color, due to the admixture of sandstone, and this gives a peculiar color to the dimly lit underground halls. In one of them you can see the hero of an old miner’s legend - the “treasurer”. This is the good spirit of Wieliczka, protecting the miners at the mine face and guarding the underground wealth.

A favorite heroine of Polish folk tales is the good Queen Kinga. Such a queen really existed - Hungarian by birth, she came to Poland in the 13th century to marry the local king. A legend also connects it with the mines in Wieliczka. Leaving her homeland, the queen dropped a gold ring into a salt spring, and it allegedly returned to her in Poland: miners dug it out of the ground when the queen was passing through Wieliczka. A magnificent chapel is dedicated to Good Kinga, where not only sculptures - all objects are made of salt: the altar, railings, candlesticks, even pendants on chandeliers.

The Wieliczka Salt Mine has a long history: it is already ten centuries old, and you can learn about its entire thousand-year history in the museum, which is located here, underground. The mine was formed naturally - from a salt spring. As the source was drained, it turned into a well, and when it was drawn out, a wide tunnel remained, along which the first miners descended underground to the salt deposits. True, from this time only wooden tools have been preserved in the mine museum: the salt atmosphere is harmful to iron.

Not only Polish salt mines have an ancient history. A mine in the Austrian city of Hallstadt has been producing salt since the dawn of the Iron Age. It is located high in the Alps, 50 kilometers from Salzburg - the Salt City. Its products - large heart-shaped pieces of rock salt - could be found on European trade routes two and a half thousand years ago. The local deposit was formed 180 million years ago at the bottom of a shallow ancient sea. During the process of mountain building, the sea disappeared, and salt deposits rose to the surface through the crater of the volcano. The reservoir turned out to be so powerful that it has not been depleted to this day.

Another mine worthy of mention is located in France, in the forests at the foot of the Jura Mountains. These former mines in the city of Arc-et-Senan are a unique architectural monument. They were created in the 18th century according to the design of the utopian architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux. The architect set out to build an ideal city for the miners, but, alas, was unable to fulfill his dream. Utopian ideals were very expensive, and it was completely impossible to obtain funds for such an “absurd” idea as improving working conditions for workers. Therefore, little remains of the “city of dreams” in practice. Visitors enter the mine site through a symbolic grotto. All its buildings are grouped in the form of an oval around the majestic building where the board was located. On the sides are two factory buildings, and in the background are large dormitories for workers. There are green lawns between the houses. This is all that Ledoux managed to implement; the rest is preserved only in sketches. He dreamed of surrounding the mine with a green city, erecting a temple of Women's Glory, a Palace of Peace, Houses of Joy and much more. He even planned an unusual cemetery - in the form of a huge concave sphere, symbolizing infinity. During the Great French Revolution, Ledoux, who had previously enjoyed the patronage of Louis XVI, went to prison, although he escaped the guillotine. Until the end of his life, he continued to defend his projects, but never achieved anything.

14 thousand professions

The oceans contain billions and billions of tons of NaCl—4.5 million cubic miles to be exact. According to American scientists, this amount is enough to cover the United States with a layer more than a mile thick. Why mines? Why bury yourself in the ground when you can evaporate salt from sea water, and at no cost, using the energy of the sun? Indeed, this is an ancient method. It is still used now, but has a significant drawback - each ton of salt undergoes a five-year “aging” cycle until it is ready, moving from one settling tank to another. The salt dams, painted in all the colors of the rainbow - the result of various impurities and blooming algae - look especially beautiful from the air. And in one area on the coast of France, the “blooming” salt even smells faintly of violets. But no matter how fragrant the sea salt is, we have to admit that five years is too long, especially for our fast-moving time.

Now it’s time to remember about the nutritional function of salt - the one that is most familiar to us. We add it to food - the most common practice in our lives, but salt is also an excellent preservative, and canning food has always required huge quantities of salt. Note that the famous Hansa flourished thanks to the Baltic herring. The common salted herring successfully competed in European markets with such prestigious goods as Burgundy wines, English wool, Flemish linen and Russian furs.

This continued until the 16th century, when the salinity of the Baltic greatly decreased. The herring schools left the sea and took with them the prosperity of the Hansa. And the palm in European fishing was seized by Holland, which began fishing for “escaped” herring in the North Sea. Often Europeans went for fish far from their native shores. Portugal received exclusive rights to fish cod near Newfoundland in the sixteenth century. She has been enjoying her rights for the fourth century: during the fishing season there are many Portuguese schooners at the island piers. Their holds are filled with salt to preserve their catch, so they fully justify their nickname - “salty”.

Meat was also actively salted: corned beef - the classic food of sailors - was an indispensable companion of all great discoverers; without it, neither Columbus nor Magellan would have been able to carry out long expeditions.

Now only five percent of the world's annual salt production ends up in dinner salt shakers and pantries. The rest is consumed by industry - chemical, textile, leather, pharmaceutical. Sodium chloride or its derivatives are found in soaps, paints, cosmetics, glue, rocket fuel, and explosives. Salt is necessary in the production of fertilizers, pesticides, rubber and paper pulp. It cools nuclear reactors, bleaches paper, softens water. Among the five most important types of chemical raw materials, salt ranks first: it has 14 thousand different professions.

It would not be much of an exaggeration to say that salt is vital. But it can also kill - for example, vegetation along the roads, if snow cleared from the roads, previously liberally sprinkled with salt, is dumped on it. The idea of ​​salt as a poison existed already in ancient times. The Romans, having defeated Carthage and razed it to the ground, covered the ruins with salt. Apparently they were extremely angry with their opponents if they went to such expense. But the salt did not help this time: a century later the city was restored by Julius Caesar.

Salt fully justifies its bad reputation in today's Holland, more precisely in the northern, low-lying part of the country. The Dutch fenced themselves off from the sea with dams, but danger came from the other side. Salty groundwater, rising to the surface, poisons canals, destroys crops, and practical ways to combat this disaster have not yet been found.

Salt rightfully occupies a prominent place in folklore. At different times, among different peoples, she was believed to bestow courage, holiness, and wisdom on people.

The ancient Greeks and Romans, making sacrifices to the gods, salted them. Bedouin custom did not allow attacking a person if you had ever tasted his salt. Among the Slavic peoples, “bread and salt” is a sign of hospitality. This symbol was once a part of only wedding ceremonies; “bread and salt” was offered to the bride and groom: bread for health, salt for wealth.

There is no people who would not have created proverbs and sayings, phrases with the word “salt”. “Eat a peck of salt”, “pour salt into the wounds”, “annoy” someone - all these are well-known examples that do not require explanation. Salt is also found in professional phraseology. For example, in the vocabulary of American gold miners there was an expression “to salt a plot” - that is, before selling it, sprinkle it with gold sand in order to mislead the buyer. The expression remains to this day and means fraud during the purchase and sale.

Everyone knows that salt “brings misfortune”: they say, if you spill it, it will lead to a quarrel. If you know the history of salt, then there will be nothing mysterious left in this belief. In the old days, when salt was very expensive, wasting it could and did lead to quarrels.

Variations on the theme of spilled salt are found among many peoples, and all these signs can be explained. If a belief states that by spilling salt, you will bring upon yourself great misfortune in the near future, then this most likely means the following: in this country at that time, salt was considered a sacred product, and people were afraid of the wrath of the gods for neglecting it. Even the great Leonardo da Vinci paid tribute to this sign when creating “The Last Supper”: he placed an overturned salt shaker on the table in front of Judas, as if warning of betrayal.

So, salt is bad luck. But there was still a way to avert this misfortune. And this remedy is again salt. A pinch of it was thrown over the left shoulder, and, one could assume, the situation was saved. Where did this superstition come from? It all comes from the same place - from the great value of salt. It is clear to everyone that evil spirits bring misfortune and that it sits behind the left shoulder. If you throw a pinch of salt there, you can appease the evil villain and give her a kind of bribe.

No matter how much you talk about salt, there will still be three more boxes of stories left. One could recall the salt riots in Moscow, the history of the northern city of Solvychegodsk, the Ural Sol-Iletsk and Solikamsk, the Baikal Usolye-Sibirsky and many others directly related to the heroine of our story. But this is a topic for another story. After all, “under-salting is on the table, and over-salting is on the back” - this should be remembered here, as in any other matter.

MOSCOW, December 6 – RIA Novosti. The authors of cave paintings had a better understanding of the anatomy of four-legged animals than most modern artists, and made fewer mistakes in drawings of walking mammoths and other mammals, according to a paper published in the journal PLoS One.

It is believed that artists had only a superficial understanding of how animals use their limbs to move before 1887. This year, the famous American photographer Eadweard Muybridge published a multi-volume work on animal movement, where he systematized the data obtained from studying photographs of walking or running quadrupeds. This work became the starting point for many textbooks on art and biomechanics.

A team of scientists led by Gabor Horvath from Lorand Eötvos University in Budapest, Hungary, tested how well prehistoric painters understood the structure of the limbs of the animals they painted.

To do this, Horvath and his colleagues collected over a thousand photographs of cave paintings and modern drawings and analyzed them from the point of view of the mechanics of movement of four-legged mammals.

As scientists explain, almost all mammals, except primates, have developed a special movement strategy when walking. As a rule, the animals' legs touch and lift off the ground in strict order - first the left hind leg takes a step, then the left front, and only after that the right hind and right front. This sequence ensures maximum stability of the body during movement and prevents the quadruped from falling.

It turned out that the ancient artists had a fairly good understanding of the anatomy and mechanics of movement of the quadrupeds they painted. According to calculations by Horvath and his colleagues, cave painters correctly painted mammoths and other animals in 54% of cave paintings.

On the other hand, their “competitors”—the artists of the Middle Ages and Modern Times—performed much worse. According to scientists, errors were present in 83.5% of the images. After the release of Muybridge's multi-volume book, the number of errors dropped to 58%. However, this was not enough - modern artists still make 12% more mistakes than cave painters.

Scientists believe that such a difference in the skill of modern and prehistoric artists can be explained by the fact that the latter had to hunt the animals they painted.

Apparently, the ancient painters had to observe for a long time the manner of movement and anatomy of their future victims, knowledge of which they transferred to their drawings. Most modern artists are not burdened with such a need, which explains the large number of errors in their works.

Task 19. Workshop. Option #1

1. Ancient people had a very superficial understanding of the laws of the universe (1) and (2) when something inexplicable happened in nature (3) they were inclined to believe (4) that this was the result of the influence of supernatural forces on the world.
2. Forest rangers are called upon to prevent forest fires (1) but (2) if a large amount of dead wood accumulates in the forest (3) then the rangers themselves intentionally start small artificial fires (4) to reduce the likelihood of spontaneous fires in the future.
3. Our expedition began excavations (1) and (2) as soon as jewelry and kitchen utensils were discovered at a depth of several meters (3) we realized (4) that we had correctly identified the location of the ancient city.
4. This fall there are a lot of mushrooms (1) and (2) if you look closely at the cuttings (3) you will see several stumps (4) that are completely covered with honey mushrooms.
5. The boy knew (1) that there was a stern doorman at this entrance (2) and (3) that (4) if you start pestering passers-by right at the door (5) you could taste some strong blows.
6. The war was at the end (1) and (2) although there was almost a year left until its end (3) but we knew for sure (4) that victory would be ours.
7. Many people mistakenly think (1) that (2) if a person knows how to swim at least a little (3) then he has nothing to be afraid of (4) and he doesn’t care about any depths.
8. And although the tone and nature of the magazine's attacks were permeated with sincere indignation (1), it always seemed to me (2) that the authors of these articles were not saying what (3) they wanted to say (4) and that this is what caused their rage.
9. The pungent smell of nettle is mixed with the stuffy smell of lungworts (1) and (2) when you stroke the growing herbs with your hands (3) to feel their delicate velvety (4) your hands will smell of the cooling smell of mint.
10. Dasha noticed (1) that (2) when Roshchin appeared in the dining room after the bell (3) Katya did not immediately turn her head towards him (4) but hesitated for a minute.

Task 19. Workshop. Option No. 2

1. From Kuznetsky Most I stopped at a confectionery shop on Tverskaya (1) and (2) although I wanted to pretend (3) that I was mainly interested in newspapers in the confectionery shop (4) I could not resist a few sweet pies.
2. They started talking about the countess's health and about mutual acquaintances (1) and (2) when those ten minutes required by decency had passed (3) after which the guest can get up (4) Nikolai stood up and began to say goodbye.
3. It was hot (1) and (2) if a breeze suddenly came (3) and brought with it coolness (4) the trees nodded their branches gratefully.
4. Andrey picked up his backpack (1) and (2) when the train locomotive appeared (3) and the motley crowd of passengers began to move (4) headed towards the platform.
5. Rita was very upset about her father’s departure (1) but (2) when he promised to bring her a real big parrot from the voyage (3) like they had recently seen at the zoo (4) the girl quickly calmed down and stopped crying.
6. Ilya Andreevich understood (1) that (2) if the apples are not collected before the onset of cold weather (3) then the entire harvest will perish (4) but circumstances did not allow him to leave work and go to the village even for a few days.
7. Larisa never loved the sea (1) and (2) although doctors prescribed her a warm climate and salt water (3) she went to the mountains again (4) when the vacation began.
8. The library opened at eight in the morning (1) and (2) although there were never any visitors at such early hours (3) Nina Ivanovna never allowed herself to be late (4) and even arrived a little earlier.
9. A belated lightning flashed directly overhead (1) and (2) while it was shining (3) I saw (4) some white dot flickering on the shore.
10. The French ambassador who found himself in the Sheremetyevs' home theater wrote (1) that (2) when he saw the ballet (3) he was shocked by the talent (4) of the serfs.

Training tasks (A 25)

What numbers should be replaced by commas in the following sentences?

1. We know (1) that St. Petersburg is sometimes called Northern Palmyra, but (2) if you ask (3) what kind of Palmyra is this (4) with which St. Petersburg is compared (5) then (6) not everyone can answer this question.

2. The brother said with a laugh (1) that he (2) if he was lucky in something (3) then now he would not be lucky in anything else (4) so ​​(5) that it became worse (6) than before ( 7) how lucky.

3. A real poet cannot be judged by one poem (1) because (2) that (3) no matter how perfect it is (4) its meaning is fully revealed only in the context of that (5) book with internal unity (6) ) which contains all the poet’s lyrics.

4. The area (1) where we lived (2) was far from the river (3) and (4) to get to the beach (5) we had to trudge through the whole city (6) in a crowded tram.

5. I now understand (1) why (2) those (3) who knew how to tell stories well (4) never tried (5) to write down their stories.

6. While everyone was waiting (1) for the light to come on (2) or preparing a kerosene lamp (3), I lay down on the floor of my aunt’s kitchen (4) and began to read in the light (5) pouring from the screen of the kerosene lamp.

7. Sometimes the ball flew into the stands (1) and (2) when someone knocked it out of there (3) for some reason everyone started laughing.

8. Kornev suddenly turned (1) as if some force had pushed him (2) and (3) until Natasha left (4) tore off his hat (5) and bowed low several times (6) and quickly.

9. There are 11 time zones on the territory of Russia (1) and (2) when in the eastern regions of the country it is already 10 o’clock in the morning on the first of January (3) then in the western regions it is still 12 o’clock at night on the thirty-first of December (4) so ​​(5) it’s New Year in St. Petersburg they meet several hours later than Sakhalin.

10. When (1) what is called inspiration comes to me (3) and with extraordinary clarity I see the design of a new apparatus (4) and with extraordinary speed I make the necessary calculations (5) don’t I understand (6) that in I was possessed by some force (7) that did not belong to me.

The Tertiary period lasted extremely long compared to the entire history of man. It began about 70 million and ended about 1 million years ago.

The significance of the Tertiary period in the history of the Earth, especially its animal and plant world, is very great. During this time, great changes took place in the appearance of the globe. Vast mountainous areas, seas and bays were formed, and the outlines of entire continents changed. The mountains of the Caucasus, the Carpathians and the Alps arose, the central part of Asia rose, crowned by the mountain ranges of the Pamirs and the Himalayas.

At the same time, no less important changes took place in the flora and fauna. The oldest plants, including giant cycads, tree ferns and giant horsetails, have long given way to more advanced angiosperms. The time of dominance of mammals began. Finally, the most important event in the history of the development of life on earth took place, prepared by the entire progressive evolution of the animal and plant world as a whole: at the end of the Tertiary period, as a result of a process of long development, the closest ancestors of man appeared.

Materialistically minded naturalists, especially Charles Darwin, collected by the middle of the 19th century. enormous material that allows us to imagine in general terms the appearance of those ancient anthropoid (anthropoid) apes that were supposed to be the direct ancestors of humans. Scientists have identified the main features of the lifestyle of anthropoids and those biological prerequisites that, during the struggle for existence, prepared the transition from ape to man through natural selection.

In the 19th century in sediments dating back to the end of the Tertiary period, the remains of highly developed ancient monkeys were found, called dryopithecines (from the Greek words “dryo” - tree and “pithekos” - monkey, i.e. literally: “tree monkey”). Dryopithecus was the common ancestor of humans and the African apes of our time - gorillas and chimpanzees. The three molars of Darwin's Dryopithecus, discovered in 1902 in Australia, are so similar to humans that the close relationship of this ancient monkey with humans is beyond doubt. The discovery of the bones of Dryopithecus was a brilliant confirmation of Darwin's materialistic theory of the origin of man from the ancient ape, since for the first time it gave a concrete idea of ​​what these apes - the ancestors of man - should actually have looked like.

Subsequently, the number of similar finds continued to increase continuously. They more and more filled the gap that idealistic scientists tried to dig between man and the rest of the organic world, trying in every possible way to support the old biblical legend about the creation of man “in the image and likeness of God.” In northern India, in the tertiary layers of the Siwalik Hills, fragments of the jaw of Ramapithecus, an ancient anthropoid ape closer to humans than Dryopithecus, were discovered. She differed from all other apes in that her fangs did not protrude forward compared to the rest of her teeth. The appearance of Ramapithecus was, therefore, less animal-like, even more similar to that of a human. On the territory of South Africa in 1924, even more interesting remains of the new anthropoid Australopithecus were found for illuminating the question of human ancestors (The name of this creature comes from the words “australis” - southern and “pithecos” - monkey and can be translated as “southern monkey "). Subsequently, in 1935-1951, the remains of at least 30 individuals of this monkey were found. As it turned out, Australopithecus was closer in structure to humans than all other known to science, including living anthropoid apes. The pelvis and femurs of Australopithecus are close to human; Australopithecines primarily walked on two legs in an upright or nearly upright position.

The reason for the transition of Australopithecines to upright walking is explained by the general conditions of their life and struggle for existence. Over the previous hundreds of millennia, monkeys, unlike animals leading a terrestrial lifestyle, were four-armed creatures that widely used their limbs, primarily the front ones, specifically for grasping movements. But unlike other monkeys who lived in trees in the tropical forest, moving through the trees with the help of all four limbs and a tail, Australopithecus lived in areas that were already almost treeless and semi-desert in those distant times - in the west and center of South Africa. These conditions predetermined the transition from climbing trees to terrestrial life, to movement with the help of only the lower limbs.

This is indicated by the structure of the bones of the upper limbs of Australopithecus. Its thumb was opposed to the rest of the fingers and, unlike the thumb of modern anthropoids, was relatively large. Therefore, Australopithecines could easily perform with their own hands such grasping operations that are difficult or inaccessible for modern higher apes. The next important feature of Australopithecus, also inextricably linked with upright posture, are the structural features of the skull, indicating a more vertical head posture than other anthropoids. This is evident from the fact that on a significant part of the back of the Australopithecus’s head there were no longer strong neck muscles that were supposed to hold the head suspended when it was in a horizontal position. This positioning of the Australopithecus head was supposed to help in the future. more accelerated development of the brain and skull of human ancestors.

All these mutually related features, which developed over hundreds of thousands of years in conditions of terrestrial life, placed monkeys such as Australopithecus in a special position compared to other apes, and opened up completely new opportunities for them in the struggle for existence. The liberation of the forelimbs from supporting functions and the expansion of their grasping activity made it possible for the development of the activity of Australopithecus along a completely new path - along the path of an increasingly expanding and systematic use of various objects, primarily sticks and stones, as natural tools.

The enormous, fundamentally important significance of this circumstance for the further evolution of human ancestors is evidenced by studies of the remains of other animals found along with the bones of the australopithecines themselves. A study of the skulls of fossil baboons found in the same place where the bones of australopithecines were discovered showed that 50 of the 58 of these skulls had damage in the form of cracks as a result of high-power blows inflicted by some heavy objects. Bones of large ungulates were also found, the ends of these bones were broken and broken. In the “kitchen heaps” of australopithecines, fragments of turtle shells, lizard bones, and freshwater crab shells were found. It can be assumed, therefore, that in addition to collecting plant food and bird eggs, australopithecines hunted small animals, caught lizards, crabs, and sometimes attacked relatively large animals, using stones and sticks. The constant consumption of animal meat by these ancient monkeys, unlike those monkeys who lived in trees and ate mainly plant foods, contributed to their accelerated progressive development. Meat food allowed human ancestors to improve more quickly and completely from generation to generation, since it had a great influence on the development of their brain, supplying the brain with the substances necessary for its development in greater quantities than before, and in a more concentrated, easier to digest form. An increased supply of the brain with substances necessary for its growth was absolutely necessary. The struggle for existence was associated with the use of primary, unprocessed tools; it required continuous development and complication of conditioned reflex activity, growth of intelligence and resourcefulness.

Thus, the study of monkeys such as Australopithecus gives an idea of ​​a definite and very important link in the evolution of our ancestors and, in addition, quite clearly shows what the direct predecessors and ancestors of [Human] who had not yet been discovered due to the incompleteness of the geological record should have looked like. . In any case, these were very close in type to Australopithecus, the same highly developed apes. They should have had approximately the same physical structure as Australopithecus and lead a similar lifestyle. These monkeys apparently inhabited a vast territory in Africa and southern Asia. The area of ​​their settlement probably included the southern parts of the USSR, as evidenced by the recent discovery of the remains of an ape in Eastern Georgia. This species of ape was believed to be close to Dryopithecus and received the name “Udabnopithecus”, after the area of ​​Udabno, where the remains of this monkey were found.

As for other representatives of the genus of monkeys, these “younger brothers” of our distant ancestors fell hopelessly behind and remained aloof from the main road of evolutionary development that led from monkey to man. Some species of highly developed monkeys of the late Tertiary period became increasingly adapted to life in trees. They remained forever tied to the rainforest. The biological development of other monkeys in the struggle for existence took the path of increasing their body size. This is how monkeys of enormous size appeared - Meganthropus, Gigantopithecus, the remains of which were discovered in southern China, as well as monkeys like the modern gorilla. But their brute strength, which made it possible to successfully fight for life in the primeval forest, grew to the detriment of the higher sphere of life activity, to the detriment of the evolution of the brain.

The role of labor in separating man from the animal world

Monkeys such as Australopithecus, under the pressure of the struggle for existence, radically changed their way of life, moving from climbing trees in the rainforest to terrestrial life in search of food. At the same time, completely new possibilities for the development of the brain of these monkeys opened up, determined by the transition to an upright gait, as well as by the fact that the head gradually began to acquire a vertical position.

But the most significant, decisive thing did not lie in the purely biological prerequisites for the formation of man, brilliantly revealed by Darwin.

The founders of Marxism established the most important fact that all these biological prerequisites could be realized, could serve as the basis for the transition from the animal to the human state, not on their own, but only through labor. In his wonderful work “The Role of Labor in the Process of Transforming Ape into Man,” F. Engels wrote: “Labor is the source of all wealth, political economists say.

He really is such, along with nature, which provides him with the material that he transforms into wealth. But he is also infinitely more than that. It is the first fundamental condition of all human life, and to such an extent that we, in a certain sense, must say: labor created man himself.”

Late Tertiary monkeys such as Australopithecus did not yet know how to make artificial tools and used only ready-made ones available in nature - sticks and stones. But they, apparently, could no longer exist without the use of such tools, at least initially given by nature itself, because they did not have natural weapons that could withstand the natural weapons of their bloodthirsty opponents from the world of predatory animals - they had neither sharp claws, no teeth like those of predators.

But in the constant use, and then in the manufacture of tools (at first in the form of simple sticks and sharp stones), labor activity arose, at first still largely instinctive, then increasingly systematic and conscious. Labor activity was not individual, but collective, uniting and uniting the herd groups of our most distant ancestors with such strong and flexible bonds that no other animal, also leading a herd lifestyle, knows or can know.

In the process of consolidation, development and complication of this primary labor activity, the entire organism of our ancestors changed just as slowly, but uncontrollably and consistently. First of all, their hands developed more and more, and with them their brains. Higher nervous activity deepened and expanded.

At the initial stage of the formation of man, which includes the appearance of monkeys such as Australopithecus, only the prerequisites for the emergence of labor activity were, of course, maturing. But it is from here, from the remotest depths of millennia, that the road to labor in the real sense of the word begins, to the deliberate production of artificial tools by primitive people.

The significance of the second stage, associated with the manufacture of tools, is exceptionally great. With it begins the development of man in the proper sense of the word, and at the same time the history of society, the history of human thinking and speech. True, the first people to emerge from the animal kingdom were, according to Engels, just as unfree as the animals themselves. But every step in the development of labor was a step towards the liberation of man from complete subordination to the elemental forces of nature.

In labor, in obtaining a means of subsistence with the help of tools artificially produced by people, social ties arose and strengthened: a herd of monkeys that took sticks gradually and very slowly turned into a human collective - into a community of primitive people.

Pithecanthropus

A great achievement of advanced science at the end of the 19th century. There were finds of remains of even more highly organized creatures than Australopithecus. These remains date back entirely to the Quaternary period, which is divided into two stages: the Pleistocene, which lasted approximately until the 8th-7th millennia BC. e. and covering pre-glacial and glacial times, and the modern stage (Holocene). These discoveries completely confirmed the views of advanced naturalists of the 19th century. and F. Engels' theory about the origin of man.

The first to be found was the most ancient of all now known primitive man, Pithecanthropus (literally “ape-man”). The bones of Pithecanthropus were first discovered as a result of persistent searches that lasted from 1891 to 1894, by the Dutch doctor E. Dubois near Trinil, on the island of Java. Going to South Asia, Du Bois set out to find the remains of a form transitional from ape to man, since the existence of such a form followed from Darwin's evolutionary theory. Du Bois's discoveries more than justified his expectations and hopes. The skull cap and femur he found immediately showed the enormous significance of the Trinil finds, since one of the most important links in the chain of human development was discovered.

In 1936, the skull of a child Pithecanthropus was found in Mojokerto, also in Java. There were also bones of animals, including, it is believed, several more ancient ones, from the Lower Pleistocene time. In 1937, local residents brought the most complete skull cap of Pithecanthropus, with temporal bones, to the Bandung Geological Laboratory from Sangiran, and then other remains of Pithecanthropus were discovered in Sangiran, including two more skulls. In total, the remains of at least seven individuals of Pithecanthropus are currently known.

As its name itself shows, Pithecanthropus (ape-man) connects ancient highly developed apes such as Australopithecus with primitive man of a more developed type. This significance of Pithecanthropus is most fully evidenced by skulls from finds in Trinil and Sangiran. These skulls combine specific simian and purely human features. The first include such features as the peculiar shape of the skull, with a pronounced interception in the front of the forehead, near the eye sockets, and a massive, wide supraorbital ridge, traces of a longitudinal crest on the crown of the head, a low cranial vault, i.e., a sloping forehead, and great thickness cranial bones. But at the same time, Pithecanthropus was already a completely bipedal creature. The volume of his brain (850-950 cubic cm) was 1.5-2 times larger than that of modern apes. However, in terms of general proportions and the degree of development of individual lobes of the brain, Pithecanthropus was closer to anthropoids than to humans.

Judging by the remains of plants, including perfectly preserved leaves and even flowers, found in the sediments immediately overlying the Trinil bone layer, Pithecanthropus lived in a forest consisting of trees that still grow in Java, but in the somewhat cooler climate that exists now at an altitude of 600-1,200 m above sea level. Citrus and bay trees, fig trees and other subtropical plants grew in this forest. Along with Pithecanthropus, the Trinil forest was home to many different animals of the southern zone, whose bones survived in the same bone-bearing layer. During the excavations, most of the antlers of two species of antelope and deer were found, as well as teeth and fragments of skulls of wild pigs. There were also bones of bulls, rhinoceroses, monkeys, hippopotamuses, and tapirs. The remains of ancient elephants, close to the European ancient elephant, and predators - the leopard and the tiger - were also found.

All these animals, whose bones were found in Trinil deposits, are believed to have died as a result of a volcanic catastrophe. During the volcanic eruption, the wooded slopes of the hills were covered and burned with a mass of hot volcanic ash. Then rain streams carved deep channels in the loose ash layer and carried the bones of thousands of dead animals into the Trinil valley; This is how the bone-bearing layer of Trinil was formed. Something similar happened during the eruption of the Klut volcano in eastern Java in 1852. According to eyewitnesses, the large navigable river Brontas, which went around the volcano, swelled and rose high. Its water contained at least 25% volcanic ash mixed with pumice. The color of the water was completely black, and it carried such a mass of fallen timber, as well as the corpses of animals, including buffalos, monkeys, turtles, crocodiles, even tigers, that the bridge that stood on the river, the largest of all the bridges on the river, was broken and completely destroyed. island of Java.

Along with other inhabitants of the tropical forest, Pithecanthropus, whose bones were discovered in Trinil, apparently fell victim to a similar catastrophe in ancient times. These special conditions associated with the Trinil finds, as probably with the finds of Pithecanthropus bones elsewhere in Java, explain why there was no evidence of tool use by Pithecanthropus there.

If the bone remains of Pithecanthropus were found in temporary sites, then the presence of tools would be very likely. In any case, judging by the general level of the physical structure of Pithecanthropus, it should be assumed that he already made tools and constantly used them, including not only wooden, but also stone. Indirect evidence that Pithecanthropus made stone tools is provided by rough quartzite items discovered in the south of the island of Java, near Patjitan, along with the remains of the same animals, the bones of which were found at Trinil in the same layer of sediments as the bones of Pithecanthropus.

Thus, we can conclude that with Pithecanthropus and creatures close to him, the initial period in the formation of man ends. This was, as we have seen, that very distant time when our ancestors led a herd lifestyle and were just beginning to move from the use of ready-made objects of nature to the manufacture of tools.

The oldest stone tools

From approximately 700-600 to 40 millennium BC. e., according to the definition of archaeologists and geologists, lasted that ancient period of human history, which is called the lower (or early) Paleolithic. If the first tools were unprocessed random pieces of stone with sharp edges and simple sticks, then over time people began to deliberately make tools from stone, using the simplest technical methods of crushing and splitting stones. At the same time, presumably, they learned to sharpen their primitive wooden tools by burning the tips of sticks on fire or cutting them with sharp stones.

The oldest wooden products disappeared without a trace, and therefore science cannot say anything about them. It is also very difficult to distinguish flints split by natural forces (the so-called dolites) from those rough initial products that primitive man made at first, deliberately splitting flint nodules and cobblestones in order to obtain the cutting blade or point he needed. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt about that stone tools with a regular and stable shape were preceded by precisely such shapeless, rough products. This initial stage of the primary use of the cutting properties of stone, the stage immediately following the use of sticks and sharp stones in their finished natural form, must have covered a huge period of time, at least several hundred thousand years.

Following this, certain methods of using stone are developed. The first purposefully designed tools appeared, rather than randomly obtained pieces of stone with a cutting blade or point. Pithecanthropus obviously had to use such primary tools.

Lower Paleolithic: 1 - Oldowan pebble tool; 2 - Shellian chopper; 3 - Acheulean ax; 4 - Acheulean cleaver; 5 - Acheulean scraper; 6 - Acheulean tip; 7 - part of an Acheulean wooden spear.

In the territory of Western Punjab (modern Pakistan), in the ancient pebble deposits of the Soan River, for example, coarse massive flakes were found, undoubtedly made by human hand, called “early Soan”. Along with them, crude tools were discovered, made from whole pebbles, roughly hewn only at one end, while the rest of the surface of the stone was left in its natural form. Around the same time, one of the sites in China, near Beijing (Zhoukoudian), where the remains of animals dating back to the early phase of the Lower Pleistocene were found. There were also burnt bones and one double-sided pebble - “the oldest human product now known in China,” as the famous Chinese archaeologist Pei Wen-chung writes about it.

Among these ancient tools are also roughly processed pebbles found in different areas of the African continent: in Kenya, Uganda, Morocco,

Tanganyika and the Vaalya River Valley. They are almond-shaped. One end of them is chipped at the edges with several chips and turned into a rough massive point. In East Africa, such tools were found at the very base of ancient pebble deposits of the Zambezi River (Oldoway Gorge). Along with them, the bones of a primitive elephant were found - the ancestor of the ancient elephant, the Dinotherium elephant, the zebra, and the horned giraffe. In southern Africa, such tools were found in the gravel of ancient terraces of the Vaalya River. In the classical region of the ancient Paleolithic of Europe, in the valley of the Somme River, near the city of Amiens, in the pebble deposits of the second terrace, along with similar products, numerous flakes made by people were also found.

Slightly corrected along the blades with rough retouching (Retouching here is the processing of stone with small chips.) they form various types of primitive tools, similar to points, as well as scrapers with a convex and concave blade; the shape also depends entirely on the outlines of the source material, i.e., flakes. In the same pebble layers, bones of animals of the Middle Pleistocene time were found - the southern elephant, ancient elephant, Merck's rhinoceros, Etruscan rhinoceros, Stenon's horse (Named after the names of scientists who studied and identified the fossil remains of animal aegis.), saber-toothed tiger (mahairod).

Chellean period

The next stage in the development of the material culture of ancient people is called “Chellean” by archaeologists (after the village of Chelles in France, at the confluence of the Marne River with the Seine, where stone tools characteristic of this stage were first discovered). The most fully studied Chelles sites are in France, in the Somme Valley, near Amiens. They depict an already well-established technique for using flint, which is based on the technique of double-sided chipping of pebbles, thus obtaining a certain, strictly expedient shape of a massive tool, one end of which looked like a point. These were Shellian hand axes. The smooth part of the pebble left untreated at the end opposite the tip served as a natural handle, convenient for holding the weapon in the palm. The edges of the Chelle handaxes were formed by strong chips, applied alternately from one side to the other, and therefore, if you look at them from the side, they have a characteristic zigzag appearance.

The Chelles chopper, the only clearly defined form of large tools of that time, was undoubtedly universal in its purpose. The Shellian man could perform with it all the work that required a strong edge and massive cutting blades, and at the same time it was necessary to deliver strong blows - chop, cut, dig the ground, for example, when extracting edible plants or when extracting small animals from holes. It goes without saying that the ax could also serve as a weapon for defense or attack, especially when hunting animals. It is interesting that Shell axes are more conveniently grasped with the right hand and in such a way that the working part of the tool is not only its sharp end, but also the side longitudinal blade. Already in Chelles times, people worked primarily with their right hand.

However, the ax was not the only weapon of the Chelles man. In all the monuments of the Chelles period, along with axes, small tools are also found, although crude, but with a completely defined form: points, rough piercings, scraper-like tools. The ancient master inevitably received a large number of flakes as a result of chipping away the original nodule or pebble. Each large flake could be used as a primitive cutting tool in its finished form, even without further processing. Such sharp flakes could serve to dismember hunting prey, replacing the sharp claws and fangs that humans lacked. Even more important, apparently, was their role as tools for making tools and weapons from wood, at least in the form of simple sharpened clubs and sticks.

The area of ​​distribution of Paleolithic tools also includes the southern regions of Asia, far from the Mediterranean Sea. Hand axes of the Shellian appearance, found in India, especially in the Madras region, have long been known; They are also found on the island of Ceylon. Chelle handaxes have now been discovered in the north of Pakistan - in Punjab, as well as in Kashmir, Upper Burma, Malaya, and Java.

In the USSR, Chelles-type guns were discovered by Soviet researchers in Armenia. The territory of Armenia is a high plateau, almost completely covered with thick layers of Quaternary lavas, which covered the more ancient, early Quaternary relief of the country. Only a few areas of the Armenian plateau remained free from the influence of volcanic activity of the Quaternary period. The Greater Bogutlu, or Artin, hill is located in one of these areas, at the foot of which is the Satani-Dar hill, which has now gained worldwide fame in archaeology.

On the slopes of Satani-Dara, strewn with fragments of volcanic glass - obsidian, pieces of this stone, processed by man, were found. These are, first of all, rough choppers. Their shape is almond-shaped and heart-shaped, the blade is zigzag, the handle, or, as it is sometimes written, the “heel,” often occupies about two-thirds of the weapon. Along with hand axes, there are coarse disc-shaped chopping tools, massive points and primitive “drills”, that is, flakes or pieces of obsidian with a point.

Archaic tools of a similar type were discovered on the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus, especially in Yashtukh, near Sukhumi. Coarse flakes and items such as hand axes were also found on the Dniester, near Luka-Vrublevetskaya. Thus, the zone in which the development of mankind began covered a number of southern regions of the Soviet Union.

Judging by the distribution of Chelles tools, man already existed in many places at that time. In Europe, the most numerous traces of his activity are known, as mentioned above, in France. Chelles tools have also been found in large numbers in Spain. The abundance of Chelles finds in Africa confirms that this continent, especially the Upper Nile Valley and the desert areas adjacent to it, was one of those places where people already lived at that time.

The latest finds in North Africa, in Ternifin (Algeria), are also extremely valuable. Here, during the development of sandstone since the 70s of the last century, bones of animals of the Lower Quaternary period were often found: a large Atlantic elephant, including the entire skull of this elephant, bones of a hippopotamus, rhinoceros, zebra, giraffe, camel, large baboon, antelope, as well as saber-toothed tiger - mahairod. Along with these bones, there were also rough stone artifacts made of dense sandstone, limestone, and, less frequently, flint, similar to the Chelles ones, including axes, trihedral in cross-section, double-cut. In 1934, in Ternifin, under the same conditions, in the same layers, the remains of ancient people were discovered.

Thus, for the first time, it is established with complete clarity that the most ancient people, close in their level of development to Pithecanthropus and at the same time already having similarities with the more developed Sinanthropus man, as one would expect, made tools of the Chellean type and used them in their work. life with the axes of Chelles forms.

Human living conditions during the Chelles period

To imagine the conditions in which people of the Chellean period existed, one should pay attention first of all to the remains of animals discovered during excavations along with Chelles tools or in deposits in which such tools are found.

In France, these were southern animals of the distant pre-glacial past - a hippopotamus, an ancient elephant with straight tusks, Merck's rhinoceros, Stenon's horse, a giant beaver. Chelles man in France, in the area of ​​modern Paris, was thus surrounded by a nature similar to that in which Pithecanthropus lived in Java. The conditions in which Chelles tools are found, occurring in pebble deposits of ancient river terraces, show that man of that time lived in small groups and led a wandering life along the banks of rivers, lakes and in the depths of the subtropical forest. During rain or heat, a person’s shelter could be dense groups of trees or bushes, rock overhangs, and, at best, the most primitive huts-canopies made of hastily thrown branches. Clothing was absent or limited to capes made from raw animal skins.

Making fire was not known. The most that was possible for a person was to maintain for some time a fire that arose against his will.

Findings of large animal bones along with Chelles tools seem to indicate that people of this time sometimes killed giant pachyderms. But it is enough to look at primitive Chelles products to be convinced that such hunting could not yet be systematic. The main source of subsistence for the people of the Chellean time was probably hunting small animals. Only in rare cases were they able to take advantage of the inexperience of the cubs of large animals or kill a large animal. The collection of wild edible plants, which abound in the subtropics, as well as insects and lizards, should also have been of great importance.

But the main thing, from a historical point of view, was that the hunter and gatherer of the Chelles time was already firmly and irrevocably standing on the human path of development. From that time on, ancient humanity followed the path of progress, conditioned by the development and complication of collective labor activity - the force that separated man from the animal world and then raised him high above nature.

Acheulean period

The further development of labor is reflected in the improvement of stone tools and the technology for their production.

Wherever crude Chelles tools are found, they are replaced by new, more carefully and skillfully made ones - Acheulean ones (Named after the place of their first discovery in Saint-Achelles (a suburb of the city of Amiens in France).

The Acheulean ax differs from the Chellean ax primarily in its regular almond-shaped, triangular or oval shape. The surface of Acheulean handaxes is usually completely chipped, indicating a good knowledge of the properties of flint, and an incomparably more skillful hand of the master, which now delivered well-aimed and well-calculated blows. If the man of the Chellean time could only deliver strong and sharp blows, as a result of which deep grooves were left on the edges of the tool, then the Acheulean man learned to separate thin and flat flakes from the stone. The blade of the Acheulean axes was therefore no longer zigzag, but straight and sharp. The shapes of tools made from flakes are improving, and series of certain products are being consistently repeated: points, side scrapers, and so-called drills.

Acheulean ax

Changes in people's lifestyles were also important. In the Acheulean time, hunting camps appeared for the first time, and more or less permanent settlements appeared. A remarkable example of such settlements is the Early Acheulian finds in Torralba (Spain). The ancient settlement was located here at an altitude of 112 m above sea level, on the shore of an ancient lake. Elephants, rhinoceroses, bulls, deer and horses came to the lake to drink, its shores covered with lush vegetation, and became the prey of primitive people. Many bones of these animals survived at the site, including entire skulls of the southern elephant with tusks reaching 3 m in length, bones of the Etruscan rhinoceros and Merck's rhinoceros, and Stenon's horse. Along with animal bones, numerous handaxes made of quartzite, chalcedony and sandstone, as well as ordinary small items made from flakes, were found in the cultural layer.

Man of the Acheulian time was already widely mastering ready-made natural dwellings, which served as cave sheds and grottoes. Cave settlements of the Acheulean period are known in the Observatory Grotto, near Monaco, off the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, in the Umm Qatafa cave, southeast of Jerusalem, and especially in the Et-Tabun cave, on Mount Carmel, in the northern part of Palestine.

The Et-Tabun cave looked like a deep and high niche, open to the north and filled with loose cave sediments for more than 15 m. In its Late Acheulean layer, the remains of hearths were discovered in the form of dark brown or yellow spots of burnt earth. The processed flints were located unequally, mainly near the rocky wall of the grotto. In one place at the entrance to the grotto there was a cluster of tools, consisting of 29 specially hidden hand axes. In total, about 50 thousand items were found in the excavated areas of the grotto, and the overwhelming majority of them were ready-made, completely finished tools: choppers, scrapers, points, retouched flakes and blades. The most striking thing here is the multitude of hand axes, which indicates the importance of this ancient tool in the life of Paleolithic man. More than 8 thousand of them were found here.

Numerous traces of hearths, many superbly processed flint tools, including thousands of axes, clearly show that the Et-Tabun cave served for thousands of years as a dwelling for people of that time, who had already left far behind their predecessors and ancestors of the Chelles period, who wandered without permanent shelters in subtropical forests and jungles of the pre-glacial era. Fire has now become, together with tools, the basis of human existence and the support of the primitive community in its struggle with nature.

Acheulian man apparently used fire not only as a source of life-giving heat to warm his body during the cold season, but also as a means of fighting the predators that constantly threatened him.

Even weak old men, women and children, armed with a burning brand, were stronger than those animals that were the threat of the tropical forest.

Very early, presumably, people learned to fry animal meat, as well as edible roots and fruits, over fire. This not only improved food and expanded food resources, but also put an even sharper line between humans and animals, capable of consuming food only in its natural form, given by nature itself.

Sinanthropus

For a long time, however, the appearance of the Acheulean man himself was not known. The only European find (we mean the so-called Heidelberg jaw, found in 1907 near Heidelberg, in Germany, where its name comes from), dating back to approximately this period, was not enough to clarify the appearance of Acheulian man. Therefore, the remarkable finds of Chinese scientists in Zhoukoudian are of absolutely exceptional importance, filling the gap between the finds of the remains of the most ancient ape-man (Pithecanthropus), on the one hand, and the man of the next stage (Neanderthal) on the other.

Zhoukoudian is located 54 km southwest of Beijing, in the place where the Beijing plain turns into a mountainous region indented by valleys. During the systematic research undertaken by Chinese scientific institutions from 1934 to 1937, before the Japanese invasion of China, a huge amount of work was done to study the Zhoukoudian sediments with the remains of ancient fauna, representing the filling of ancient cracks and caves. In the People's Republic of China, research into the world-famous Zhoukoudian finds was resumed and again yielded rich results.

As a result of many years of work, it was established that in five places in Zhoukoudian, along with animal bones, there are traces of human activity.

The most extensive and richest in finds was location No. 1. Initially, it was a grandiose cave, possibly consisting of several caves arranged in tiers, but their vaults collapsed at the beginning of the Upper Pleistocene time. Primitive man lived in it for many tens or even hundreds of millennia, during which a thickness of sediments of more than 50 m accumulated. This was, according to some researchers, the Early Pleistopene time. According to others, it is more likely that the settlement of the main cave of Zhoukoudian by ancient people dates back to the Middle Pleistopenic time, that is, to the end of the second glaciation or to the interglacial stage separating the second glaciation from the next, third ice age in the Himalayas.

Contemporaries of the man of that time, called Sinanthropus by scientists, were two species of rhinoceroses, a saber-toothed tiger and other representatives of giant cats of the Middle Pleistopene period, two species of bears, a Chinese hyena, wild horses, wild boar, gazelles, deer, and buffalo. Sinanthropus hunted mainly deer. Of the animal hands found in the cave, 70% belong to deer. In addition, Sinanthropus ate edible plants, especially berries and fruits, including wild cherries. The most remarkable feature of the deposits at location No. 1 is the presence of thick layers of ash in it, indicating that Sinanthropus made extensive and daily use of fire, burning bushes in fires, although, perhaps, he did not yet know how to artificially produce fire.

The stone products found here are made mainly of sandstone, quartz, and also some quartzite, volcanic rocks, hornfels and flint. Sinanthropus usually used river pebbles rolled up by water as raw materials for the manufacture of his tools, roughly beating them along one edge. In this way, large chopping tools with a wide oval blade, like a chopping ax or a splitting axe, were made. Rough disc-shaped stone cores, from which flakes and blades were broken, were also common. Flakes and blades were used as cutting tools. A simple touch-up along the edge turned them into scraper-like tools or points.

Thus, although no undisputed hand axes similar to the Acheulean ones were found in the cave of Sinanthropus, Sinanthropus has already risen quite high in the general level of its cultural development. He used fire, had permanent habitats in caves, hunted such large animals as deer, gazelles and wild horses, and even hunted rhinoceroses. According to the general level of technological development, most authors attribute Sinanthropus to the early Chelles period, others even see in it features close to the later, Mousterian period. It would be more correct to attribute the finds in Zhoukoudian to the Acheulean time.

The relatively higher level of development of Sinanthropus is also evidenced by its bone remains. In Zhoukoudian, the remains of more than 40 Sinanthropus specimens, including fragments of skulls, are scattered at various levels of Site No. 1. Judging by the structure of the lower limbs, Sinanthropus was already a completely bipedal creature. The general progressive development of Sinanthropus found clear expression in the structure of its upper limbs, which developed more and more rapidly in the process of constant and systematic labor activity. His upper limbs were basically real human hands, formed as a result of labor and intended mainly for labor actions.

In the process of development of work in Sinanthropus, such a purely human trait as the predominant importance of the right hand took shape with increasing clarity. Unlike animals in which the forelimbs are developed strictly symmetrically, and even from Pithecanthropus, Sinanthropus's right hand bore an incomparably greater workload than the left. This is evident from the fact that the brain of Sinanthropus has an asymmetrical structure - one half of its brain is better developed than the other.

Settlement of people like Sinanthropus

Findings of the remains of creatures close to Sinanthropus in other countries are of great importance. These are the teeth found in 1948 in the north of Vietnam, similar to the teeth of Sinanthropus; two jaws close to that of Heidelberg Man, discovered in 1949 and 1950 in Swartkrans Cave, southern Africa; a molar found in the Transvaal in 1938, belonging to some representative of the most ancient people, close to Sinanthropus.

The humanoid creature, which belonged to the bones discovered in the Swartkrans cave, has features close to both Sinanthropus from China and the Heidelberg people from Europe. In 1935, near Lake Eyasi, in East Africa, the remains of skulls of creatures similar to Sinanthropus were discovered, which were called Afrikanthropus. No less interesting, as a new indication of the fact that the remains of Sinanthropus and creatures similar in appearance represent a certain stage of human evolution, is the discovery of one lower jaw in 1953 in Makapansgat (Central Transvaal, Africa). This jaw, discovered in a limestone quarry, belonged to an adult, apparently female, creature called “Australopithecus Prometheus,” and is very similar to the jaw of Sinanthropus from Zhoukoudian.

On the territory of the Soviet Union, Acheulean tools, indicating the presence of ancient people here at that time, have now been discovered in entire series in the North Caucasus, Abkhazia, Armenia, South and North Ossetia. Traces of human presence from this or a very close time have now been found in Turkmenistan - off the coast of the Caspian Sea, as well as on the heights of the Tien Shan - in Kyrgyzstan.

Thus, in the vast expanse of the southern regions of Asia, in the south of Europe, as well as in Africa up to its extreme southern regions in the Middle Pleistocene, before the great, or maximum, glaciation of Northern Europe and Northern Asia. There were already ancient people who, in terms of the degree of development of their tools, stood at the level of the Acheulean culture, and in physical appearance were close to Sinanthropus.

Throughout this entire territory, the progressive process of development of primitive humanity was steadily proceeding, based on the development of labor and the strengthening of social ties.

Strengthening community relations

The collectives of Sinanthropus and, obviously, their immediate predecessors were qualitatively different from those associations that are characteristic of animals; it was no longer a herd of monkeys, but a human association, although still very primitive.

We cannot clearly imagine the internal structure of these ancient associations, since ethnographers do not know anything similar to the state of people of such a distant time, and it is completely impossible that by some miracle, after 500-300 thousand years, a type of relationship has survived to our time, although would be vaguely similar to the structure of groups of the Chelles or Acheulian times. Even the most backward groups of humanity, who found themselves in the 18th-19th centuries. in the most remote places on the globe from the centers of advanced culture, like the Tasmanians, in their physical and mental development they did not differ from other modern people. The study of various remnants of ancient social relations, even among a number of tribes of our time, can give very little to the solution of this complex problem.

One thing is indisputable: the general level of development of primitive people in that period was extremely low. Throughout the vast territory of settlement of ancient humanity, there were separate small groups of people, separated from each other by vast spaces. Their technical experience and production skills grew extremely slowly. The tools were extremely crude and imperfect. Labor as a whole remained still undeveloped.

The direct legacy of the animal past was the forms of marital relations within these ancient communities. Judging by what we know about these relations in later human communities, where they were only partially regulated, in this ancient time marriage relations should have been of a disorderly nature (the stage of promiscuity), determined only by biological instinct.

But the most important thing was that within such a primitive group, horde or human primitive herd, the existence of which was determined by vital necessity, there was such a powerful force that did not and could not exist even in the most tightly knit herd of animals - collective labor activity in the fight against nature. In the process of development of labor activity within the primitive community, social ties grew and strengthened, curbing the former zoological instincts inherited by man from his animal ancestors. Over the course of thousands of years, the new, human, more and more took precedence over the old, bestial. This was expressed, in particular, in the restriction of sexual intercourse between parents and their children.

Judging by the structure of the brain, the earliest people, up to and including the Neanderthal man, were not yet able to control their behavior, in particular, to restrain impulses of rage to the same extent as it became possible for later people. It goes without saying that the further into the past, the more this trait of ancient people should have been sharper and more pronounced - in Sinanthropus it was stronger than in Neanderthal, and in Pithecanthropus it was stronger than in Sinanthropus. And, on the other hand, the further history went, the faster the evolution of man as a social being took place, the stronger the educational influence of the primitive community, the more completely the behavior of the individual was determined by social ties. In any case, it is clear that even the most primitive people never led the life of lonely “Robinsons”.

The history of ancient humanity does not know a fantastic period of individual hunting and searching for food. The strength of primitive people, their advantage over the most powerful and dangerous predators, lay in the fact that they did not act alone, but as a team, held together by labor activity and a joint struggle with nature.

Development of human higher nervous activity

The continuous upward development of the human mind is clearly evidenced by the consistent increase in the volume of the brain of our ancestors and the complication of its structure, especially the cortex and those parts of the brain with which higher functions of thinking are associated, which can be judged by the relief of the internal cavity of the skull, corresponding to the volume and shape of the brain .

It is characteristic that plaster casts of the internal cavity of the skull of Pithecanthropus clearly show, for example, that the frontal lobe of the brain was much weaker than in later people; the parietal part of the brain also had primitive structural features. Studying these features of the Pithecanthropus brain, researchers came to the conclusion that its centers of attention and memory were still sufficiently developed, and the ability to think remained rudimentary.

Beijing Sinanthropus skull

The progressive evolution of the brain of Sinanthropus found its expression, as we have already seen, in the asymmetry of its structure directly caused by the growth of labor. At the same time, it was expressed in other, no less significant changes in this body. If the brain of Pithecanthropus, having an average volume of about 870 cubic meters. cm, was significantly larger in size than the brain of Australopithecus and especially the apes of our time, then the brain of Sinanthropus increased to an even greater extent, reaching an average volume of 1040 cubic cm. and one of the skulls even had a capacity of 1,225 cubic meters. cm.

As a result of the general increase in the brain of Sinanthropus, his cranial vault also became higher than that of Pithecanthropus, which in turn, presumably, should have been inextricably linked with the progressive development of the structure of the skull as a whole, with the formation of new, human features and in the device of its front part. The head of Sinanthropus must therefore have had a much more human appearance than that of its predecessor, Pithecanthropus.

The development of the human psyche was inextricably linked with the evolution of his work activity. “That state,” says Marx, “when human labor has not yet freed itself from its primitive, instinctive form, belongs to the depths of primitive times.” That was the time of “the first animal-like instinctive forms of labor” (K, Marx, Capital, vol. I, Grspolitizdat, 1953, p. 185.). The further the development of collective activity of people went, the richer and more complete human thinking became, of course. Of particular importance in this regard is the continuous improvement of stone tools throughout the Lower Paleolithic. This includes, first of all, hand axes, which went through a number of stages in their evolution, starting from a simple pebble, only slightly chiseled at the end, to elegant, geometrically regular in outline, almond-shaped or triangular products of the end of the Acheulean time. Such a consistent evolution of the forms of ancient tools clearly indicates the progressive development of the mind of primitive man.

Before receiving a finished weapon, it was necessary to find a suitable material for this and correctly evaluate its technical qualities. Then followed a series of operations to preliminary free the stone from the crust, to initially shape the tool using a special chipper and, finally, to finalize it, maybe not even a chipper, but a more suitable tool such as a wooden hammer or squeezer.

I.P. Pavlov showed that in the development of higher nervous activity in animals and humans, two special types should be distinguished. One species is represented by the first signaling system, beyond which even the most highly organized animals did not rise. Animals are able to perceive only specific signals - irritations entering their brain from the outside world. The energy of external stimulation appears in the nervous signaling system only as a reflex, as a concrete sensory experience in the form of a sensation that reflects only the particular and specific qualities of certain objects of the external world. An animal feels, for example, heat or cold, the taste of a particular object and reacts accordingly with its behavior to these sensations in the struggle for existence.

Then, the most important fact is that the need for successful adaptation of animals in the struggle for existence to changing environmental conditions requires flexibility in the behavior of animals, that is, a rapid change of reactions. Such a rapid change of reactions is ensured by conditioned reflexes, which are not innate, but acquired. Conditioned reflexes allow animals to detect food based on random and temporary signs, which serve as conditioned signal stimuli for them to move towards the food source. If this were not the case, animals would not be able to search for food in a changing, complex environment and would die out. Conditioned reflexes save animals from danger that threatens them. I.P. Pavlov wrote that if an animal began to seek salvation only at the moment when it was touched by the fangs of a predator, it would inevitably die; but thanks to the development of conditioned reflexes, the animal, as soon as it hears sounds that are signals of the approach of a predator, hides from the enemy.

Already at this stage, therefore, quite complex forms of reflection of reality are developed, and a fairly flexible higher nervous activity of animals develops. However, the rudiments of knowledge at this stage are limited to a few. They do not rise above the ability to distinguish the qualities of individual objects.

Remaining generally at the level of the first signaling system, modern apes have in many ways gone further in its development than other animals. Their higher nervous activity is based on much more complex and clear conditioned reflexes. Accordingly, it is distinguished by the greatest mobility and flexibility. This development of the higher nervous activity of anthropoid monkeys is associated with their structure and is determined by the nature of the struggle for existence.

Possessing four arms, which other animals do not have, monkeys can easily perform actions that four-legged animals are incapable of, for example, using sticks and stones. Because of this, they enter into more complex relationships with the environment and can perform much more complex actions. In accordance with the complicated nature of the monkeys’ activities, the reflex processes in their brains also become more complex. Individual associations, individual sensations and impressions merge in anthropoids into more complex chains of associations than in other animals.

Thanks to their increased powers of observation, anthropoid monkeys are able to notice various more subtle phenomena and qualities of reality. I. P. Pavlov defined these behavioral traits of monkeys as rudimentary “thinking in action,” which is based on chains of associations. But with the end of the action, the “thought” process also ends, because in monkeys it is limited to a specific given situation, the framework of a given action. Unlike a person, a monkey is not able to break away from a given specific situation; it cannot itself show far-reaching initiative, or make even the simplest invention that requires generalization.

Thinking in its emergence is inextricably linked with the next, second stage in the development of higher nervous activity, which is characteristic only of humans and is fundamentally, qualitatively different from the higher nervous activity of not only lower animals, but also the most highly organized monkeys.

The emergence of the second signaling system was therefore a turning point, a transition from one quality to another, higher one. Such a transition, of course, was prepared by the long development of the first signaling system in the most highly organized animals. In order to move from the higher nervous activity of animals to human thinking, it was necessary to have the ability to respond not only to direct stimulation, but also to a special kind of sound stimulus - the word, which had grown in the process of labor activity, based on the practical experience of hundreds of generations. It is necessary that the sensation causing the reaction be replaced by a word - this is the second signaling system. The body now reacts not only to signals from direct external stimuli, but also to combinations of sounds, which at first were themselves a reaction to such stimuli. Combinations of sounds - words become “signals of signals”. They express common features and qualities presented in all the diversity of specific phenomena and sensations, and therefore the importance of speech for the development of human thinking is enormous.

Abstract thinking is expressed in words, in language, and it is formed in language; it cannot exist without it. It goes without saying that the second signaling system in humans does not at all cancel or exclude the first signaling system. On the contrary, the richness and complexity of the activity of the human brain is determined precisely by the fact that a person has both the first and second signaling systems, which are closely related to each other. It should be emphasized that, being a more advanced form of higher nervous activity, the second signaling system has significantly changed in man the work of his first signaling system. Thanks to the word, a person perceives and feels the world differently than an animal - he learns it in the process of his social experience. The process of cognition of reality is at a qualitatively different level in humans than in all other living beings.

Reflecting reality in logical forms of thinking, that is, ascending from sensations, impressions and concrete sensory representations - images to abstract general concepts, a person identifies what is essential in objects and phenomena. He reveals their real essence more fully and deeply, and learns the objective laws of the real world. The emergence of abstract thinking is a long and complex process. It became possible thanks to work activity, thanks to social life. A person cognizes reality in the course of its practical development, hourly, every minute, testing his ideas with practice. By preserving what is right and discarding what is wrong, he moves from ignorance to knowledge.

The most ancient people, of course, were still extremely far from any deep knowledge of reality, from power over nature. Armed only with sticks and crude stone tools, only partly separated from the animal kingdom, they stood at the very beginning of the great path of human progress.

Origin of speech

The development of thinking, therefore, cannot be considered independently of the development of speech. From the very beginning, language and thinking grew on the same labor soil and were inextricably linked and in interaction with each other. Language consolidates and registers the results of the work of thinking and makes possible the exchange of thoughts, without which social production and, consequently, the very existence of society is impossible.

From here it is clear what enormous importance language must have had in the history of ancient humanity, in the development of its thinking and culture.

In science, starting from the ancient world, many hypotheses have been put forward, a lot of effort has been spent to reveal the mystery of the origin of speech, to establish the time when it appeared and the reasons that brought it to life. But all attempts to explain the origin of speech were fruitless, because the creators of these theories did not have the correct dialectical-materialist understanding of society and the historical process and, therefore, could not understand the social role and significance of language.

The classics of Marxism were the first in the history of the development of science to show that language, as a means of communication between people, was born from the development of labor and society; at the same time, it was a condition and a powerful incentive for the further development of human labor activity and social relations.

It should be emphasized that already the most ancient speech was mainly sound; body movements and facial expressions only complemented sound speech, although the role of these auxiliary means of expressing thoughts and feelings could have been more significant among ancient people than at the present time.

As you know, monkeys are the noisiest inhabitants of the tropical forest. Sounds play a huge role in their lives. Loud screams help monkeys find each other in dense foliage; with shouts they warn each other about Danger and draw attention to food supplies. Various screams and noises accompany the movements of monkeys, their games, etc. Monkeys use sounds to express dissatisfaction, anger, fear, impatience, despair, and satisfaction.

But the sounds made by the most ancient people should have been fundamentally different from the sounds that the vocal apparatus of a monkey can make. The difference here, of course, was not simply and not only in the richness of certain modulations, not in the variety of sounds, but in their social role, in their social function in humans. The sounds of speech of the most ancient people were qualitatively different from the sounds of monkeys; they were in approximately the same relation to them as the tools used by primitive people are, at least the simplest, most primitive ones, to the sticks and stones that monkeys sometimes used.

No matter how primitive the sounds of ancient speech were, but, accompanying labor, flowing from labor activity and serving it, such sounds expressed a certain social content.

The speech sounds of ancient people differed, therefore, from the vocal sounds produced not only by monkeys, but by all animals without exception, including the most gifted in terms of sound. The abstracting abilities of the mind, the conscious nature of human activity, and not blind instinct, were expressed in the sounds of people's speech. Therefore, the sounds of speech did not remain in the same unchanged state among the most ancient people and their closest ancestors, as in animals. On the contrary, as labor developed and in connection with it, these sounds, and with them the corresponding organs, were improved, developed and enriched.

A comparative anatomical study of the larynx of higher apes and humans clearly shows how, in close connection with other changes in the human body, the vocal apparatus of our distant ancestors gradually changed:

Of decisive importance is, first of all, the fact that Pithecanthropus was already a bipedal creature, that his body had a straight, vertical position. Straightening the position of the head strengthened the connection between the larynx and the oral cavity and led to a change in the shape of the glottis. Fuzzy cries disappeared, and they were replaced by sounds with more subtle shades, significantly different from the sounds made by monkeys.

Judging by the nature of the lower jaw, Pithecanthropus or Sinanthropus did not yet have the ability to frequently change the articulation of speech. Their vocal apparatus was still too primitive and undeveloped for this. The larynx of primitive man was not yet able to pronounce any complex and clearly defined combinations of sounds. But the presence of a fairly differentiated relief in the region of the lower part of the left frontal gyrus of the brain, i.e., where the motor center of speech activity is located, allows us to assume that, for example, Sinanthropus was already explained by sound speech, although not completely articulate.

The speech of people throughout the Lower Paleolithic, of course, still consisted of very poorly differentiated sounds, supplemented as necessary by facial expressions and body movements. We cannot establish what exactly the primary sound complexes were, or how these ancient words with which speech began were formed. But the most important thing is clear - it was a powerful means of man’s further advancement along the path of strengthening social ties, born of labor.

The continuous progressive development of the rudiments of language was natural and inevitable because the development of labor increasingly strengthened the need for communication, consolidated social ties, and required the enrichment and improvement of language as the main means of communication between people.

Olduvai culture

Olduvai culture (Oldowan culture, pebble culture) is the most primitive culture of stone processing, when, to obtain a sharp edge, the stone was usually simply split in half, without additional modification. Arose about 2.7 million years ago, disappeared about 1 million years ago. The first pebble tools could have been made by Australopithecus, the last by Archanthropus.

The name of the culture is given by part of the East African Rift System - the Olduvai Gorge in the Serengeti, Tanzania, in the area of ​​the Ngorongoro Crater. Here, Louis Leakey and his wife Mary discovered the remains of multi-layered Paleolithic settlements. The lower layers (about 1.7 - 1.8 million years ago) gave the name to the Olduvai culture. The remains of Zinjanthropus and Prezinjanthropus were discovered here, and the upper layers were attributed to the Chelles and Acheulian cultures and contained the remains of Olduvai Pithecanthropus. And in 1961, Jonathan Leakey discovered a skilled man here.

Based on their findings, the Leakey family put forward a hypothesis of the African origin of man, with primary localization including in the Olduvai Gorge area.

Oldvoy

Abbeville culture

Abbeville culture (Chelles culture, early Acheulean culture) is an archaeological culture of the Early (Lower) Paleolithic.

The Abbeville culture arose approximately 1.5 million years ago, replacing the Olduvai culture, and ended approximately 300 thousand years ago, when it was replaced by the Acheulean culture. However, some archaeologists view the Abbeville culture not as the next, but as the initial phase of the Acheulean.

Due to the deterioration of the climate and the onset of glaciation, the carriers of the Abbeville culture were forced to leave Europe and concentrated in Africa. It was originally called the Chelles culture (this name is still often used in Russian literature) after the French city of Chelles near Paris. In the 1920-30s. It was found that the tools found near the city of Abbeville (in the Somme Valley, France) were more typical of the Early Paleolithic era than those found at the city of Chelles, and the Chelles culture was renamed the Abbeville culture. The tools were discovered in 1839-1848 by the Frenchman Jacques Boucher de Pert (1788-1868), director of the customs bureau of the city of Abbeville, who gave the name “stone ax” to the type of tools found. The tools he found are also called hand axes

The Abbeville hand ax has long been considered the main tool of the Lower Paleolithic. A typical ax is shaped like a human hand with closed fingers or a flattened pear. The manufacturing technology of a hand chopper is more complex than a chopper. To make them, large pieces of stones were used, broken off from large blocks of stone (boulders). The hand ax was made by double-sided upholstery. The stone was given the desired shape by striking it with another stone, which served as a hammer. To do this, the workpiece required about 30 blows (chips). The working part was the tapered end of the chopper; through targeted blows, this end acquired a sharp edge. The opposite end (“heel”) had a thickened and rounded shape; when using a chopper, this end was clamped in the palm of a person. The maximum dimensions of a hand chopper are 20 cm, weight 2.5 kg.

The purpose of hand axes is not completely clear: apparently, it was a hunting and kitchen tool. Hand axes were used to finish off hunted animals and split their bones to extract bone marrow, cut tendons to separate meat from bones, pierce and scrape the skin of animals, dig up the roots of edible plants and tubers, and cut branches from a tree trunk.

The Abbeville culture used fire and could build temporary shelters from stones and branches. 300 thousand years ago the total human population was about 1 million people.

Klektonian culture

Klektonian culture, English. Clactonian culture is one of the oldest archaeological cultures of the Lower Paleolithic, which existed in Western Europe about 550-475 thousand years ago. Most of the artefacts were found in the Thames basin.

The name comes from an eponymous site near the town of Clacton-on-Sea in Great Britain, Essex, where flint tools of this culture were found. Characteristic of this culture was that its representatives looked for flint “semi-finished products”, close in shape to finished tools, after which they “modified” them by breaking off small pieces. In this way they made scrapers, burins and other tools.

Apparently, Klektonian tools coexisted with Acheulian ones, which were made using identical technology, but which also included hand stone axes made by double-cutting flint.

In the 1990s. A number of researchers have come out with the point of view that the difference between the Clectonian and Acheulean industries was imaginary. In their opinion, the Klektonian industry coincided with the Acheulean one, and the absence of stone axes in the “Klektonian” finds was explained by the lack of need for them, or by the quality of local raw materials for the manufacture of Paleolithic tools.

However, in 2004, excavations at the Southfleet Road site in Kent uncovered a Pleistocene elephant butchered by primitive people. Numerous Klektonian tools were discovered near the elephant, among which, however, stone axes were still missing. Since a stone ax would have been a much more convenient tool for hunting elephants than a simple flake, the find is considered strong evidence that the Clectonian industry developed independently of the Acheulean one. The area where the elephant was found was abundant in flint raw materials of suitable quality for making stone axes, so it must be assumed that the people who hunted this elephant did not know the technology for making double-sided stone axes. Proponents of the hypothesis that the Clectonian industry existed independently of the Acheulian industry point out the lack of concrete evidence of a relationship between the two industries, and the origin of several tools that allegedly indicate such a relationship is controversial.

The traditional view that the Clectonian industry predates the Acheulean industry is now increasingly being challenged, as Acheulean tools have been discovered at Boxgrove in Sussex and High Lodge in Suffolk in strata associated with the English Stage, a glaciation that preceded the Hoxnian stage, and hence and Klektonian culture. But regardless of whether the Acheulean and Klektonian tools belonged to a common culture or to different ones, cultural contacts certainly existed between their creators.

Acheulean culture

Acheulean culture (1.6 million - 150 (-120) thousand years ago) - the culture of the Early Paleolithic. It arose on the basis of the Chelles or (if the Chelles are considered as the early period of the Acheulean) Olduvai culture. The first human culture to leave Africa. In Eurasia it is replaced by the Mousterian culture, and in Africa by the Sangoi culture.

It was distributed in Africa, Western Europe (Saint-Acheul in France and Torralba in Spain), the North Caucasus, Kazakhstan (Borykazgan and Tanirkazgan sites), the Middle East (Gesher Bnot Yaakov) and Korea (Chongonni site).

Mousterian time. Neanderthal man

The culture of the angelic type is being replaced by a new culture, Mousterian (Mousterian is a cave on the banks of the Veser River, in France, where a site of ancient people, the so-called Neanderthals, was found, more highly developed and having more developed technology than the most ancient people of the beginning of the Lower Paleolithic (including Sinanthropus ) (100-40 thousand years ago), which is sometimes distinguished from the Lower Paleolithic into a special “Middle Paleolithic”. The Mousterian culture is widespread not only where the Acheulean people lived, but also in places where the people of the Chelles and Acheulean times did not go. Such a widespread settlement of Mousterian man, although he now lived in much less favorable conditions than his predecessors, was possible because he was able to overcome the difficulties that arose thanks to the development of culture.

Highly developed monkeys - the closest ancestors of humans, who lived at the end of the Tertiary and at the beginning of the Quaternary period, as well as primitive people such as Sinanthropus and his immediate descendants everywhere existed in a relatively mild climate, in fairly favorable conditions for life. Over time, significant changes occurred in the natural environment that surrounded primitive people. Due to insufficiently clarified reasons, the action of which in one way or another covers the entire globe and all continents, periods of glacial advance begin, separated from each other by breaks (interglacial periods). The pattern of alternation of ice ages in the Alps is clearer and better developed, where it has a classical character in its clarity and completeness. The history of glaciation of the Alps and the adjacent part of Europe is divided into the stages of Günz, Mindel, Ries and Würm. They are separated by interglacial periods, respectively called Günz-Mindel, Mindel-Ries, Riess-Würm. The Würm stage is divided by Western researchers into four more stages. A number of scientists outline three stages of glaciation for the territory of the USSR: Likhvin, Dnieper (maximum), Valdai. The first of them corresponds, in general, to the Mindel period of the Alpine scheme, the second to the Rissky period, and the third to the Würm period.

The existence of Mousterian man in Europe and its neighboring countries dates back to the time of maximum glaciation in these countries, to the Rissky, or Dnieper, stage of the Ice Age. To visualize the scale of these events and their significance for the history of Paleolithic man, it should be borne in mind that continuous ice masses then stretched from the British Isles in the west and almost to the Ob in the east. The ice cover reached the areas where the cities of Molotov and Kirov are now located on the territory of the European part of our country, then dropped steeply to 50° N. sh., which it crossed in two places, jutting out to the south with wide protrusions-tongues, reaching the areas of the current cities of Stalingrad and Dnepropetrovsk, and then retreated somewhat to the north-west. The area of ​​the ice sheet exceeded 9.5 million square meters. km. Its thickness reached, according to geologists’ calculations, 2 km.

Slowly moving layers of ice leveled the hills, plowed through the valleys and destroyed all life in their path. The heat-loving vegetation of the past in the area immediately adjacent to the glaciers has disappeared. The corresponding animals also became extinct or moved south, to places more favorable for them. They are being replaced by a new animal world. Instead of the “southern elephant fauna,” a new, “mammoth fauna” is widely distributed, represented in addition to the mammoth by woolly rhinoceros, reindeer, arctic fox and other animals.

This process was lengthy and uneven in its pace in different areas. Heat-loving fauna continued to exist for a long time in southern Europe, in Italy and in those countries (for example, in Africa) where catastrophic changes in climate did not occur during the Quaternary period. In the south, then came the time of rains and downpours (pluvial period), when the present Sahara was covered with lakes, rivers and grassy plains, interspersed with dense groves of tropical trees.

Stone scraper

Neanderthal man

The man of the Mousterian time, in many of his characteristics, was already significantly higher than the most ancient people such as Pithecanthropus, Sinanthropus and Heidelberg man.

The remains of people from the Mousterian period were first discovered in Europe in 1856 in the Neanderthal Valley (Germany). Then new finds followed - in Spain, Belgium, Yugoslavia, France, Italy. On the territory of the USSR, the bones of people of the Mousterian period were discovered in the Kiik-Koba cave in Crimea, in the Teshik-Tash grotto (Uzbekistan). In other countries outside Europe, such remains were found in Palestine, Iraq, South Africa, and Java.

In their physical structure, the people of Mousterian times often show very significant differences from each other, which is why they are divided into separate groups. Excellent, for example, are the Palestinian finds, on the one hand, and the European ones (“Chapelles” (Named after a skeleton found in a cave near the village of La Chapelle-aux-Saints (France).)) on the other. European finds also differ from each other. But in general, they have so much in common that all these ancient people of the Mousterian time are usually designated by one common name - Neanderthals (based on the discovery in Neanderthal).

Judging by European finds, the Neanderthal was of a stocky build with a massive skeleton and powerful muscles. His height was small, not exceeding 155-165 cm for men. Since the Neanderthal’s body was relatively short, and the curves of the spine were weakly expressed, it is possible that he walked with a stoop and ran slightly bent to the ground. This gait is evidenced by the massive foot bones of a Neanderthal from the Kiik-Koba cave in Crimea. The Neanderthal hands found in the Kiik-Koba cave turned out to be paw-shaped. Features of the Neanderthal skull: low, sloping forehead, as if “running” back, strongly protruding brow ridges, merging into a continuous supraorbital ridge. The upper jaw protrudes strongly forward, the incisors are large, spade-shaped. There is no chin protrusion.

The brain of Neanderthals - and this is much more important than the external features of the skull relief - was already significantly developed. In addition to its significant volume (1300-1600 cc), its structure also shows signs of further evolution. On casts made from the internal cavity of Neanderthal skulls, the development of individual lobes of the brain associated with the location of centers of higher mental activity is clearly visible: the frontal lobes increase, the parietal lobe grows. According to the development of the brain, the cranial vault increases, the slope of the forehead decreases, the back of the head rounds, i.e., features are discovered that further connect the Neanderthal with modern man. Such features, as we will see later, were most clearly expressed in Neanderthals, whose remains were found in Palestine.

Mousterian stone tools

Neanderthal did not die out and did not retreat south before the cold breath of glaciers. On the contrary, he continued to continuously settle into new areas and further develop his culture, first of all, to improve tools and the technique of their manufacture. Ancient hand axes, made by chipping a boulder, are still occasionally found in the Mousterian layers, but the decisive importance belongs to tools made by the “cleaving technique” from plates and flakes chipped from a disc-shaped core (core). The chipping technique is being improved. If earlier the cores had irregular outlines, now they acquire definite and stable shapes in the form of disks, which ensured the correct outlines of the blades and flakes. In addition, during the Mousterian period, special attention was paid to the special preparation of the cores that were struck.

The outstanding Russian archaeologist V. A. Gorodtsov clearly demonstrated the importance of such an operation in a series of systematic experiments he carried out on the manufacture of flint tools. “Noticing that the long fragments that I broke off from the core were thicker at the bottom, and often broke before reaching the lower base of the core, I began to trim the lower ends of the cores, and the matter went well. A precisely directed blow to a certain point on the impact plane of the core is of decisive importance, but achieving such a blow in practice is often hampered by the imperfect forms of the chippers, the working ends of which are usually uneven and thick, often completely covering the intended impact points, due to which the fragments are knocked off either too thick or too thick. thin, small. In general, I still managed to overcome the difficulties encountered, and I could work all forms of tools found in Mousterian-type sites,” wrote V. A. Gorodov about his experiments.

Thus, the undercutting of cores, characteristic of the Mousterian time, was of great importance in improving the technique of flint splitting and provided the form of blanks - blades and flakes - necessary for the manufacture of Mousterian tools.

Neanderthal man also used the flint retouching technique more skillfully and confidently than his predecessors. He no longer follows the ready-made outlines of the flakes, but gives them a certain appropriate shape. A direct indication of the development of retouching techniques are the “anvils” that first appeared in Mousterian times - usually pieces of animal bones covered with gouges as a result of pressure on them from the sharp edge of flint products during processing. Such “anvils” were apparently used when applying subtle and careful retouching to the blades of tools, which became more and more widespread in Mousterian times.

The nature of the tools themselves changed significantly during the Mousterian period. The shapes of tools become not only more stable and defined, but also significantly more differentiated. Large, bilaterally processed points of triangular or almond-shaped shapes could serve as universal cutting tools, as well as daggers. Double-pointed tips could be attached to the end of a long wooden spear. The small plate-like points were undoubtedly only cutting and piercing instruments. Among them, the most notable are the points, the convex edge of which is processed in such a way that fingers could rest against it when cutting. The scrapers of the Mousterian period also differ in their form and character; some of them served as scrapers, others as knives and scrapers themselves for processing hides.

At the end of the Mousterian time, new forms of tools began to spread in the form of rough chisels, apparently intended for processing wood, and later bone.

The improvement of stone processing techniques and the complication of a set of stone tools clearly reflect, thus, the continuous enrichment of the labor skills and production experience of the people of the Mousterian time, which underlay the progressive development of their entire culture.

Artificial fire production. Economic life

The fact that the people of Mousterian times in new, much more severe conditions spread even wider than before is obviously explained by their new most important achievement - the invention of methods for artificially producing fire. Sinanthropus already knew how to systematically use fire, as mentioned earlier, and this was a great achievement of ancient man; but fire received by man by accident was used. During his work, a person noticed that sparks appear from the impact of stone on stone, and heat is released when drilling wood; this is what he used. It is impossible to say when and where exactly man first developed methods of artificially producing fire, but Neanderthals, apparently, had already firmly mastered them in various areas of the globe.

The progressive development of man of the Mousterian time is found primarily in the economic field. Hunting was once one of the most important sources of existence for ancient people. Now it rises to the level of the leading occupation, leaving behind gathering, which should have been much more important among the most ancient people, the predecessors of the Neanderthals due to the imperfection of their hunting tools.

Of particular interest for understanding the economic life of Mousterian man is the fact that in a number of cases a certain specialization of ancient hunters is observed: they hunt primarily for certain animals, which is, of course, due to nothing more than natural conditions and the associated abundance certain types of animals.

At the Ilskaya site (North Caucasus), bison bones accounted for at least 60% of the mass of animal bones. It is believed that bones belonging to at least 2 thousand bison can be found here. In the highlands of the Alps, they mainly hunted such a predator, distinguished by its strength, enormous size and fury, as the cave bear. Equally revealing are the findings in the Teshik-Tash grotto in Southwestern Uzbekistan. Judging by the tubular bones of animals, broken and split to extract the brain, often even finely crushed, discovered during excavations in huge quantities, the people from Teshik-Tash were skilled and dexterous hunters. The most important source of livelihood for the inhabitants of the grotto was hunting for mountain goats, a difficult, complex and dangerous task even for modern man, who is immeasurably better armed.

The main weapon of Neanderthal man was apparently a spear. Thus, in the La Quina cave, in France, animal bones with sharp fragments of flint embedded in them were discovered. Such wounds were apparently inflicted by a spear with a flint tip. On one of the Neanderthal bones found in the Es-Skhul cave (Palestine), traces of a wound inflicted by a wooden spear without a stone tip were found. As you can see, the weapon pierced the victim’s thigh with such terrible force that it pierced through the head of the femur and came out with its end into the pelvic cavity.

The weapons of the Mousterian hunters were still very primitive. The decisive importance should have been not individual, but collective hunting techniques that united all members of each Mousterian group. Such round-up hunts were especially widespread in rugged areas, where animals were driven to cliffs, falling from which they were killed or injured. Such, for example, is the area in the vicinity of the Teshik-Tash grotto, whose inhabitants hunted mountain goats.

The improvement of technology and the development of hunting, naturally, should have contributed to the further improvement of general living conditions, including the more or less long-term settlement of groups of people in places convenient for hunting and rich in game.

Consolidating the achievements of his predecessors, Mousterian man not only widely developed caves as natural dwellings with ready-made walls and vaults, but constantly created open-air settlements for more or less long periods. Where there were no caves, in the harsh conditions of that time, the simplest shelters from rain, wind and cold were undoubtedly built in the form of barriers or canopies.

The beginnings of the tribal system

Joint labor activity, a common home, a common fire that warmed its inhabitants - all this, with natural necessity, rallied and united people. The strengthening of social ties caused by the need to unite people to fight nature is clearly evidenced by the entire situation of the Mousterian settlements, their entire culture, all traces of their activity, including even such seemingly ordinary and inexpressive finds from this side as “kitchen waste” "in the form of thousands or even tens of thousands of animal bones found in the cave dwellings of Neanderthals and at their open-air sites. They show how man gradually overcame the animal egoism inherited from the prehuman state.

Rock painting

Unlike animals, man no longer cared only about himself and not only about his own children, but also about the entire community. Instead of eating the prey at the hunting site, Mousterian hunters carried it to a cave, where women, children and the elderly remained busy with housework around a blazing fire. The custom of collective distribution of food and joint consumption, characteristic of the primitive communal system at all its stages, is clearly evidenced by all the ethnographic material known to science.

It is very likely that it was at this time that the transition to a new form of social life begins. The first rudiments of the most ancient form of clan society, the maternal clan community, that is, a collective connected by ties of kinship, emerge. Due to the form of marriage relations that existed at that time, only the mother of the child was indisputably known, which, along with the active role of the woman in economic life (gathering, participation in hunting) or her role as the keeper of the fire, determined. her high social position.

By this time, the forms of marriage relations had already gone a long way in development, although it is difficult to say with certainty what level they had reached. Initially, as noted earlier, relations between the sexes, apparently, were of a nature unregulated by social rules. The further development of the family followed the line of narrowing the circle of persons participating in marital communication, first of all by limiting marital communication between the generation of parents and children, then between half-brothers and sisters, etc.

Development of Neanderthal thinking

There can be no doubt that the progressive development of labor and society caused corresponding progressive changes in the consciousness and thinking of primitive man. There are idealistic theories that try to prove that the thinking of primitive man was supposedly completely irrational and mystical, that our distant ancestors supposedly had completely false, fundamentally incorrect, completely distorted and fantastic ideas about reality.

However, it is enough to become familiar with the actual process of development of primitive man and his culture to be convinced of the opposite. It is absolutely clear that if the content of the consciousness of our primitive ancestors were not real ideas that correspond to objective reality and are fundamentally true reflections of the laws and phenomena of the real world, but only some mystical ideas and groundless fantasy, then humanity would not. could continue to develop successfully. If the consciousness of primitive man to some extent did not reflect objective reality in its present and true form, he would not be able to resist the forces of nature and would ultimately become their victim. Having so-called mystical thinking, man would not be able to make his tools and improve them.

The path from ignorance to knowledge, from vague, unclear, and false ideas about reality to more accurate and true ideas was, of course, extremely slow and difficult. But precisely because this positive knowledge, which lay at the basis of man’s conscious activity and at the basis of his thinking, consistently grew and became enriched, man went forward and forward.

The development of the consciousness of primitive man was based on the consistent growth of his work activity, his daily work practice, as the only source of knowledge and a criterion for the reliability of ideas about the world around him.

The development of the mind of Neanderthal man is particularly clearly reflected in the further improvement of his tools. The more complex mental activity of Mousterian man compared to his primitive ancestors is evidenced by the presence of skillfully executed colorful spots and stripes at the end of Mousterian time. These are rather wide stripes of red paint, applied by the hand of a Neanderthal man across a small slab of stone discovered during excavations of a Mousterian settlement in the La Ferrassie cave (France).

Neanderthal man could not yet draw or sculpt the figure of an animal. However, already at the end of the Mousterian period, the first attempts were noticeable to deliberately change the shape of the stone, not only in order to make tools out of it. In the Mousterian deposits, slabs of stone with skillfully carved indentations, the so-called “cup stones,” were discovered. On the slab from La Ferrassie, the cup recesses were located not individually, but in a compact group and, moreover, in such a way that some kind of connection is revealed in their placement.

Of course, it would be wrong to overestimate and exaggerate the degree of development of abstract thinking in Neanderthals. It should be emphasized even more sharply that primitive man was not at all free from false, incorrect ideas about himself and about the world around him, since he took only the first steps from ignorance to knowledge, since every hour, every minute he felt his weakness in the fight against nature and dependence on its elements.

Early burials

Many idealistically-minded philosophers and historians strive to present religion as the highest manifestation of the human spirit, the ideological achievement of humanity, the “crown of its development.” From this point of view, religion could not have arisen in distant primitive times; it should have appeared only in a fully formed and highly developed person, “completing” his achievements in the field of spiritual culture.

Other reactionary philosophers and idealist historians are trying, on the contrary, to prove the “eternity” of religion. They argue that already at the very initial stages of his ancient development, man not only had a religion, but also received, as if by “divine revelation,” faith in a single god - the creator of the universe and the source of all goods on earth. In fact, such religious ideas arise only during the long development of human society, in a class society, and the initial religious beliefs that arise among primitive man are extremely primitive.

Both of these reactionary, idealistic points of view are completely refuted by the entire course of the primitive history of mankind. They are exposed by facts, archaeological data, revealing the actual time and specific conditions in which the beginnings of primitive religious beliefs arose.

In fact, religion arose as a result of the oppression of primitive man by the forces of nature, as a fantastic reflection of this weakness and humiliation.

Data on the most ancient burials appearing in Mousterian times provide factual material about the emergence of the beginnings of these primitive religious fantastic beliefs.

Researchers have discovered more than 20 cases of burials of Neanderthal bodies. The most remarkable of them are noted in Spi (Belgium, near Namur); in the Boufia cave, near the village of La Chapelle aux Saintes, Yves, La Ferrassie (France), where the remains of 6 skeletons were found; on Mount Carmel, in the caves of Et-Tabun and Es-Skhul (Palestine), where the remains of 12 skeletons were discovered. In the USSR, Mousterian burials were found in the Crimea, in the Kiik-Koba cave, and in Central Asia, in the Teshik-Tash grotto.

In all these cases, the bodies were deliberately buried in the ground. The burial place was caves, which were the dwellings of people, but burials outside caves are not excluded. In some caves, burials were carried out more than once. Sometimes the corpses of the dead were placed, perhaps in ready-made recesses, in “sleeping” pits. In other cases, special holes were dug for this purpose, and even with considerable effort.

Both the corpses of adult men and women and the corpses of children were buried. In some cases, burials of two skeletons of adults located nearby, as well as the skeletons of a child and a woman are observed (Kiik-Koba cave, in Crimea). The specific position of the skeletons in the graves is also established:

they usually lie with their legs bent, that is, in a slightly crouched position. In some cases, both arms or one of them are bent at the elbow, and the hands are near the face. This pose resembles the position of a sleeping person.

Thus, in the middle and at the end of the Mousterian time, to which the listed burials belong, for the first time a certain and completely new attitude towards the dead appeared, expressed in intentional and already quite complex in nature actions - in the burials of corpses. The basis of this attitude was, undoubtedly, concern for a fellow member of one’s collective, arising from the entire life structure of the primitive community, from all the unwritten laws and norms of behavior of that time. This was an indisputable expression of that feeling of inextricable blood ties between relatives, which runs like a red thread through the entire primitive era of human history.

But this concern for the deceased member of the primitive community was based here on false ideas about the person himself, about life and death. These, presumably, were the first beginnings of fantastic, fundamentally incorrect ideas, on the basis of which ideas about the “soul” and the “afterlife” that continues after death, which are one of the most important sources, and then an indispensable component of each, subsequently develop. religion.

It should be emphasized that before the Mousterian time there are no traces of intentional human burial. In earlier times, which include the skeletal remains of Pithecanthropus, Sinanthropus and ancient people close to the latter, there was no concern for the dead. From this it is clear that there can be no talk of any “primordial religion”; the first traces of the intentional burial of human corpses appear only 500-600 thousand years after the beginning of the emergence of man.

Religious beliefs are not “inherent in human nature,” not “inherent in human thinking,” as idealists of various persuasions claim. Religious beliefs arise under certain social conditions, change, and then disappear depending on changes in these conditions.

Mousterian time was a natural transitional stage from the most ancient period of human history to a new period, to the time of primitive matriarchal communities. This was a period when there was a process of gradual accumulation of new elements in people’s lives, which then gave its results in a significant and even unexpected at first glance, but quite natural from the point of view of a materialistic understanding of history, rise of culture in the subsequent Upper Paleolithic time.

According to scientific data, primitive people appeared about 4 million years ago. Over the course of many millennia, they evolved, that is, they improved not only in terms of development but also in appearance. Historical anthropology divides primitive people into several species, which successively replaced each other. What are the anatomical features of each type of primitive people, and in what period of time did they exist? Read about all this below.

Primitive people - who are they?

The most ancient people lived in Africa more than 2 million years ago. This is confirmed by numerous archaeological finds. However, it is known for certain that for the first time humanoid creatures moving confidently on their hind limbs (and this is the most important feature in defining a primitive man) appeared much earlier - 4 million years ago. This characteristic of ancient people, such as upright walking, was first identified in creatures to which scientists gave the name “australopithecus.”

As a result of centuries of evolution, they were replaced by the more advanced Homo habls, also known as “homo habilis.” He was replaced by humanoid creatures, whose representatives were called Homo erectus, which translated from Latin means “upright man.” And only after almost one and a half million years a more perfect type of primitive man appeared, which most closely resembled the modern intelligent population of the Earth - Homo sapiens or “reasonable man.” As can be seen from all of the above, primitive people slowly, but at the same time very effectively developed, mastering new opportunities. Let us consider in more detail what all these human ancestors were, what their activities were and what they looked like.

Australopithecus: external features and lifestyle

Historical anthropology classifies Australopithecus as one of the very first apes to walk on their hind limbs. The origin of this kind of primitive people began in East Africa more than 4 million years ago. For almost 2 million years, these creatures spread across the continent. The oldest man, whose height averaged 135 cm, weighed no more than 55 kg. Unlike monkeys, australopithecines had more pronounced sexual dimorphism, but the structure of the canines in male and female individuals was almost the same. The skull of this species was relatively small and had a volume of no more than 600 cm3. The main activity of Australopithecus was practically no different from that practiced by modern apes, and boiled down to obtaining food and protecting against natural enemies.

A skilled person: features of anatomy and lifestyle

(translated from Latin as “skillful man”) appeared as a separate independent species of anthropoids 2 million years ago on the African continent. This ancient man, whose height often reached 160 cm, had a more developed brain than that of Australopithecus - about 700 cm 3. The teeth and fingers of the upper limbs of Homo habilis were almost completely similar to those of humans, but the large brow ridges and jaws made it look like monkeys. In addition to gathering, a skilled person hunted using stone blocks, and knew how to use processed tracing paper to cut up animal carcasses. This suggests that Homo habilis is the first humanoid creature with labor skills.

Homo erectus: appearance

The anatomical characteristic of the ancient humans known as Homo erectus was a marked increase in the volume of the skull, which allowed scientists to claim that their brains were comparable in size to the brains of modern humans. and the jaws of Homo habilis remained massive, but were not as pronounced as those of their predecessors. The physique was almost the same as that of a modern person. Judging by archaeological finds, Homo erectus led and knew how to make fire. Representatives of this species lived in fairly large groups in caves. The main occupation of skilled man was gathering (mainly for women and children), hunting and fishing, and making clothes. Homo erectus was one of the first to realize the need to create food reserves.

appearance and lifestyle

Neanderthals appeared much later than their predecessors - about 250 thousand years ago. What was this ancient man like? His height reached 170 cm, and his skull volume was 1200 cm 3. In addition to Africa and Asia, these human ancestors also settled in Europe. The maximum number of Neanderthals in one group reached 100 people. Unlike their predecessors, they had rudimentary forms of speech, which allowed their fellow tribesmen to exchange information and interact more harmoniously with each other. The main occupation of this was hunting. Their success in obtaining food was ensured by a variety of tools: spears, long pointed fragments of stones that were used as knives, and traps dug in the ground with stakes. Neanderthals used the resulting materials (hides, skins) to make clothing and shoes.

Cro-Magnons: the final stage of the evolution of primitive man

Cro-Magnons or (Homo Sapiens) are the last ancient man known to science, whose height already reached 170-190 cm. The external resemblance of this species of primitive people to monkeys was almost imperceptible, since the brow ridges were reduced, and the lower jaw no longer protruded forward. Cro-Magnons made tools not only from stone, but also from wood and bone. In addition to hunting, these human ancestors were engaged in agriculture and the initial forms of animal husbandry (tamed wild animals).

The level of thinking of the Cro-Magnons was significantly higher than their predecessors. This allowed them to create cohesive social groups. The herd principle of existence was replaced by the tribal system and the creation of the rudiments of socio-economic laws.