The origin of man and the stage of anthropogenesis

The origin of man and the main stagesAnthropogenesis has been the subject of controversy for many centuries. Among all the theories of the origin of the rational man, the most substantiated and most developed to date is Darwin's theory, which has already been "superstructured" with new facts and statements.

It's no secret, and Darwin emphasizes thatthe initial stages of anthropogenesis, biological factors played a leading role in the life of man, the formation of his habits, attitudes toward the world around him. In the future, social factors begin to acquire increasing importance, therefore the main stages of anthropogenesis can not be considered uniform and characterized only by a temporary interval. The most important thing at every stage is qualitative changes.

Stages of anthropogenesis had their own driving forces,and at the initial stages, as we have already said, the biological component was the vanguard, and then the social one. So, biological factors include: struggle for survival, natural selection, mutational processes, combinative variability, gene drift, isolation, gene flow, population waves. The social factors of evolution include labor, the social way of life, articulate speech.

There are three main stages of anthropogenesis:

1. the oldest people (archanthropes). Archanthropines appeared about one million years ago. Outwardly, the archanthropists were remotely similar to the modern man, but they were distinguished by a powerful superciliary arched, prominent chin, low and flattened forehead, protruding occiput. The volume of the brain was from seven hundred and fifty to nine hundred cubic centimeters, and its structure was more primitive than in later forms. The archanthropists engaged in hunting, lived in caves and used fire.
2. ancient people (paleanthropines). Appeared about two hundred thousand years ago. Externally paleanthropines had almost the same signs as archanthropines, however, the brain volume increased almost twofold, and the musculature became more developed. Paleanthropines had an attempt to articulate speech. If we compare in general the physical development of the archanthropes and paleanthropines, the latter were considerably inferior in physical terms.
3. modern people (neanthropines). They had high growth, the brain volume increased, the shape of the skull bones changed. They were engaged in hunting and gathering, could transmit to each other primitive sounds. They built a house, created the first rock paintings, knew how to sew clothes.

The first two stages of anthropogenesis werenatural selection, because it gave an opportunity to survive to people with pronounced social qualities. At the neanthropic stage, a person learned to use fire, build artificial shelter, and make primitive clothes. As a result of such transformations, the degree of dependence of a person on external conditions has significantly decreased. Further, social factors are leading, which are gaining more turns. In the progress of humanity, the laws of social existence began to play a leading guiding role. Qualitatively new stages of anthropogenesis are the main difference of human development. Later such changes led to the emergence of nationalities - the territorial, linguistic, economic and cultural community of people that developed in the process of historical development. A higher level is a nation - a stable community of people, which has a common economic development, territory, speech, mental characteristics that manifest themselves in the culture and way of life of the people.

The stages of human anthropogenesis are a long onea difficult path to the formation of a reasonable person with social skills, a high level of psycho-emotional actions. To date, not all the questions of anthropogenesis have been studied, many of them are a mystery and are waiting for their disclosure.