Interesting information about the origin of man. Human Origins

The Theical Hypothesis of the Origin of Man (God's Creation)

Until the 20th century, the theistic anthropological concept dominated European thought, according to which the world appeared as a result of an act of divine creation according to the principle: "And God said: let it be ... and it became ...". The same applies to the act of creation of man. The Bible says: “And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness... And God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; He created male and female” (Genesis 1:26-27). According to this concept, the world has no development in history. Past and future, exactly the same as the present. This fully applies to humans as well. The world came into being because God commanded it. That is the only reason for its creation. Thus, the above concept lacks the main thing that makes it scientific - an explanation of the natural causes and patterns of the appearance and development of the world and man. In addition, one can ask a question (it cannot be ruled out that it is blasphemous) - who created God?, and who created Him Who created God? and so on ad infinitum.

Evolutionary concepts of the origin of man

Intensive scientific understanding of the problem of anthropogenesis began in the 19th century, and the main achievement in this area is associated with the establishment of evolutionary theory. In 1871, in his book The Descent of Man and Sexual Selection, Charles Darwin suggested an animal connection between man and higher primates. Somewhat later, his devoted supporter and propagandist German biologist Ernst Haeckel, the author, by the way, of the famous Darwinian hereditary evolutionary triad, began to speak and write about the direct connection of man with ape-like ancestors. Evolution in the organic world is carried out as a result of three main factors: variability, heredity and natural selection, this is supposedly a Darwinian triad, but in fact Haeckelian. Thanks to this single process, as a result of evolution, organisms accumulate more and more new adaptive traits, which ultimately leads to the formation of new species. E. Haeckel (1834-1919) put forward a hypothesis about the existence in the past of an intermediate species between apes and humans, which he called Pithecanthropus (“monkey-man”). He also suggested that not modern monkeys were the ancestors of man, but driopithecus (“ancient monkeys”) who lived in the middle of the Tertiary period (70 million years ago). From them, one line of evolution went to chimpanzees and gorillas, the other to humans. Twenty million years ago, under the influence of a cold snap, the jungle from the northern territories retreated to the south, and one of the branches of the dryopithecus had to descend from the trees and switch to upright posture (the so-called "ramopithecus", the remains of which were found in India and named after the god Rama).

In 1960, the English archaeologist L. Leakey discovered in East Africa a "handy man", whose age is 2 million years, and the brain volume is 670 cm3. In the same layers, tools made of split river pebbles were found. Later, the remains of creatures of the same type, 5.5 million years old, were found on Lake Rudolph in Kenya. After that, the opinion was strengthened that it was in East Africa in the Quaternary period of the Cenozoic era that the separation of man and great apes occurred, that is, the evolutionary lines of man and chimpanzee diverged. These conclusions are confirmed by measurements on the so-called "molecular clock". The rate of gene change due to point mutations is stable over long periods of time, and it can be used to date the branching of a given evolutionary branch from a common trunk.

What was the reason for the appearance of a person in exactly one place? In East Africa, there are open outcrops of uranium rocks, that is, on the land surface, and there is increased radiation. Thus, here evolutionary changes could proceed more rapidly. The emerging species, physically weaker than the environment, had to lead a social way of life and develop the mind as a powerful tool of a naturally weak creature that did not have sufficient natural organs of protection in order to survive.

“Handy Man” refers to Australopithecus (translated as “southern monkey”), the remains of which were first found in Africa in 1924. The brain volume of Australopithecus did not exceed the brain volume of great apes, but it was already capable of creating tools.

The remains, discovered in 1891 on the island of Java (Southeast Asia), were named hypothetically assumed by E. Haeckel as a Pithecanthropus. Creatures that lived 500 thousand years ago had a height of more than 150 cm, a brain volume of about 900 cm3, used knives, drills, scrapers, and hand axes. In the 20s of the 20th century, P. Teilhard de Chardin found Sinanthropus (“Chinese man”) in China with a brain volume close to Pithecanthropus. He used fire and vessels, but had no speech yet.

In 1856, in the Neandertal valley in Germany, the remains of a creature that lived 150-40 thousand years ago, called the Neanderthal, were discovered. He had a brain volume close to modern man, but a sloping forehead, brow ridges, and a low cranium; lived in caves hunting mammoths. Burials of corpses have been discovered in a Neanderthal for the first time.

Finally, in the Cro-Magnon cave in France in 1868, the remains of a creature similar in appearance and volume of the skull to a modern man, who had a height of 180 cm and lived from 40 to 15 thousand years ago, were found. This is Homo sapiens, or Homo sapiens. In the same era, racial differences of people appeared.

W. Havells argues that modern man arose 200 thousand years ago in East Africa. This hypothesis was called "Noah's Ark" because, according to the Bible, all races and peoples descended from Noah's three sons - Shem, Ham and Japheth. In accordance with this version, Pithecanthropus, Sinanthropus and Neanderthal are not the ancestors of modern man, but various groups of hominids, forced out by "upright man" from East Africa. In favor of this hypothesis, there are genetic studies, which, however, are not recognized by all anthropologists and paleontologists as reliable enough.

An alternative point of view of the multi-regional evolution of mankind claims that only archaic people arose in Africa, and modern people - where they live now. Man left Africa at least 1 million years ago. This hypothesis is based on paleontological similarities between modern humans and distant ancestors living in their habitats.

It is not yet possible to say which of these hypotheses is correct, since the fossil record is incomplete and intermediate species between humans and monkeys are still completely unknown.

The whole chain of predecessors of modern man, from the point of view of today's natural science, will look like this: the most ancient ancestor of man and higher apes known to science - ramopithecus - lived on the territory from India to Africa about 14 million years ago. Approximately 10 million years ago, the ancestor of the orangutan, the Sivapitek, separated from it, which remained in Asia. The common ancestor of the gorilla, chimpanzee and man, apparently, settled in Africa, since it was there that the oldest tools (made 2.5 million years ago) and the remains of housing (1.75 million years old) were found. In Africa, the remains of a "handy man" - a zinjanthropus, who lived 2 million years ago, were found. He already possessed such human characteristics as upright walking and a noticeable development of the hand. At the same time, the name "skillful" was given to him for the ability to make and use primitive stone tools. From the "handy man" there is a connection with the most ancient humanoid creature - Australopithecus, who lived from 4 to 2 million years ago. Further, the development of modern man can be traced more clearly: Pithecanthropus (1.9-0.65 million years ago); Sinanthropus (400 thousand years ago), Neanderthal, which appeared according to various sources from 200 to 150 thousand years ago, and, finally, Cro-Magnon, our immediate ancestor, which arose from 200 to 40 thousand years ago.

It should be noted that anthropogenesis should not be presented as a linear process. Therefore, obviously, one should listen to the opinion of the Russian scientist R. Lewontin, whose concept is also in good agreement with the theory of self-organization. “All attempts to prove,” he writes, “that this or that fossil is our direct progenitor, reflect the outdated idea of ​​evolution as a strictly linear process and that all fossil forms should form some kind of single sequence connecting the past with the present. ". Speaking about the nonlinearity of the process of anthropogenesis, it should be borne in mind that evolution is carried out in the process of the constant emergence of new branches (bifurcations), most of which disappear very quickly. In each time period, there are many parallel evolutionary lines descending from a common ancestor.

The remains of Australopithecus afarensis, the “southern monkey from Aphorus”, discovered in 1974 by the English paleontologist L. Leakey, were of high scientific value. The remains are female, giving them their own name "Lucy". She died about 3.7 million years ago and has long been considered by anthropologists as our most ancient ancestor on the tree of evolution. Two decades later, in the summer of 1995, on the shores of Lake Turkana, in the same East Africa, Australopithecus anamensis, "the southern monkey from the lake", was found. The age of the remains is from 3.9 to 4.2 million years, i.e. older than Lucy. This creature was upright walking and in its structure is in a straight line of the general development of hominids - the distant ancestors of man, but also of great apes.

In the same 1995, as a result of excavations by French researchers in Chad - about 2500 km west of the places where all previous finds in East Africa were made, a new species of Australopithecus was discovered, which received the name Australopithecus bahrekgazali - "southern monkey from the river Gazelles". How the descendants of Australopithecus anamensis and "Lucy" later developed other forms of prehuman is a matter of great controversy. Many lines are already known, and paleontologists are finding new ones. The well-known German specialist in this field, F. Schreck, preaches the following idea: Homo rudolfensis, which existed from 2.5 to 1.9 million years ago, whose lower jaw was found by his group in 1991 near Lake Malawi, occupies a central place in the line of human development . Together with this representative of the genus "man", his fellow tribesmen from East Africa can be attributed to the first people in history. Perhaps the closest descendants of Homo dolfesis started a chain of migration from Africa about 2 million years ago. It is possible that the descendants of the genus Homo rudolfesis could also be immigrants to Java, and then it becomes clear that this creature appeared in Asia about 1.8 million years ago.

In the middle of the last century, the hypothesis of the arrival of ready-made Homo sapiens to Europe from Asia was put forward, but it did not find the necessary support, since it was based on rather scarce material (skulls from Swanscombe and Fonteshevad). Russian archaeologist Yuri Mochanov found 400 items in Central Yakutia, apparently made by human hand. According to preliminary data, the age of the site is 2.5-1.8 million years. Later, even a skull was found there. If we take as a starting point the existence of ancient people 2.5-1.8 million years ago in Yakutia, then the next logical step should be the recognition that the emergence of the human race took place in the western part of Northeast Asia, and not in Africa, as is generally accepted now, or to admit the possibility of a very rapid migration of early human ancestors from Africa to northern Siberia. Archaeologists cannot come to terms with this news so easily and immediately. Among the skeptics is the prominent anthropologist Richard Klein of Stanford University, who does not admit the possibility of "rewriting the history of human evolution on the basis of data obtained from just one excavation site."

One way or another, scientists face a new riddle that they have to solve. The main problem in restoring human evolution is that we have no close relatives among our living ancestors. Our closest, though not very close, living relatives, the chimpanzee and the gorilla, were related to us by a common ancestor at least 7 million years ago.

Mutational hypotheses of human origin

In anthropology, a number of hypotheses have been put forward that try to solve this problem, assuming that man became a man thanks to: life in water; mutations in the brain cells of hominids, caused by hard radiation from a supernova explosion, or reversals of the geomagnetic field; a mutant in the hominid community appeared as a result of heat stress. Let us consider these hypotheses in the order presented.

The hypothesis of the Swedish researcher J. Lindblad is very original. According to her, the South American Indians living in the rainforest are the most ancient people on Earth, and the predecessor of man was the “hairless monkey”, or “ixpitek”, leading an aquatic lifestyle. It is the reduced hairiness, upright posture, long hair on the head, emotionality and sexuality inherent only in humans that are due to the peculiarities of the lifestyle of the aquatic hominid (he spent most of the day on the shore). “As always, when a new way of life increases the percentage of survival,” writes J. Lindblad, “mutational changes in hereditary structures entail adaptation to the aquatic environment. Here it is expressed in a decrease in body hairiness and the development of a layer of subcutaneous fat. However, long hair on the head is an important factor for the survival of the young. In the first years of life, cubs have a particularly powerful layer of subcutaneous fat. The legs of the ixpitec are longer than the arms, the big toes are not opposed and point forward. The posture when walking is more straight - perhaps the same as ours. In other words, the Ixpitek has a completely human appearance, at least from a distance. Further development of the skull and brain led to the appearance of a modern type of man. Within the framework of such a direction of scientific research as “cosmic catastrophism”, which has recently been formed, a hypothesis has been put forward about the emergence of modern man in connection with the outbreak of a nearby supernova. It was recorded that a very surprising circumstance is that the outbreak of a nearby supernova in our Galaxy of a star in time (occurring once in 100 million years) approximately corresponds to the age of the oldest remains of Homo sapiens (35-60 thousand years ago). In addition, some of the anthropologists believe that the appearance of modern man is due to mutation. And pulses of gamma and X-ray radiation from a supernova explosion are known to be accompanied by a short-term increase in the number of mutations. In this case, the intensity of ultraviolet radiation, which is a mutagenic agent, sharply increases on the Earth's surface, which, in turn, initiates the appearance of other mutagens. Ultimately, we can say that the hard radiation generated by the supernova explosion could cause irreversible changes in brain cells, which led to the formation of intelligent mutants of the species? Homo sapiens. In any case, modern science connects with supernovae: the formation of the solar system, the origin of life and, possibly, the origin of the modern type of man with his civilization.

Another hypothesis comes from the fact that modern man is a mutant that arose as a result of the inversion of the earth's magnetic field. It has been established that the terrestrial magnetic field, which mainly delays cosmic radiation, sometimes weakens for reasons unknown so far; then there is a change in the magnetic poles, i.e. geomagnetic inversion. During such reversals, the degree of cosmic radiation on our planet will increase dramatically. Studying the history of the Earth, paleomagnetologists came to the conclusion that over the past 3 million years, the Earth's magnetic poles have changed places four times. Some of the discovered remains of primitive people belong to the era of the fourth geomagnetic inversion. Such an unusual combination of circumstances leads to the idea of ​​the possible influence of cosmic radiation on the appearance of man. This hypothesis is reinforced by the following fact: man appeared at a time and in those places in which the power of radioactive radiation turned out to be most favorable for changing the great apes. It was these conditions that arose about 3 million years ago in South and East Africa - during the period of separation of man from the animal world. According to geologists, deposits of radioactive ores were exposed in this region due to strong earthquakes. This, in turn, caused a mutation in some monkey species that was most predisposed to changing genetic traits. It is possible that about 3 million years ago, prolonged exposure to radioactive radiation so profoundly changed Australopithecus that he became able to perform the actions necessary for his safety and food supply. In accordance with this hypothesis, Pithecanthropus appeared about 700 thousand years ago, when the second change in the geomagnetic poles of the Earth occurred (250 thousand years ago), Neanderthal appeared, while the appearance of modern man falls on the fourth geomagnetic inversion. This approach is quite legitimate, because the role of the geomagnetic field in the life of organisms, including humans, is known.

The following hypothesis says that we all belong to the same subspecies of “reasonable man” and are descended from one foremother and one forefather, a very specific man and woman (more precisely, as it is now believed, a group of about 20 men and 20 women), whose descendants we are , now living people. More strictly, as we shall see, they should be called genetic Adam and Eve. Their real existence is recognized by the scientific majority, but some scientists still doubt this. Adam and Eve lived approximately 150-200 thousand years ago in Africa, and they still cannot be attributed to Homo sapiens, but rather to Homo erectus. They lived in different places and at different times. Naturally, they were not alone - around them and at the same time with them lived tens of thousands of other quite the same people. Certainly some of them are also our ancestors. The difference is that these others were the ancestors of some of us, maybe even many of us, but, fundamentally, not all of us. The concept of genetic Adam and Eve suggests that these two "humans" are the direct ancestors of ALL people now living on Earth.

This is the general hypothetical-theoretical situation in the development of the problem of anthropogenesis today. Not everything in it is fully clarified and explained, not everything scientists agree with each other. But there is nothing surprising in this, because we are dealing with the crown of the creation of nature - man. It is important to emphasize the following: in science it can be considered proven that man is a product of the natural development of nature. It has its roots in the biosphere of the Earth and is its legitimate child.

Concepts of ethnology

Ethnology - (from the Greek ethnos - nation, people, logic) ethnology, a science that studies the everyday and cultural characteristics of the peoples of the world, the problems of origin (ethnogenesis), settlement (ethnography) and cultural and historical relationships of peoples. It took shape as a science in the 19th century with the emergence of the evolutionary school, the appearance of research by L. G. Morgan and the book by F. Engels “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State” (1884), which formulated the foundations of the doctrine of the primitive communal system. Great contributions to the development of ethnology in Russia belong to N. N. Miklukho-Maclay, M. M. Kovalevsky, and D. N. Anuchin. Ethnology is an emerging science. The need for it arose only in the second half of the 20th century, when it became clear that the simple accumulation of ethnographic collections and observations threatens that science, which does not pose problems, will turn into meaningless collecting. And so social science and ethnology arose before our eyes - two disciplines that are interested in one, at first glance, subject - a person, but in completely different aspects. And this is natural. Each person is simultaneously a member of society and a member of an ethnic group, and this is far from the same thing.

Mankind, which has existed on Earth for a very short time, some 30-50 thousand years, nevertheless, made upheavals on its surface, which V. I. Vernadsky equated with small-scale geological upheavals. This problem is relevant for our generation, and it will become especially relevant for our descendants. Man as a biological being belongs to the genus Homo. This genus, when it appeared on Earth, was characterized by a rather large diversity of species. This also applies to those types of Homo, which we, strictly speaking, have no right to consider as people, namely: Pithecanthropes and Neanderthals. Ethnicity in humans is the same as prides in lions, packs in wolves, herds in ungulates. This is a form of existence of the species Homo sapiens and its individuals, which differs both from social formations and from purely biological characteristics, which are races.

In the number of races, the opinions of anthropological scientists differ - four or six. Both in appearance and in psychophysical characteristics, representatives of different races are very different from each other. Race is a relatively stable biological characteristic of the species of people, but it is by no means a form of their community, a way of their life together. Races differ in purely external features, which can be determined anatomically. Just as an ethnos does not coincide with a race, it does not coincide with another biological grouping of individuals - a population. Population - the sum of individuals living in the same area and randomly interbreeding with each other. There are always marriage restrictions in an ethnic group. Two ethnic groups can coexist on the same territory for centuries and millennia. They can mutually destroy each other or one will destroy the other. This means that ethnos is not a biological phenomenon, just as it is not a social one. “That is why I propose to regard ethnos as a geographical phenomenon,” wrote Russian ethnologist S. Lurie, “always associated with the enclosing landscape that feeds the adapted ethnos.” And since the landscapes of the Earth are diverse, ethnic groups are also diverse.

The dependence of a person on the nature around him, more precisely, on the geographical environment, has never been disputed, although the degree of this dependence was assessed differently by different scientists. But, in any case, the economic life of the peoples inhabiting and inhabiting the Earth is closely connected with the landscapes and climate of the inhabited territories. The rise and fall of the economy of ancient eras is rather difficult to trace because of the inferiority of information obtained from primary sources. But there is an indicator - military power.

The significance of geographical conditions, for example, relief for military history, has been discussed for a long time, one might say, always. However, dwelling on such a clear problem in the 20th century is inappropriate, because history now poses much deeper tasks than before, and geography has moved away from a simple description of the curiosities of our planet and has gained opportunities that were inaccessible to our ancestors.

So the question is different. Not only how does the geographic environment affect people, but also to what extent people themselves are an integral part of that shell of the Earth, which is now called the biosphere. Which patterns of human life are influenced by the geographic environment and which ones are not affected? This formulation of the question requires analysis. Speaking of the history of mankind, they usually have in mind the social form of the movement of history, that is, the progressive development of mankind as a whole in a spiral. This movement is spontaneous and because of this alone it cannot be a function of any external causes whatsoever. Neither geographical nor biological influences can influence this side of history. So what do they affect? on organisms, including humans. This conclusion was made already in 1922 by the outstanding Russian physiogeographer Lev Berg for all organisms, including humans: “The geographical landscape affects organisms, forcing all individuals to vary in a certain direction, as far as the organization of the species allows. Tundra, forest, steppe, desert, mountains, aquatic environment, life on islands, etc. - all this leaves a special imprint on organisms. Those species that fail to adapt must move to a different geographical landscape or become extinct.” And by "landscape" is meant "a section of the earth's surface, qualitatively different from other areas, bordered by natural boundaries and representing a holistic and mutually conditioned natural set of objects and phenomena, which is typically expressed over a significant space and is inextricably linked in all respects with the landscape shell." Berg in his writings formulated the evolutionary concept of nomogenesis as a process proceeding according to certain internal patterns, not reducible to the effects of the external environment. Unlike Darwin, Berg believed that hereditary variability is regular and ordered (for example, by homological series), and natural selection does not drive evolution, but only "protects the norm." He also believed that all living things are inherent in the original expediency (as Aristotle thought when building his ladder of beings) of reactions to the influence of the external environment, while development takes place due to some force independent of the environment, directed towards the complication of biological organization. In our time, the ideas of nomogenesis were developed by the outstanding Russian biologists A.A. Lyubishchev and S. V. Meyen.

Theory of passionarity L.N. Gumilyov

The outstanding Russian historian Lev Gumilyov (the son of the great Russian poets Nikolai Gumilyov and Anna Akhmatova) presented an exclusively biologizing concept of an ethnos (nation). He considers ethnoi as part of the Earth's biosphere, subject to the influence of interacting cosmic and terrestrial electromagnetic fields and radiation, but at the same time he emphasizes that ethnos cannot be considered only a biological, as well as only a social phenomenon. Gumilyov combined, as he himself repeatedly said, the service to the Beautiful Lady of History with the recognition of the undoubted merits of her Wise Sister Geography, which makes people related to their foremother - the biosphere of the planet Earth. In this regard, he proposes to consider ethnos as a geographical phenomenon, always associated with the enclosing landscape that feeds the adapted ethnos. According to Gumilyov, ethnos is a systemic integrity and arises at a certain historical time. Ethnos is a closed system, that is, closed, since there is no rigid connection between the parts, but these parts need each other. An ethnos in some historical epoch receives its energy, with the help of which it begins to exist, lives for about 1200-1500 years, and, having spent it by dispersion (dissipation, like the natural systems that we studied in the previous chapters of the book), the ethnos disintegrates or creates homeostasis. The stages of this ethnogenesis are as follows:

rise, or dynamic (aggressive) phase;

"overheating", break, akmatic (from the French "acme" - "top") phase;

transition to a normal state, or inertial phase;

obscuration (from the Latin obscurans - obscuring, hostile), or the phase of damped oscillations.

In the ascent phase, "the interests of the ethnic group are above all"; wars are being waged; the interests of the individual are subordinated to society; an intensive transformation of nature is underway. In the akmatic phase, the ethnos reaches its peak, after which a decline is inevitable. In the inertial phase, the main slogan of the individual is “be yourself,” i.e., individualism flourishes; blood is shed, but the culture develops, the wealth and glory accumulated by the ancestors are squandered. In the phase of obscuration, hostility, the main slogans are “be like everyone else”, “we are tired of the greats”; everyone thinks only of himself; culture continues to grow. Ethnos reaches homeostasis. At the end of the development of the ethnos, there is a futuristic perception of time, oblivion of the past and present for the sake of the future, leading to disastrous uprisings and collapse. Death in 1200-1500 years overtakes an ethnic group under the influence of its own decay or the invasion of other younger ethnic groups. The last stages are memorial (only memory remains as the totality of what was known) and relic (memory disappears).

The beginning of all ethnogenesis is given by a certain passionary impetus, leading to the emergence of a certain number of energetic (passionate) personalities who lead people along. Passionarity is a characterological dominant, an irresistible inner desire (conscious or, more often, unconscious) for activity aimed at achieving some goal (often illusory). Note that this goal seems to be a passionate individual sometimes more valuable than even his own life, and even more so the life and happiness of his contemporaries and fellow tribesmen. Passionarity comes from the Latin word passio - passion.

The passionarity of an individual can be associated with any abilities: high, medium, small; it does not depend on external influences, being a feature of the mental constitution of a given person; it has nothing to do with ethics, it equally easily gives rise to exploits and crimes, good and evil, creativity and destruction, excluding only indifference; it does not make a person a “hero” leading a “crowd”, because most of the passionaries are part of the “crowd”, determining its potency in a particular era of the development of an ethnos.

The modes (type, manifestation, variety) of passionarity are diverse: here is pride, stimulating the thirst for power and glory throughout the ages; vanity, pushing for demagoguery and creativity; greed that breeds misers, money-grubbers and scientists who accumulate knowledge instead of money; jealousy, entailing rigidity and protection.

A large system can be created and exist only at the expense of an energy impulse that produces work (in the physical sense), due to which the system has internal development and the ability to resist the environment. L. Gumilyov called this effect of energy in the ethnos a passionary impetus and analyzed the historical and geographical conditions that facilitate its activation. He wrote that, according to observations, new ethnic groups do not arise in monotonous landscapes, but on the borders of landscape regions and in zones of ethnic contacts, where intensive miscegenation is inevitable. There are also subpassionaries, whose passionarity is less than the impulse of instinct. The presence of subpassionaries for an ethnos is as important as the presence of passionaries, because they constitute a certain part of the ethnic system. Subpassionaries are different. The dose of passionarity can be so small that it does not extinguish even the simplest instincts and reflexes. The bearer of such passionarity is ready to drink the last ruble, because he is drawn to alcohol, and he forgets about everything.

Passionarity has another quality that is extremely important: it is contagious. Passionarity behaves like electricity when a neighboring body is induced: “It was also Tolstoy who noted in “War and Peace” that when someone shouts “Hurrah!” in the chain of soldiers, the chain rushes forward, and when they shout: “Cut off! ", then everyone runs back," Gumilev wrote.

Undoubtedly, the vast majority of actions performed by people are dictated by the instinct of self-preservation, either personal or specific. The latter is manifested in the desire to reproduce and raise offspring. However, passionarity has the opposite vector, because it makes people sacrifice themselves and their offspring, which are either not born or are completely neglected for the sake of illusory desires: ambition, vanity, pride, greed, jealousy and other passions. Therefore, passionarity can be considered as an anti-instinct, or an instinct with the opposite sign.

Both instinctive and passionary impulses are regulated in the emotional sphere. But psychic activity encompasses consciousness as well. This means that one should find in the field of consciousness such a division of impulses that could be compared with that described above. In other words, all impulses must be divided into two categories: 1) impulses aimed at preserving life, 2) impulses towards sacrificing life to an ideal - a distant forecast, often illusory. For ease of reference, the “life-affirming” impulses are denoted with a plus sign, and the “sacrificial” impulses with a minus sign. Then these parameters can be expanded into a planar projection similar to the Cartesian coordinate system. The positive impulse of consciousness will be only unbridled egoism, which requires the presence of reason and will in order to realize itself as a goal. Reason is understood as the ability to choose a reaction under conditions that allow it, and under the will - the ability to perform actions in accordance with the choice made. "Reasonable egoism" is opposed by a group of impulses with a reverse vector. “It is well known to everyone, as well as passionarity, but it has also never been singled out in a single category,” noted L. Gumilyov. All people have a sincere attraction to truth, to beauty and justice. This attraction varies significantly in the strength of the impulse and is always limited by the constantly acting "reasonable egoism", but in a number of cases it turns out to be more powerful and leads to death no less steadily than passionarity.

From what has been said, of course, it does not follow that all provisions of L. N. Gumilyov's theory will be accepted by the scientific community. The questions of the origin of passionarity and the concepts of "passionary overheating", "passionary gene pool" and some others remain controversial.

It is worth noting that, discussing all this, Gumilyov acts as a scientist with original ideas, completely devoid of stereotyping and bureaucratic ideas. And this is precisely now, when ethnography and history need such an approach. Is it not blind adherence to the canons that led to the fact that certain provisions of historical science need to be revised? Gumilyov's books are relevant today because, revealing the genetic roots of ethnogenesis, the author considers ethnos as a natural phenomenon, analyzes the moral illnesses of ethnoses that have arisen on the basis of social phenomena, and shows the disastrous consequences of man's struggle with landscapes, similar in scale to modern ones. And this should not be forgotten when assessing the current state of the environment and the biosphere.

Co-evolution of man and the biosphere

Let's ask ourselves again: what is a person? Scientists have long been engaged in the search for the ancestors of modern man, the search for various "missing links" in the chain from monkey to man. We know Pithecanthropus, Sinanthropus, Australopithecus, Zinjanthropus, Neanderthals. The age of the "first man" was pushed back almost to 3 million years, and the offshoot of our ancestors from the ancestors of modern monkeys - up to 15 million years.

However, recent studies (since 1987 and later), based on the study of genetic material (DNA of the cell's mitochondria), have shown that the human race, apparently, began only about 200 thousand years ago from a common foremother. All people are genetically almost identical, and such "ancestors" as Neanderthal and Sinanthropus turned out to be a dead end branch of the family tree that did not lead to Homo sapiens. Everything indicates that a certain single epochal mutation that launched the mechanism of new thinking, which occurred not very long ago, gave birth to a person.

Thinking singled out man from the rest of living nature. Man is a living organism, for the first time realizing himself, his self-identity and difference from the rest of the world. The animal is in harmony with the surrounding world, and this harmony is established on an instinctive level, the animal is automatically integrated into the natural balanced system. Man, having realized himself, found himself in isolation, and he had to consciously “build the world” anew in order to find his place in it and reconnect with it. As a result, man created a new level of organization called human society, engaged in the knowledge of the world and self-knowledge, and began to conquer and remake nature, to create the technosphere.

natural science passionarity knowledge evolutionary

Unfortunately, the vast majority of even thinking people are not able to isolate the true information from all kinds of "vinaigrette" of scientific theories, myths and divine interpretations related to the origin of man on our planet. As it turned out, it is far from accidental. After all, a rational being cannot be rational if it is not able to identify itself in the surrounding space and understand participation with it, without understanding its origin. And if someone wanted to rid the "victim" of rationality for use for their own purposes? Then the first thing such an “insolent person” should do is to erase the memory of everything that concerns the origins of the origin of a particular person, clan, tribe, people.

Here is a simple example: you hit your head so hard that amnesia set in, and at that moment any person comes up and asks: What is your name? The answer will be very definite - "I do not know." At the moment, you can do whatever you want with such a person and inspire him with whatever you want, but ... all this until his memory returns to him. I had to be in this state for a while - you feel like a complete idiot, but you can’t do anything about it. And if you forgot how to talk and everything in general, even what is connected with conditioned reflexes? Then, they will be able to teach you everything anew: to talk, think, etc. But who will be your teacher? If you're lucky - good people. And if not? It is hard to imagine what they can fashion out of your consciousness, having some kind of purpose in relation to you.

In fact, about the same thing happened to the Russian people and not only, only in a more sophisticated form. Such a “blow to the head” was a catastrophe on a planetary scale that occurred about 13 thousand years ago, due to the fall of fragments of the moon Fatta (Earth's satellite in the past) on our planet. After a catastrophe on a planetary scale, the entire terrestrial civilization, in which the Slavic-Aryan world was dominant and had a highly developed cosmic system of society, was thrown back to the level of the Stone Age, i.e. into primacy. As a result, all the benefits, technologies, knowledge, infrastructure, culture, etc. that were available at that time were quickly lost. But the centers of civilization still remained until recently, which in the end still managed to be destroyed by those who started this catastrophe.

In the conditions of the primitive state, humanity is naturally subject primarily to primitive, animal instincts. And, of course, in such conditions it is much easier to clear the memory of peoples, because the majority are busy with the problems of finding suitable food and more or less suitable housing, etc. Here, the "arbiters of fate" succeeded just to the fullest. Several generations of our ancestors, replacing each other, being without proper information support, became what the enslavers of human consciousness and potential wanted to see them. But this happened, of course, not in one hundred years and not in all territories at once, but gradually from one Slavic-Aryan people to another. At the same time, the so-called Dark Forces very skillfully pitted the kindred peoples of the Slavic-Aryans, gradually imposing new values ​​on them, transforming their worldview, smoothly leading to a new religion, saturated with slave philosophy.

Therefore, today the question of the emergence of man on planet Earth remains open to most people. Looking at the empty look of a person who lacks the meaning of life due to a lack of understanding of his own self-identification (who he is, where he is from, what he is, etc.), a burning desire appears bring back his memory about everything that he should know from the first days of his life. Namely: we were the first to colonize our mother Earth more than 560 thousand years ago to create a fundamentally new intelligent race based on 4 white peoples from different star systems of the Cosmos. But to tell a person that God did not create him, and that he did not come from a monkey, is far from easy, because you will immediately be put on a par with sectarians or psychos.

How bitter it is to look at our people, realizing that they hang labels on you, relying on the program laid down in our brain from the very first days of life. When a Russian person tells you that Russians are all pigs, drunkards, lazybones, barbarians, and that Russia is a country of fools, then it becomes hard to breathe from such statements,. It's really mind blowing when you realize that the enemies have done their job very well. The program works great. Our consciousness has taken the right form for those who created it. This is especially true of the history of the civilization of our planet and the emergence of man on it. In this field, our "friends" did their best, turning our people (Slavic-Aryans) from the first settlers to Earth, who had a cosmic level of development, into wild barbarians. How this could happen can be understood from the books and articles of N.V. Levashov, who for the first time gave people a true whole picture of what is happening on our planet and not only.

Here is the last one on March 31, 2013. Conference in our native Omsk, dedicated to the origin of man, was very difficult, but very interesting. Members of the Russian Public Movement “Revival. Golden Age” in Omsk have been holding such events periodically for more than 3 years, trying to constantly improve the quality of reporting information about the past of our people and much more from time to time.

When the performance of the first participant began, one man decided to prove his incompetence and ... he did not succeed. But in the end, at the end of the conference, the man was very grateful for received information. This suggests that the information we present has begun to take on an acceptable form for assimilation even by "savvy" people, which is consistent with what they know from other sources. Although at the same time there was a difficulty in linking many historical events and facts into a single picture in order to substantiate our "incredible" point of view.

There were also people at the meeting who reflected our activities from the “normal” side: they stopped comparing us with a sect, etc., who have a certain benefit from their activities. One person even said that for the first time he sees such an organization that calls for social activity, relying on objective knowledge. This feedback made us very happy. This means that we do not stand still and have somehow learned to convey the most valuable information that encourages reflection and action.

The origin of man is a mystery. Even Darwin's theory is not considered fully proven, due to the lack of transitional links in evolution. How else do people explain their appearance from ancient times to the present day.

totemism

Totemism belongs to the most ancient mythological representations and is considered the first form of awareness of the human collective, as well as its place in nature. Totemism taught that each group of people had its own ancestor - a totem animal or plant. For example, if a raven serves as a totem, then it is the actual progenitor of the clan, and each raven is a relative. At the same time, the totem animal is only a patron, but is not deified, in contrast to later creationism.

Androgynous

The mythological ones include the ancient Greek version of the origin of man from the Androgyns - the first people who combined the signs of both sexes. Plato in the dialogue "Feast" describes them as creatures with a spherical body, whose back did not differ from the chest, with four arms and legs and two identical faces on their heads. According to legend, our ancestors were not inferior to the titans in strength and skill. Puffed up, they decided to overthrow the Olympians, for which they were cut in half by Zeus. This reduced their strength and self-confidence by half.
Androgyny is present not only in Greek mythology. The idea that a man and a woman were originally one whole is close to many world religions. So, in one of the Talmudic interpretations of the first chapters of the Book of Genesis, it is said that Adam was created by an androgyne.

Abrahamic tradition

Three monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) go back to the Abrahamic religions, going back to Abraham, the patriarch of the Semitic tribes, the first person who believed in the Lord. According to the Abrahamic tradition, the world was created by God - Existing from Non-Being, literally "out of nothing". God also created man - Adam from the dust of the earth "in our image and likeness", so that a man would be truly good. It is worth noting that both in the Bible and in the Koran the creation of man is mentioned more than once. For example, in the Bible about the creation of Adam, in the beginning it says in the 1st chapter that God created man "out of nothing in his own image and likeness", in the 2nd chapter that he created him from dust (dust).

Hinduism

In Hinduism, there are at least five versions of the creation of the world and man, respectively. In Brahmanism, for example, the creator of the world is the god Brahma (in later versions identified with Vishnu and the Vedic deity Prajapati), who appeared from a golden egg floating in the oceans. He grew up and sacrificed himself, created from his hair, skin, meat, bones and fat the five elements of the world - earth, water, air, fire, ether - and the five steps of the sacrificial altar. Gods, people and other living beings were created from it. Thus, in Brahminism, by making sacrifices, people re-create Brahma.
But according to the Vedas, the ancient scripture of Hinduism, the creation of the world and man is shrouded in darkness: “Who truly knows who will proclaim here. Where did this creation come from? Further, the gods (appeared) through the creation of this (world).
So who knows where it came from?

Kabbalah

According to Kabbalistic teachings, the creator of Ein Sof created a soul that received the name Adam Rishon - "the first man." It was a construction, consisting of many separate desires, interconnected like the cells of our body. All desires were in harmony, since initially each of them had a desire to support each other. However, being on the highest spiritual level, similar to the creator, Adam took on a huge spiritual light, which is equivalent to the "forbidden fruit" in Christianity. Unable to achieve the goal of creation by this action alone, the primary soul split into 600,000 thousand parts, and each of them into many more parts. All of them are now in the souls of people. Through many circuits, they must carry out a “correction” and gather again into a common spiritual complex called Adam. In other words, after the "breaking" or fall into sin, all these particles - people are not equal to each other. But returning to their original state, they again reach the same level, where they are all equal.

Evolutionary creationism

As science developed, creationists had to compromise with natural science concepts. An intermediate stage between the theory of creation and Darwinism was "theistic evolutionism." Evolutionary theologians do not reject evolution, but consider it an instrument in the hands of God the creator. Simply put, God created the "material" for the appearance of man - the genus Homo and launched the process of evolution. The result is a man. An important point of evolutionary creationism is that although the body changed, the human spirit remained unchanged. This is the position officially held by the Vatican since the time of Pope John Paul II (1995): God created an ape-like creature by putting an immortal soul into it. In classical creationism, a person has not changed either in body or soul since the time of creation.

"Theory of ancient astronauts"

In the 20th century, the version about the extraterrestrial origin of man was popular. One of the founders of the idea of ​​paleocontact in the 20s was Tsiolkovsky, who announced the possibility of aliens visiting the earth. According to the theory of paleocontact, sometime in the distant past, approximately in the Stone Age, aliens visited the Earth for some reason. Either they were interested in the colonization of exoplanets, or the resources of the Earth, or it was their transfer base, but one way or another, part of their descendants settled on Earth. Perhaps they even mixed with the local genus Homo, and modern people are mestizos of an alien life form and natives of the Earth.
The main arguments on which supporters of this theory rely are the complexity of the technologies used in the construction of ancient monuments, as well as geoglyphs, petroglyphs and other drawings of the ancient world, which allegedly depict alien ships and people in spacesuits. Mates Agres, one of the founders of the theory of paleovisits, even claimed that the biblical Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed not by God's wrath, but by a nuclear explosion.

Darwinism

The famous postulate - man descended from apes, is usually attributed to Charles Darwin, although the scientist himself, remembering the fate of his predecessor Georges Louis Buffon, who was ridiculed at the end of the 18th century for such ideas, cautiously expressed that humans and monkeys should have some common ancestor, monkey-like creature.

According to Darwin himself, the genus homo originated somewhere around 3.5 million in Africa. It was not yet our compatriot Homo Sapiens, whose age is dated today at about 200 thousand years, but the first representative of the genus Homo - the great ape, hominid. In the course of evolution, he began to walk on two legs, use his hands as a tool, he began to progressively transform the brain, articulate speech and sociality. Well, the reason for evolution, like in all other species, was natural selection, and not God's plan.

Anthropogenesis- the process of historical development, the evolution of man from the moment of the emergence of ancestral forms - hominids to the present existence of the Homo sapiens species of rational man. Anthropogenesis factors: habitat change, use of tools, fire, speech. It is believed that the ancestors of man are primates. Representatives of this order appeared about 70 million years ago at the end of the Mesozoic era. The scheme accepted by most scientists suggests that Homo sapiens is currently the only representative of the genus Homo and the family Hominidae. This family, together with the family of pongids, or great apes, (Pongidae: chimpanzee, gorilla and orangutan) and gibbons (Hilobatidae) are combined into the superfamily of hominoids, or anthropoids (Hominoidea) of the order Primates.
Evidence of the origin of man from animals: the presence of rudimentary organs (appendix, highly developed auricles), the appearance of atavisms (the appearance of a tail, a strong development of body hair, additional nipples). The ancestral home of humanity is East Africa. Family ties between humans and higher apes are also found when comparing their karyotypes. Chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans have 48 diploid chromosomes, while humans have 46. The results of the study of amino acid and nucleotide sequences confirm the closeness of humans with great apes, especially with chimpanzees and gorillas. Thus, the differences in nucleotide sequences do not exceed 1%. Chimpanzees and humans have the same blood group antigens, and the blood of the corresponding group can be transfused from individuals of one species to individuals of another.
Stages of anthropogenesis:
. formation of the genus Homo;
. evolution of the genus Homo to modern man;
. evolution of modern man.
The first stage is a purely biological evolution; at the second stage, social evolution is also connected to the biological one, which becomes dominant at the third stage.
A possible scheme of phyletic relationships between human ancestors. The common ancestor of Australopithecus and the genus Homo is A. afarus, whose skeleton has been found in Kenya, Ethiopia and Tanzania. The antiquity of the finds dates back to 4-2.8 million years. He walked on two legs. The brain volume was 380-450 cm3, which corresponds approximately to the brain volume of a modern chimpanzee. A. afarus gave rise to the genus Homo, and also continued the branch of Australopithecus, the next in which was the species A. africanus (South African anthropoid Australopithecus). He had an upright posture, the mass of the brain was 450-550 g, with a total weight of 25-65 kg. A. africanus had similarities in the structure of the dental system compared to humans: small fangs, teeth arranged in a wide arc (this indicates omnivory). At the location of their skeletons, animal bones were found, and in particular skulls, split by heavy objects on the left side. This suggests that Australopithecus was mostly right-handed. A. africanus is a branch with a narrow specialization, the last of which was the species A. robustus, which became extinct about 1 million years ago. The first representative of the genus Homo was H. habiens (handy man), who lived about 2 million years ago. He knew how to process stones and, consciously using his hand, performed subtle manipulations, his brain mass was 600-800 g, he had 4 bends of the spine and changes in the pelvic region. The big toe was not laid aside, which indicates that the rearrangements associated with upright walking were completed in him. The next representative of the genus Homo was H. erectus or archanthropes (upright man - Pithecanthropus, Sinanthropus). The brain mass of archanthropes was 800-1000 g, which clearly exceeds the minimum brain mass (750 g) at which speech is possible. Archanthropes have mastered a large area of ​​territories without obvious morphological changes, which indicates the presence of social evolution (building dwellings, clothing, etc.). The first ancient people were Neanderthals, their brain volume was 1400-1450 cm3, speech was in its infancy. The first modern people - the Cro-Magnons for some time existed in parallel with the Neanderthals. Their height reached 180 cm, brain volume up to 1600 cm3, the skull had a high forehead, a developed chin protrusion, and developed speech.
Anthropomorphoses: upright posture, formation of an arched foot, the appearance of more massive lower limbs compared to the upper ones, expansion of the pelvic bones, the appearance of an S-shaped spine, the formation of an expanded chest, the formation of a hand with an opposed thumb capable of small movements.
The spread of human populations around the planet has led to the emergence of races as adaptations to life in specific environmental conditions. There are three major races - Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid.

ALL TRUTH PASSES IN THE HUMAN MIND THROUGH THREE STAGES: FIRST - "What nonsense!",THEN - "THIS IS SOMETHING" AND FINALLY -"WHO DOES NOT KNOW THIS!"

ALEXANDER HUMBOLDT

One of the mysteries is the theory of the origin of life on Earth in general, and the origin of man in particular. To date, several hypotheses are known that try to explain the appearance on Earth of a person - a rational being (lat. Homo sapiens). We will name only three of them, the main ones.

Basic concepts of the origin of people on earth

First (the concept of creationism)- the most ancient and classical: God created the Earth, all life on it from inanimate matter, including man. The first people - Adam and Eve gave life to the next generation of people.

And it was, according to the Bible, about seven and a half thousand years ago. Maybe this is so, and there should be no questions, but it is important what is generally understood by the concept of God, the Almighty or the Creator, abstracting from religious terminology. In addition, it is scientifically established and there is evidence that people appeared much earlier, about 40-45 thousand years ago.

The second (the concept of panspermia) - life on Earth was brought from other more developed planets. This version is brand new, only a few decades old. It assumes the existence of life in the Universe always, since the appearance of the Universe itself. Life, as the planets formed and the conditions for the existence of life appeared, was brought to them from the Cosmos, by dispersion.

The third is scientific concept is based on evolutionary path development of all life on Earth, including humans. The founder of this theory, Darwin, gave a clear, strictly verified scheme for the origin of species of living organisms in the course of natural selection and their changes as a result of evolution and cell mutation. Even earlier than Darwin, similar views were expressed by the French scientist Georges-Louis Buffon, who asserted the unity of the origin of the plant and animal world.

Every schoolchild knows that according to this theory, the ancestor of a person is declared primates - chimpanzees - representatives of hominids (the very first and ancient of them is Sahelanthropus).

So, whether or not we would like to have this type of animal as our fellow, there is no getting away from it. So far, nowhere ... But something in this theory does not converge a little.

The process of separating a person from the animal world is called "anthropogenesis". The scientific assertion that man is a direct descendant of the monkey has undergone an adjustment today. It is possible that the human ancestor, like the ancestor of the modern ape, had common roots of origin, but in the course of evolution their paths diverged.

The complete formation of man on Earth, according to modern theory, was preceded by an evolutionary appearance Neanderthals and it is not clear where they came from Cro-Magnons.

Neanderthals were short, stocky, round-shouldered people with large brow ridges and an almost complete absence of a chin. The volume of their brain was not inferior to the human, although it was arranged more primitively. They could hunt, provide themselves with food, make their own shelter, and even buried their dead relatives, decorating their graves. They had the beginnings of the birth of religion. But, as scientists suggest, for some reason this branch of civilization has ceased to develop. It has been proven that the early Neanderthals were more advanced than their descendants.

With the onset of continental glaciation, the Neanderthals, unable to adapt to new conditions, simply died - this is the version of their disappearance from the face of the Earth. The branch of development of Neanderthals is recognized as a lateral, dead-end branch of civilization.

Archaeologists find the remains of people like us, whose age is established by radiological method and is approximately 40-50 thousand years. These direct ancestors of ours are called Cro-Magnons.

What is especially interesting, according to the research of archaeologists, it is clear that Neanderthals still live, and the first Cro-Magnons have already appeared next to them. And sometimes, just in the caves of Neanderthals, the remains of Cro-Magnons are suddenly found, the paths of whose appearance have not been identified.

Cro-Magnons form the only genus and species of Homo Sapiens - Homo sapiens. Their monkey features were completely smoothed out, there was a characteristic chin protrusion on the lower jaw, indicating their ability to articulate speech, the Cro-Magnons were far ahead in the art of making various tools from stone, bone and horn compared to their Neanderthal neighbors.

Interestingly, there is not the slightest similarity between Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals genetically. But such an absolute similarity is found between a man and a Cro-Magnon. And there are also some genetic similarities between humans and Neanderthals. And this suggests that the paths of development of the ancestors of man and Neanderthals diverged about 600 thousand years ago, and maybe even earlier. So, we must look for a link between the anthropoid apes and Cro-Magnons. But this link is just missing. Where did the handsome men come from - the Cro-Magnons are unknown ..., it is still unknown ...

The presence on Earth in our time will not surprise anyone. But there are facts that the first aliens were seen by ancient people and mentioned this in their pictograms, manuscripts, annals. The ancient Greeks and Romans and even the Sumerians (presumably the most ancient civilization) left their impressions of “barrels of fire”, “shining moons” or “hanging logs” descending from heaven and “sons of God” coming out of them and marrying “daughters of men” . Messages about are also found in medieval chronicles, and Russian ones. There are mentions of them in the Bible - a source that cannot be questioned.

All this suggests the idea that something from the outside influences the civilization of mankind. The only question is what kind of force it is, and what is the general plan of this influence. Maybe the genetic code of the first Cro-Magnons was borrowed from representatives of other worlds? And our blue planet Earth, with its endlessly multiplying problems, has been under the vigilant eye of more developed civilizations or Reason in general for a long time, from the very moment the first Cro-Magnons appeared, and maybe even earlier from the moment of its inception. Who knows ... Or remembering the instruction from the bible:

"Hidden things belong to the Lord, but things that are revealed to the sons of men",

Let's wait until the veil is lifted...

Russian scientists from the Paleontological Institute. Borisyak were able to prove that the first living organisms appeared on Earth as a result of the so-called panspermia (a hypothesis about the appearance of life on the planet as a result of the introduction of the so-called "germs of life" from outer space). It happened about 3.8 billion years ago, during the fall of a meteorite, which brought the most ancient microorganisms to Earth, from which all modern life forms subsequently developed.

Scientists have studied ancient meteorites found in Mongolia. The analysis showed that bacteria were present in them, which existed even before the formation of the Earth.