Stages of the formation of humanity. Андрей Тихомиров
was the Dutch physician Eugene Dubois. Inspired by the logical force of Darwin's interpretation of the pedigree of humanity, he decided to look for an intermediate stage between ape and man and on the island of Java at the beginning of In the 1890s, the bones of a fossilized creature that combined features of man and ape, Pithecanthropus, which in Greek means "ape-man", were found. Scientists could judge another stage in the process of human development by the remains of Neanderthal man (named after the town of Neanderthal in Germany, where the first find was made in 1856). Neanderthal man was closer to modern man than Pithecanthropus and Sinanthropus (Chinese man), whose bone remains were found in abundance during excavations near Beijing (Zhoukoudian) in the late 1920s. The appearance of primitive people and traces of their labor activity are not enough in themselves to recreate a complete picture of the origin of mankind. It is necessary to know what connections and relationships existed between separate individuals, transforming their totality into a society of people, into a human society. Even ancient thinkers noted the difference between the customs of neighboring ("barbarian") peoples and the way of life that dominated ancient society. In the era of great geographical discoveries, Europeans came into contact with an even more amazing world of tribes and peoples who were lagging behind in their development. The collection and generalization of information about such "primitive" peoples opened up the possibility of reconstructing the social life of ancient humanity. The most successful attempt in this direction was the work of the American ethnographer and historian Lewis Henry Morgan, "Ancient Society" (1877). It shows the important role of collective property both in productive life and in family-marital organization and in other spheres of life in primitive society. The initial and fundamental "cell" of the social structure was the clan, first maternal, then paternal. Thus, in the 19th century, the most important contours of the picture emerged that allow us to imagine the emergence and initial development of mankind. In generalizing the accumulated facts and developing the methodology for further research in the field of primitive history, the most important role belongs to the works of Engels "The Role of Labor in the Process of Transformation of the Ape into Man" (1873-1876) and "The Origin of Private Property and the State" (1884), which provide a consistent dialectical-materialistic interpretation of the processes of the origin of man and society. F. Engels showed that these processes were based on the development of productive forces and production relations. Labor, Engels wrote, is the first basic condition of all human life, and moreover to such an extent that in a certain sense we must say: labor created man himself. Further, Engels emphasizes the stimulating role of articulate speech in anthropogenesis – a specific means of communication between individuals, characteristic only of human society.
The explanation of the laws of human development in its earliest stages from the standpoint of dialectical materialism has stood the test of time. It allows us to correctly understand the discoveries and findings of recent times, which have caused an avalanche of comments from a variety of points of view.
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