The origin of man and the main stages of anthropogenesis have been the subject of controversy for many centuries. Among all theories of the origin of Homo sapiens, the most substantiated and most developed theory today is Darwin's theory, which has already been "built on" with new facts and statements.
It is no secret, and Darwin emphasizes that at the initial stages of anthropogenesis, biological factors played a leading role in human life, the formation of his habits, and his attitude to the world around him. In the future, social factors begin to become increasingly important, therefore, the main stages of anthropogenesis cannot be considered uniform and characterized only by a time period. The most important thing at every stage is qualitative change.
The stages of anthropogenesis had their own driving forces, and at the initial stages, as we already said, the biological component was the vanguard, and then the social one. So, biological factors include: the struggle for survival, natural selection, mutational processes, combinational variability, gene drift, isolation, gene flow, population waves. Social factors of evolution include labor, a social way of life, articulate speech.
There are three main stages of anthropogenesis:
- ancient people (archanthropes). Archanthropes appeared about one million years ago. Outwardly, the archanthropes were remotely similar to modern man, but they were distinguished by a powerful superciliary arch, protruding chin, low and flattened forehead, protruding nape. The brain volume was from seven hundred fifty to nine hundred cubic centimeters, and its structure was more primitive than in later forms. Archanthropists were engaged in hunting, lived in caves and enjoyed fire.
- ancient people (paleoanthropes). Appeared about two hundred thousand years ago. Externally, the paleoanthropes had almost the same signs as the archanthropes, but the brain volume almost doubled, the muscles became more developed. The paleoanthropes had an attempt at articulate speech. If we compare in general the physical development of archanthropes and paleoanthropes, the latter are significantly inferior in physical indicators.
- modern people (neoanthropes). They had high growth, increased brain volume, changed the shape of the bones of the skull. Engaged in hunting and gathering, could transmit primitive sounds to each other. They built housing, created the first cave paintings, knew how to sew clothes.
The first two stages of anthropogenesis by the leading people had natural selection, since it made it possible for people with pronounced social qualities to survive. At the neoanthropic stage, a person learned to use fire, build artificial housing, and make primitive clothes. As a result of such transformations, the degree of a person’s dependence on external conditions decreased significantly. Further leading are social factors that are gaining more momentum. In the progress of mankind, the laws of social existence began to play a leading guiding role. Qualitatively new stages of anthropogenesis are the main difference between human development. In the future, such changes led to the emergence of nationalities - a territorial, linguistic, economical and cultural community of people that has developed in the process of historical development. A higher level - a nation - is a persistent community of people that has a common economic development, territory, speech, mental characteristics that are manifested in the culture and way of life of the people.
The stages of human anthropogenesis is a long difficult path to becoming a rational person with social skills and a high level of psychoemotional actions. Today, not all issues of anthropogenesis have been studied, many of them are a mystery and are awaiting disclosure.