In the modern scientific community there is no consensus as to when the first ancient man appeared on the planet. The whole snag is who exactly from a whole series of our upright ancestors to consider a person and according to what criteria: brain size, the presence of tools, the level of social organization, the development of other physiological parameters. Be that as it may, the ancient man existed on the planet for a very long period of time. Significantly longer,
than our entire written history counts.
Paleolithic era
This period can be considered the time of the final formation of the first Homo sapiens that appeared in the Upper Paleolithic (50-10 thousand years BC). Then tribal communities are formed, which will give the first states. The most primitive culture and religious beliefs are developing. An illustrative example is the rock drawing of an ancient man, reflecting his worldview. Perhaps the most famous in this regard are the walls of the Lascaux and Altamira caves, which have preserved surprisingly eloquent paintings with scenes of social, spiritual life, hunting, and so on.
Different humanity
It is interesting to note that in the Paleolithic, according to modern scientists, there wereseveral alternative branches of upright bipedal development are presented at once
hominids. So, for example, the well-known Neanderthals today are no longer considered the ancestor of modern man, but only a dead-end branch that died out about 40 thousand years ago, literally a different humanity. There are many versions of why this ancient man, having considerable technical achievements, having mastered the craft of hunting, having tamed fire, could not survive to this day: from a banal failure in adapting to new environmental conditions and the retreat of glaciers to the physical widespread destruction of Neanderthals by our ancestors – Cro-Magnons.
The emergence of the first civilizations
It was the latter species that managed not only to successfully resist the forces of the surrounding nature, but also to tame it. An epochal event was the so-called Neolithic revolution. This definition refers to the transition from an appropriating subsistence economy, that is, hunting and gathering, to a productive one - cattle breeding and the cultivation of useful plants. The fact that ancient man learned not only to take what nature gives him, but also to create food and labor products on his own, predetermined fundamental transformations on our planet. The transition to a productive economy made it possible to forget about the painful problem of hunger, the first permanent settlements appeared - the most ancient villages and cities. Previously limited hunting areas and
diversity of fauna on them imposed a natural limit onthe number of human communities. The increase in labor productivity that now characterized agriculture led to a significant increase in the number of tribes, the specialization of labor, social stratification, and the first right to property. Of course, all this could not but result in the creation of the first states on the planet in 7-6 millennia BC. The people of ancient Egypt, India, the states of Mesopotamia already had developed social systems, cultural and religious worldviews, economic and political structures. Human history has begun.
