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Stone Age

a cultural and historical period in the development of mankind, when the main tools and weapons were made mainly of stone and there was still no metal processing, wood and bone were also used; at a late stage To. the processing of clay, from which dishes were made, also spread. Through the transitional era - the Eneolithic K. c. is replaced by the Bronze Age (See Bronze Age). K. v. coincides with most of the era of the primitive communal system and covers the time from the separation of man from the animal state (about 1 million 800 thousand years ago) and ending with the era of the spread of the first metals (about 8 thousand years ago in the Ancient East and about 6-7 thousand years ago in Europe).

K. v. It is divided into the ancient K. v., or Paleolithic, and the new K. v., or Neolithic. The Paleolithic is the era of the existence of fossil man and belongs to that distant time when the climate of the earth and its flora and fauna were quite different from modern ones. Paleolithic people used only chipped stone tools, not knowing polished stone tools and earthenware (ceramics). Paleolithic people were engaged in hunting and gathering food (plants, mollusks, etc.). Fishing was just beginning to emerge, while agriculture and cattle breeding were not known. Neolithic people already lived in modern climatic conditions and surrounded by modern flora and fauna. In the Neolithic, along with chipped, polished and drilled stone tools, as well as pottery, spread. Neolithic people, along with hunting, gathering, fishing, began to engage in primitive hoe farming and breed domestic animals. Between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic, a transitional era is distinguished - the Mesolithic.

The Paleolithic is divided into ancient (lower, early) (1 million 800 thousand - 35 thousand years ago) and late (upper) (35-10 thousand years ago). The ancient Paleolithic is divided into archaeological epochs (cultures): pre-Chellenic (see. Galek culture), Shellic culture (see. Shellic culture), Acheulean culture (see. Acheulean culture), and Mousterian culture (see. Mousterian culture). Many archaeologists single out the Mousterian era (100-35 thousand years ago) as a special period - the Middle Paleolithic.

The oldest, pre-Shellian stone tools were pebbles chipped at one end, and flakes chipped from such pebbles. The tools of the Schell and Acheulean eras were hand axes, pieces of stone chipped on both surfaces, thickened at one end and pointed at the other, coarse chopping tools (choppers and choppings), which had less regular outlines than axes, as well as rectangular ax-shaped tools (jibs) and massive flakes that broke off from Nucleus ov (cores). The people who made pre-Chellian-Acheulean tools belonged to the type of archanthropes (See Archanthropes) (Pithecanthropus, Sinanthropus, Heidelberg man), and, possibly, to an even more primitive type (Homo habilis, Prezinjanthropus). People lived in a warm climate, mostly south of 50° north latitude (most of Africa, southern Europe, and southern Asia). In the Mousterian era, stone flakes became thinner, because. they broke off from specially prepared disk-shaped or tortoiseshell nuclei - nuclei (the so-called Levallois technique); flakes were turned into a variety of side-scrapers, pointed points, knives, drills, hems, etc. The use of bone (anvils, retouchers, points), as well as the use of fire, spread; in view of the beginning of a cold snap, people more often began to settle in caves and mastered wider territories. Burials testify to the origin of primitive religious beliefs. The people of the Mousterian era belonged to the paleoanthropes (See Paleoanthropes) (Neanderthals).

In Europe, they lived mainly in the harsh climatic conditions of the beginning of the Würm glaciation (see the Würm era), they were contemporaries of mammoths, woolly rhinos, and cave bears. For the ancient Paleolithic, local differences have been established in different cultures, determined by the nature of the tools produced.

In the era of the late Paleolithic, a person of the modern physical type developed (neoanthrope (See Neoanthropes), Homo sapiens - Cro-Magnons, a man from Grimaldi, etc.). Late Paleolithic people settled much more widely than the Neanderthals, settled in Siberia, America, Australia.

The Late Paleolithic technique is characterized by prismatic cores, from which elongated plates were broken off, turning into scrapers, points, tips, incisors, piercings, scrapers, etc. Awls, needles with an eye, spatulas, picks, and other items made of bone, horn, and mammoth tusk appeared. People began to move to a settled way of life; along with the cave camps, long-term dwellings spread - dugouts and ground dwellings, both large communal ones with several hearths, and small ones (Gagarino, Kostenki (See Kostenki), Pushkari, Buret, Malta, Dolni-Vestonice, Pensevan, etc.). In the construction of dwellings, skulls, large bones and mammoth tusks, reindeer horns, wood and skins were used. Dwellings often formed entire villages. The hunting industry has reached a higher level of development. Fine art appeared, characterized in many cases by striking realism: sculptural images of animals and naked women made of mammoth tusk, stone, sometimes clay (Kostenki I, Avdeevskaya site, Gagarino, Dolni-Vestonice, Willendorf, Brassanpuy, etc.), engraved on bones and stone images of animals and fish, engraved and painted conditional geometric ornament - zigzag, rhombuses, meander, wavy lines (Mezinskaya site, Prshedmosti, etc.), engraved and painted (monochrome and polychrome) images of animals, sometimes people and conventional signs on the walls and ceilings of caves (Altamira, Lasko, etc.). Paleolithic art, apparently, is partly connected with the female cults of the maternal era, with hunting Magic and Totemism. There were various burials: crouched, sitting, painted, with grave goods.

There were several large cultural areas in the Late Paleolithic, as well as a significant number of smaller cultures. For Western Europe, these are the Perigord, Aurignacian, Solutrean, Madeleine and other cultures; for Central Europe - Selet culture, etc.

The transition from the Late Paleolithic to the Mesolithic coincided with the final extinction of the glaciation and with the establishment of the modern climate in general. Radiocarbon dating of the European Mesolithic 10-7 thousand years ago (in the northern regions of Europe, the Mesolithic lasted until 6-5 thousand years ago); Mesolithic of the Near East - 12-9 thousand years ago. Mesolithic cultures - Azil culture, Tardenois culture, Maglemose culture, Ertbölle culture, Hoabin culture, etc. The Mesolithic technique of many territories is characterized by the use of microliths - miniature stone tools of geometric outlines (in the form of a trapezoid, segment, triangle), used as inserts in wooden and bone frames, as well as chipped chopping tools: axes, adzes, picks. Bows and arrows spread. The dog, which was tamed, perhaps already in the late Paleolithic, was widely used by people in the Mesolithic.

The most important feature of the Neolithic is the transition from the appropriation of finished products of nature (hunting, fishing, gathering) to the production of vital products, although appropriation continued to occupy a large place in the economic activity of people. People began to cultivate plants, cattle breeding arose. The decisive changes in the economy that occurred with the transition to pastoralism and agriculture are called by some researchers the "Neolithic Revolution". The defining elements of the Neolithic culture were earthenware (ceramics), molded by hand, without a potter's wheel, stone axes, hammers, adzes, chisels, hoes (their production used sawing, grinding and drilling of stone), flint daggers, knives, arrowheads and spears, sickles (made by pressing retouching), microliths and chopping tools that arose back in the Mesolithic, all kinds of products made of bone and horn (fish hooks, harpoons, hoe tips, chisels), and wood (hollowed canoes, oars, skis, sledges , handles of various kinds). Flint workshops spread, and at the end of the Neolithic - even mines for the extraction of flint and, in connection with this, intertribal exchange of raw materials. Primitive spinning and weaving arose. Characteristic manifestations of Neolithic art are a variety of indented and painted ornaments on ceramics, clay, bone, stone figurines of people and animals, monumental painted, incised and hollowed out rock carvings (petroglyphs, petroglyphs). The funeral rite becomes more complex; cemeteries are being built. The uneven development of culture and its local originality in different territories intensified even more in the Neolithic. There is a large number of different Neolithic cultures. The tribes of different countries at different times passed the stage of the Neolithic. Most of the Neolithic monuments of Europe and Asia date back to the 6th-3rd millennium BC. e.

Neolithic culture developed most rapidly in the countries of the Middle East, where agriculture and livestock rearing first arose. People who widely practiced the collection of wild cereals and, possibly, made attempts to grow them artificially, belong to the Natufian culture of Palestine, dating back to the Mesolithic (9-8th millennium BC). Along with microliths, sickles with flint inserts and stone mortars are found here. In the 9th-8th millennium BC. e. primitive agriculture and cattle breeding also originated in the North. Iraq. By the 7th-6th millennium BC. e. include the settled agricultural settlements of Jericho in Jordan, Jarmo in northern Iraq, and Chatal Huyuk in southern Turkey. They are characterized by the appearance of sanctuaries, fortifications and often of considerable size. In the 6th-5th millennium BC. e. in Iraq and Iran, more developed Neolithic agricultural cultures with adobe houses, painted pottery, and female figurines are common. In the 5th-4th millennium BC. e. agricultural tribes of the advanced Neolithic inhabited Egypt.

The progress of Neolithic culture in Europe proceeded on a local basis, but under the strong influence of the cultures of the Mediterranean and the Near East, from which, probably, the most important cultivated plants and some species of domestic animals penetrated into Europe. On the territory of England and France in the Neolithic and the early Bronze Age, agricultural pastoral tribes lived, constructing megalithic buildings (see Megalithic cultures, Megaliths) from huge blocks of stone. The Neolithic and Early Bronze Age of Switzerland and the adjacent territories are characterized by a wide distribution of piled buildings (see Pile Buildings), whose inhabitants were mainly engaged in cattle breeding and agriculture, as well as hunting and fishing. In Central Europe, the Danube agricultural cultures took shape in the Neolithic, with characteristic ceramics decorated with ribbon ornaments. In northern Scandinavia at the same time and later, up to the 2nd millennium BC. e., lived tribes of Neolithic hunters and fishermen.

K. v. on the territory of the USSR. The oldest reliable monuments of the K. century. belong to the Acheulean time and date back to the era preceding the Rissky (Dnieper) glaciation (see Rissky Age). They are found in the Caucasus, in the Azov region, Transnistria, Central Asia and Kazakhstan; flakes, hand axes, choppers (rough chopping tools) were found in them. In the caves of Kudaro, Tsonskaya and Azikhskaya in the Caucasus, the remains of hunting camps of the Acheulian era were discovered. The sites of the Mousterian era are spread further to the north. In the grotto of Kiik-Koba in the Crimea and in the grotto of Teshik-Tash in Uzbekistan, burials of Neanderthals were discovered, and in the grotto of Staroselye in the Crimea - a burial of a neoanthrope. In the site of Molodova I on the Dniester, the remains of a long-term Mousterian dwelling were discovered.

The Late Paleolithic population on the territory of the USSR was even more widespread. Successive stages of development of the Late Paleolithic in different parts of the USSR, as well as Late Paleolithic cultures are traced: Kostenkovo-Sungir, Kostenkovo-Avdeevskaya, Mezinskaya, etc. on the Russian Plain, Maltese, Afontovskaya, etc. in Siberia, etc. A large number of multi-layer Late Paleolithic settlements have been excavated on the Dniester (Babin, Voronovitsa, Molodova V, etc.). Another area where many Late Paleolithic settlements are known with the remains of dwellings of various types and examples of art is the Desna and Sudost basin (Mezin, Pushkari, Eliseevichi, Yudinovo, etc.). The third such area is the villages of Kostenki and Borshevo on the Don, where more than 20 Late Paleolithic sites have been found, including a number of multi-layer sites, with the remains of dwellings, many works of art and 4 burials. The Sungir site on the Klyazma is located separately, where several burials were found. The northernmost Paleolithic sites in the world include the Bear Cave and the Byzovaya site. R. Pechora (Komi ASSR). Kapova Cave in the Southern Urals contains painted images of mammoths on the walls. The caves of Georgia and Azerbaijan allow us to trace the development of the Late Paleolithic culture, which is different from that on the Russian Plain, through a series of stages - from the sites of the beginning of the Late Paleolithic, where Mousterian pointed points are still present in a significant number, to the sites of the late Late Paleolithic, where many microliths are found. The most important Late Paleolithic settlement in Central Asia is the Samarkand site. In Siberia, a large number of Late Paleolithic sites are known on the Yenisei (Afontova Gora, Kokorevo), in the Angara and Belaya basins (Malta, Buret), in Transbaikalia, in Altai. The Late Paleolithic was discovered in the Lena, Aldan and Kamchatka basins.

The Neolithic is represented by numerous cultures. Some of them belong to ancient agricultural tribes, and some belong to primitive fishermen-hunters. The agricultural Neolithic includes monuments of the Bug and other cultures of the Right-Bank Ukraine and Moldavia (5th-3rd millennium BC), settlements of Transcaucasia (Shulaveri, Odishi, Kistrik, etc.), as well as settlements of the Jeytun type in South Turkmenistan, reminiscent of the settlements of the Neolithic farmers of Iran. Cultures of Neolithic hunters and fishermen of the 5th-3rd millennium BC. e. also existed in the south, in the Sea of ​​Azov, in the North Caucasus, and in Central Asia (the Kelteminar culture); but they were especially widespread in the 4th-2nd millennium BC. e. in the north, in the forest belt from the Baltic to the Pacific Ocean. Numerous Neolithic hunting and fishing cultures, most of which are characterized by certain types of pottery, decorated with pit-comb and comb-pricked patterns, are represented along the shores of Lake Ladoga and Onega and the White Sea (here, in some places, rock art related to these cultures is also found). images, petroglyphs), on the upper Volga and in the Volga-Oka interfluve. In the Kama region, in the forest-steppe Ukraine, in Western and Eastern Siberia, ceramics with comb-pricked and comb patterns were common among the Neolithic tribes. Other types of Neolithic pottery were common in Primorye and Sakhalin.

History of studying K. in. The conjecture that the era of the use of metals was preceded by a time when stones served as weapons was expressed by Lucretius Car in the 1st century. BC e. In 1836 dates. archaeologist K. Yu. Thomsen singled out 3 cultural-historical epochs on the basis of archaeological material (K. century, Bronze Age, Iron Age). The existence of a Paleolithic fossil man proved in the 40-50s. 19th century in the struggle against reactionary clerical science, the French archaeologist Boucher de Perth. In the 60s. the English scientist J. Lubbock dismembered the C. v. on the Paleolithic and Neolithic, and the French archaeologist G. de Mortillet created generalizing works on the K. century. and developed a more fractional periodization (the eras of the Shellic, Mousterian, etc.). By the 2nd half of the 19th century. include studies of Mesolithic kitchen piles in Denmark, Neolithic pile settlements in Switzerland, and numerous Paleolithic and Neolithic caves and sites in Europe and Asia. At the end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century. Paleolithic painted images were discovered in the caves of southern France and northern Spain.

In the 2nd half of the 19th century. studying To. was closely associated with Darwinian ideas (see Darwinism), with progressive, albeit historically limited, evolutionism. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. and in the first half of the 20th century. in the bourgeois science of k. (primitive archeology, prehistory, and paleoethnology), the methodology of archaeological work has been substantially improved; vast new factual material has been accumulated that does not fit into the framework of the old simplified schemes; At the same time, ahistorical constructions connected with the theory of cultural circles, with the theory of migrations, and sometimes directly with reactionary racism, became widespread. Progressive bourgeois scientists, who sought to trace the development of primitive mankind and its economy as a natural process, opposed these reactionary concepts. A serious achievement of foreign researchers of the 1st half and the middle of the 20th century. is the creation of a number of generalizing guides, reference books and encyclopedias on K. century. Europe, Asia, Africa and America (French scientist J. Dechelet, German - M. Ebert, English - J. Clark, G. Child, R. Vofrey, H. M. Warmington, etc.), the elimination of extensive white spots on archaeological maps, the discovery and study of numerous monuments of K. v. in European countries (Czech. scientists K. Absolon, B. Klima, F. Proshek, I. Neusstupni, Hungarian - L. Vertes, Romanian - K. Nikolaescu-Plopshor, Yugoslav - S. Brodar, A. Benac, Polish - L Savitsky, S. Krukovsky, German - A. Rust, Spanish - L. Perikot-Garcia, etc.), in Africa (English scientist L. Leakey, French - K. Arambur, etc.), in the Middle East (English scientists D. Garrod, J. Mellart, C. Kenyon, American scientists - R. Braidwood, R. Soletsky, etc.), in India (H. D. Sankalia, B. B. Lal, etc.), in China (Jia Lan-po, Pei Wen-chung, and others), in Southeast Asia (the French scientist A. Manxui, the Dutch - H. van Heckeren, and others), in America (the American scientists A. Kroeber, F. Rainey, and others .). The technique of excavations has improved significantly, the publication of archaeological sites has increased, and a comprehensive study of ancient settlements by archaeologists, geologists, paleozoologists, and paleobotanists has spread. The radiocarbon dating method and the statistical method of studying stone tools began to be widely used; (French scientists A, Breuil, A. Leroy-Gourhan, Italian - P. Graziosi and others).

In Russia, a number of Paleolithic and Neolithic sites were studied in the 70-90s. 19th century A. S. Uvarov, I. S. Polyakov, K. S. Merezhkovsky, V. B. Antonovich, V. V. Khvoyka, and others. The first two decades of the 20th century. The excavations of Paleolithic and Neolithic settlements by V. A. Gorodtsov, A. A. Spitsyn, F. K. Volkov, and P. P. Efimenko and others.

After the October Socialist Revolution, research by K. v. gained wide scope in the USSR. By 1917, 12 Paleolithic sites were known in the country, in the early 1970s. their number exceeded 1000. Paleolithic sites were first discovered in Belarus (K. M. Polikarpovich), in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia (G. K. Nioradze, S. N. Zamyatnin, M. Z. Panichkina, M. M. Huseynov, L. N. Solovyov and others), in Central Asia (A. P. Okladnikov, D. N. Lev, V. A. Ranov, Kh. A. Alpysbaev and others), in the Urals (M. V. Talitsky and etc.). Numerous new Paleolithic sites have been discovered and explored in the Crimea, on the Russian Plain, and in Siberia (P. P. Efimenko, M. V. Voevodsky, G. A. Bonch-Osmolovsky, M. Ya. Rudinsky, G. P. Sosnovsky, A. P. Okladnikov, M. M. Gerasimov, S. N. Bibikov, A. P. Chernysh, A. N. Rogachev, O. N. Bader, A. A. Formozov, I. G. Shovkoplyas, P. I . Boriskovsky and others), in Georgia (N. Z. Berdzenishvili, A. N. Kalandadze, D. M. Tushabramishvili, V. P. Lyubin and others). The most sowing are open. Paleolithic sites in the world: on the Pechora, Lena, in the Aldan basin and on Kamchatka (V. I. Kanivets, N. N. Dikov, and others). A methodology has been developed for excavating Paleolithic settlements, which made it possible to establish the existence of settled and permanent dwellings in the Paleolithic. A method for restoring the functions of primitive tools based on the traces of their use, traceology (S. A. Semenov) was developed. The historical changes that took place in the Paleolithic were covered - the development of the primitive herd and the maternal tribal system. Late Paleolithic and Mesolithic cultures and their relationships are revealed. Numerous monuments of Paleolithic art have been discovered and generalizing works dedicated to them have been created (S. N. Zamyatnin, Z. A. Abramova, and others). Generalizing works have been created on the chronology, periodization and historical coverage of Neolithic monuments in a number of territories, the identification of Neolithic cultures and their relationships, the development of Neolithic technology (V. A. Gorodtsov, B. S. Zhukov, M. V. Voevodsky, A. Ya. Bryusov , M. E. Foss, A. P. Okladnikov, V. N. Chernetsov, N. N. Gurina, O. N. Bader, D. A. Krainev, V. N. Danilenko, D. Ya. Telegin, V M. Masson and others). The monuments of Neolithic monumental art - rock carvings of S.-Z. USSR, Sea of ​​Azov and Siberia (V. I. Ravdonikas, M. Ya. Rudinsky and others).

Soviet researchers K. century. Much work has been done to expose the ahistorical concepts of reactionary bourgeois scientists, to illuminate and decipher the monuments of the Paleolithic and Neolithic. Armed with the methodology of dialectical and historical materialism, they criticized the attempts of many bourgeois scholars (especially in France) to attribute the study of calisthenics to to the field of natural sciences, to consider the development of the culture of K. in. like a biological process, or construct for the study of K. century. a special science of "paleoethnology", which occupies an intermediate position between the biological and social sciences. At the same time, owls researchers oppose the empiricism of those bourgeois archaeologists who reduce the tasks of studying Paleolithic and Neolithic monuments only to a thorough description and definition of things and their groups, and also ignore the conditionality of the historical process, the natural connection between material culture and social relations, their consistent natural development. For owls. researchers monuments to. - not an end in itself, but a source of study of the early stages of the history of the primitive communal system. They are particularly uncompromising in their struggle against the bourgeois idealistic and racist theories that are widespread among specialists in classical art. in the USA, Great Britain, and a number of other capitalist countries. These theories erroneously interpret and sometimes even falsify the data of the archeology of the K. v. for statements about the division of peoples into elected and unelected, about the inevitable eternal backwardness of certain countries and peoples, about the beneficence in human history of conquests and wars. Soviet researchers K. v. showed that the early stages of world history and the history of primitive culture were a process in which all peoples, large and small, participated and contributed.

Lit.: Engels F., Origin of the family, private property and the state, M., 1965; his, The role of labor in the process of turning a monkey into a man, M., 1969; Abramova Z. A., Paleolithic art on the territory of the USSR, M. - L., 1962; Aliman A., Prehistoric Africa, trans. from French, Moscow, 1960; Coastal N. A., Paleolithic locations of the USSR, M. - L., 1960; Bonch-Osmolovsky G. A., Paleolithic of the Crimea, c. 1-3, M. - L., 1940-54; Boriskovsky P. I., Paleolithic of Ukraine, M. - L., 1953; his, Ancient Stone Age of South and Southeast Asia, L., 1971; Bryusov A. Ya., Essays on the history of the tribes of the European part of the USSR in the Neolithic era, M., 1952; Gurina N. N., Ancient history of the north-west of the European part of the USSR, M. - L., 1961; Danilenko V.N., Neolit ​​of Ukraine, K., 1969; Efimenko P. P., Primitive Society, 3rd ed., K., 1953; Zamyatnin S. N., Essays on the Paleolithic, M. - L., 1961; Clark, J.G.D., Prehistoric Europe, [trans. from English], M., 1953; Masson V. M., Central Asia and the Ancient East, M. - L., 1964; Okladnikov A.P., Neolithic and Bronze Age of the Baikal region, part 1-2, M. - L., 1950; his, Distant Past of Primorye, Vladivostok, 1959; his own, Morning of Art, L., 1967; Panichkina M. Z., Paleolith of Armenia, L., 1950; Ranov V.A., Stone Age of Tajikistan, c. 1, Dush., 1965; Semenov S. A., Development of technology in the Stone Age, L., 1968; Titov V.S., Neolit ​​of Greece, M., 1969; Formozov A. A., Ethnocultural regions in the territory of the European part of the USSR in the Stone Age, M., 1,959; his own, Essays on primitive art, M., 1969 (MIA, No. 165); Foss M.E., The most ancient history of the north of the European part of the USSR, M., 1952; Child G., At the origins of European civilization, trans. from English, M., 1952; Bordes, F., Le paleolithique dans ie monde, P., 1968; Breuil N., Quatre cents siècles d "art pariétal, Montignac, 1952; Clark J. D., The prehistory of Africa, L., 1970: Clark G., World L., prehistory, 2 ed., Camb., 1969; L" Europe à la fin de l "âge de la pierre, Praha, 1961; Graziosi P., Palaeolithic art, L., 1960; Leroi-Gourhan A., Préhistoire de l" art occidental, P., 1965; La prehistory. P., 1966; La prehistoire. Problems et tendances, P., 1968; Man the hunter, Chi., 1968; Müller-Karpe H., Handbuch der Vorgeschichte, Bd 1-2, Münch., 1966-68; Oakley, K. P., Frameworks for dating fossil man. 3 ed., L., 1969.

P. I. Boriskovsky.

Mousterian era: 1 - Levallois core; 2 - leaf-shaped tip; 3 - teyak point; 4 - discoid nucleus; 5, 6 - points; 7 - two-pointed tip; 8 - toothed tool; 9 - scraper; 10 - chopped; 11 - a knife with a butt; 12 - a tool with a notch; 13 - puncture; 14 - scraper type kina; 15 - double scraper; 16, 17 - longitudinal scrapers.

Paleolithic sites and finds of bone remains of fossil man in Europe.

Today, very little is known about our ancestors who lived in the Stone Age. For a long time there was an opinion that these people were cave dwellers who walked with a club. But modern scientists are sure that the Stone Age is a huge period of history that began about 3.3 million years ago and lasted until 3300 AD. — it wasn't exactly like that.

1. Homo Erectus Tool Factory

In the northeast of Tel Aviv, Israel, hundreds of ancient stone tools have been unearthed during excavations. Discovered in 2017 at a depth of 5 meters, the artifacts were made by human ancestors. Created about half a million years ago, the tools told a few facts about their creators - the ancestor of man, known as Homo erectus ("upright man"). It is believed that the area was a kind of Stone Age paradise - there were rivers, plants and abundant food - everything you need for existence.

The most interesting find of this primitive camp was the quarries. Stonemasons chipped the flint edges into pear-shaped ax blades, which were probably used for digging up food and butchering animals. The discovery was unexpected, in view of the huge number of perfectly preserved instruments. This makes it possible to learn more about the lifestyle of Homo erectus.

2. First wine

At the end of the Stone Age, the first wine was made on the territory of modern Georgia. In 2016 and 2017, archaeologists dug up ceramic shards dating back to 5400-5000 BC. Fragments of clay jars found in two ancient Neolithic settlements (Gadahrili Gora and Shulaveri Gora) were subjected to analysis, as a result of which tartaric acid was found in six vessels.

This chemical is always an undeniable sign that there was wine in the vessels. The scientists also found that grape juice fermented naturally in the warm climate of Georgia. To figure out whether red or white wine was preferred at the time, the researchers analyzed the color of the leftovers. They were yellowish, which suggests that the ancient Georgians produced white wine.

3. Dental procedures

In the mountains of northern Tuscany, dentists served patients 13,000 to 12,740 years ago. Evidence of six such primitive patients has been found in an area called Riparo Fredian. On two teeth, traces of a procedure that any modern dentist would recognize - a cavity in the tooth filled with a filling, were found. It is difficult to say if any painkillers were used, but the marks on the enamel were made by some kind of sharp instrument.

Most likely, it was made of stone, which was used to expand the cavity, scraping off decayed tooth tissues. In the next tooth, they also found a familiar technology - the remains of a filling. It was made from bitumen mixed with vegetable fibers and hair. If the use of bitumen (natural resin) is understandable, then why hair and fibers were added is a mystery.

4. Long term home maintenance

Most children are taught in schools that Stone Age families lived only in caves. However, they also built mud houses. Recently, 150 Stone Age camps have been studied in Norway. Stone rings showed that the earliest dwellings were tents, probably made from animal skins held together by rings. In Norway, during the Mesolithic era, which began around 9500 BC, people began to build dugout houses.

This change occurred when the last ice of the Ice Age left. Some "semi-dugouts" were quite large (about 40 square meters), which suggests that several families lived in them. The most incredible thing is the consistent attempts to preserve the structures. Some of them were abandoned for 50 years before the new owners stopped maintaining the houses.

5. Massacre in Nataruk

Stone Age cultures produced spectacular art and social relationships, but they also fought wars. In one case, it was just a senseless massacre. In 2012, in Nataruk in northern Kenya, a team of scientists found bones sticking out of the ground. It turned out that the skeleton had broken knees. After clearing the bones of sand, scientists discovered that they belonged to a pregnant woman of the Stone Age. Despite her condition, she was killed. About 10,000 years ago, someone tied her up and threw her into the lagoon.

Nearby were found the remains of 27 other people, soon of which there were 6 children and several more women. Most of the remains showed signs of violence, including injuries, fractures, and even pieces of weapons stuck in the bones. It is impossible to say why the hunter-gatherer group was decimated, but it could be the result of a resource dispute. During this time, Nataruk was a lush and fertile land of fresh water - an invaluable place for any tribe. Whatever happened that day, the massacre at Nataruk remains the oldest evidence of human warfare.

6. Inbreeding

It is possible that humans were saved as a species by the early realization of inbreeding. In 2017, scientists found the first signs of this understanding in the bones of Stone Age humans. Four skeletons of people who died 34,000 years ago have been found in Sungir, east of Moscow. Genetic analysis showed that they behaved like modern hunter-gatherer communities when it came to choosing mates. They realized that having offspring with close relatives such as siblings was fraught with consequences. In Sungir, there were clearly almost no marriages within the same family.

If people mated at random, then the genetic consequences of inbreeding would be more obvious. Like later hunter-gatherers, they must have sought out partners through social ties with other tribes. Sungir burials were accompanied by complex enough rituals to suggest that important milestones in life (such as death and marriage) were accompanied by ceremonies. If so, then Stone Age weddings would be the earliest human marriages. Lack of understanding of kin bonds may have doomed Neanderthals, whose DNA shows more inbreeding.

7. Women of other cultures

In 2017, researchers studied ancient dwellings in Lechtal, Germany. Their age was about 4000 years, when there were no large settlements in the area. When the remains of the inhabitants were examined, an amazing tradition was discovered. Most of the families were founded by women who left their villages to settle in Lechtala. This happened from the Late Stone Age to the Early Bronze Age.

For eight centuries, women, probably from Bohemia or Central Germany, preferred Lechtal men. Such movements of women were the key to the dissemination of cultural ideas and objects, which, in turn, helped shape new technologies. The discovery also showed that previous beliefs about mass migration needed to be corrected. Although the women moved to Lechtal many times, this was purely on an individual basis.

8. Written language

Researchers may have discovered the oldest written language in the world. In fact, it can be code that represents certain concepts. Historians have long known about the symbols of the Stone Age, but for many years they ignored them, despite the fact that the caves with rock paintings are visited by countless visitors. Some of the most incredible rock inscriptions in the world have been found in caves in Spain and France. Between the ancient images of bison, horses and lions were tiny symbols representing something abstract.

Twenty-six signs are repeated on the walls of about 200 caves. If they serve to convey some kind of information, this "pushes back" the invention of writing back 30,000 years ago. However, the roots of ancient writing may be even older. Many of the symbols painted by Cro-Magnons in French caves have been found in ancient African art. Specifically, it is an open angle sign engraved in Blombos Cave in South Africa that dates back 75,000 years.

9. Plague

By the time the bacterium Yersinia pestis reached Europe in the 14th century, 30-60 percent of the population was already dead. Examined in 2017, ancient skeletons showed that the plague appeared in Europe during the Stone Age. Six Late Neolithic and Bronze Age skeletons tested positive for plague. The disease has spread over a wide geographical area, from Lithuania, Estonia and Russia to Germany and Croatia. Given the different locations and two eras, the researchers were surprised when they compared the genomes of Yersinia pestis (the plague bacillus).

Further research showed that the bacterium probably arrived from the east when people settled from the Caspian-Pontic steppe (Russia and Ukraine). Arriving some 4,800 years ago, they brought with them a unique genetic marker. This marker appeared in European remains at the same time as the earliest traces of the plague, indicating that the steppe people brought the disease with them. It is not known how deadly the plague bacillus was in those days, but it is possible that the steppe migrants fled their homes due to the epidemic.

10. Musical evolution of the brain

It used to be thought that the tools of the Early Stone Age evolved along with the language. But the revolutionary change - from simple to complex tools - happened about 1.75 million years ago. Scholars are not sure if the language existed then. An experiment was carried out in 2017. The volunteers were shown to the volunteers how to make the simplest tools (from bark and pebbles) as well as the more "advanced" hand axes of the Acheulian culture. One group watched the video with sound, and the other without.

While the participants were asleep, their brain activity was analyzed in real time. The scientists found that the "jump" in knowledge was not related to language. The brain's language center only activated in people who heard the video's instructions, but both groups successfully made Acheulean instruments. This could solve the mystery of when and how the human species moved from ape-like thinking to cognition. Many believe that 1.75 million years ago, music first arose, along with human intelligence.

The undoubted interest of all those involved in history,
will call and .

The history of human life on the planet began when man picked up a tool and applied his mind to survive. During its existence, humanity has gone through several major stages in the development of its social system. Each era is characterized by its own way of life, artifacts and tools.

History of the Stone Age- the longest and oldest of the pages of mankind known to us, which is characterized by fundamental changes in the worldview and lifestyle of people.

Stone Age features:

• humanity has spread all over the planet;
• all tools of labor were created by people from what the surrounding world provided: wood, stones, various parts of dead animals (bones, skins);
• the formation of the first social and economic structures of society;
• the beginning of the domestication of animals.

Historical chronology of the Stone Age

It is hard for a person in a world where the iPhone becomes obsolete in a month to understand how people have used the same primitive tools for centuries and millennia. The Stone Age is the longest era known to us. Its beginning is attributed to the emergence of the first people about 3 million years ago and it lasts until people invented ways to use metals.

Rice. 1 - Chronology of the Stone Age

Archaeologists divide the history of the Stone Age into several main stages, which are worth considering in more detail. It is important to note that the dates of each period are very approximate and controversial, therefore they may vary in different sources.

Paleolithic

During this period, people lived together in small tribes and used stone tools. The source of food for them was the gathering of plants and the hunting of wild animals. At the end of the Paleolithic, the first religious beliefs in the forces of nature (paganism) appeared. Also, the end of this period is characterized by the appearance of the first works of art (dances, songs and drawing). Most likely, primitive art stemmed from religious rites.

The climate, which was characterized by changes in temperature, from the ice age to warming and vice versa, had a great influence on humanity at that time. The unstable climate managed to change several times.

Mesolithic

The beginning of that period is associated with the final retreat of the ice age, which led to adaptation to new living conditions. The weapons used have greatly improved: from massive tools to miniature microliths, which have made everyday life easier. This also includes the domestication of dogs by humans.

Neolithic

The new stone age was a big step in the development of mankind. During this time, people have learned not only to extract, but also to grow food, while using improved tools for cultivating the land, harvesting and cutting meat.

For the first time, people began to unite in large groups to create significant stone buildings, such as Stonehenge. This indicates a sufficient amount of resources and the ability to negotiate. The emergence of trade between different settlements also testifies in favor of the latter.

The Stone Age is a long and primitive period of human existence. But it was this period that became the cradle in which man learned to think and create.

In details stone age history considered in lecture courses below.

STONE AGE (GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS)

The Stone Age is the oldest and longest period in the history of mankind, characterized by the use of stone as the main material for the manufacture of tools.

For the manufacture of various tools and other necessary products, man used not only stone, but other solid materials: volcanic glass, bone, wood, animal skins and skins, and plant fibers. In the final period of the Stone Age, in the Neolithic, the first artificial material created by man, ceramics, became widespread. In the Stone Age, the formation of a modern type of man takes place. This period of history includes such important achievements of mankind as the emergence of the first social institutions and certain economic structures.

The chronological framework of the Stone Age is very wide - it begins about 2.6 million years ago and before the use of metal by man. On the territory of the Ancient East, this happens in the 7th-6th millennium BC, in Europe - in the 4th-3rd millennium BC.

In archaeological science, the Stone Age is traditionally divided into three main stages:

1. Paleolithic or ancient stone age (2.6 million years BC - 10 thousand years BC);
2. Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age (X / IX thousand - VII thousand years BC);
3. Neolithic or New Stone Age (VI / V thousand - III thousand years BC)

Archaeological periodization of the Stone Age is associated with changes in the stone industry: each period is characterized by peculiar methods of stone processing and, as a result, a certain set of various types of stone tools.

The Stone Age correlates with geological periods:

1. Pleistocene (also called: glacial, Quaternary or Anthropogenic) - dates from 2.5-2 million years to 10 thousand years BC.
2. Holocene - which began in 10 thousand years BC. and continues to this day.

The natural conditions of these periods played a significant role in the formation and development of ancient human societies.

Paleolithic (2.6 million years ago - 10 thousand years ago)

The Paleolithic is divided into three main periods:

1. the early Paleolithic (2.6 million - 150/100 thousand years ago), which is divided into the Olduvai (2.6 - 700 thousand years ago) and Acheulean (700 - 150/100 thousand years ago) eras;
2. Middle Paleolithic or Mousterian era (150/100 - 35/30 thousand years ago);
3. late Paleolithic (35/30 - 10 thousand years ago).

Only Middle and Late Paleolithic sites have been recorded in Crimea. At the same time, flint tools were repeatedly found on the peninsula, the manufacturing technique of which is similar to the Acheulean ones. However, all these finds are accidental and do not belong to any Paleolithic site. This circumstance does not make it possible to confidently attribute them to the Acheulean era.

Mousterian era (150/100 - 35/30 thousand years ago)

The beginning of the era fell at the end of the Riess-Wurm interglacial, which is characterized by a relatively warm climate close to the modern one. The main part of the period coincided with the Valdai glaciation, which is characterized by a strong drop in temperatures.

It is believed that the Crimea during the interglacial period was an island. Whereas during the glaciation the level of the Black Sea decreased significantly, during the period of maximum advance of the glacier it was a lake.

About 150 - 100 thousand years ago, Neanderthals appeared in the Crimea. Their camps were located in grottoes and under rock canopies. They lived in groups of 20-30 individuals. The main occupation was driven hunting, perhaps they were engaged in gathering. They existed on the peninsula until the Late Paleolithic, and disappeared about 30 thousand years ago.

In terms of the concentration of Mousterian monuments, not many places on Earth can compare with Crimea. Let's name some of the best-studied sites: Zaskalnaya I - IX, Ak-Kaya I - V, Krasnaya Balka, Prolom, Kiik-Koba, Volchiy Grotto, Chokurcha, Kabazi, Shaitan-Koba, Kholodnaya Balka, Starosele, Adzhi-Koba, Bakhchisarai, Sarah Kaya. The remains of bonfires, animal bones, flint tools and their products are found at the sites. In the Mousterian era, Neanderthals begin to build primitive dwellings. They were round in plan, like plagues. They were built from bones, stones and animal skins. In Crimea, such dwellings are not recorded. In front of the entrance to the Wolf Grotto parking lot, there may have been a wind barrier. It was a shaft of stones, reinforced with branches vertically stuck into it. At the Kiik-Koba site, the main part of the cultural layer was concentrated on a small rectangular area, 7X8 m in size. Apparently, some kind of structure was made inside the grotto.

The most common types of flint tools of the Mousterian era were pointed and side-scrapers. These tools were
and themselves relatively flat fragments of flint, during the processing of which they tried to betray a triangular shape. At the scraper, one side was processed, which was the working one. At the points, two edges were processed, trying to sharpen the top as much as possible. Pointed and side-scrapers were used in butchering animal carcasses and processing skins. In the Mousterian era, primitive flint spearheads appear. Flint "knives" and "Chokurchin triangles" are typical for the Crimea. In addition to flint, bone was used from which piercings were made (small animal bones pointed at one end) and wringers (they were used to retouch flint tools).

The basis for future tools was the so-called cores - pieces of flint, which were given a rounded shape. Long and thin flakes were chipped from the cores, which were blanks for future tools. Next, the edges of the flakes were processed using the squeezing retouching technique. It looked like this: small flakes of flint were chipped from the flake with the help of a squeezer bone, sharpening its edges and giving the tool the desired shape. In addition to wringers, stone chippers were used for retouching.

Neanderthals were the first to bury their dead in the ground. In the Crimea, such a burial was discovered at the Kiik-Koba site. For burial, a recess in the stone floor of the grotto was used. A woman was buried in it. Only the bones of the left leg and both feet have been preserved. According to their position, it was determined that the buried woman was lying on her right side with her legs bent at the knees. This posture is typical of all Neanderthal burials. Poorly preserved bones of a 5-7 year old child were found near the grave. In addition to Kiik-Koba, the remains of Neanderthals were found at the Zaskalnaya VI site. Incomplete skeletons of children were found there, which were in the cultural layers.

Late Paleolithic (35/30 - 10 thousand years ago)

The Late Paleolithic occurred in the second half of the Wurm glaciation. This is a period of very cold, extreme weather. By the beginning of the period, a person of the modern type is being formed - Homo sapiens (Cro-Magnon). By the same time, the formation of three large races - Caucasoid, Negroid and Mongoloid. People inhabit almost all inhabited land, with the exception of the territories occupied by the glacier. Cro-Magnons everywhere begin to use artificial dwellings. Bone products are widely used, from which not only tools are now made, but also jewelry.

The Cro-Magnons have formed a new truly human way of organizing society - tribal. The main occupation, like that of the Neanderthals, was driven hunting.

Cro-Magnons appeared in the Crimea about 35 thousand years ago, while coexisting with Neanderthals for about 5 thousand years. There is an assumption that they penetrate the peninsula in two waves: from the west, from the area of ​​the Danube basin; and from the east - from the territory of the Russian Plain.

Crimean Late Paleolithic sites: Syuren I, Kachinsky canopy, Aji-Koba, Buran-Kaya III, the lower layers of the Mesolithic sites of Shan-Koba, Fatma-Koba, Syuren II.

In the Late Paleolithic, a completely new industry of flint tools was formed. Nucleus begin to make a prismatic shape. In addition to flakes, they begin to make plates - long blanks with parallel edges.
Tools were made both on flakes and on plates. Incisors and scrapers are most characteristic of the Late Paleolithic. At the incisors, the short edges of the plate were retouched. The scrapers were made of two types: end scrapers, where the narrow edge of the plate was retouched; lateral - where the long edges of the plate were retouched. Scrapers and chisels were used to process hides, bones, and wood. At the site of Suregne I, many small narrow pointed flint items (“points”) and blades with sharpened retouched edges were found. They could serve as spearheads. It should be noted that in the lower layers of the Paleolithic sites, tools of the Mousterian era are found (pointed, side-scrapers, etc.). In the upper layers of the Suren I and Buran-Kaya III sites, microliths are found - trapezoid flint plates with 2-3 retouched edges (these products are typical of the Mesolithic).

Few bone tools have been found in the Crimea. These are spearheads, awls, pins and pendants. At the site of Suregne I, mollusk shells with holes were found, which were used as decorations.

MESOLITHIC (10 - 8 thousand years ago / VIII - VI thousand BC)

At the end of the Paleolithic, global climatic changes occur. Warming leads to the melting of glaciers. The level of the world ocean rises, rivers become full-flowing, many new lakes appear. The Crimean peninsula takes shape close to modern. In connection with the increase in temperature and humidity, the place of cold steppes is occupied by forests. The fauna is changing. Large mammals characteristic of the ice age (for example, mammoths) go north and gradually die out. The number of herd animals is decreasing. In this regard, collective driven hunting is being replaced by individual hunting, in which each member of the tribe could feed himself. This happens because when hunting for a large animal, for example, for the same mammoth, the efforts of the entire team were required. And this justified itself, since as a result of success the tribe received a significant amount of food. The same method of hunting in the new conditions was not productive. It made no sense for the whole tribe to drive one deer, it would be a waste of effort and would lead to the death of the team.

In the Mesolithic, a whole complex of new tools appears. The individualization of hunting led to the invention of the bow and arrow. Bone hooks and harpoons for catching fish appear. They begin to make primitive boats, they were cut down from a tree trunk. Microliths are widespread. With their help, composite tools were made. The base of the tool was made of bone or wood; grooves were cut into it, into which microliths were fastened with resin (small flint products made from plates, less often from flakes, and served as inserts for composite tools and arrowheads). Their sharp edges served as the working surface of the tool.

Continue to use flint tools. These were scrapers and incisors. Silicon was also used to make segmented, trapezoidal, and triangular microliths. The shape of the nuclei changes, they become cone-shaped and prismatic. Tools were mainly made on blades, much less often on flakes.

The tips of darts, awls, needles, hooks, harpoons and pendants were made from bone. From the shoulder blades of large animals, knives or daggers were made. They had a smooth surface and pointed edges.

In the Mesolithic, people tamed the dog, which became the first domestic animal in history.

At least 30 Mesolithic sites have been discovered in Crimea. Of these, such as Shan-Koba, Fatma-Koba and Murzak-Koba are considered classical Mesolithic. These sites appeared in the Late Paleolithic. They are located in the grottoes. They were protected from the wind by barriers made of branches, reinforced with stones. The hearths were dug into the ground and lined with stones. At the sites, cultural strata were found, represented by flint tools, waste products from their production, bones of animals, birds and fish, and edible snail shells.

Mesolithic burials have been discovered at the Fatma-Koba and Murzak-Koba sites. A man was buried in Fatma-Kobe. The burial was made in a small pit on the right side, the hands were placed under the head, the legs were strongly pressed. A paired burial was opened in Murzak-Kobe. A man and a woman were buried in an extended position on their backs. The man's right hand went under the woman's left hand. The woman was missing the last two phalanges of both little fingers. This is associated with the rite of initiation. It is noteworthy that the burial was not made in the grave. The dead were simply covered with stones.

According to the social structure, the Mesolithic society was tribal. There was a very stable social organization, in which each member of society was aware of his attitude to a particular genus. Marriages were carried out only between members of different clans. Economic specialization arose within the genus. Women were engaged in gathering, men hunting and fishing. Apparently, there was an initiation rite - a rite of transferring a member of society from one gender and age group to another (transferring children to a group of adults). The initiate was subjected to severe trials: complete or partial isolation, starvation, scourging, wounding, etc.

NEOLITHIC (VI - V millennium BC)

In the Neolithic era, there is a transition from appropriating types of economy (hunting and gathering) to reproducing - agriculture and cattle breeding. People have learned to grow crops and breed certain types of animals. In science, this unconditional breakthrough in the history of mankind has been called the "Neolithic Revolution".

Another achievement of the Neolithic is the appearance and wide distribution of ceramics - vessels made of baked clay. The first ceramic vessels were made using the rope method. Several bundles were rolled out of clay and connected to each other, giving the shape of a vessel. The seams between the strips were smoothed with a bunch of grass. Then the vessel was burned in a fire. The dishes turned out to be thick-walled, not quite symmetrical, with an uneven surface and slightly burnt. The bottom was rounded or pointed. Sometimes the vessels were ornamented. They did this with the help of paint, a sharp stick, a wooden stamp, a rope, which they wrapped around the pot and burned it in the oven. The ornament on the vessels reflected the symbolism of a particular tribe or group of tribes.

In the Neolithic, new methods of stone processing were invented: grinding, sharpening and drilling. Grinding and sharpening of tools were done on a flat stone with the addition of wet sand. Drilling took place with the help of a tubular bone, which had to be rotated at a certain speed (for example, with a bowstring). As a consequence of the invention of drilling, stone axes appeared. They had a wedge-shaped shape, in the middle they made a hole into which a wooden handle was inserted.

Neolithic sites are open throughout the Crimea. People settled in grottoes and under rocky canopies (Tash-Air, Zamil-Koba II, Alimovsky canopy) and on yayla (At-Bash, Beshtekne, Balin-Kosh, Dzhaylyau-Bash). Open campsites (Frontovoye, Lugovoe, Martynovka) were found in the steppe. Flint tools are found on them, especially many microliths in the form of segments and trapezoids. Ceramics are found, although finds of Neolithic ceramics are rare for the Crimea. The exception is the Tash-Air site, where more than 300 fragments were found. The pots had thick walls, a rounded or pointed bottom. The upper part of the vessels was sometimes decorated with notches, grooves, pits or stamp imprints. At the Tash-Air site, a deer antler hoe and the bone base of a sickle were found. A horny hoe was also found at the Zamil-Koba II site. The remains of dwellings in the Crimea were not found.

On the territory of the peninsula, the only burial ground of the Neolithic period was discovered near the village. Dolinka. 50 people were buried in four tiers in a shallow, wide pit. All of them lay in an extended position on their backs. Sometimes the bones of the previously buried were moved to the side to make room for a new burial. The dead were sprinkled with red ocher, this is due to the burial rite. Flint tools, many drilled animal teeth and bone beads were found in the burial. Similar burial structures were discovered in the Dnieper and Azov regions.

The Neolithic population of the Crimea can be divided into two groups: 1) the descendants of the local Mesolithic population who inhabited the mountains; 2) the population that came from the Dnieper and Azov regions, populated the steppe.

In general, the "Neolithic revolution" in the Crimea never ended. There are much more bones of wild animals in the parking lots than of domestic ones. Agricultural implements are extremely rare. This indicates that the people who lived on the peninsula at that time, as before, as in previous eras, gave priority to hunting and gathering. Farming and gathering were in their infancy.

What is the "Stone Age", everyone knows. These are skins, dirt, a toilet in the far corner of the cave, rock art instead of comics and no certainty: today you will have breakfast with a mammoth, and tomorrow a saber-toothed tiger will bite you with appetite. However, our life consists of nuances, and the little things of the daily life of our ancestors are known only to individual specialists. A primitive way of life does not at all mean a dull life: something, but ancient people did not have to be bored. They had to wrap themselves in skins to protect themselves from the cold. Today we decided to turn history upside down and visit the skins of our ancestors.

Last year, World of Science Fiction published several articles about medieval life. At the request of our readers, we decided to dig deeper into the terra incognita of human history - a period when (according to some experts) aliens performed genetic experiments on monkeys, citizens of Atlantis flew into space, and our ancestors looked at all this disgrace and bitten fleas in bewilderment.

A long time ago, far, far away...

There has never been a Stone Age. At least, this directly follows from the sacred books of most religions. Bible scholars agree that our world was created between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago. It just so happened that after gastronomic experiments with apples, the first people immediately switched to settled agriculture, invented complex tools and writing, and then began to kill each other in the name of good.

In 1654, Irish Archbishop James Ussher calculated that man was created at exactly 9 am on October 23, 4004 BC. The Orthodox Church called a different date - 5508 BC. Scientists say that the formation of man began about 3 million years ago.

Unfortunately, not a single world religion contains a myth about how on April 1, a thousand of some year BC, the gods hid dinosaur skeletons and flint arrowheads in the ground in order to later laugh heartily at archaeologists. The Stone Age came independently and even contrary to the beliefs of billions of people.

It began about 100,000 years ago and (in some regions of the planet) lasted until the New Time. The active development of civilization coincided with the end of the last ice age about 10,000 years ago. The sea level rose, the climate changed, and humanity began to quickly adapt to new conditions - to create complex tools, establish permanent settlements, actively hunt.

The people of the late Stone Age were not much different from you and me. The volume of the brain, the structure of the skull, the proportions of the body, the degree of hairiness and other characteristics were the same as modern ones. If a child of that time got into modern times, he could grow up, get an education and become, for example, the author of articles in the World of Science Fiction.

Until comparatively recent times, most people could rightfully be considered ... Negroes. The mutation of the “white-skinned” SLC24F5 gene began in Europeans only 12 thousand years ago and ended 6 thousand years ago.

The darkness of the skin most likely varied from region to region. The most common hair color was black. Blondes and redheads began to appear later - with the increase in the number of mankind, mutations also diversified, which ultimately created various types of appearance. It is assumed that people of the Stone Age dyed their hair with grass juices, pollen from flowers and multi-colored clays not only for ritual, but also for aesthetic reasons.

Paradise in a hut

In almost all the images, people of the Stone Age are somewhere in nature (usually among the endless steppe) or sit by the fires. This view is true for the Paleolithic, but does not reflect the realities of the Neolithic (7000 BC) at all. Man began to build the first buildings - large stones that served as a support for a roof made of branches - almost 2 million years ago, and 4.5 thousand years ago he was already building giant pyramids. So by the end of the ice age, architectural knowledge was enough to create long-term settlements.

The culture of the early Stone Age was surprisingly uniform. All over the planet, people, without saying a word, used similar tools and did almost the same things with them. 25 thousand years ago, near the village of Dolni-Vestonice (Czech Republic), houses were built from clay bricks, tents were made from skins and tusks of mammoths in Siberia, and when it came to burials, our ancestors were not too lazy to move huge stone slabs, folding them into impressive megalithic graves .

In addition, massive blocks of stone went to the signs that limit any territory, "monuments" in honor of any events, and in some cases they were turned into objects of worship.

Large cities began to be built about 5 thousand years ago. For example, Mohenjo-Daro (“The Hill of the Dead”) in modern Pakistan had several tens of thousands of inhabitants, and 5,000 people could gather in the Citadel alone at the same time. But the bulk of humanity lived in small settlements that could be abandoned in the event of depletion of soils or natural resources.

A typical "village" of the Stone Age was something like a tourist camp. For hunting societies, tents made of skins were characteristic, in agricultural settlements, houses were made of stone or reed. Nearby, rice fields were green (cultivated since 9000 BC) or a river flowed (the first fish bones began to appear at human sites 50,000 years ago, and by the Stone Age our ancestors were already excellent at fishing).

The first houses were round, one-room. Soon people began to build something resembling modern multi-room cottages, which served at the same time as tombs: the bones of deceased relatives were buried under the floor covered with skins or straw. Judging by the excavation data, the doors were made in the ceilings - people climbed into the houses and left them by stairs. Clay served as “wallpaper”, and the walls of houses could be painted from the inside (for example, the settlement of Chatal-Guyuk in Turkey).

O times! Oh manners!

A normal day for a person of that time began shortly before sunrise and ended shortly after sunset. The rhythm of life by today's standards was very leisurely. The main work areas were within walking distance. Only hunters moved far away from the settlements, which had an extremely unfavorable effect on the duration of their lives.

It should be borne in mind that 10,000 years ago, all of humanity numbered only about 5 million people, and the population of the "villages" was estimated at dozens of inhabitants, most of whom were related to each other. Wild animals - not intimidated, as they are today, but angry, hungry and considering meeting a person as something like a "happy hour" in an expensive restaurant - were sitting under almost every bush. There were tigers and lions in Europe. In some places, woolly rhinos and even mammoths were still found.

The Stone Age would be to the taste of fans of classic rock, professing the motto "live fast, die young." The fact is that the average life expectancy was 20-30 years. The dawn of civilization can hardly be called "paradise". It was a very harsh and dangerous time, when the main argument when meeting with an animal or a stranger was a stone ax.

Most of the daytime was spent on preparing food, replacing worn-out tools with new ones, repairing the home, religious ceremonies, and caring for children. The latter was in direct proportion to the low life expectancy - the age of marriage was low, and children were given much less care than now, which understandably affected child mortality. The shortage of men stimulated polygamy, so that 2-3 wives of 15 years old for one "old man" of 30 years old were not uncommon.

For the same reasons, matriarchy dominated Neolithic societies. Women lived longer than men, kept the family hearth and were actually responsible for the accumulation of cultural experience. The Neolithic was the age of women. There were many more of them on the "streets" of settlements than men.

In the south of Russia, burial places of the tribes of the "Amazons" who lived about 3000 years ago were discovered.

Little nothings of life

Contrary to some stereotypes, Stone Age people did not wear smelly skins on their naked bodies. The fashion of the Neolithic era was quite diverse and in some cases could compete with the medieval one. Seven thousand years ago, our ancestors began to make clothes from felt, around the same time linen fabric, woolen yarn appeared, and in the 30th century BC, the Chinese established silk production.

Throw in jewelry made of polished bone, feathers, colored stones - and a person born before the invention of writing will pass for his own in most modern third world countries. Moreover, if a Neolithic dandy wore bracelets or shell beads, this put him on the same level as today's watch owner Patek Phillipe. Settlements far from each other practiced barter, but 10,000 years ago, in some places there was already a developed market economy. Money - shells or stones - was often worn as jewelry. It was convenient for the ransom of the bride, the division of the inheritance or trade with neighboring tribes.

Gourmets in the Stone Age had nothing to do. The transition to settled agriculture meant a deterioration in the quality of food, because among hunters and gatherers it was more diverse. It is not easy for modern man to imagine the Neolithic diet. No tea or coffee. The main drink is unboiled water from the nearest reservoir. Herbal decoctions were made only for medical and religious purposes. Milk was considered a drink for children, and alcohol (or rather, fermented juice) was consumed much less frequently than now.

Cooking was in its infancy, so vegetables were eaten raw. There was quite a lot of meat and fish on the tables (pigs, goats and sheep were domesticated 9000 years ago), but the concepts of "salt" and "spices" were absent in the lexicon of cooks. Legumes and grains were consumed for some time without heat treatment - they were ground into a paste with water and eaten like porridge. One day, someone decided to heat this mixture over a fire for fun. This is how bread, one of the oldest and most important human foodstuffs, appeared.

Scientists suggest that, for all the isolation of the settlements, the Europeans of the Stone Age, if they could not freely understand each other, then they could almost certainly guess the meaning of most phrases. There is an opinion that in those days there was a certain Proto-Indo-European language with a uniform structure and universal word roots.

Artist - from the word "bad"

In conditions of general illiteracy of the population, the most important of the arts were painting, music and war. The oldest art artifact is the so-called "Venus from Tan-Tan" - a stone figurine found near the city of Tan-Tan in Morocco. It was carved 300,000 years ago, so by the beginning of the Stone Age, human culture was already in full swing.

The Upper Paleolithic entered the rock art textbooks. It is often considered the main form of art of the Stone Age, although vodka could just as well be considered the crowning achievement of Mendeleev's research. Oddly enough, the ancient Japanese began to promote material art to the masses. It is believed that they were the first on the planet to develop pottery (earlier than agriculture). 11,000 years ago, they already had clay figurines and utensils, on which, before firing, various patterns were applied using braided ropes or sticks.

In the fishing settlement of Lepenski Vir (7th millennium BC, modern Serbia), figurines of fish or, according to another version, magical fish-men were made of stone. In the 5th millennium BC, people of the European Vinca culture carved something suspiciously resembling cuneiform on clay products. It is assumed that it was proto-writing - something between drawings and symbols.

Unfortunately, small works of art from that era are very poorly preserved. But many megaliths have come down to us, the most famous of which is Stonehenge. It should not be thought that the decoration of gravestones with spiral carvings was a favorite pastime of artists of that time. Stone tools gave little scope for creativity - even embroidering leather with bone needles was a problem. Lavishly decorated jewelry, weapons and armor appeared only in the Bronze Age.

With music, things were much better. It developed from the hunting imitation of animal sounds. In the beginning, the only musical instrument was the human throat. In the Stone Age, people took up the manufacture of musical instruments (22 years ago in China they found a flute made of heron bone 8,000 years old), which suggested that ancient people were familiar with at least notes. String instruments appeared only at the end of the Stone Age.

Probably, learning to play music in the Stone Age was mechanical, without any abstract system. The first musical notation on clay tablets dates back to the 14th century BC (Ugarit, modern Syria).

Near the Spanish city of Castellón, there are the cliffs de la Mola, which depict marching warriors. Anyone who has played Sid Meier's Civilization knows very well that if the map is small and there are many players, the first unit in the first city should be a warrior. The fact that stone walls were erected around cities speaks volumes. It was in the Stone Age that organized armies and professional warriors began to appear.

"Army" is, of course, loudly said. Letters from El-Amarna (Egyptian official correspondence, 1350 BC) say that detachments of 20 people terrorized entire cities - and this is already in the Bronze Age! The Stone Age was shaken by the grandiose battles of several dozen people. True, some researchers believe that large settlements like Chatal-Guyuk could put up about a hundred soldiers. In this case, we can already talk about tactics, maneuvers, supplies and other delights of real wars.

The conflicts were incredibly bloody. The victors killed all the men and children, took the women and completely plundered the settlements. However, in some regions there could be tribes that lived in peace with each other and were practically unfamiliar with the concept of "murder" (a modern example would be the Bushmen from the Kalahari Desert).

The most terrible weapon of the ancient hunters was fire. They set fire to forests and grass, destroying the enemy's habitat. The scorched earth tactics were much more effective than hand-to-hand combat. In close combat, both hunting tools - primarily spears - and clubs were used.

According to the rock paintings, it is possible to reconstruct the average battle of the Stone Age: the warring "armies" lined up opposite each other in a line, the leaders came forward and gave the command to open archery (sling). Separate elements of the drawings suggest that the "infantry" at that time was trying to outflank the enemy.

Professor Lawrence Keely calculated that conflicts broke out between the tribes almost every year, and some of them fought constantly. Excavations of some settlements in Africa have shown that more than half of their inhabitants died a violent death. The wars of the Stone Age were many times bloodier than they are today. If we transfer the level of military losses to the realities of today, any local war would take two billion lives.

With the transition from hunting to farming, the number of wars dropped sharply. The population was still small enough to support idle warriors. The conflicts were fleeting, there were no siege devices, so the walls almost always guaranteed the invulnerability of the city.

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The words "stone age" are usually used in a pejorative sense - to denote primitiveness, stupidity and savagery. Indeed, the early Neolithic was an era when breaking skulls was considered a much more interesting activity than trading. However, with the transition to agriculture, the world has changed beyond recognition.

Labor made a man out of a monkey. He also turned bloodthirsty maniacs into architects, sculptors, painters and musicians. The Stone Age was not such a bad time at all. A healthy lifestyle, good ecology, diet, constant physical activity and the tranquility of small villages, a sincere belief in gods and magical monsters... Isn't this the foundation for any fantasy?