The formation of civilization. Neolithic revolution. The emergence of civilization

On the edge 4-3 thousand BC The famous Neolithic revolution begins. "Neolithic" means "new" stone Age"("neos" in Greek means "new").

First of all, I took a new step forward stone tool processing. People learned to drill stone and began to polish its surface. Entire workshops were engaged in the production of massive polished sharp axes with holes for mounting them on a wooden handle, scrapers, knives, tips, spears, and arrows. Remarkable stonemasons of those years exchanged the products of their labor for food and clothing. The first exchange of goods began. It was anticipation of future trade. Maces appeared as weapons - huge wooden clubs that, when struck, could crush even a strong and large animal. New tools helped cut down trees, knit rafts from them, hammer boats and shuttles from trunks, and build log huts.

Wide the spread of boats contributed to the emergence of fishing using not only fishing rods and bone hooks, but also nets made from bast and nettle stems. Was invented in the Neolithic age Potter's wheel As a result, it became possible to make pottery, which was later fired. The vessels became smooth and convenient for eating, storing food, and water. In the same time wool spinning and weaving began, both from wool and plant fibers. This allowed a person to use more comfortable clothes compared to the previous ones, made from animal skins, and to sew various kinds of soft and warm flooring and coverings. During the Neolithic period people invented the wheel, which made a genuine revolution in means of transportation, in construction equipment, at home.

At the end of the Neolithic in human society the final new sectors of the economy such as cattle breeding and agriculture were formed. These were branches of the productive economy, meaning that man not only took what nature gave him - berries, nuts, wild honey, roots, cereals, not only what he took from her from battle, killing wild animals, but also created , produced, grew himself.

This largely happened because people began to use metal along with stone tools and weapons. First they learned to smelt copper, which, however, was a soft metal and could not yet compete with stone. Later, bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, firmly entered the world of stone, bone, and wood, which made it possible to short time make hard and sharp tools and weapons. Bronze hoes, axes, daggers, sickles, knives, awls, and even later swords appeared. They also began to make jewelry from bronze. Gradually, the Stone Age began to give way to the Bronze Age.

First of all, cattle breeding, agriculture, and metal smelting appeared where natural conditions people's lives were most favorable. These areas were Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, and China.

The founder of the productive economy was a woman. It was she who, while collecting cereals, noticed that seeds dropped into the ground sprout. She is the first in her household tamed the cubs of killed animals, and then began to use this experience to create a permanent herd that provided food, milk, and leather. The woman fully justified the role assigned to her by history during the period of matriarchy, creating the basis for the future rise of human civilization.

Thus, she prepared the ground for ceding the leading role in society to a man - a farmer, plowing vast fields and cutting down and burning the forest for new crops; a pastoralist who grazes thousands of head of livestock and is located for a long time in the saddle; hunter, warrior. In the new economic conditions it was required male power, agility and masculine valor. The time of patriarchy has come, when men took the leading place in the family, clan, and tribe. From that time on, the woman submitted to the man. There was even a tradition of burying his wife with the deceased head of the family, so that he would not be lonely in the afterlife.

The development of agriculture and cattle breeding, the emergence of crafts, construction ancient cities indicate that man began to actively transform nature. He began to create an artificial habitat. The organization of social life has become more complex. People appeared who controlled other people.

Approximately at mid 4th millennium BC e. The transition of humanity from primitiveness to civilization began.

Indicators of this transition were the emergence of the first states, the development of cities, writing, and new forms of religious and cultural life.

Word "civilization" derived from Latin word"civilis", meaning "civil, urban, state".

Ancient peoples created large organized communities with highly developed culture and religion on their lands, which are called civilizations.

Research by scientists has shown that ancient civilization originated in the valleys largest rivers. Large masses of people flocked to the fertile valleys of the Nile, Euphrates, Tigris, Indus and Yellow River. They created their own cities and settlements on their banks, which were then united into states.

Despite great distances and differences in development, ancient civilizations were interconnected.

discovered in Çatalhöyük, shines like a supernova among the rather dim galaxy of contemporary rural cultures... Its most lasting influence was not in the Middle East, but in Europe, for it was this new continent that the Neolithic cultures of Anatolia introduced the first beginnings Agriculture and animal husbandry and the cult of the mother goddess, the basis of our civilization.”

Here evidence of an unprecedented level of technological development was discovered: hundreds of knives, daggers, arrowheads and spears, made of flint or obsidian, crafted with amazing and unprecedented skill, far exceeding the level of technological development of any other cultures known in the Middle East at that time. Obsidian in particular is an extremely hard volcanic glass, and broken pieces of this glass can have an incredibly fine cutting edge, much sharper than any modern metal blade.

Superbly polished obsidian mirrors, beads with the finest holes, Jewelry and woven products of the highest standard, including carpets - evidence of life in comfortable conditions. These settlers did not use pottery, but they did use wood and wickerwork that is unrivaled in its complexity and craftsmanship among the products of that era.

Their technical perfection is so great that we still do not know how these people created some of their everyday objects. We do not know how they polished their hard obsidian mirrors without leaving a single scratch on the surface; stone beads were found, as well as several of obsidian, in which, it is difficult to believe, a hole was drilled so thin that it is impossible to insert a modern needle through it.

It is impossible to imagine how they could make them without resorting to the use of very hard metal drills. Nevertheless, they somehow managed to make them. Perhaps one day we will find out their secret.

The settlers practiced a complex and carefully constructed religion, the center of which seems to have been a mother goddess, perceived as three people in one: a young girl, a pregnant woman and an old witch. Even in the small part of the city that has been excavated so far, over forty altars or sanctuaries used for the practice of this cult have been excavated, although not all of them were in operation at the same time.

In other words, as far as archeology is concerned, the urban culture of Çatalhöyük was unique; it had no obvious predecessors, there were no places nearby where the inhabitants of the settlement could learn all their skills and abilities.

The city's residents must have learned their unique technical skills elsewhere. But this could not have been in any of the known communities of the time, such as those found at Jericho in the Jordan Valley or at Jarmo on the Kurdistan plateau. Since these communities did not have even a remotely similar level of development of culture and crafts.

It is absurd to believe that this complex, highly developed urban culture appeared suddenly and out of nowhere around 8000 BC. e. And it is clear to the blind that sedentary culture should have begun its development much earlier and in some other place.

The question is where and when?

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10,000 BC, the geographical structure of the Earth in general outline it looked like something modern. Probably at this time ocean waters They broke through the isthmus where the Strait of Gibraltar is now located, and in place of the former lowland the Mediterranean Sea was formed, on approximately the same shores as today. Perhaps the Caspian Sea was more extensive then, which could connect with the Black Sea to the north Caucasus Mountains. Around this Central Asian Sea, on the site of today's steppes and deserts, stretched fertile and already populated lands. In general, the world was wetter and more abundant then; V European Russia swamps and lakes predominated, and Asia and America at the site of the Bering Strait were connected by an isthmus. By this time, the modern main races had already formed. The warm regions of the then hot and wooded world were inhabited by the dark-skinned peoples of the heliolithic culture, the ancestors of the current inhabitants of the Mediterranean: the Berbers, Egyptians and most of the inhabitants of the South and East Asia. Of course, within this great race there were many varieties: the Iberian or Mediterranean race on the Atlantic coast and Mediterranean Sea; "Hamitic" peoples, which include the Berbers and Egyptians; dark-skinned people of India - Dravidians; many of the tribes inhabiting East India; Polynesian races, and also the Maoris of New Zealand. Western varieties turned out to be lighter than eastern ones. In the forests of Central and Northern Europe, a light type of people with blue eyes appeared, whom many now call the Nordic race. Mongoloid peoples settled in the vastness of North-East Asia - another type of dark-skinned person - with slanted eyes, wide cheekbones, yellowish tracks and straight black hair. In South Africa, Australia, and on the tropical islands of South Asia, the ancient Negroid race survived. But Central Africa has become an area of racial mixing: almost all modern colored African peoples are probably the result of a mixture of the dark northern type with a Negroid substrate.

It must be remembered that the races of men can freely mingle, diverge and unite, like clouds in the wind, and not tree branches that never meet each other. This must be constantly taken into account so as not to fall into severe disappointments and prejudices. People use the word "race" too freely and base the most incredible generalizations on it. They speak, for example, of the “British” or “European” race. However, almost all the peoples of Europe are a complex mixture of dark, dark white, white and Mongoloid features.

It was in the Neolithic that people of Mongolian origin crossed into America, apparently through the Bering Strait, and moved further south. In the north they encountered Canadian deer, in the south - countless herds of bison. Having reached South America, they found glyptodonts (giant armadillos) and megatheriums (sluggish sloths the size of an elephant) there. The aliens probably exterminated the latter, since they were as defenseless as they were huge.

Most of the American tribes never rose above the nomadic life inherent in the Neolithic era. They did not know iron and used mainly native gold and copper. However, in Mexico, Yucatan and Peru, conditions turned out to be favorable for settled agriculture, and here around 1000 AD. e. civilizations arose that were somewhat similar (but different in type) to the earlier primitive civilizations of the Old World. Human sacrifices were also widely practiced here during sowing and harvesting. But if, as we will see, in the Old World these customs died out and gave way to new ones, in America they developed and became incredibly complex. The civilized countries of America were ruled by priests who, like military leaders, were themselves subject to cruel laws.

In astronomical science, the priests achieved very deep knowledge, for example, they determined the length of the year more accurately than the Babylonians. In Yucatan, a sophisticated and unique writing system was created, the so-called Mayan script. Partial deciphering showed that it was used mainly for maintaining accurate and complex calendars. Mayan art reached its peak around 700-800 AD. e. Their sculptures amaze the modern viewer with incredible plastic expressiveness, and often beauty, but at the same time they stun with the grotesque fantasy of the imagination and the tradition of some kind of madness that goes beyond our understanding. There is nothing like it in the Old World. A very distant similarity can be discerned in the works of primitive Indian carvers. Here and there we see intertwined feathers and coiled snakes. Many Mayan inscriptions resemble drawings by patients in European psychiatric clinics, as if their thinking developed in a direction not only different from the Old World, but, according to our concepts, completely irrational.

The assumption about the general mental “shift” of these American peoples is confirmed in their manic commitment to the shedding of human blood. The Mexican civilization was especially different in this, where priests ripped open the chests of still living victims and tore out the beating heart from it. Public life and popular festivities were concentrated around these fantastically terrifying acts.

Daily existence ordinary people in such societies corresponded to what we see among other farmers at the stage of barbarism. They were good at making dishes, weaving and dyeing fabrics. Mayan writing was not only carved into stone, but also painted with colored paints onto hides and other materials. Museums in Europe and America contain many mysterious manuscripts, almost unread, except for the dates mentioned in them. A similar writing originated in Peru, but was supplanted by a completely different method - tying knots on ropes. The Chinese used something similar thousands of years ago.

In the Old World, four to five thousand years ago, similar primitive civilizations existed. Their basis was a sanctuary with numerous bloody sacrifices and priests - sophisticated astronomers. But in the Old World, civilizations interacted with each other, and their development led to the formation modern world, and American civilizations never left the primitive state, since each of them closed itself in its own little world. Apparently, before the arrival of Europeans, Mexico knew nothing about Peru: for example, the main food product of the Peruvians - potatoes - was completely unknown there.

Century after century, these peoples worshiped their gods, the priests improved the calendar and rituals of sacrifice, but in all other respects practically nothing changed.

Student, studied section I, must:

know : world economic processes that took place under the conditions of the “Neolithic revolution”; causes and consequences of the global gap of civilization into “East” and “West”; features of the development of the economy of eastern despotism, the ancient world, European and Russian feudalism; economy of pre-industrial civilization;
be able to: identify and find relics of pre-industrial civilizations in economic life modern countries and peoples;
own : skills of independent search and systematization of historical and economic material from literary, statistical and Internet sources in order to replenish one’s own knowledge of the history of pre-industrial civilizations.

The fractured world of the "producing man"

The Neolithic Revolution is a slow process of maturation of civilization

We, economists, are humane people and prefer to talk and write about creation rather than destruction. We do not like sudden movements, since rapid processes are often destructive. Many of us are not interested in wars and political revolutions, because what more people struggle, the less they work. But it is only through labor that the wealth of societies is created.

An economist, no matter what branch of science he deals with, one way or another develops problems of production. Take any economic text, and you are sure to come across this well-known word - production.

However, defining the production process is not easy. Few people thought that production in general, and especially social production, is a very young phenomenon. Therefore, it is unfamiliar to most of us.

As archaeological knowledge accumulates, the period of the appearance of man on earth moves further and further into the depths of centuries. They say that the ancestors of modern humans appeared in the territory of modern Ethiopia 2.5 million years ago. AND For most of its history, man produced nothing. How did people live without producing anything? And just like how some northern peoples of Russia still live, consuming everything that is in finished form nature gives them. Hunting, fishing and gathering are the sphere human activity for many thousands of years. Man even mastered fire only some 500 thousand years ago. And only 300 thousand years ago he began to speak and begin to build above-ground dwellings. And wherever human communities, herds, tribes, clan associations appeared, everywhere man coexisted with nature, without standing out from it, in approximately the same way. From an economic point of view, most of human history was occupied by a huge era of consuming economy. No, let’s not exaggerate and say that in distant pre-civilization times, man did not produce anything at all. From the moment a person fried a piece of meat for himself or joined two pieces of skin, turning them into a kind of cloak, he already began productive activity, but this activity for a long time bore the character of instinctive impulses. Nevertheless, man differed from animals at least in that he cared not only about himself, but also about the community; he did not eat the prey at the hunting site, but carried it to the cave for everyone. And this already showed that intelligent creatures appeared on earth, and this happened about 100 thousand years ago, which we proudly call Homo sapiens.

So why can't we give it a primitive economic activity human production status?

Because production is this is a conscious, constantly repeated transformation of substances and forces of nature with a predetermined goal to create material and intangible benefits that can satisfy increasing human needs .

This kind of production appeared quite recently - only some 10-12 thousand years ago. Of the 2.5 million years of human existence on earth! Human civilization is still very young. Moreover, humanity has not even yet settled properly on the earth. Most people today live where it historically appeared - in Asia and in some favorable areas of Africa.

WITH light hand English archaeologist V. G. Child the period of transition of human communities to a productive economy is called Neolithic revolution. Historical and archaeological data confirm that this relatively long but revolutionary process occurred in the Neolithic era, when most tools were still made of stone, but man had already learned to use metal tools, first copper, and then more durable bronze. And this happened in various areas of human settlement in the period from the 12th to the 3rd millennium BC. The transition to a productive economy took place most rapidly in the 6th–4th centuries. BC. A rough map of Neolithic cultures looks like this:

It was during the Neolithic period that agriculture and cattle breeding, artificial irrigation, the potter's wheel and forge, pottery firing, spinning and weaving appeared. Finally, it was during the Neolithic era that writing appeared - the first iconic form of information transmission. With the widespread spread of the nomadic way of life during this period, settled life and the corresponding form of economy appeared, when a person does not simply appropriate consumer goods, but reproduces them. It is the transition to the reproduction of goods, i.e. to the constant conscious repetition of the process of production, and gives the Neolithic transformations the status of a revolution. A revolution is a fundamental change in the quality of socio-economic life. Sometimes in people's minds the word revolution is associated with short-term and explosive processes. However, in economics it is very difficult to associate the concepts of “fast” or “slow” exclusively with astronomical time. The main thing here is to understand the essence of the processes taking place. The calendar extent of the changes does not deny their radicality and revolutionary nature.

The Neolithic brought humanity the opportunity to take the first step on the path to freedom. True, so far only to freedom from the domination of the forces of nature.

It is already clear that human progress should not be exaggerated. A huge number of people, at a professional or amateur level, are still engaged in hunting, fishing and gathering.
There is a lot of controversy about the question of human intelligence. Roughly rounded modern man lives on average about 75 years. A third of his life, 25 years, a person just sleeps. He spends another third of his life satisfying his biological needs: preparing food, eating, drinking, looking for clothes, putting his home in order, having children, taking care of his body’s hygiene, and simply walking, stretching his stiff body. There are only 25 years left for reasonable activity. And what can we do to reduce this time? We smoke, abuse alcohol and drugs, torture our neighbors, endlessly fight with each other in the figurative and, unfortunately, literal sense of the word, thoughtlessly waste time on a lot of meaningless actions. That's what we are Homos sapiens !
Valyansky S.I., Kalyuzhny D.V. Another history of Rus'. From Europe to Mongolia. M.: Veche, 2001. P. 11; citycat.ru/historycentre/. It is easy to see that all these dates fall during the period of the “Neolithic Revolution”, from which civilization began.

Firstly, it meant a new status of the relationship between man and nature, the first step towards the noosphere, the formation of the Neolithic ecological mode of production. If previously man, like other species of the animal world, consumed natural products (sometimes causing major damage to flora and fauna and giving rise to local or large-scale environmental crises), now he himself began to reproduce the conditions of his existence, transforming natural environment through agriculture, cattle breeding, crafts, construction; he began to transform natural environment habitat into an artificially created one and thereby reduced its dependence on natural processes and cyclical fluctuations.

Secondly, radical changes occurred in tools and technologies, the Neolithic technological method production. A wide range of specialized tools and technologies were required for cultivating the soil, farming and animal husbandry, processing their products, and engaging in various crafts and construction. Wheeled vehicles and sailing boats appeared. Labor productivity has increased manifold, along with its division, specialization and cooperation. This created the conditions for the emergence of intercommunity exchange of labor products and the creation of surplus product. Teamwork gave way more and more to the individual.

Thirdly, technological changes have brought about

changes in the economy, the formation of the Neolithic economic mode of production. Its foundations: a combination of communal ownership of land with family ownership of tools and the bulk of the products produced; the predominance of family reproduction while maintaining some collectively performed work; development of natural exchange both between families in a community and between communities and tribes. By the end of the period, the prerequisites were created for the emergence of private property and the accumulation of wealth among the tribal elite.

Fourthly, the population has increased, its living conditions and forms of social organization have changed. Thanks to the Neolithic revolution, that is, the transition to agriculture and cattle breeding, the population in areas with a productive economy increased several times. Improved and more stable nutrition (although cyclical seasonal fluctuations remained) led to a reduction in mortality, prolongation of life cycle people, increasing the number of families and communities. Permanent settlements arose, surrounded by walls and ditches, natural barriers. The first cities were created and the urban revolution began to unfold, changing the living conditions and communication of people. Territorial communities arose, which united into tribes controlled by the tribal elite. Larger cultural and historical communities also emerged, but not yet states, much less non-local civilizations.

Fifthly, the accumulation of significant masses of people in settlements and the first cities, larger social formations, the growth of productivity of agriculture and livestock breeding created conditions for the development of spiritual life, the accumulation of primary, empirical knowledge passed on from generation to generation, more in-depth practice of art, the creation of various decorations, construction of religious buildings, formation of more stable religious views.