AT THE START OF ANTHROPOGENESIS: HARD ENVIRONMENTS OR APPETENT ACTIVITY?

Abstract

To any extent, many hypotheses of anthropogenesis suppose hard environments as a trigger of anthropogenesis and culture genesis. This supposition is represented in some manuals of anthropology as well. But, was hard environments really a trigger of anthropogenesis? The analysis of recent critics of “East Side story” and “Savannah” hypotheses makes us to doubt if this idea is really true. Thus, nowadays we know that the East African rift in reality was not an impenetrable area for early hominids. Next, and more important, that in Miocene and for much of Pliocene early hominids inhabited well-wooded to forested environments, and not savannah. These, and some other facts do not allow, I think, to explain the beginning of anthropogenesis and culture genesis by the hypothesis of “hard environments”. The alternative explanation is required. This sought explanation would be based on the idea of interaction of two main factors as driving forces of anthropogenesis and culture genesis: the appetent activity (namely endogenous appetent activity, first of all) and, second, the priority of challenges of “internal environments” (i.e., the environments created by interactions inside of and between populations of hominids) over the challenges of “external” environments. Thus, I think that even at the start of anthropogenesis early hominids had not had any real contestants besides themselves. And this was the main reason that made them become a thinking being.

Keywords

• «истсайдская история»
• «саванная» гипотеза