For a long time in the Anthropogen, biological factors and patterns were gradually replaced by social ones, which finally ensured the appearance in the Upper Paleolithic of a modern type of man - Homo sapiens, or Homo sapiens. In 1868, five human skeletons were discovered in a Cro-Magnon cave in France, along with stone tools and drilled shells, which is why Homo sapiens are often called Cro-Magnons. Before Homo sapiens appeared on the planet, there was another humanoid species called Neanderthals. They inhabited almost the entire Earth and were distinguished by their large size and serious physical strength. The volume of their brain was almost the same as that of a modern earthling - 1330 cm3.
Neanderthals lived in the era of the great glaciation, so they had to wear clothes made from animal skins and hide from the cold in the depths of the caves. Their only rival in natural conditions could only be a saber-toothed tiger. Our ancestors had highly developed brow ridges, they had a powerful protruding jaw with large teeth. The remains found in the Palestinian cave of Es-Skhul, on Mount Carmel, clearly indicate that Neanderthals are the ancestors of modern humans. These remains combine both ancient Neanderthal features and features that are already characteristic of modern man.
It is assumed that the transition from the Neanderthal to the current type of man took place in the most climatically favorable regions of the globe, in particular, in the Mediterranean, Western and Central Asia, the Crimea and the Caucasus. Recent studies show that the Neanderthal lived for some time even at the same time as the Cro-Magnon man, the direct predecessor of modern man. Today, Neanderthals are considered to be a kind of side branch of the evolution of Homo sapiens.
Cro-Magnons appeared about 40 thousand years ago in East Africa. They populated Europe and within a very short period completely replaced the Neanderthals. Unlike their ancestors, the Cro-Magnons were distinguished by a large active brain, thanks to which they made an unprecedented step forward in a short period of time.
Since Homo sapiens lived in many regions of the planet with different natural and climatic conditions, this left a certain imprint on his appearance. Already in the era of the Upper Paleolithic, racial types of modern man began to develop: Negroid-Australoid, European-Asian and Asian-American, or Mongoloid. Representatives of different races differ in skin color, eye shape, hair color and type, skull length and shape, as well as body proportions.
The most important occupation for the Cro-Magnons was hunting. They learned how to make darts, arrowheads and spears, invented bone needles, with their help they sewed the skins of foxes, arctic foxes and wolves, and also began to build dwellings from mammoth bones and other improvised materials.
For collective hunting, housing construction and the manufacture of tools, people began to live in tribal communities, consisting of several large families. Women were considered the core of the clan and were mistresses in common dwellings. The growth of the frontal lobes of a person contributed to the complication of his social life and the diversity of labor activity, ensured the further evolution of physiological functions, motor skills and associative thinking.
Gradually, the technique of production of tools was improved, their assortment increased. Having learned to use the advantages of his developed intellect, a reasonable person became the sovereign master of all life on Earth. In addition to hunting mammoths, woolly rhinos, wild horses and bison, as well as gathering, Homo sapiens also mastered fishing. The way of life of people also changed - a gradual settling of individual groups of hunters and gatherers began in the forest-steppe regions abundant in vegetation and game. 
Man has learned to tame animals and domesticate some plants. This is how cattle breeding and agriculture appeared.
The sedentary lifestyle ensured the rapid development of production and culture, which led to the flourishing of housing and economic construction, the manufacture of various tools, the invention of spinning and weaving. A completely new type of management began to take shape, and people began to depend less on the vagaries of nature. This led to an increase in the birth rate and the spread of human civilization in new territories. The manufacture of more advanced tools became possible due to the development of gold, copper, silver, tin and lead around the 4th millennium BC. There was a social division of labor and specialization of individual tribes in production activities depending on certain natural and climatic conditions.
We draw conclusions: at the very beginning, human evolution took place at a very slow pace. It took several million years that have passed since the emergence of the most ancient ancestors for a person to reach the stage of his development, at which he learned to create the first rock paintings.
But with the advent of Homo sapiens on the planet, all his abilities began to develop rapidly, and in a relatively short period of time, man turned into the dominant form of life on Earth. Today, our civilization has already reached the mark of 7 billion people and continues to grow. At the same time, the mechanisms of natural selection and evolution still work, but these processes are slow and rarely amenable to direct observation. The emergence of Homo sapiens and the subsequent rapid development of human civilization led to the fact that nature gradually began to be used by people to satisfy their own needs. The impact of people on the biosphere of the planet has made significant changes in it - the species composition of the organic world in the environment and the nature of the Earth as a whole has changed.
Human life appeared on Earth approximately 3.2 million years ago. Until now, mankind does not know for certain how human life originated. There are a number of theories that provide their own options for the origin of man.
The most famous of these theories are religious, biological and cosmic. There is also an archaeological periodization of the life of ancient people, which is based on the material from which tools were made at different times.
The Paleolithic era - the appearance of the first man
The appearance of man is associated with the Paleolithic era - the Stone Age (from the Greek "paleos" - ancient, "lithos" - stone). The first people lived in small herds, their economic activity was gathering and hunting. The only tool of labor was a stone axe. Language was replaced by gestures, a person was guided solely by his own instincts of self-preservation and in many ways was similar to an animal.
In the era of the Late Paleolithic, the mental and physical formation of modern man was completed, lat. Homo sapiens, Homo sapiens.
Features of Homo sapiens: anatomy, speech, tools
Homo sapiens differs from his predecessors in the ability to think abstractly and express his thoughts in an articulate speech form. Homo sapiens learned to build the first, albeit rather primitive dwellings.
Primitive man had a number of anatomical differences from Homo sapiens. The brain part of the skull was much smaller than the front. Since Homo sapiens was more mentally developed, his structure of the skull changes completely: the front part decreases, a flat forehead appears, and a chin protrusion appears. The hands of a reasonable person are significantly shortened: after all, he no longer needs to be engaged in gathering, he is being replaced by agriculture.
Homo sapiens significantly improves the tools of labor, there are already more than 100 types of them. The primitive herd is already being replaced by a formed tribal community: Homo sapiens clearly defines its relatives among many people. Thanks to the ability to analyze, he begins to fill the surrounding objects and phenomena with spiritual meaning - this is how the first religious beliefs are born.
Homo sapiens is no longer so dependent on nature: hunting is being replaced by cattle breeding, he can also grow vegetables and fruits on his own, without resorting to gathering. Due to the fact that a person was able to adapt to the environment and deal with natural disasters, his average life expectancy increases by about 5 years.
Later, with the improvement of the tools of labor, a reasonable person will create a class society, which speaks, first of all, of material superiority and the ability to create personal property. Homo sapiens is inherent in the belief in the spirits of deceased ancestors, who allegedly help and patronize him.
Looking at the evolutionary development of humanity, the soul is filled with admiration for its willpower and ability to deal with various obstacles in its path. Thanks to this, a person was able not only to get out of the cave, but also independently build modern skyscrapers, realize himself in science and art, completely subjugating nature.
The emergence of Homo sapiens was the result of a long evolutionary development that took tens of millions of years.
The first signs of life on Earth originated about 4 billion years ago, then plants and animals arose, and only about 90 million years ago did the so-called hominids appear on our planet, which were the earliest predecessors of Homo sapiens.
Who are hominids?
Hominids are a family of progressive primates that became the progenitors of modern humans. Appearing about 90 million years ago, they lived in Africa, Eurasia and.
Approximately 30 million years ago, global cooling began on Earth, during which hominids died out everywhere, with the exception of the African continent, southern Asia and America. In the Miocene era, primates experienced a long period of speciation, as a result of which the early ancestors of humans, the Australopithecus, separated from them.
Who are Australopithecus?
Australopithecus bones were first found in 1924 in the African Kalahari Desert. According to scientists, these creatures belonged to the genus of higher primates and lived in the period from 4 to 1 million years ago. Australopithecus were omnivorous and could walk on two legs. 
It is possible that towards the end of their existence they learned to use stones for cracking nuts and other needs. Approximately 2.6 million years ago, primates split into two branches. The first subspecies, as a result of evolution, was transformed into a skilled man, and the second into an African Australopithecus, which later became extinct.
Who is a skilled person?
Handy man (Homo habilis) was the very first representative of the genus Homo and existed for 500 thousand years. Being a highly developed Australopithecus, he had a fairly large brain (about 650 grams) and quite consciously made tools.
It is believed that it was a skilled person who took the first steps to subjugate the surrounding nature, thus stepping over the border that separated primates from people. Homo habilis lived in camps and used quartz to create tools, which they brought to their homes from distant places.
A new round of evolution turned a skilled man into a working man (Homo ergaster), who appeared about 1.8 million years ago. The brain of this fossil species was much larger, thanks to which it could make more advanced tools and start fires. 
In the future, the working man was replaced by Homo erectus, which scientists already consider as the immediate ancestor of people. Erectus could make stone tools, wore skins and did not disdain to eat human flesh, and later learned to cook food on a fire. Subsequently, they spread from Africa throughout Eurasia, including China.
When did the reasonable man appear?
Until today, scientists believe that Homo sapiens replaced Homo erectus and its Neanderthal subspecies about 400-250 thousand years ago. According to DNA studies of fossil humans, Homo sapiens originated from Africa, where Mitochondrial Eve lived about 200,000 years ago.
By this name, paleontologists called the last common ancestor of modern man on the maternal side, from which people got a common chromosome.
An ancestor in the male line was the so-called "Y-chromosomal Adam", which existed a little later - about 138 thousand years ago. Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosome Adam should not be identified with biblical characters, as both are merely scientific abstractions adopted for a more simplified study of the emergence of man. 
In general, in 2009, after analyzing the DNA of the inhabitants of African tribes, scientists came to the conclusion that the most ancient human branch in Africa were the Bushmen, who probably became the common progenitors of all mankind.
The appearance of human life on our planet is associated with the Paleolithic era. This is the Stone Age, when the first people lived in herds and hunted. They learned how to make the first stone tools, began to build primitive dwellings. Evolution has led to the fact that a new type of person has appeared. About 200-150 thousand years ago, two types of primitive man developed in parallel - Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons. They are named after the place where their remains were found - the Neandertal valley in Germany and the Cro-Magnon cave in France. Neanderthals did not have a developed speech apparatus, could only make sounds, and in many ways were similar to animals. They had powerful jaws, protruding forward, and strongly protruding brow ridges. It has been established that the Neanderthals were a dead-end branch of development and the Cro-Magnons should be considered the ancestors of Homo sapiens.
The Cro-Magnons have a great similarity in appearance with modern man. Thanks to the constant work of Cro-Magnon, the volume of the brain increases, the structure of the skull changes - a flat forehead and chin appear. Hands are significantly shortened, as gathering ceases to be the only occupation. Primitive people begin to communicate with relatives. Abstract thinking develops.
Hunting tools are becoming more diverse - they are being made from the bones and horns of dead animals. Clothing made from animal skins appears. In the era of the late Paleolithic, the process of the formation of Homo sapiens is completed. Primitive people settled on all continents. This is largely due to the last glaciation. Following the herds of migrating animals, people move who begin to live in tribal communities, as they understand that it is more difficult to survive alone. The community included several families that formed a clan. Separation begins - the men of the clan hunted together, built dwellings, and the women watched the fire, cooked food, sewed clothes and took care of the children. Gradually, hunting is replaced by cattle breeding and agriculture. Kinship in the primitive community is conducted through the female line, matriarchy arises.
With the settlement of different continents, human races begin to form. Different conditions of existence predetermine changes in the appearance of primitive people. Representatives of different races differ in appearance - skin color, eye shape, hair color and type.
The era of the late or upper Paleolithic (35 thousand years BC) is the era of Homo sapiens, modern man, Homo sapiens. Prehistoric art appears - rock paintings, sculptures representing the image of man and animals. At the sites of the Upper Paleolithic, archaeologists found the first musical instruments - bone flutes. This is a kind of spiritual growth of ancient people, they have a need to express their feelings. Rituals and the first cults appear. People begin to make burials of dead relatives. This indicates that the ancients have ideas about the afterlife. They believe in the existence of the spirits of the dead and worship them. The emergence of culture and religion gives a powerful impetus to the development of ancient human society.
Difficulties of classification
It would seem that there should be no problems with the classification of the animal species known as Homo sapiens sapiens (reasonable man). It would seem, what is easier? It belongs to the chordates (a subtype of vertebrates), to the class of mammals, to the order of primates (humanoids). In more detail, his family is hominids. So, his race is a man, his species is reasonable. But the question arises: how is it different from others? At least from the same Neanderthals? Were the extinct species of people so unintelligent? Is it possible to call the Neanderthal a distant, but direct ancestor of a person of our time? Or maybe these two species existed in parallel? Did they interbreed, giving a joint offspring? Until work is done to study the genome of these mysterious Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, there will be no answer to this question.
Where did the species "reasonable man" appear?
Most scientists believe that the common ancestor of all people, both modern and extinct Neanderthals, appeared in Africa. There, in the Miocene era (about six or seven million years ago), a group of species separated from hominids, which subsequently evolved to the genus Homo . First of all, the basis of this point of view was the discovery of the oldest remains of a man called Australopithecus. But soon other finds of the most ancient people were discovered - Sinanthropus (in China) and Homo heidelbergensis (in Europe). Were they varieties of the same genus?
Were they all ancestors of modern humans, or dead-end branches of evolution? One way or another, a reasonable person appeared much later - forty or forty-five thousand years ago, during the Paleolithic. And the revolutionary difference between Homo sapiens and other hominids moving on their hind limbs was that they made tools. His ancestors, however, like some modern monkeys, only used improvised means.
Secrets of the family tree
Even 50 years ago, they taught in school that Homo sapiens came from a Neanderthal. He was often represented as a hairy semi-animal, with a sloping skull and protruding jaw. And Homo Neanderthal, in turn, evolved from Pithecanthropus. His Soviet science depicted almost a monkey: on bent legs, completely covered with wool. But if everything is more or less clear with this ancient ancestor, then the relationship between Homo sapiens sapiens and Neanderthals is much more complicated. It turns out that both of these species existed for some time at the same time and even in the same territories. Thus, the hypothesis of the origin of Homo sapiens from Neanderthals requires additional evidence.
Did Homo neanderthalensis belong to the Homo sapiens species?
A closer examination of the burials of this species showed that the Neanderthal was completely upright. In addition, these people had articulate speech, tools (stone chisel), religious cults (including funeral ones), primitive art (decorations). However, he was distinguished from modern man by a number of features. For example, the absence of a chin protrusion, which allows us to judge that the speech of such people was not sufficiently developed. The findings confirm the following facts: the Neanderthal arose one hundred and fifty thousand years ago and flourished until 35-30 thousand years BC. That is, this happened at a time when the species “reasonable sapiens” had already appeared and clearly took shape. Completely disappeared "Neanderthal" only in the era of the last glaciation (Wurm). It is difficult to say what caused his death (after all, the change in climatic conditions affected only Europe). Perhaps the legend of Cain and Abel has deeper roots?
