Where and how did the modern Russian literary language come from? Where did man come from? Man as a result of biological and social evolution How and where did this origin come from?
An international group of scientists led by German researchers managed to determine the age of the oldest remains of Homo sapiens, previously discovered in Morocco. According to the results of the study, published in the scientific journal Nature, the find is approximately 300 thousand years old.
Site of the most ancient Homo sapiens
Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig), led by the director of the department of human evolution, Jean-Jacques Hublen, discovered fossilized bones, including fragments of a skull, an almost complete jaw and teeth belonging to at least five people, in the late 2000s in the area of the Jebel cave -Irhud. It is located about 100 km northwest of the city of Marrakech, and the first evidence that it was a site of ancient people was obtained in the early 1960s.
It was only now possible to determine the age of the find, thanks to modern computed tomography (micro-CT) and statistical analysis. According to scientists, the remains are about 300 thousand years old. Before them, the oldest were considered to be those found in Ethiopia, whose age is about 200 thousand years.
Distinctive features
Ublen and his colleagues carefully studied the fragments of the skulls and reconstructed them. Although the general facial features of early Homo sapiens have long been known, recent findings indicate that the occipital region was more elongated than in later members of the species.
“These are the faces that can now be seen on the street,” says Hublen. “And the more elongated skulls compared to later homo sapiens suggest that these individuals had a different brain organization.”
“This means that the shape of the facial bones of the skull evolved before the evolution of our species,” comments Ublen’s colleague Philipp Gunz. According to him, there is reason to believe that the facial features characteristic of modern humans were formed during the later development of the species.
Africa is one big Eden
Remains with signs of belonging to the species Homo sapiens, similar to those found in the Jebel Irhoud cave, have been found before in different regions of Africa. In this regard, Ublen suggested that already 300 thousand years ago our species existed not in a limited area, but on the entire African continent. He also emphasized that in those days the Sahara was not a lifeless desert - there was vegetation, lakes and rivers.
“Until today, it was believed that our species supposedly appeared somewhere in a conditional Eden, which was most likely located in Africa, south of the Sahara,” says Hublen. “I would say that the Garden of Eden in Africa is itself Africa is one big, big garden."
During the excavations, researchers also discovered many animal bones, particularly gazelles, and tools that helped more accurately determine the age of the remains. “We were lucky that stone tools that had been heat-treated were found in Jebel Irhoud,” explained Ublen’s other colleague, Daniel Richter. “Therefore, we were able to use the thermoluminescent dating method.” The decay of natural radioactive elements characteristic of this procedure makes it possible to determine the period of time that has passed since the heat treatment of the object.
The generally accepted time for the formation of the modern Russian literary language is the beginning of the 19th century. This case is associated with the names of the great Russian writers I.A. Krylova, N.M. Karamzina, V.A. Zhukovsky. A.S. Pushkin wrote in the already established Russian literary language, although he made a significant contribution to its development and consolidation.
The formation of the modern Russian literary language took place in polemics, in competition with adherence to old linguistic forms dating back to the Church Slavonic language. At the beginning of the 19th century, the recognized leader of this linguistic opposition was the writer and statesman A.S. Shishkov. By the way, the term “Slavophiles” came from him. Shishkov defended the need to preserve archaic forms in the literary language and was against the rapprochement of this language with everyday speech, arguing that these two languages, intended for different life situations, must be different. In this he continued the line of M.V. Lomonosov, who passionately fought all his life against any attempts to modernize Russian written speech.
Moscow kingdom
But where are the sources of the modern Russian literary language? We will be mistaken if we look for them only in the Moscow state of the 16th-17th centuries. The Great Russian language of that time was rich, sonorous, but unusually hurts our ears now. Here, for example, is an excerpt from Tsar Ivan the Terrible’s first response to Andrei Kurbsky’s message (hereinafter, in all passages, spelling and punctuation are, as a rule, changed to modern):
“But you did not accept evil and foolish persecution from me, and you did not bring troubles and misfortunes upon you; And some minor punishments happened to you, otherwise for your crime, because you agreed with our traitors. But you did not create lies and betrayals; they did not look upon you; and those who did their actions, and we then inflicted punishment on you based on those faults of yours.”
Everything, of course, is understandable, especially if you take your time reading the written text, but...
“Under this kingdom there was a terrible and beneficial thing, and now I want to offer a word about it, if it is not from his native kindness that this comes, but from God, by whom the destinies save everyone,” says the “Chronograph” 1617 about the reign of the first False Dmitry.
“If someone decides to smite the judge with his forehead because he accused him of wrongdoing according to a promise, and his brother, or son, or nephew, or man took the wrongful case against the judge, and bring that court case to the boyars to hear, and carry out in that case, the decree depends on the case,” - from the Council Code of 1649, the language of Moscow legal acts.
Orthodox Ukraine under the rule of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
At the same time, in 1588, the Orthodox brotherhood in Lvov published a textbook of the Church Slavonic language - “Grammar of the Good-Verbal Hellenic Slavonic Language.” The Lviv brotherhood generally played an outstanding role in preserving Orthodoxy and Russian identity in Ukraine during the period when it was under the rule of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and attempts to introduce Catholicism and union among Ukrainians. The publication of the first Slavic grammar in Cyrillic was also one of the important acts of the brotherhood.
The book is preceded by a poem dedicated to the city of Lviv:
The sign of the namesake Prince Lva is waving this city,
The Russian family knows his name throughout Europe.
He resides gloriously in the Metropolis of Kiev-Galitsa,
The entire surrounding country enriches him.
The lion reigns as a dumb beast to the beginning,
The verbal image of Christ’s kingdom was shown to us.
Take heart, multi-tribal Russian people,
The beginning of the fortress will be in you.
Let us note that it is here that the term “Russian”, “Russian”, which was subsequently deeply adopted in Russia in the 18th century, appears. The language itself is no further from modern Russian than Moscow at the same time, and the way of constructing and mastering phrases is much easier.
Philologists, not burdened by the prejudice that the literary Russian language must necessarily have its source in the territory of the current Russian Federation, believe that its most important source was the language in which the Lviv Brotherhood wrote. Russian cultural organizations in Lviv even today are proud of the fact that their city has become the birthplace of the modern Russian language.
Little Russian emigration to Muscovy
Due to the intensive emigration of the educated elite of Ukrainian (Rusyn) society from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to Muscovy in the 17th century, the southwestern dialect of the Russian language began to spread in Russia. Archbishop Arseny Elassonsky himself (Greek by origin), the creator of the mentioned “Grammar,” went to Moscow and became Archbishop of Suzdal and Tarusa. The influx of Ukrainians to Moscow especially increased after the Pereyaslav Rada of 1654. Ukrainians, as more educated (Orthodox higher educational institutions existed there since the 16th century), occupy bishop's departments, become teachers of the Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy (since 1687), and are invited as home teachers for the children of the nobility.
In 1722, at the end of the reign of Peter I, the Holy Synod included five metropolitans of Ukrainian origin and four of Great Russian origin. Almost thirty years later, in 1751, out of ten members of the Synod there were nine Little Russians. During the period from 1700 to 1762, out of 127 people who served as bishops in Russia, 70 came from Little Russia and Belarus. In 1758, out of ten bishops appointed to the department, only one turned out to be a Great Russian. This gives grounds for some historians to even talk about “Ukrainian dominance” in Russia at that time.
The cultural influence of Little Russia on Great Russia was reflected at that time in architectural styles, which is clearly visible in the example of church architecture of the 18th century. But the main consequence of such immigration was the literary language. It was against Little Russian influence that Lomonosov fought, hopelessly defending Church Slavonic forms in the Russian language. However, in his odes he also wrote in approximately the same way as the Lviv Brotherhood in the above verses.
The general trend could not be overcome. The educated class, however, spoke and wrote more in French. But when, at the end of the 18th century, patriotic Russian writers decided to create an original secular literary Russian language, it was more likely the speech of educated and high-ranking immigrants from Ukraine, already familiar in the houses of the Russian nobility, than the office of the Moscow orders of the 17th century, and rather than the language of the Great Russian common people, which was unknown to these aristocrats (Karamzin, etc.), she gave them a living example for this.
For Ukraine itself, the emigration of the educated Orthodox elite was a tangible loss. Having largely formed the all-Russian culture, this elite actually left its own people without self-awareness.
People have long been interested in how exactly they appeared on Earth, who was their first ancestor, where and when he lived. So, where did man come from? Ancient hunting tribes considered some animal to be their ancestors: a tiger, a bear, an eagle. They carved images of such “ancestors!” on tree trunks, carved them on stones... It was forbidden to hunt “ancestors”; they made sacrifices and prayed for them. Later, when people populated the sky with gods, they decided that it was the gods who created the ancestors of humanity.
The ancient Babylonians, for example, claimed that man was molded from clay by the god Bel. It was from clay, because from it they made dishes, built houses and temples... They even wrote on clay tablets. This legend was borrowed by Christians, and according to the Christian religion, God also sculpted the first man - Adam - from clay.
Ancient Greek philosophers, who did not rely much on the gods, explained the appearance of people by the action of the Sun on silt and water, or considered fish to be the ancestors of man.
If we remember that all land animals, and therefore humans, descend from lobe-finned fish, such a doctrine can be considered the first more or less successful attempt to explain the origin of man. Scientists have been studying the body structure of animals, fish, and birds for centuries. There were brave souls who dismembered the corpses of people at night, although this was strictly prohibited by religion. Comparing the structure of the human body with the structure of the body of animals, scientists were surprised to see that they had a lot in common.
That is why the Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus, although he recognized the divine origin of man, on the whole, very correctly classified him and the anthropoid ape into the same group of animals. Karl Roulier, a professor at Moscow University, also tried to find the most ancient ancestors of man. In his opinion, life arose in the sea, and much later those living on land evolved from marine animals. From them man developed.
French researcher Georges Buffon, comparing the body structure of animals and humans, also pointed out their similarities. In his opinion, modern animals and people have common ancestors who inhabited the Earth in ancient times.
The great English explorer Charles Darwin, in his book The Descent of Man, argued that humans and apes have common ancestors. And in order for a person to be formed, he must first of all free his hands. Ancient man did not have powerful muscles, sharp teeth, or long claws. His kids grew up for several years and were defenseless against predators. So, in order to survive among numerous enemies, people had to make some kind of weapon, and this, in turn, became possible only when a person’s brain developed, became larger and more complex than the brain of an animal...
Many scientists disagreed with the evolutionary theory of human origins. One of them even wrote an angry letter to Darwin, signing: “Your former comrade, and now a descendant of a monkey.” The clergy were especially upset. Of course, because evolutionary theory contradicted theological dogmas. In America, teachers who taught evolutionary theory were even brought to court.
Evidence was needed. Hundreds of scientists in different parts of the globe searched for skeletons and skulls of ancient people. And they found them.
Now these finds are stored in steel safes in museums. There are very few of them, and their value is unusually great. Because this is the history of humanity.
Due to the fact that very few remains of ancient people were found, and they were very expensive, from time to time scammers tried to fake them. They saturated the skulls of modern people with various chemicals so that they had an ancient appearance, glued the jaws of monkeys to the skulls of people, and added bones of other animals to the skeletons. The scammers were exposed, but new scammers appeared who forged bones so skillfully that scientists spent years uncovering the fakes.
Now science has learned to determine the age of bones using radioactive analysis. After all, every bone contains radioactive substances that gradually disintegrate after the death of the animal. Knowing the rate of decay of these substances and their residue in the fossil skeleton, it is possible to calculate exactly when a given animal lived.
Life has become harder for fraudsters, life has become easier for scientists, and now the evolutionary path of human development is more or less clear in general terms.
Man as a result of biological and social evolution.
Where did man come from? This is the question humanity has been asking since the moment it became aware of itself. During all this time, many theories have been created to explain the origin, united in a common branch of science and research - anthropogenesis (from gr. anthropos - man and genesis - origin), the essence of which is to study the process of its emergence and development.
The main theories, according to the number of adherents, are:
Religious theory (Creationism).- Creationists believe that man is the creation of God. People, in their opinion, are endowed with a divine part - a soul.
Paleovisit theory (Also ancient cosmonaut theory, paleocosmonautics).- This theory explains the existence of man as a result of contact with alien beings, the result of an experiment, or considers the option that humanity is their direct heirs.
Evolution theory ( Darwinism ).- Following this theory, man is the result of primate evolution. The theory implies a natural, natural origin, and a connection with higher mammals.
But only 40 thousand years ago appeared in EuropeCro-Magnon– « Homo sapiens » ( Homosapiens). He was no longer different in his biological structure from modern people. He not only mastered fire, knew how to build houses and sew clothes, skillfully hunt or fish - we find rock paintings and burials of that era. They testify to the complex spiritual world of “homo sapiens”: he had religious beliefs and, with the help of art, expressed his attitude to the world around him.
Historians have been trying for hundreds of years to figure out who the Russians are and where they came from, but no one has yet found a single correct answer to this question. There are a dozen of the most plausible theories, but each of them has its own shortcomings and weak points. It is quite possible that we still have not figured out where the ancestral home of the Slavs and the Russian people is, so everyone can believe in what they consider the most probable.
Where did the Russians come from?
It's no secret that Russians came from the Slavs, but where these ancestors of ours came from is a mystery.
In this regard, a number of interesting theories have been put forward:
- Norman.
- Scythian.
- Danube.
- Autochthonous.
- Gellenthal.
Briefly about each theory:
- Everyone has heard about the first theory; the Scandinavian leaders came to us from the northern lands , brought a squad and began to rule. But it is difficult to believe that the tribes living in this territory did not have their own government system, culture and customs.
- Consider yourself descendants Scythians- one of the most pleasant options. Yet ancient Greek historians gave them too flattering a description. The veracity of this idea can also be doubted, especially if you approach the issue from the point of view of genetics.
- There is an assumption that all Slavic tribes came from across the Danube, from the territory of Europe. This happened about one and a half thousand years ago, and since then the Slavs have firmly established themselves in new territories and actively explored the North and East.
- According to fourth theory, our distant ancestors were the “indigenous” inhabitants of the territories in which we live today. Where they were born, they came in handy.
- And here Hellenthal expressed an interesting hypothesis. According to this scientist, for more than 4 thousand years, part of the tribes from the territory of modern Germany and Poland moved to Eastern Europe. And 3 thousand years ago there was a migration of the population from Altai, the mixing of these two groups led to the emergence of the Slavs, and later the Russians.
Where did Russian music originate?
With music everything is much simpler. On the territory of modern Russia lived a huge number of disparate tribes, each of which sought to fill their lives with music and fill solemn events with it. Folk music is at least a thousand years old and includes:
- Wedding songs.
- Dance.
- Ritual.
- Calendar.
- Lyrical.
It is not for nothing that folk art is called oral, because it was passed on from mouth to mouth, rarely when the works were recorded in written form.
So there are not so many sources that have come down to us from ancient times. Judging by the number of songs and musical instruments, one can only indirectly conclude that our ancestors were musical people.
They used sonorous melodies not only to celebrate special occasions, but also to brighten up everyday life.
Where did the Russian language come from?
But in the history of the Russian language there are three stages:
|
Old Russian |
Old Russian |
National |
|
It began to take shape during the birth of Kievan Rus. |
A relatively recent period, its heyday came in the XIV-XVII centuries. |
Already in the 17th century, Russians began to form as a nation. |
|
In truth, it has little in common with modern Russian. |
The spelling and pronunciation are more similar to modern language. |
Any nation needs a language, so Old Russian began to change. |
|
It was used in the pre-Christian era. |
Actively used in church services. |
The formation of the language is almost complete. |
Even in our time, new words appear, new rules are introduced and completely new features are indicated.
The Russian language is not some kind of frozen substance; it changes according to modern trends. But the foundation of the language was laid many centuries ago and it does not change. If two Russian people from the 17th and 21st centuries met now, they would not be able to explain things normally.
But at the same time, our contemporary would have grasped the essence of the ancestor’s statements, but the “traveler from the past” would have too many problems with understanding. Nowadays there are too many foreign words in the Russian language, and even without that it has changed a lot over the past centuries.
Modern research on the problem
Pseudoscientific articles regarding the origin of the Slavs have now become fashionable. And they not only raise the topic of a common ancestor, but also in all seriousness “researchers” try to find the most “worthy” descendant. In fact:
- The process of nation formation began and went into full swing just four centuries ago.
- Before this, self-identification was based on belonging to a certain territory, religion or community.
- The neighbors always had a very similar culture, the same religion and called themselves almost the same, with minor differences.
- Our ancestors probably would not have understood the hostility and the current degree of tension.
- They were absolutely not concerned about the dignity or non-dignity of their descendants; in harsh times, people faced more pressing problems. Yes, at least basic physical survival.
Unfortunately, these simple facts are now ignored by many. We can only hope that in their works all researchers will rely on historical sources, and not write what comes into their heads. It's not hard to follow fashion, but the value of such materials tends to zero.
Common ancestral home of Russian people
Until now, the origin of Russians and all Slavs causes fierce debate:
- Most likely, we were not born in this territory, but came from somewhere.
- The starting point of migration is Western Europe, the mouth of the Danube and the region of the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea.
- It is possible that the Slavs were formed as a result of the mixing of two or more groups that migrated en masse towards each other or in the same direction.
- It is likely that our distant ancestors were Indo-Europeans.
- On the territory of modern Russia, ancient Roman helmets and other signs of the West are found, so our ancestors were familiar with Europe thousands of years ago. The only question is who “went to visit” whom.
- Written sources of antiquity provide conflicting information, but they agree on one thing - initially the Slavs came from somewhere in the West and moved to the East, exploring new lands.
It would be nice to get a final answer to the question and find out where that very “small Motherland” of the entire people is located. But for now we have to make do with theories like these.
Someday we will be able to find out who the Russians are and where they came from. But you shouldn’t hope that scientists will name just one village; rather, we will be talking about a territory stretching over tens of thousands of square kilometers.
Video about the appearance of the Russians
In this video, historian Anatoly Klesov will tell you where, in his opinion, the Russians came from and who they are, what ancient race they belong to, what peoples they were formed from:
