Widely recognized approach, in which the main stages of the history of mankind are distinguished by the principle of changing forms of economic activity, the development of material culture. Such ideas were expressed by the French philosopher J. Koldors (1743-1794) and the American ethnographic. L. Morgan (1818-1881), They shared history into the era of savagery (the period of gathering, hunting), barbarism (the predominance of agriculture, cattle breeding) and civilizations.
This periodization was based on changes in the nature of the instruments of labor. It gained recognition in archeology in the study of the early stages of the existence of mankind, which are divided into stone, bronze and iron ages.
Proponents of the theory of world civilization development see in it three main stages, shared by intermediate, transitional stages.
First stage It began around the eighth millennium BC. It was associated with the transition from gathering and hunting to to agriculture, livestock and handicraft production.
Second stage, which began in the middle of the XVII century, was marked by the formation of manufactory, when a system of division of labor was formed, which made it more productive, conditions arose for the introduction of machines and the transition to the industrial stage of development.
Third stage began in the second half of the twentieth century and was associated with the emergence of a new type of society (it is often referred to as informational), when the nature of intellectual work changes qualitatively with the introduction of computers, the knowledge production industry is emerging.
Proponents of the perception of history from the perspective of a change in local civilizations (ancient, Greek-Byzantine, Islamic, Christian medieval Europe, etc.) measure historical epochs by the duration of their existence, which varies from several centuries to millennia, A. Toynbee believed that in world history 13 independent civilizations were replaced that possessed unique features (he considered the rest as their branches).
Marxist, formational, theory distinguished five main eras of the history of mankind. Each of these eras was considered more progressive than the previous one.
The era of the primitive communal system was characterized by an extremely low level of development of productive forces, when there was still no private property, people were completely dependent on nature and could survive only on the condition of joint, collective labor and consumption.
The transition to a slave-owning formation is associated with the improvement of tools, the emergence of the possibility of production of surplus product and its sole appropriation, the emergence of private property. Moreover, the owner - slave owner owned not only land and means of labor, but also the workers themselves, slaves, who were considered as "talking tools."
Feudal society characterized by a partial personal dependence of workers on land owners - feudal lords. Peasantsthat constitute the bulk of the working population, had personal property on the instruments of labor, could dispose of part of the product produced. This determined their interest in increasing labor productivity, which slaves did not have.
Within the framework of the formation, which Marxism defined as capitalist, the worker is personally free. However, without any livelihood, he is forced to sell his ability to work. entrepreneur , the owner of the means of production, which appropriates the unpaid portion of the produced surplus product.
The next, communist formation was seen as a society where, with the withering away of private property, a person will gain genuine freedom, will work exclusively for himself and the needs of society as a whole, he himself will become the master of his life.
Within each historically extended era in Marxist theory, periods of formation, flourishing and decline of the corresponding formations were distinguished. The civilization approach highlighted the same phases in the development of civilizations.
The boundaries between eras and their constituent periods, as a rule, were determined by large, large-scale historical events that had a great influence on the life of peoples.
At first glance, it might seem that supporters of different approaches to history should radically diverge in its periodization, but in reality this does not happen. Disputes arise only on certain issues. The fact is that the time of changes can be called in different ways - a change of formation, the collapse of a local civilization, the onset of a new phase of development. The essence of the events described does not change from this.
Each new period of historical development, as a rule, is associated with a change in the forms of economic activity, property relations, political upheavals, profound changes in the nature of spiritual culture.
When studying world history, it is necessary to proceed from an understanding of world development as a process of constantly occurring interconnected changes in all spheres of life of societies, states, in their relations, in the interaction of peoples with their natural environment. When these changes affect the appearance, if not of the whole world, then of the life of the majority of the world's population, it is legitimate to talk about the onset of a new stage in world history. Sometimes it is associated with completely obvious events directly affecting many peoples. In other cases, the transition to a new stage is extended in time. Then for a turning point some conditional date can be accepted.
It should be remembered that any periodization, if we are talking about the history of mankind as a whole, is to some extent arbitrary. The transition to a new era is not an instantaneous act, but a process stretched out in time and space. the crisis and the decline of society can be combined with the formation in its depths of sprouts of a new civilization. These processes do not develop simultaneously in all regions of the world. That is how the formation of the industrial civilization of the new time went. While some countries have already survived the industrial revolution, others have not yet gone beyond the estate system and manufactory production, and in the third, elements of the old and the new system are fantastically combined.
Stages of human development
It has become generally accepted to divide the historical path traveled by mankind into the primitive era, the history of the Ancient World, the Middle Ages, the New and Modern times.
The length of the primitive era is estimated at more than 1.5 million years. When studying it, archeology comes to the aid of history. Based on the remains of ancient tools, cave paintings and graves, she studies past cultures. The reconstruction of the appearance of primitive people is the science of anthropology.
Throughout this era, the emergence of a person of a modern type takes place (around 30,000 to 40,000 years ago), tools are gradually being improved, and the transition from hunting, fishing and gathering to farming and animal husbandry begins.
The counting of the history of the Ancient World is carried out from the appearance of the first states (IV - 111 millennium BC). This was a time of the split of society into governors and ruled, haves and have-nots, widespread slavery (although not in all the states of antiquity it was of great economic importance). The slave system reached its peak in antiquity (1 millennium BC - the beginning of AD, e). the rise of civilizations Ancient greece and ancient Rome.
In recent years, attempts by a group of scientists, in particular the mathematician D.T. Fomenko, to offer their own chronology of the history of the Ancient World and the Middle Ages. They argue that the reconstruction by historians of many events that occurred earlier than the XVI-XVII centuries, before the widespread dissemination of printing, is not indisputable and its other options are possible. In particular, they propose to consider that the written history of mankind has been artificially extended by more than a millennium. It is, however, only an assumption that has not received the recognition of most historians.
The era of the Middle Ages is usually determined by the time frames of the 5th-15th centuries.
First period of this era (V-X / centuries) was marked by the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the emergence of a new type of social relations associated with the establishment of the estate system in Europe. Within this framework, each estate has its rights and obligations. This time is characterized by the predominance of subsistence farming and the special role of religion.
Second period (mid-X / - late XV century.) - This is the time of the formation of large feudal states, the growth of the importance of cities. They become centers of craft, trade, and spiritual life, which is becoming more and more secular.
Third period (XV / - the middle of the XV // century) is associated with the beginning of the decomposition of the feudal system, it is sometimes characterized as the early New Age, Europeans discover the world, the creation of colonial empires begins. Commodity-money relations are developing rapidly, manufactory production is becoming widespread, the social structure of society is becoming more complicated, it is increasingly coming into conflict with its class division. The Reformation and Counter-Reformation mark the beginning of a new stage in the spiritual life. In the context of the growth of social and religious contradictions, central authority is strengthening, and absolutist monarchies are emerging.
Civilizations of the Ancient World and the Middle Ages within the framework of the theory of “growth stages” are not dispersed, they are considered as a “traditional society”, the basis of which is a natural and semi-natural agrarian and craft economy.
As E. Toffler wrote in The Third Wave (1980), “From China and India to Benin and Mexico, Greece and Rome,” civilizations everywhere grew and fell into decay, fought and merged with each other, forming an endless one. full of a variety of openings mix.
However, under these external differences there is a fundamental similarity. In all these countries, land was the foundation of economics, life, culture, family structure, and politics. In each of them, life was organized around the village. In each of them there was a simple division of labor and a small number of clearly defined castes and classes: nobles, priests, warriors, slaves, or serfs. In all such countries, power was authoritarian. And everywhere in these countries, the economy was subsistence, so each community produced most of what it needed.
There were exceptions to the rules described above - there is nothing simple in history .. but, despite these exceptions, we have reason to look at all these seemingly different civilizations as special versions of the one and only phenomenon - agrarian civilization ” .
The era of the New Age - the era of the formation and approval of industrial, capitalist civilization - is also divided into several periods.
The first It begins in the middle of the 17th century, when the time came for revolutions that destroyed the foundations of the estate system (the first of them was the revolution in England in the 1640-1660s). Equally important was the era of Enlightenment, associated with the spiritual emancipation of man, his gaining faith in the power of reason.
The second period of the New Age begins after the French Revolution (1789-1794). The industrial revolution, which began in England, covers the countries of continental Europe, where capitalist relations are developing rapidly. This is a time of rapid growth of colonial empires, the development of the world market, the system of international division of labor. With the completion of the formation of large bourgeois states, most of them affirm the ideology of nationalism, of national interest.
Aunt period A new time begins in the late XIX - early XX century. It is characterized by the fact that the rapid development of industrial civilization “in breadth”, due to the development of new territories by it, slows down. The capacity of world markets is insufficient to absorb the growing volumes of products. There is a time of deepening global crises of overproduction, the growth of social contradictions in industrial countries. The struggle between them for the redivision of the world begins and escalates.
Contemporaries perceived this time as a period of crisis of industrial, capitalist civilization. His indicator was the First World War of 1914-1918 and the upheavals associated with it, primarily the 1917 revolution in Russia.
Periodization of Recent History
The question of what should be understood by the term recent history is one of the most controversial in modern science.
For some Soviet historians and philosophers, the 1917 revolution in Russia marked a transition to the era of the formation of the communist formation, and it was with it that the offensive of the Recent Time was associated. Proponents of other approaches to the periodization of history used the term “Newest Time” in a different sense, implying a period directly related to current time. They preferred to talk about the history of the twentieth century, or the history of modernity.
Nevertheless, in the framework of modern history, two main periods are distinguished.
The process of deepening, the growing crisis of industrial civilization of the new time, which began at the end of the XIX century, covers the entire first half of the XX century. This is the early modern time, the severity of the contradictions that have declared themselves in the world continued to grow. The great crisis of 1929-1932 put the economies of the most developed countries on the brink of collapse. Sovereign rivalry, the struggle for colonies and markets for products led to the Second World War of 1939-1945. even more destructive than the first. The colonial system of European powers is collapsing. The conditions of the Cold War break the unity of the world market. With the invention of nuclear weapons, the crisis of industrial civilization began to threaten the death of the entire human race.
Qualitative changes associated with a change in the nature of the social, socio-political development of the world's leading gotsidartstva, begin to appear only in the second half - the end of the twentieth century.
During this period, with the proliferation of computers and industrial robots, the nature of labor activity changes, the central figure of production becomes an employee of intellectual labor. In developed countries, a socially oriented market economy is emerging, the nature of human life and leisure is changing. Significant changes are taking place in the international arena, sovereign rivalry is being replaced by cooperation. Integration processes are developing, common economic spaces are developing (Western European, North American, etc.). With the collapse of the USSR and its system of unions, the integrity of the world market is being restored, the processes of globalization of economic life begin to break up, and a global system of information communications is taking shape.
At the same time, the symptoms of the crisis of industrial society make themselves felt in many parts of the world and at the beginning of the 21st century, including in the territory of the former USSR.
Questions and Tasks
1. What approaches to the periodization of world history existed in historical science? Give examples.
2. Explain why any periodization of the historical process is arbitrary. Under what changes in social development is it legitimate to talk about the onset of a new stage in world history?
3. Fill in the table:
Table. Stages of human development
4. Explain why periodization of the Newest period of history is one of controversial issues. What changes in world social development can be associated with the onset of a new stage?
The primitive era is the largest period in the history of mankind - from the appearance of man (about a million years ago) to the advent of statehood. For different peoples, this period lasted unequally, some even at the moment live under primitive conditions. Therefore, modern science distinguishes between the primitive culture itself - what existed before the first civilizations on Earth (the end of the 4th-beginning of the 3rd millennium BC), and the traditional primitive culture.
During the primitive era, the following processes took place:
anthropogenesis - the biological evolution of man, which ended about 40 thousand years ago with the appearance of the species “Homo sapiens”, as well as the main human races;
the formation of thinking (or intelligence) of a person, his language;
the resettlement of mankind across all continents;
the transition of people from the appropriating conduct (hunting, picking) of the economy to reproductive labor (agriculture and cattle breeding);
sociogenesis - the formation of social forms of life in the form of a clan and then clan tribal organization;
the appearance of the first worldview, religious ideas, mythological systems.
Among these most important processes that laid the foundation for the history of mankind, the formation of culture as a special sphere of human society occupies its place. Moreover, the early stages of the history of different peoples are characterized by a unity of laws, a common manifestation of the formation of culture.
A specific feature of primitive culture is syncretism (indivisibility), when forms of consciousness, economic activities, social life, art were not separated and not opposed to each other. Any type of activity contained other types. For example, in hunting, technological methods of making weapons, spontaneous scientific knowledge, about animal habits, social connections, which were expressed in the organization of hunting, were combined. Individual, collective connections, religious representations are magical actions to ensure success. They, in turn, included elements of artistic culture - songs, dances, painting. It is as a result of such syncretism that the characteristic of primitive culture provides for a holistic examination of material and spiritual culture, a clear awareness of the conventions of such a distribution.
The primitive history of mankind is traditionally divided into Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic - 2 million years ago - the limit of the III millennium BC; Bronze Age - II millennium BC; Early Iron Age - I millennium BC Using this periodization, we give a general description of the evolution of material culture and the art of primitive society.
The primitive era of mankind is characterized by a low level of development of productive forces, their slow improvement, the collective appropriation of natural resources and production results (primarily the exploited territory), equal distribution, socio-economic equality, the absence of private property, the exploitation of man by man, classes, and states.
Analysis of the development of primitive human society shows that this development was extremely uneven. The process of isolating our distant ancestors from the world of apes was very slow.
The general scheme of human evolution is as follows:
- Australopithecus man;
- Homo erectus (early hominids: pithecanthropus and synanthropus);
- a man of a modern physical form (late hominids: Neanderthals and Upper Paleolithic people).
In practice, the appearance of the first Australopithecus marked the emergence of a material culture directly related to the production of tools. It was the latter that became for archaeologists a means of determining the main stages in the development of ancient humanity.
The rich and generous nature of that period did not accelerate this process; only with the advent of harsh conditions of the ice age, with the intensification of the labor activity of primitive man in his difficult struggle for existence, new skills accelerate, tools are improved, new social forms are developed. Mastering fire, collective hunting for large animals, adapting to the conditions of a melted glacier, inventing onions, moving from appropriating to a producing farm (cattle breeding and agriculture), discovering metal (copper, bronze, iron) and creating a complex tribal organization of society - these are the most important stages that mark the path of mankind in a primitive communal system.
The pace of development of human culture has gradually accelerated, especially with the transition to a productive economy. But another feature appeared - the geographical unevenness of the development of society. Regions with an unfavorable, harsh geographical environment continued to develop slowly, while regions with a mild climate, ore reserves, etc., moved faster toward civilization.
The colossal glacier (about 100 thousand years ago), which covered half the planet and created a harsh climate, influenced the flora and fauna, inevitably divides the history of primitive mankind into three different periods: preglacial with a warm subtropical climate, glacial and postglacial. Each of these periods corresponds to a certain physical type of person: in the preglacial - archaeoanthropes (Pithecanthropus, Sinanthropus, etc.), in the ice age - paleoanthroles (Neanderthal man), at the end of the ice age, in the late Paleolithic - neoanthropes, modern people.
Paleolithic. The early, middle and late stages of the Paleolithic are distinguished. In the Early Paleolithic, in turn, there are the primary, Schellish1 and Acheulean eras.
The most ancient cultural monuments were found in the caves of Le Lazare (dating back to about 150 thousand years ago), Lialco, Nio, Fond de Gom (France), Altamira (Spain). A large number of shell culture objects (tools) were found in Africa, especially in the Upper Nile Valley, in Ternifin (Algeria), and others. The most ancient remains of human culture in the USSR (Caucasus, Ukraine) belong to the turn of the Shell and Acheulean eras. By the Acheulean era, man settled wider, penetrating into Central Asia, the Volga region.
Task 2. List the basic processes and phenomena of the socio-political history of ancient Eastern society. Justify your choice.
It is customary to study the history of ancient Eastern peoples from the appearance of the first class societies and state formations in the Nile and Euphrates valleys in the second half of the fourth millennium BC. e. and finish for the Middle East 30 - 20 years of IV century. BC e., when the Greco-Macedonian troops led by Alexander the Great captured the entire Middle East, the Iranian Plateau, the southern part of Central Asia and the north-western part of India.
Since the campaign of Alexander the Great, the so-called Hellenistic states have arisen in this territory, which are studied in the course “History of Ancient Greece”. As for Central Asia, India and the Far East, the ancient history of these countries is studied until the III-V centuries. n e., that is, until the time when feudal society came to replace the ancient society.
Thus, the history of ancient Eastern peoples has about three millennia.
A large geographical area, conventionally called the Ancient East, forgive Tunisia, where Carthage was located, to modern China, Japan and Indonesia, and from south to north - from modern Ethiopia to the Caucasus Mountains and the southern shores of the Aral Sea. Here in antiquity there were numerous states that played an important role in history: the great Ancient Egyptian kingdom, the Babylonian state, the Hittite empire, the vast Assyrian empire, the state of Urartu, small state formations in the territory of Phenicia, Syria and Palestine, the Phrygian and Lydian kingdoms, the states of the Iranian Plateau, including the world Persian monarchy, which included the territory of the Middle East and almost the entire Middle East, state entities of Central Asia, states on the territory of the Indian subcontinent, China, Korea and Southeast Asia.
In the long evolution of ancient Eastern society, the law of the unevenness of historical development found its manifestation.
Some of the ancient Eastern countries have reached a high socio-economic, political and cultural level.
It can be noted the high level of civilization in Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Phenicia, the Hittites, in Ancient India, Ancient China. Powerful centers of highly developed culture and socio-economic relations were created here, which influenced neighboring, more backward areas, stimulated the development of productive forces, social relations, public administration, and their original culture in them. In IV - III millennia BC e. many regions of the Ancient East (Egypt, Mesopotamia, India) developed relatively isolated, but by the middle of the II millennium BC. e. between various regions of the Middle East established economic, political and cultural contacts, and in the I millennium BC. e. - a system of countries closely interconnected by diverse relations, communication between which enriched each local culture. Thus, a well-known unity of the ancient Eastern world was formed, which played a significant role in the progressive development of the region and of all mankind.
The main types of environmental conditions for the eastern world are:
1) waterless plateaus with vast steppes and plains;
2) lowlands, cut and irrigated by large rivers;
3) coastal countries directly adjacent to the sea.
To these three types two more essential types should be added: mountainous regions and desert regions, which now more and more fall into the scope of archaeological and historical research.
The first type of geographical conditions includes the Syrian-Mesopotamian steppe, linking Syria with Mesopotamia and Arabia, the mountainous regions and plateaus of Central Asia, Asia Minor and Iran, the Caspian steppes, the Central Asian Plateau, the Dean, as well as the vast mountainous regions and steppes of China .
The second type of geographical conditions includes ancient alluvial valleys and lowlands created by sediments of great rivers: the Nile Valley, the Euphrates and Tigris Valley, which the Greeks called Mesopotamia (Mesopotamia or Mesopotamia), Indus and Ganges valleys in Northern India, and finally, the Yangtze Jiang and Yellow River valleys in China.
The third type of geographical conditions includes the Nile Delta, as well as the Euphrates and Tigris delta, which in ancient times flowed into the Persian Gulf in separate channels, the Mediterranean coast of Syria and Phenicia, and finally, the fertile Malabar coast, located in the southwestern part of India.
In the countries of the Ancient East, three main classes gradually formed: the class of slaves and their bonded laborers, the class of small producers and the ruling class, which included the landowning, court and serving aristocracy, the command staff of the army, the priesthood, and the wealthy top of the agricultural communities. Each class was not monolithic and homogeneous, but consisted of several layers, differing in legal and domestic status, property wealth. For example, in the slave class there were foreign slaves, equated to things, and debtor slaves who retained elements of legal capacity; there was also a slavish position of the younger members of the family in relation to the father, the householder. The class of small producers consisted of free and dependent farmers, artisans of various property statuses. A feature of the ruling class in the countries of the Ancient East was its close connection with the state apparatus.
The presence of three main classes determined the complex nature of class and social relationships in ancient Eastern societies. Information has been preserved on the class and social struggle, on the uprisings in which slaves, dependent workers and the most disadvantaged sections of the class of free small producers took part, mainly ordinary members of the agricultural communities. Between the various layers of the ruling class there were frictions, which sometimes turned into sharp clashes between the military and priestly aristocracy, the priesthood and the nobleman, led by the king.
A rather complex class and social structure testifies to the high level of development of ancient Eastern society in comparison with the primitive. However, it should be noted the relatively slow pace of development of the ancient Eastern countries compared with the ancient Greek policies and Ancient Rome. This was manifested in the stagnant nature of the ancient Eastern economy, the weak development of the commodity economy, the slow improvement of engineering and technology, and the shallow division of labor. The slaveholding relations themselves did not reach the depth and scale (the small number of slaves, poor participation in many industries, low labor productivity), characteristic of the Ancient Greece and Rome.
The most important feature of the social structure in the Ancient East is the existence of communities - the main social and territorial units. Any ancient Eastern state, with the exception of a few cities, consisted of many rural communities, each of which had its own organization and was a closed world. Ancient Eastern communities by origin go back to tribal communities, but in their content, nature and internal structure they were already a new phenomenon. The community has lost its patrimonial character and has become an organization of neighbors living in a certain territory and bound by rights and obligations in relation to each other, other communities and the state. It consisted of individual households, large families or family communities,
The need to unite and coordinate the efforts of numerous communities contributed to the growing role of state power in the countries of the Ancient East, the creation of a specific form of such power - an unlimited monarchy, which is often called "ancient Eastern despotism." Its essence, like any other form of slave-owning state, is to suppress the resistance of the exploited (slaves and free small producers) in the interests of the ruling class. However, the specifics of the ancient Eastern state consisted in the fact that it acted as the supreme organizer of the artificial irrigation system necessary for normal economic life in the country, or, in the words of K. Marx, included a public works department in its structure. Active state intervention in the economic life of the country led to the appearance of a large administration organized according to the bureaucratic principle: division into ranks, subordination, and social position depending on the place on the career ladder.
Since the ancient Eastern ruler and his apparatus acted as the organizer of the artificial irrigation system, and ultimately of all agriculture (as well as crafts and trade), the state considered irrigated land as its own: state or royal land. However, the concept of full ownership is hardly applicable to state or royal land in the Ancient East. It was rather not property in the modern sense of the word, but the right to dispose and control, receive a certain tax. In fact, most of the irrigated and cultivated land was in the hereditary possession of numerous communities (and within the communities was distributed among the community members). Part of the land was distributed to the courtiers, soldiers, aristocracy, who created private farms. All these farms for the right to use land usually paid a land tax in favor of the state, carried some duties. After paying the tax and performing duties, the owners could dispose of the land until its sale.
At the same time, a significant part of the land was concentrated directly in the hands of the ancient Eastern despot and the priesthood dependent on him. On these lands, large royal and temple estates were organized, where slaves worked, working groups of dependent persons, and numerous tenants. Thus, in the hands of the despot concentrated a large number of agricultural and craft products produced in the country, other material values \u200b\u200bobtained directly from the royal estates or in the form of taxes from the entire population.
Ancient Eastern despotism as a specific form of slave-owning monarchy took shape over time, gradually overcoming the traditions of patrimonial democracy. The early forms of primitive monarchy gradually grew into a particular kind of ancient Eastern despotism. An important feature of ancient Eastern despotism was the special position of the head of state - the ruler of the despot. The king was considered not only the bearer of all power: legislative, executive, judicial, but at the same time he was recognized as a superman, a protege of the gods, their descendant or even one of the gods. The deification of the personality of the despotic king is an important feature of ancient Eastern despotism. However, in different countries of the Ancient East, the degree of despotism was either the most complete, like despotism in Ancient Egypt, then very limited, such as, for example, the power of the king among the Hittites. Even in different historical periods, for example, in Egypt, the degree of despotism was not the same. Non-monarchical forms of the state existed in the countries of the Ancient East, a kind of oligarchic republic, for example, in a number of state formations of Ancient India, in some cities of Phenicia.
In the Ancient East there lived a population belonging to different races and smaller communities, into which large racial groups fall: tribes and nationalities of the Eurasian, or Caucasian, equatorial, or Negro-Australoid race (part of the population of the ancient kingdoms of Napata and Meroe - modern Sudan; South India), Asian-American, or Mongoloid race (in the Far East). The Caucasoid race was divided into numerous nationalities, tribes, and ethnic groups belonging to different linguistic communities.
In some regions, stable large language families have developed that are divided into branches and groups. The peoples and tribes of the large Semitic-Hamitic, or Afro-Asian, linguistic family lived in Western Asia, which included an extensive Semitic branch, Egyptian, or Hamitic, Berber-Libyan, Cushitic, etc. The tribes and peoples speaking the Semitic languages \u200b\u200bwere Akkadians, Amorites, Aramaeans, Assyrians, Canaanites, Jews, Arabs and some other smaller tribes. The seven-language tribes occupied mainly the territory of Mesopotamia and the Eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, the Syrian-Mesopotamian steppe and the Arabian Peninsula.
The Egyptian, or Hamitian, branch was represented by the population of Ancient Egypt, the Berber-Libyan languages \u200b\u200bwere spoken by numerous tribes living west of the Nile Valley, the Cushitic languages \u200b\u200bwere tribes of the upper reaches of the Nile.
The tribes and nationalities of the Indo-European language family were divided into Anatolian, or Hitto-Luvian, and Indo-Iranian branches. The languages \u200b\u200bof the first branch were spoken by the Hittite tribes, Lydians, Carians and other small tribes of Asia Minor. The languages \u200b\u200bof the Indo-Iranian branch existed among Indians and Persians, Parthians and Bactrians, Scythians and Saks, Aryans of Ancient India. The same family included part of the population of the state of Mitanni. Some peoples of Asia Minor spoke the languages \u200b\u200bof the Thracian-Phrygian group of the Indo-European language family.
The Hurrit-Urartian language family, whose languages \u200b\u200bwere spoken by the Hurrit and Urartian tribes, as well as the Hittite predecessors, called the Proto-Hittites from Asia Minor, stood apart. The population of ancient India belongs to the Dravidian language family, the ancient Chinese tribes spoke the languages \u200b\u200bof the Sino-Tibetan, or Tibeto-Chinese, language family. However, some languages \u200b\u200bare known, for example, the Sumerians (ancient inhabitants of the southern part of Mesopotamia), the Kassites who lived in the mountains of Zagros, and others that cannot be attributed to any linguistic community and stand apart.
The numerous tribes, nationalities and ethnic groups of the Ancient East are characterized by intense military-political trade and cultural ties, ethnic contacts and crosses that led to a confusion of the population and the emergence of new, more complex ethnic formations. All tribes, nationalities and ethnic units took an active part in the creation of ancient Eastern civilization. There is no reason to single out, emphasize racial or ethnic superiority, the decisive role of any groups of tribes, whether it be the tribes of Mesopotamia, the ancient Egyptian people or the tribes of the Aryans.
In the long evolution of ancient Eastern society, the law of the unevenness of historical development found its manifestation. Some of the ancient Eastern countries have reached a high socio-economic, political and cultural level. It can be noted the high level of civilization in Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Phenicia, the Hittites, in Ancient India, Ancient China. Powerful centers of highly developed culture and socio-economic relations were created here, which influenced neighboring, more backward areas, stimulated the development of productive forces, class relations, government, and their original culture in them. In the IV-III millennia BC e. many regions of the Ancient East (Egypt, Mesopotamia, India) developed relatively isolated, but by the middle of the II millennium BC. h. between various regions of the Middle East established economic, political and cultural contacts, and in the I millennium BC. e. - a system of countries closely interconnected by diverse relations, communication between which enriched each local culture. Thus, a well-known unity of the ancient Eastern world was formed, which played a significant role in the progressive development of the region and of all mankind.
Task 3. Describe the main features of the development of culture in the latest period of world history.
Rapid technical progress of the XIX - early XX century. could not but influence the development of Western European and North American culture. The consequence of the completion of the industrial revolution and industrialization was the growth of cities. By the beginning of the 20th century, the 13 largest cities had a population of more than a million. In these years, new masses of people have been joining city life and urban culture. It is no accident that at this time the city became the subject of artistic research in poetry and painting.
The generations that came into life in the 70s and subsequent years of the 19th century perceived the machine industry, railways, ships as an integral part of the natural habitat. In spiritual life, there was a feeling of the enormous potential of new and constantly updated technology. The technical upheaval in many respects changed the material environment, introduced significant innovations in the way of life of people. In historical and cultural terms, the main thing is that this revolution contributed to the changes in man himself as a participant in the technical and scientific revolution. Having learned to think in a highly professional framework, a person gains the ability to analyze other areas of life. This affects his moral principles, artistic views and tastes. A higher intellectual level is becoming a characteristic feature of the national cultures of Western Europe and North America.
Shifts in technology are probably the most striking effect on the entire population of these countries in the field of communications. Here, in addition to economic importance, the development of railways objectively played an outstanding role in cultural progress. It ensured the mobility of the bulk of the urban and partially rural population, reduced the cost of internal migration, and thanks to the rapid movement made changes to the idea of \u200b\u200btime. In the same direction, changes were operating in intra-city transport.
From a cultural point of view, a special place belongs to those technical innovations that are directly related to the transfer of information, i.e. with the enrichment of consciousness with facts, ideas, images that without these inventions would not have reached many people at all or would have come much later. Information, both internal and external, began to arrive regularly and primarily through the press. Correspondents of major newspapers sought to provide their publication with the latest material, and thanks to the railway, newspapers from capitals and large cities were quickly delivered to subscribers.
The development of transport and communications has greatly facilitated international contacts and promoted an intensive cultural exchange. This process was also stimulated by the self-development of culture, its internal needs. But only now have the technical obstacles to touring the actors, frequent personal meetings of cultural figures, and their intensive correspondence been removed. International cultural contacts have become regular.
Cinema is gradually becoming the most important means of communication, especially thanks to chronicle films recording the event and allowing it to be seen by many viewers in different countries. An outstanding universal cultural achievement was the discovery of the artistic possibilities of cinema. Cinema already at that time had the advantage over a theater, a museum, a picture that could reach the most remote corners of any country. The spectacle fixed on the film was reproduced repeatedly, without requiring any special conditions, and the relative cheapness made it accessible to the widest masses.
Thus, it should be noted that technological progress has contributed not only to raising the intellectual level and human awareness of its power, but also to a peculiar collapse of cultural boundaries, spiritual mutual enrichment, and the beginning of the internationalization of cultural life.
The twentieth century marked the onset of a new era in the life of mankind of modern times and was the most dynamic in history, which accordingly affected the nature of its entire culture. The culture of the 20th century inherits the sociocultural processes of the previous century and demonstrates a new understanding of man, his attitude to the world and the corresponding change in style and genre systems, as well as images and expressive means in art.
In the 20th century, humanity formed united world culture, the main characteristics of which are industrialization of production and mass consumption, unified means of transportation and information transfer, internationalization of science and education.
The panorama of the artistic culture of the 20th century is characterized by an unprecedented diversity, while the main art systems are modernism and postmodernism. The first of them is characterized by a rejection of traditional methods of artistic depiction of the world, the most striking trends are Dada, Surrealism, Expressionism, Fauvism, Suprematism, etc. The works of modernists demonstrate the loneliness of a person in the modern world, the insolubility of conflicts and contradictions of the surrounding reality and the insuperability of life circumstances.
Postmodernism It is not only a stylistic system of artistic culture, its significance is much wider - this concept denotes the general direction of development of the whole European culture, which was formed in the 70s. XX century. Its appearance is associated with the awareness of the limited possibilities of social and scientific and technological progress and fear for the fate of universal culture. Postmodernism is trying to establish the limits of human intervention in the processes of development of nature, society and culture.
The modern society of the XXI century clearly demonstrates the transition from industrial to postindustrial, or informationalcivilization. The increased role of information itself and the speed of its exchange contribute to a significant intensification of cultural contacts, which makes the problem of cultural cooperation and equal intercultural dialogue particularly relevant.
On the whole, the role of the culture of the New and Modern times is to create favorable conditions for the development of personality, the formation of a decent standard of living for people and the realization of creative potential in all spheres of human activity.
Task 4. Highlight the most important characteristics of Russian civilization. Give arguments to defend your point of view.
Russian civilization, historically spanning more than a thousand years, was built on completely different foundations than the West or East. At the same time, one of the foundations of the identity of Russian political and social development was an understanding of the place, role and significance of the state in society, its attitude to it and its policies.
Danilevsky N.Ya. (1995) 1, - initially turned its close attention to Russia as a unique Eurasian civilization, considering its interaction with the German-Roman civilization. Namely, in his analysis a “triangle” was seen: a Slavic civilization, including Russia (in unity primarily with the Orthodox Slavic countries - Serbia and Bulgaria), and Russian civilization, which, in turn, was included in the enclave of Slavic civilization (as Russian ethnos - it nevertheless primarily represents the Slavic ethnos in its essence, despite the late and peculiar ethnogenesis, starting with the “Moscow kingdom”), is at the same time a Eurasian civilization that has a certain influence in the whole current. At the same time, we note that N.Ya. Danilevsky did not use the category of Eurasianism and, according to many historians, is not only a representative of Slavophilism, but also acts as the first Eurasianist.
We list the main provisions of Eurasianism, which reflect the philosophy of the history of Russia as a unique Eurasian civilization and have value for our logic.
Firstly, Russia is neither West nor East, Russia is their specific synthesis, which is Eurasian location (this term was introduced by P.N. Savitsky), in which the Great Steppe from Manchuria to Transylvania plays a unifying role.
Secondly, the dominant factor in the development of Russia was community, a common whole community according to N.S. Trubetskoy, requiring universal collective historical self-determination of Russian society (imperative of universal self-determination according to N. S. Trubetskoy).
Thirdly, the universally binding imperative of the historical logic of the development of Russia as a Eurasian civilization is ideocracy - the power of an idea, the power of an ideal, which, according to the Eurasianists, was (and which should be restored in the future) Orthodoxy; Eurasians saw the features of ideocracy in Bolshevism, in the Soviet state - the USSR.
Fourth, the denial of the Eurocentric concept of the history of Russia (the first was clearly substantiated by N. Ya. Danilevsky).
Fifth, an organistic, holistic approach to the state, which logically stemmed from a common whole community as a factor in the historical development of Russia and corresponded with the philosophy of "Russian cosmism" - the central core of Russian philosophy.
Sixth, the concept of “duties” according to N.N. Alekseev as a key category defining a “binding state”; this concept is opposed to the liberal-democratic concept of “law” and “rule of law” in the West, in which “human rights” are so absolute that they oppose the individual to the state; N.N. Alekseev introduces the concept of “liability”; in fact, this concept reproduces the primacy of the unity of the state and the individual, so characteristic of the entire history of Russia.
Seventh, the anti-capitalist orientation of the Eurasian logic of Russian history in the second half of the XIX and in the first half of the twentieth century .; Eurasians, primarily N.S. Trubetskoy, they saw that, as A. Dugin aptly observes, “the alarming one-dimensional shadow of the West, like a cadaveric spot, spread all over the world, striking the“ blossoming complexity ”of peoples, cultures and civilizations with the ailment of a flat-bourgeois end of history” 1. According to the logic of Eurasianism, revolutions in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century were absolutely not random and were caused by this Eurasian, anti-capitalist and at the same time anti-Western logic of the History of Russia (anti-Western in the sense of rebellion against the bourgeois values \u200b\u200bof the West). “In the future, the Eurasian Orthodox empire was conceived by the Eurasians as the axis and pole of the planetary uprising of different cultures, peoples and traditions against the uniform hegemony of the utilitarian bourgeois colonialist imperialist West.” 1
Note that a number of Western geopolitics such as H.J. have recognized the leading role of Russia in a strategic sense in the world due to its Eurasian location. Mackinder (book “The Geographical Axis of History”), A. Mahen, C. Haushofer, C. Schmitt, and others.
According to Mackinder, the "geographical axis of history" passes through Russia, which he wrote: "Russia takes in the whole world the same central strategic position as Germany in relation to Europe. It can carry out attacks in all directions and be subjected to them from all sides except the north. The full development of its railway capabilities is a matter of time. ”3
What is the uniqueness of Russia as a civilization? What is the uniqueness of the logic of the historical development of Russia?
The first one. If you look at the world globe, you can see that Russian Eurasia is the only place where the West and the East are not separated by natural obstacles (mountains, seas, deserts, etc.), that is, form a geographical unity. This geographical quality of Russian Eurasia, in which the Great Degree serves as an integrating factor, is due to the fact that Russian Eurasia served as an “ethnogenetic volcano”, whose “lavas” in the form of migrations of peoples to the west, south, east and north determined the ethnogenesis of all of Europe, Central and West Asia, North Africa, North and South America. Celts, Huns, Gottes, Turks, Polovtsy, Tatar-Mongols, Hungarians, etc. "lavas" spread from Eurasia, forming new impulses for ethnogenesis in the conquered territories.
In this sense, Russian Eurasia, that is, Eurasia, located approximately within the borders of the USSR (now the CIS countries, and earlier the Russian Empire), has been (and will be in the future) the center of stability and instability of the world.
The logic of the history of Russian Eurasia strove for stabilization, for the formation of stability in the wide space of Eurasia, which required its state-civilizational unity. In this regard, Russian Eurasian civilization in the prevailing spatial design appears, according to our assessment, not by chance, but naturally.
The very appearance of the Russian state (in general terms its territorial design completed by the end of the 18th century) on the Eurasian continent (from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean, from the Caucasus and Central Asia to the Arctic Ocean) stabilized the evolution of the peoples of Russia. We can say that the late ethnogenesis of Europe took place in the form in which it morphologically took shape in the II millennium BC. e., due to the fact that the actively consolidating Russian state separated Europe from the East.
Russia as a power determined the geopolitical stability of the world, especially in recent centuries. This special geopolitical function of Russia as a center of stability and instability of the world was manifested in the fact that the two world wars that took place in the twentieth century. and which began in Europe with the conflict in Serbia, reflected the leading role of Russia in the logic of these wars (in opposing German imperialism), when the Russian army and navy bore the brunt of the war, involving from 50-60% in the confrontation on Russian fronts 80-90% of the opposing armed forces.
Russian culture carries a synthesis of European and Asian principles. We can say that the “Russian idea” in its voluminous and quite diverse modern integration appears as a Eurasian cultural synthesis, as a kind of ideal representation of Russian Eurasian civilization, which reflected its main spiritual, cultural and characterological signs and dominants. The “Russian idea” as a “concentrate” of the features of Russian civilization was primarily reflected in its “community logic” of development, in which the “man of Russian civilization” “need to be part of the whole, part of a common fate” was convexly shown.
The second one. This is the ethnic diversity of Russian civilization, the cementing, “cementing” beginning of which is the Russian people. L. N. Gumilev, as a result of studies of Russian ethnogenesis, convincingly shows that a Russian superethnos has formed in Russia, the basis of which is the Russian ethnos. Here the effect of the law of cooperation as the law of ethnic evolution manifested itself in the logic of the development of Russian civilization. The Russian superethnos is the ethnic cooperation of the ethnic groups of Russia, in which the Russian ethnic group, by virtue of a number of its characteristics reflected in the Russian idea, is a “brace”, the bearer of ethnic unity.
The third. Russian civilization, as already noted, is a communal civilization. The historical logic of Russian civilization is a community logic. At the same time, community is interpreted in a broad, civilizational context, and not in a narrow one - as being only communities. From a civilizational perspective, community acquires the meaning of civilizational cooperation, communality, collegiality as a kind of synergistic unity of society and man.
Community in the concept being developed is a fundamental property of Russian civilization, acquiring a Eurasian scale. This is a community of the "Great Space" and "Great Time", giving birth to a special type of person, a person directed to the future, to realize long-term goals. This feature of the spiritual warehouse of Russian civilization was noted by a number of scientists. For example, V.P. Kaznacheev notes that “the Russian formation of statehood at its roots has a different basis” compared to the basis of Western civilization (according to Kaznacheev, associated with the primacy of economic interest and “redistribution of property”) - the basis of spiritual culture.
The community itself as the basis and as the law of development of Russian civilization is due to Russian Eurasianism, the "coldness" of Eurasian territory, its northern latitudinal location. The energy cost of human life and society as a whole in Russia is 3-5 times higher than the energy cost of living in Europe and the United States. The favorable period for sowing and harvesting in Russia on average is only two weeks in the spring and two weeks in the fall, and sometimes even less. The severity of the climatic conditions of Russian Eurasia initially formed a community way of life as a way of survival. With a certain degree of conditionality, one can speak of “Russian-civilizational communism” as a value expression of Russian community Eurasianism, which is reflected in the high priorities of equality (even equalization), social justice, collectivism, the condemnation of wealth and enrichment as a personal ideal of life, mutual assistance, “ontology” love and kindness ”(about which Vl. Soloviev writes), compassion, the primacy of the spiritual principle over the material. It was this "civilizational communism" of Russian civilization that caused the adoption of Orthodoxy 1000 years ago by Russia, since it was it that preserved the tenets of early Christianity with its "communism", "communism of Christ", collegiality, the cult of love.
Fourth. Russia is a unique civilization. Its uniqueness is due to the Eurasian location. The process of collecting lands and peoples that the Russian people carried out in the second millennium since the birth of Christ was, as it were, predetermined by the "Eurasian location." In this historical logic of the genesis of Russian civilization, a peculiar civilizational-geographical determinism manifested itself, which is still condemned by the “philosophy of history”, although it was quite convincingly shown by L.I. Mechnikov and N.Ya. Danilevsky. Russian Eurasia, as noted, is the only place on planet Earth where the East and West are not separated by natural obstacles, where the "Great Space" has not only an internal, spiritual meaning (which is secondary), but also a physical, tangible meaning, the meaning of the unity of the earth - places of residence, "ecumene": from the Baltic to the Pacific Ocean and from the Black Sea, the Caucasus and to the Arctic Ocean. “Big space” also gives rise to “Big time”, because in accordance with the laws of system genetics, each system has its own system spaces (“toposs”) and times (“chronies”), caused by the “cycles-waves” of development characteristic of the system.
The main stages of the development of mankind and the era of world history
Yu.I. Semenov
The main division of the history of mankind.
Now that a whole system of new concepts has been introduced, one can try, using them, to draw an integral picture of world history, of course, extremely brief.
The history of mankind is primarily divided into two main periods: (I) the era of the formation of man and society, the time of primacy and prehistory (1.6-0.04 million years ago) and (II) the era of development of a mature, ready-made human society (from 40-35 thousand years ago to the present). Within the last era, two main eras are distinctly distinguished: (1) a pre-class (primitive, primitive, egalitarian, etc.) society and (2) a class (civilized) society (from 5 thousand years ago to the present day). In turn, in the history of mankind since the emergence of the first civilizations, the era of the Ancient East (Sh-P millennia BC), the Antique era (VIII century BC - V century CE), the Middle Ages ( VI-XV centuries.), New (XVI century. -1917) and the Newest (since 1917) era.
The period of enslavement and ancestry (1.6-0.04 million years). Man stood out from the animal world. As it is now firmly established, between the animal precursors of man, on the one hand, and the people who they are now (Homo sapiens), on the other hand, lies an unusually long period of the formation of man and society (anthroposociogenesis). The people who lived at that time were still emerging people (great-humans). Their society was still just emerging. It can be characterized only by the community.
Some scientists take for the first people (great-men) habilis who replaced Australopithecus, about 2.5 million years ago, while others consider the first people to be archanthropes (Pithecanthropus, synanthropus, atlantrop, etc.), who replaced habilis, approximately 1 , 6 million ago. Closer to the truth, the second point of view, because only with archanthropes began to form language, thinking and social relations. As for the habilis, they, like Australopithecus, were not pre-humans, but pre-humans, but not early but late.
The formation of man and human society was based on the process of the emergence and development of productive activities, material production. The emergence and development of production necessarily required not only a change in the organism of producing creatures, but also the emergence of completely new relationships between them, qualitatively different from those that existed in animals, not biological, but social, that is, the emergence of human society. There are no social relations and society in the animal kingdom. They are inherent only to man. The emergence of qualitatively new relationships, and thereby completely new behavioral stimuli inherent only to humans, was absolutely impossible without restriction and suppression, without introducing into the social framework the old driving forces of behavior — biological instincts that reign supreme in the animal kingdom. An urgent objective necessity was to curb and introduce into the social framework two egoistic animal instincts - food and sexual.
The curbing of the food instinct began with the emergence of the earliest prelude - archanthropes and ended in the next phase of anthroposociogenesis, when it was replaced by 0.3-0.2 million years ago, the more perfect species - paleoanthropes, more precisely, with the advent of 75-70 thousand. years ago of late paleoanthropes. It was then that the formation of the first form of socio-economic relations — collapsible communal relations — was completed. With the curbing, putting under the social control of the sexual instinct, which was expressed in the appearance of the clan and the first form of marital relations - the dual clan organization, which happened 35-40 thousand years ago, the emerging people and the emerging society were replaced by ready-made people and a ready-made a society whose first form was a primitive society.
The era of primitive (pre-class) society (40-6 thousand years ago). In the development of pre-class society, the stages of early primitive (primitive-communist) and late primitive (primitive-prestigious) societies have successively changed. Then came the era of a society transitional from primitive to class, or pre-class.
At the stage of pre-class society, there was an emerging peasant-communal (practical-peasant-communal), emerging political (protopolar), nobiliary, dominar and magnar methods of production, and the last two often formed one single hybrid method of domino-magnet production. (See lecture VI, “Basic and non-basic methods of production.”) They individually or in different combinations determined the socio-economic type of pre-class sociohistorical organisms.
There were societies in which the peasant-communal system dominated, - the peasant (1). In a significant number of pre-class societies, the dominant was the protopolitical system. These are proto-political societies (2). Societies with the dominance of nobilar relations - proton-biliary societies were observed (3). There were sociohistorical organisms in which the dominomarnar mode of production dominated - protominomagnar societies (4). In some societies, the mobilized and domino-dominant forms of exploitation coexisted and played approximately the same role. These are protonobilo-magnar societies (5). Another type is societies in which dominomnar relations were combined with the exploitation of its ordinary members by a special military corporation, which in Russia was called the squad. The scientific term for such a corporation could be the word "militia" (lat. Militia - army), and its leader - the word "militar". Accordingly, such sociohistorical organisms can be called protomilito-magnar societies (6).
None of these six main types of pre-class society can be characterized as a socio-economic formation, because it was not a stage of world-historical development. Pre-class society was such a stage, but it also cannot be called a socio-economic formation, because it did not represent a single socio-economic type.
The concept of paraformation is hardly applicable to the different socio-economic types of pre-class society. They did not supplement any socio-economic formation that existed as a stage in world history, and all taken together replaced the socio-economic formation. Therefore, they would best be called socio-economic pro-formations (from the Greek. Pro - instead).
Of all the mentioned types of pre-class society, only pro-topolitarian pro-formation was capable, without the influence of higher-type societies, to become a class society, and, of course, ancient political. The remaining pro formations constituted a peculiar historical reserve.
The era of the Ancient East (III-II millennium BC). The first class society in the history of mankind was political. It appeared for the first time at the end of the 4th millennium BC. in the form of two historical nests: a large politar sociohistorical organism in the Nile Valley (Egypt) and a system of small politar sociors in southern Mesopotamia (Sumer). Thus, human society split into two historical worlds: the pre-class one, which turned into an inferior one, and the political one, which became superior. Further development went along the path, on the one hand, of the emergence of new isolated historical nests (the Harappa civilization in the Indus and Shan (Yin) civilizations in the Huanghe Valley), and on the other, the appearance of more and more historical nests in the vicinity of Mesopotamia and Egypt and the formation of a huge system of political sociohistorical organisms that spanned the entire Middle East. Such a set of sociohistorical organisms can be called the historical arena. The Middle East historical arena was at that time the only one. It was the center of world historical development and, in this sense, the world system. The world was divided into a political center and a periphery, which was partially primitive (including pre-class), partially class, and political.
Ancient Eastern societies had a cyclical nature of development. They arose, flourished, and then fell into decay. In a number of cases, civilization collapsed and the pre-class society (Indian and Mycenaean civilizations) returned to the stage. This, first of all, was connected with the method of increasing the level of development of productive forces inherent in a political society — increasing the productivity of social production by increasing the length of working time. But this temporal (from lat. Tempus - time), a way to increase the productivity of social production, unlike the technical method, is a dead end. Sooner or later, a further increase in working time became impossible. It led to physical degradation and even death of the main productive force - workers, which resulted in the decline and even death of society.
Ancient era (VIII century BC - V century BC). Due to the impasse of the temporal method of development of productive forces, a political society was unable to turn into a society of a higher type. A new, more progressive socio-economic formation — antique, slaveholding, and servar — arose as a result of the process, which was called ultrasuporization above. The emergence of ancient society was the result of the comprehensive influence of the Middle East world system on the Greek sociohistorical organisms that were previously pre-class. This influence has long been noticed by historians who called this process orientation. As a result, pre-class Greek sociors, who belonged to a pro-formation other than protopolitical, namely protonobilo-magnarn, at first (in the 8th century BC) became dominomarnar societies (Archaic Greece), and then turned into proper antique server ones. So, along with the two previous historical worlds (primitive and political), a new one appeared - antique, which became superior.
Following the Greek historical nest, new historical nests arose in which the formation of a servar (antique) mode of production took place: Etruscan, Carthaginian, Latin. Antique sociohistorical organisms combined form a new historical arena - the Mediterranean, to which the role of the center of world historical development has shifted. With the advent of a new world system, humanity as a whole has risen to a new stage in historical development. There was a change in world eras: the era of the Ancient East was replaced by Antique.
In the subsequent development, in the IV century. BC. the Middle Eastern and Mediterranean historical arenas combined form a socioressystem - the central historical space (central space), and as a result, have become its two historical zones. The Mediterranean zone was the historical center, the Middle East was the inner periphery.
Outside the central historical space was the outer periphery, which was divided into primitive (including pre-class) and politar. But unlike the era of the Ancient East, the political periphery existed in ancient times in the form of not isolated historical nests, but a significant number of historical arenas between which various kinds of connections arose. In the Old World, East Asian, Indonesian, Indian, Central Asian arenas formed and, finally, the Great Steppe, in the open spaces of which nomadic empires either appeared or disappeared. In the New World in the 1st millennium BC Andean and Mesoamerican historical arenas formed.
The transition to ancient society was marked by significant progress in the productive forces. But almost the entire increase in the productivity of social production was achieved not so much by improving technology as by increasing the share of workers in the population of society. This is a demographic way to increase the level of productive forces. In the pre-industrial era, an increase in the number of producers of material goods within a sociohistorical organism without an increase in the same proportion of its entire population could occur in only one way - by an influx of ready-made workers from outside, who do not have the right to have families and acquire offspring.
The constant influx of workers from outside into a particular sociohistorical organism necessarily required the same systematic pulling them out of other sociors. All this was impossible without the use of direct violence. External workers could only be slaves. The considered method of increasing the productivity of social production consisted in the affirmation of exogenous (from the Greek. Exo - outside, outside) slavery. Only a constant influx of slaves from the outside could make possible the emergence of an independent mode of production based on the labor of such kind of dependent workers. For the first time, this mode of production was established only in the heyday of ancient society, and therefore it is commonly called antique. In Chapter VI, “Basic and Non-Basic Methods of Production,” he was called Servar.
Thus, a necessary condition for the existence of ancient society was the continuous pumping of human resources from other sociohistorical organisms. And these other sociors should have belonged to types different from this one, and it is preferable to pre-class society. The existence of a system of antique-type societies was impossible without the existence of a vast periphery, consisting mainly of barbaric sociohistorical organisms.
Continuous expansion, which was a prerequisite for the existence of server societies, could not continue indefinitely. Sooner or later, it became impossible. The demographic method of increasing the productivity of social production, as well as the temporal one, was a dead end. Antique society, as well as political, was unable to turn into a society of a higher type. But if the political historical world continued to exist almost to our days and after leaving the historical highway as an inferior, the ancient historical world has disappeared forever. But, perishing, the ancient society passed the baton to other societies. The transition of mankind to a higher stage of social development has again occurred in a way that has been called formational super-elevation, or ultrasuperiorization.
The era of the Middle Ages (VI-XV centuries). Undermined by internal contradictions, the Western Roman Empire collapsed under the onslaught of the Germans. The German pre-class demo-social organisms were superimposed, which belonged to a pro-formation, different from the protopolitarian, namely protomilitomagnar, on the fragments of the West Roman geosocial organism. As a result, on the same territory, part of the people lived as part of demosocial pre-class organisms, and the other as part of a half-destroyed class geosocial organism. Such coexistence of two qualitatively different socio-economic and other social structures could not last too long. Either the destruction of demosocial structures and the victory of the geosocial, or the disintegration of the geosocial and the triumph of the demosocial, or, finally, a synthesis of both were to occur. On the territory of the perished Western Roman Empire, what historians call the Romano-German synthesis happened. As a result of it, a new, more progressive mode of production was born - the feudal and, accordingly, the new socio-economic formation.
A Western European feudal system arose, which became the center of world-historical development. The Antique era was replaced by a new one - the era of the Middle Ages. The Western European world system existed as one of the zones of the preserved, but at the same time, rebuilt central historical space. This space included the Byzantine and Middle Eastern zones as the inner periphery. The latter as a result of the Arab conquests of the 7th-8th centuries. significantly increased, including part of the Byzantine zone, and turned into an Islamic zone. Then began the expansion of the central historical space through the territory of Northern, Central and Eastern Europe, filled with pre-class sociohistorical organisms, which also belonged to the same pro-formation as the German pre-class societies - protomilitomagnar.
These societies, some under the influence of Byzantium, others - of Western Europe, began to transform and turned into class sociohistorical organisms. But if ultrasuperiorization took place in Western Europe and a new formation appeared - the feudal one, then there was a process that was called literalization above. As a result of it, two close socio-economic paraformations arose, which, without going into details, can be conditionally described as parafeudal (from Greek: steam near, about): the sociors of Northern Europe belonged to one, the Central and Eastern societies to the other. Two new peripheral zones of the central historical space arose: the North European and the Central East European, which included Russia. In the outer periphery, primitive societies and the same political historical arenas continued to exist, as in the ancient era.
As a result of the Mongol conquest (XIII century), Northwest Russia and North-Eastern Russia, taken together, were torn out of the central historical space. The Central-Eastern European zone narrowed to the Central European. After getting rid of the Tatar-Mongol yoke (XV century), Northern Russia, which later became known as Russia, returned to the central historical space, but already as its special peripheral zone - Russian, which subsequently turned into Eurasian.
New time (1600-1917 gg.). On the verge of the XV and XVI centuries. in Western Europe, capitalism began to take shape. The Western European feudal world system was replaced by the Western European capitalist system, which became the center of world-historical development. The Middle Ages were followed by New Time. Capitalism developed in this era both inward and in breadth.
The first was expressed in the maturation and establishment of the capitalist system, in the victory of bourgeois sociopolitical revolutions (the Netherlands XVI century, the English XVII century, the Great French XVIII century). Already with the emergence of cities (X-XII centuries), Western European society embarked on the only path that was able to ensure, in principle, the unlimited development of productive forces - the growth of labor productivity by improving production techniques. The technical way of ensuring the growth of the productivity of social production finally prevailed after the industrial revolution that began in the last third of the 18th century.
Capitalism arose in
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