Moscow, Nauka Publ. 1983. 432 p.

The publication of the peer-reviewed work1 is important both for historical science in general and for the study of the early stages of the history of human society in particular. In the world, including domestic literature, there are no generalizing works of this kind. The authors faced difficult and diverse tasks, the solution of which is complicated by the lack of actual data. It seems that the authors have successfully implemented their plan. The sources currently available to scientists are carefully systematized and subjected to a thorough analysis in the book. From the standpoint of modern ideas about primitiveness, it examines the theoretical views of Soviet and foreign researchers that have developed in science. The authors draw a broad and reliable picture of the emergence of humanity and its social institutions.

One of the advantages of the monograph is the desire of its authors not to smooth out the controversial nature of many problems of primitive history. This encourages further theoretical research, and it is natural that in a work of this kind, many thoughts and propositions are expressed in a hypothetical plan, which allows for other solutions to the problems posed.

The authors focus on four cardinal problems: source studies, historiography, the emergence and evolution of man in the light of anthropological data, the background and formation of human society. The introduction (authored by A. I. Pershits) examines the main aspects of these problems, the nature and degree of their elaboration, points out controversial issues, and defines the methodological positions of Soviet historians of primitive society. It also addresses an important question about the name of the subject "primitive history" and the designation of the formation studied by it (p. 11). We think that the term "history of primitive society" (p.12) chosen by the author from a number of others is indeed the most successful.

A number of sections of the work deal with complex and controversial issues of periodization of primitive history and, in particular, archaeological periodization. It seems to us that with the accumulation of factual data on the anthropogenesis and history of the material culture of primitive society, there are more and more doubts about the validity of naming cultures of the epoch of human formation and the time of the appearance of a modern human species by the early and late "Paleolithic". These doubts were also reflected in Yu. I. Semenov's proposal to replace the term "Early Paleolithic" with "archeolithic" (p. 342 et al.). The fact is that the time traditionally referred to as the" Paleolithic " includes at least two radically different epochs: the stages of a person forming and a person formed, between which there are fundamental differences.

No matter what attempts are made to bring these stages closer together in terms of technology and social development, it remains an indisputable fact that the creators of Early Paleolithic cultures were not capable of intensive social development, there were still many zoological features in their organization, and only as a result of another species transformation did a modern type of person develop, who was able to move from biological to social evolution, the course of natural selection, and became a direct ancestor of the creators of modern civilization. The definition of this epoch as the "Late Paleolithic" terminologically relates it to the time of the existence of species that preceded modern man and separates it from the Mesolithic and Early Neolithic-epochs that did not have fundamental differences from the Late Paleolithic.

Source studies of the history of primitive society have not been generalized in the world literature. The historiography of this society was considered only fragmentary, mainly in connection with certain specific questions of primitiveness. The authors thoroughly examined the concepts, ethnographic, archaeological, anthropological, written and natural science sources and their classification. The consistency and validity of the information contained in the report is important.

1 Author's team: V. P. Alekseev, L. E. Kubbel, A. I. Pershits, Yu. I. Semenov, N. B. Ter-Hakobyan, B. A. Frolov, V. A. Shnirelman. Editorial Board: Yu. V. Bromley (editor-in-chief), A. I. Pershits, Yu. I.Semenov.

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a book of Marxist assessments of bourgeois concepts, an active offensive position in the criticism of anti-Marxist views. The authors examine in detail the questions of the formation of primitive history as a science, the views of the Marxist classics on primitive society, the concepts of bourgeois authors of the late XIX and XX centuries, the problems of the development of the science of primitive society in pre-revolutionary Russia, the USSR and other socialist countries of Europe.

The historiographical part of the work as a whole deserves the most positive assessment. But there are gaps in it. So, speaking of the contribution of Ch. The contribution of J. Darwin and T. Huxley to the study of the origin of man, it would be worth dwelling on the hypotheses of E. Haeckel. One could argue about some of the assessments of the views of E. Westermarck and K. Starke on the history of the family, expressed at one time by M. O. Obliquen, and wish that E. Grosse was also mentioned. I would like to see a more detailed review of the Russian historiography of primitive society in the 1920s and 1930s, when many historians, ethnographers and archaeologists were actively engaged in the issues of primitiveness. It seems to us that it is in vain that B. F. Porshnev's curious, though very controversial, views on primitive society, which are only briefly mentioned in other sections of the work, have not been thoroughly analyzed.

Fundamental problems of anthropogenesis are considered by V. P. Alekseev, who dwells in detail on the debatable issues of the initial forms of hominids, the ecological circumstances of anthropogenesis, the factors of formation, the time and place of the appearance of hominids and humans themselves, their evolution, and the communicative aspects of anthropogenesis. On the basis of almost exhaustive factual material, the author examines in detail the problems of the place and time of the origin of man and his hypothetical ancestors, discusses the still completely unresolved issues of anthropological systematics. We should probably agree with his conclusion that not only natural selection but also sexual selection played a significant role in anthropogenesis (p.199), and that hominid evolution proceeded as a multi-linear process (p. 211).

The author's further development of the labor theory of F. P. Tolstoy should be regarded as an undoubted success. Engels. One can fully support V. P. Alekseev's broad understanding of the concept of "labor" as a joint activity of collective members to obtain their means of subsistence (p.201). This position is at odds with the opinion of a number of researchers who view "labor" too narrowly, mainly as a tool activity only. One cannot disagree with V. P. Alekseev when he denies the special role of the so-called biosocial or social-labor selection (p.202). I would especially like to emphasize the scientific breadth of the approach to the study of the problems of anthropogenesis. The author, clearly stating his theoretical position in each case, also explains in detail the concepts of other researchers, which will have a positive impact on the further development of scientific research.

About half of the volume of the book is devoted to Yu. I. Semenov's research of the prerequisites and formation of human society. Special attention is paid to the attempt to determine the philosophical essence of humanization, the content and nature of this process. As for the emergence of the human ancestral community and society, the author sees a special role in this process in establishing a communal distribution of food, and above all meat (p. 309 and others). A new interpretation of the concept of "group marriage" seems very successful (p.282). Many of Yu. I. Semenov's conclusions seem well-founded and can be accepted without objections, but some of the hypothetical constructions are controversial and require further in-depth discussion.

First of all, it should be noted that Yu. I. Semyonov presents the presentation in a slightly different way than other authors of the monograph, who draw, in addition to their own theoretical positions, a broad picture of the views of other researchers. Yu. I. Semyonov develops mainly his own concepts, in some cases only focusing on the views of other scientists. His explanation of anthropogenesis mainly as a consequence of tool activity is largely controversial: it is hardly possible to agree that labor in the early stages of anthropogenesis was mainly reduced to tool activity (cf. pp. 232, 253, 298, etc.). As noted above, labor is a much broader phenomenon, covering all actions aimed at creating tools. adaptation to the environment, based on social collective experience and activities.

The use of tools was social-

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a real perspective of human development. But in the early stages of anthropogenesis, tools did not yet play a major role in adaptation. Labor at the first stages of humanization was expressed in the emergence of a new, different from zoological social organization of primitive collectives, the emergence of the division of labor as a method of social adaptation, the emergence of social, non-hereditary and non-word-reflex methods in obtaining a living, experience in using fire, tool activity, and much more. Thus, humanization represented a transition from active conditioned-reflex adaptation to the environment, to active social adaptation based on the use of collective experience.

The complexity of the problem, the possibility of dealing in some cases only with indirect data, the controversial use of analogies and retrospections from the field of primatology, on the one hand, and examples from the life of peoples on the periphery of class societies in modern and modern times, on the other, give rise to and will continue to give rise to discussions on general and specific issues of the history of primitive society. The value of this work lies precisely in the fact that, summing up research in this area, it calls for reaching new scientific frontiers.

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