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| Author | B. F. Porshnev |
|---|---|
| Genre | Monograph |
| Publisher | Mysl |
On the Beginning of Human History (Problems of Paleopsychology) is a philosophical and natural-scientific treatise[Notes 1] by Soviet historian Boris Fyodorovich Porshnev, dedicated to the problems of anthropogenesis. The initial concept for a book on human prehistory dates back to 1924, although Porshnev directly addressed the topic of the emergence of Homo sapiens in the 1950s in connection with his interest in troglodytidae and the issue of the "snowman". After 1968, the researcher's work was entirely devoted to writing and publishing On the Beginning of Human History, which he considered the main research work of his life.
The book presents a complex interdisciplinary study at the intersection of physical anthropology, evolutionary psychology, sociology, philosophy of history, and some other disciplines. The "beginning" highlighted in the title was, in the author's view, is a key to the entire complex of sciences about human society and the individual within society, creating a research program. For Porshnev, there was a fundamental distinction between humans and all other animals (an "evolutionary gap"), rooted in creativity, which is absent in any animal, even in rudimentary form. In the book On the Beginning of Human History, the author specifically analyzed problems that most researchers did not even consider necessary to address:
- the emergence of neoanthropes and the rapidly growing gap between the dynamics of the "neoanthrope community" and the pace of change in the natural environment;
- the separation of neoanthropes from the environment of paleoanthropes due to specific relationships with the natural environment, primarily with the surrounding animal world;
- the explanation of anthropogenesis from the perspective of physiology of higher nervous activity and psychology.
When considering the transition from animal to human, Porshnev placed at the center of his analysis the model of "individual to individual", rather than "individual to environment" relationships. The requirements for a unique mechanism of interaction between individuals are rooted in animal physiology. The author reconstructed this mechanism up to the stage of the emergence of human speech communication, through which he examined the human psyche, sociality, and capacity for creativity.[3] Human labor originated in the activities of troglodytids of the Tertiary period, whose primary ecological characteristic was corpse-eating and scavenging. The mastery of fire occurred accidentally during the processing of stone tools, necessary for breaking thick bones and extracting brain and bone marrow—the primary resources of troglodytes. Further development led to adelphophagy—hunting members of their own species. As a result of the divergence in ecology and ethology of paleoanthropes, the paleoanthrope species itself split into two subspecies. Thus emerged — the ecological opposite of Homo neanderthalensis.
By 1972, the manuscript of the monograph was ready for publication but faced sharp objections from the editorial board, primarily due to its revision of Marxist views on anthropogenesis. The typeset was dismantled; according to one version, this contributed to B. F. Porshnev's death. The manuscript was published in 1974 by the Moscow publishing house Mysl in an abridged form (at the editorial board's request, chapters on corpse-eating, mastery of fire, and the formation of modern humans among Neanderthals were removed). From this edition, translations into Slovak and Bulgarian were made. In the 1990s, efforts began to restore the author's original text based on manuscripts stored in the Russian State Library. The restored monograph was published by various publishers in 2006, 2007, 2013, and 2017.
B. F. Porshnev's hypothesis of anthropogenesis has been criticized by some biologists, psychologists, and linguists. It is not widely accepted, with critics arguing that Porshnev relied on incomplete factual information: in the early 21st century, it is considered proven that Neanderthals were not direct biological ancestors of modern humans. Porshnev's concept of suggestion, like similar approaches by Western scholars, is regarded by contemporary specialist in Primitive culture (anthropology) P. Kutzenkov as speculative due to the lack of factual data, which is hardly obtainable in studies of prehistoric human psychology.[4] Nevertheless, according to contemporary historian of Soviet intellectual thought Galin Tihanov, B. Porshnev's philosophy of history was the most complex and original concept in Soviet humanities of the second half of the 20th century. According to Tihanov, by combining history and psychology in his book, Porshnev succeeded in historicizing the foundation of history — humankind, which had previously been treated as unchanging in Soviet historiography.[5]
- ^ Vite 2007, p. 576.
- ^ Porshnev 2007, p. 421.
- ^ Oleg Vite (October 4, 2004). "Why is B. Porshnev Relevant Today?" [Чем интересен Б. Поршнев сегодня?]. On the 100th Anniversary of Boris Fyodorovich Porshnev's Birth (March 7, 1905 – November 26, 1972). www.porshnev.ru. Archived from the original on April 23, 2016. Retrieved August 4, 2025.
- ^ Kutzenkov 2008, pp. 188–189.
- ^ Tihanov 2010, pp. 330–331.
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