Prehistoric man

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Primitive man is a generic term for extinct representatives of the genus Homo in older prehistory , who lived in the geological age of the Pleistocene . The designation is used inconsistently in the attribution of specific species in human tribal history .

18th to early 20th century

The French-Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau described in his main work On the Social Contract or Principles of Constitutional Law (1762) the "natural man" ( l'homme naturel ) as an archaic type of anatomically modern man ( Homo sapiens ), without fossil evidence that would have suggested its existence outside the biblical timeframe. With the application of the theory of descent to humans by Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck (“Philosophy zoologique”, 1809) a scholarly dispute arose for decades as to whether the diluvial “primitive man” existed. After the discovery of theNeanderthals in 1856 this - as the first fossil of an extinct human species - was initially referred to as primitive man . However, Ernst Haeckel noted a short time later in his "Natural Creation Story" (1868):

"However, the physical development of primitive man from human-like apes probably already took place in the younger or pliocene , perhaps even in the middle or miocene tertiary period ."

After the discovery of Homo erectus or Java man (1891), the name was also transferred to older fossils . Until the middle of the 20th century, primitive man was used as a collective term for all found or scientifically accepted extinct people ( Homo erectus or Homo heidelbergensis , Neanderthals), in part also for the Ice Age Cro-Magnon people . The term caveman was a synonym , due to the location known at the time, almost without exception in caves or abrises .

Mid 20th century until today

After the discovery and scientific acceptance of hominini with "pre-human" characteristics, a differentiated use of language became necessary from around 1950. Representatives of the australopithecines have since been commonly referred to as pre-humans .

Homo habilis, first described in 1964, was of great importance for the reconstruction of human tribal history . The working group "Problems of Incarnation" of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR , founded in 1977, tried to use the term early man for the "habilines" ( Homo habilis ) to linguistically differentiate them from both the pre- humans and the subsequent primitive humans. The designation prehistoric man should only be reserved for the "archanthropins" ( Homo erectus and its regional representatives such as Homo heidelbergensis and Homo steinheimensis ). The “archanthropins” were followed by the “paleoanthropins” ( archaic Homo sapiens , Neanderthals), which were referred to as ancient people from around 200,000 years ago . The division of mankind into stages of development was based on historical materialism , according to which the level of development of the archaic Homo sapiens was similar to that of the Neanderthal. Regardless of the ideological background, the five-tier classification (pre, early, ancient, old and new) as a colloquial regulation had a certain acceptance in the 1970s to 1990s. However, the term early man has been used by other specialists since the 1960s as a chronologically indifferent synonym for primitive man .

Friedemann Schrenk , one of the leading German-speaking paleoanthropologists , suggested the following linguistic rule at the beginning of the 21st century : the Australopithecines become pre-humans ; Homo habilis and Homo rudolfensis as primitive people ; all later species of the genus Homo (except Homo sapiens ) as early humans ; Homo sapiens as now man or "anatomically modern man". The chronological order of primitive man before early man differs from earlier classifications.

A uniform usage of language has not yet been recorded. In other specialist literature, for example, all species following pre-humans (before Homo sapiens ) are referred to as primitive humans . Ernst Probst , for example, used early man in 2008 in the sense of the classification introduced by Schrenk, but here only for Homo erectus or Homo heidelbergensis and not for the Neanderthal. In 21st century encyclopedias and school books, primitive man and early man are sometimes used as interchangeable terms.

The Cro-Magnon people are unanimously referred to as present-day people or new people, despite their temporal overlap with late representatives of Homo erectus and the Neanderthals . This reflects the affiliation to anatomically modern humans ( Homo sapiens ) as the only human species still existing today.

See also

literature

  • Joachim Herrmann, Herbert Ullrich (Hrsg.): Incarnation: Millions of years of human development, results from the natural sciences and the humanities. An overall picture. Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1991

Web links

Wiktionary: primitive man  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck: Philosophy zoologique, ou, Exposition des considérations relative à l'histoire naturelle des animaux. Paris 1809 (German translation by Arnold Lang: Jena 1876)
  2. ↑ Ernst Haeckel: Natural history of creation. Common scientific lectures on the theory of evolution in general and that of Darwin, Goethe and Lamarck in particular, on the application of the same to the origin of man and other related fundamental questions of natural science. Georg Reimer, Berlin 1868, lecture 14 ( full text )
  3. ↑ Otto Kleinschmidt : The primeval man . Leipzig, Quelle & Meyer, 1931
  4. ↑ Georg Kraft: The primordial man as creator: The spiritual world of the Ice Age man. Matthiesen, 1948
  5. ↑ Herrmann / Ullrich, p. 609
  6. ↑ a b c Joachim Herrmann (Ed.): Lexicon of early cultures. Leipzig (Bibliogr. Inst.), 1984.
  7. ^ Herrmann / Ullrich, pp. 218, 609
  8. ↑ Dietrich Mania: In the footsteps of primitive man. The finds from Bilzingsleben . Theiss, Stuttgart 1990, ISBN 3-8062-0832-8
  9. ↑ a b Achim Paululat, Günter Purschke: Dictionary of Zoology. Springer Spectrum, Heidelberg, 2011, (8th edition) ISBN 978-3-8274-2115-9
  10. ↑ Bernhard Rensch (Ed.): Manual use and understanding among monkeys and early humans. Bern, Huber, 1968
  11. ^ Alfred Rust : Tools of early humans in Europe. Neumünster 1971
  12. ↑ Friedemann Schrenk, Timothy G. Bromage: Adam's parents. Expeditions into the world of early humans. CH Beck, Munich 2002, ISBN 3406486150
  13. ↑ a b Friedemann Schrenk: The early days of man. The way to Homo sapiens. CH Beck, 5th, completely revised and expanded edition, Munich 2008 (CH Beck Wissen ), ISBN 978-3-406-57703-1
  14. ↑ Jan Zrzavý, Hynek Burda, David Storch, Sabine Begall , Stanislav Mihulka: Evolution. A reading textbook. Springer Spectrum, Berlin, 2013, (2nd edition) ISBN 978-3-642-39695-3
  15. ↑ Ernst Probst : Records of the primitive man: inventions, art and religion. Grin-Verlag, 2008.
  16. ↑ Miriam Sénécheau: Chapter portraits on evolution , in: Jana Esther Fries , Ulrike Rambuscheck (Ed.): Science or Fiction ?: Gender roles in archaeological images of life. Münster, Waxmann, 2007, pp. 134-135.
  17. ↑ Herrmann / Ullrich, pp. 112, 118