Libmonster ID: SE-398
Author(s) of the publication: L. B. VISHNYATSKY

The question of the driving forces and mechanisms of cultural development in the primitive era rarely becomes the subject of special consideration in Russian literature. As a rule, only specific cases of cultural changes in prehistory, such as the spread of geometric tools in the Mesolithic, pottery in the Neolithic, or the transition to a productive economy, can be explained, but not the process as a whole, not the evolution of culture as such. If, however, we are talking about the latter, it is usually assumed that both in prehistoric times and in later epochs, basically the same factors of cultural development were at work, and, therefore, no special theory, limited to primitiveness alone, is needed to explain them. In this article, I aim to show that such an attitude is incorrect and that one general theory is not enough to explain cultural development; there must be at least two theories: one for prehistory, the other for history. An attempt to substantiate the thesis about the very special nature of the mechanism of cultural evolution in primitive times, which is the main content of this paper, is based on the analysis of archaeological data on the Stone Age and, to a lesser extent, ethnographic data on hunter - gatherers and other traditional societies of the present or recent past. This analysis is preceded by a historiographical section, where the main approaches to explaining cultural changes in prehistory are considered, and at the very beginning of the article, in order to avoid possible discrepancies and terminological confusion, brief definitions of the most general and important concepts used in it are given.

BASIC CONCEPTS

Culture. We are talking here about culture in the broadest sense. Despite the extreme variety of proposed interpretations of this concept, in my opinion, there are only two main approaches to its definition. One of them-the traditional one-is that culture, before defining what it is, is already considered in advance as something specifically human, something that appears and exists only together with man 1 . In the second approach, the emphasis is placed on identifying the essence of the phenomenon being defined, regardless of who may be its carrier 2 In this case, culture is considered primarily as something in a certain sense opposed to nature. It is the result of a specially organized behavior, the specificity of which consists in the fact that it is formed, first, extragenetically, through various forms of learning, and secondly, non-mechanically, i.e. actively, selectively. In other words, culture (in the broadest sense) is all forms of behavior based on extragenetically and selectively (non - mechanically) assimilated, stored, and transmitted information.-

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information, as well as their results (real and ideal). Whether such behavior is exclusively human or not must be established empirically, but it does not matter for the definition of culture as such.

Cultural and social issues. If we proceed from the definition of culture formulated above, then the social should be considered as part of the cultural. These concepts are of different levels, one of them acts as generic in relation to the other, so it would be correct to say not "cultural and social", but "cultural and including social". Culture includes society, but society is not as a set of individuals (individuals), but as an organizational structure that regulates their relations, as a set of such connections between individuals and their groups that are established and maintained without being genetically determined. Thus, when I speak further about the evolution of culture, I mean simultaneously the evolution of society and social relations.

Evolution and development. In the history of culture, there are two facts that are of fundamental importance for it, and at the same time quite obvious (at least for most modern people). They consist in the fact that: a) culture changes over time (which results in its diversity in space); b) it changes directionally, in the direction of increasing complexity. The presence of a certain direction in the dynamics of culture over time, i.e., the vectorized nature of the process of change, allows us to define it (this process) as evolution (evolution is a directed change), and the general tendency to complication that characterizes this evolution allows us to talk about the development of culture (development is evolution in the direction of complication). Evolution may or may not be accompanied by the appearance of something new, but development without the appearance of something new (new elements, new connections between them) is impossible.

Causes and mechanism (cultural changes). A mechanism is a causal structure, a chain of interactions that connects ultimate causes with immediate ones. Mechanism is a system, causes are elements of the system. By identifying the reasons, we explain, why changes have occurred, identifying the mechanism, we explain, in what way they were implemented. Identifying the ultimate causes means understanding why the change mechanism was started and enabled.

HISTORY AND CURRENT STATE OF THE ISSUE

The purposeful search for the causes and mechanisms of the evolution of culture as an integral process began in science much later and was conducted with much less intensity than the search for the causes and mechanisms of biological evolution. This may seem rather strange, since the dynamism of culture over time, in contrast to the dynamism of the organic world, was, at least for Europeans of recent centuries, something quite obvious and does not need special proof. If in biology the establishment of the very fact of evolution required special research and was accompanied by a long debate between supporters and opponents of transformism, then in the sciences that study human activity and its results, the variability of culture over time was initially taken for granted. Why is it that biologists, while trying to prove the reality of evolution, simultaneously tried to explain how and why it happens? raison d' etre their sciences, and for a long time the vast majority of cultural scientists did not seem to notice the problem at all, being content with a simple statement of cultural changes?

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This is probably explained not so much by the difference in the development of biological and human sciences, but by the different nature of their objects: the natural (organic world), on the one hand, and the artificial (culture), on the other. The fact is that in the object of biology, after its "secularization", there was no active goal-setting principle that could be thought of as the source of evolution, and thus the question of the driving forces of the latter inevitably became critical. On the contrary, for a culture whose creator was present, the explanation for the changes seemed as obvious as the changes themselves. This was due, first, to the "progressivism" and" activism " inherent in the Modern European mentality; second, to the fact that anthropological ideas about human nature were rooted in the sciences of man as eternal and unchangeable; and third, to the popularity of the principle of actualism, which was established in the 19th century not only in geology and biology, but also in anthropology, which was followed by evolutionists 3 . In accordance with this principle and the principles of philosophical anthropology, the qualities of a Modern person (activity, striving for progress) were consciously or unconsciously transferred to a person in general as his "generic" qualities, and as a result, the development of culture was perceived as a natural and inevitable consequence of the realization of human nature itself, as an absolute trend illustrating the operation of the "law of progress"(Comte, Mill) and needs no explanation.

Although in anthropology, this approach was particularly characteristic of classical evolutionism, the underlying principle of evolution is that it is based on psychological reductionism in one way or another, it is also inherent in many later theories of cultural development in the primitive era, including those that their proponents considered and consider to be purely materialistic. The creators and adherents of these theories, unlike most evolutionists, are widely based in their constructions on the thesis of the interconnectedness and interdependence of various spheres of culture. However, when they single out a particular area as a basic, key one for explaining cultural dynamics in general, they usually simply ignore the question of the causes of changes in this area itself, accepting the progress of technology, or the development of productive forces (or changes in the social structure, ideology, etc.) as a matter of course, as a given. a law (like the law of gravity) that, while explaining everything, doesn't need to be explained by itself. In whatever field of culture theories of this kind may see its "engine", it remains unclear what made it move (work) the "engine" itself.

In neo-evolutionism, a very typical example of this approach was given by L. White. According to his view, the main and determining factor in the evolution of culture is the development of technology, leading to an increase in the amount of energy "harnessed" by man. The form and content of the social structure and ideology do not simply depend on the technological factor, but are "largely, if not completely, determined by it" 4 , so that, for example, knowing the Upper Paleolithic technology, you can tell in advance what type of "philosophy" it corresponded to 5 . According to White, in a system such as culture, technology is an independent variable 6 , and the question of what determines the state of this variable and why it is a variable, and not a constant, i.e. why the technology is improved, and does not always remain at the same level, he simply does not raise. It is emphasized only that factors external to culture (natural environment, climate) cannot interest cultural studies and should not be considered as the cause of development 7

A similar role is played by the technological factor in the ideas of many authors who believe that they are developing Marxist theory, with the only difference that they prefer to talk not about technology as such, but about productive forces.

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forces in general. The development of productive forces is conceived as a very special form of movement, qualitatively different from the development of adaptive activity, and it is explicitly emphasized that "production has a source of development in itself and is therefore capable of self-movement, self-development" 8 . However, the statement about the initial capacity of production for self-development in itself does not explain anything 9 (unless, of course, this ability is considered a mystical property), and, realizing this, those who are ready to subscribe to it, sometimes go further in their reasoning and try to find a mechanism for self-development. Here, a variety of factors come into play. Some authors emphasize the improvement of the subject of production, while others put the growth of needs at the forefront 10 still others are guided in their reasoning by the common ideas that primitive people were constantly forced to fight a hard struggle for survival, and therefore the question of the need to develop means and methods of life support has always been relevant for them, and, finally, the fourth consider the progress of culture simply as the result of a gradual spontaneous accumulation of knowledge and experience, inventions.

With the entry into anthropological theory of the ideas of Marxist structuralists (Terray, Meyassoux, Godelier), who shift the emphasis from productive forces to production relations, hypotheses have become quite widespread, the authors of which see the source of cultural development not in the sphere of direct (material) life support, but in the field of relationships between individuals and groups, i.e. in changes in the structure of the world, social organization of communities and their structures. In particular, archaeology has tried to explain, for example, the transition to a productive economy in a similar way 11 , the emergence of a complex of various innovations marking the so-called "Upper Paleolithic revolution" 12 Although hypotheses of this kind are often very witty and contain interesting ideas, in all cases it remains completely unclear what caused changes in the sphere of social relations itself, that is, what led to the processes in society that allegedly resulted in the Neolithic and Upper Paleolithic "revolutions" or some cultural transformation on a smaller scale 13 .

The considered theories represent the first of the main trends in explaining the driving forces of cultural evolution in prehistory. Critics of this trend sometimes refer to it as "developmentalism" or "transformationism", implying that the growth of culture is likened to the growth of an organism, i.e. it is considered more as an ontogenetic than an evolutionary process 14 . It seems to me that these names, which are usually used in a pejorative sense, are not entirely appropriate in this case, since both the terms "development" and "transformation" are quite applicable to describe any process of change accompanied by complexity, and in themselves do not say anything about its nature. A much better term would be "progressive vitalism" to describe views that somehow go back to the "law of progress" 15 Vitalistic, in the final analysis, are all theories that see the causes of the development of primitive culture in itself, since none of these theories can answer the question of the driving forces of change without resorting to explicit or veiled references to certain unchanging properties of man and his inherent tendency to improve himself and the world around him.

Progressive vitalism is opposed by an approach that is often called "adaptive" or " ecological." Its essence lies in the fact that the root causes of cultural changes in prehistory are proposed to be sought outside the culture itself. It is assumed that the main incentive for development in the period under review was natural factors, the action of which led to nar-

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It is necessary to create a state of equilibrium between the environment and human communities (i.e., ecological equilibrium), forcing the members of the latter to adapt to the new situation. From the point of view of the proponents of this approach, the so-called progressive innovations in culture should be considered not as a consequence of the desire to improve, but only as a side result of attempts to maintain the usual living standards in changing conditions. Natural factors are understood primarily as climate change and demographic processes, but since the former were mostly fluctuating in nature, the leading role is usually assigned to the latter, which in the long run are characterized by such a property as orientation (population growth) and inevitably lead to a more complex environment, thus dictating the need for increasingly complex forms of adaptation to it.

In defining such an approach to explaining the development of culture in prehistory, it would be wrong to speak, as is sometimes done, of geographical or demographic determinism. Natural and demographic changes are considered in this case not as a determinant of the form of culture (i.e., the latter is not a simple function of the environment in this approach), but only as a trigger factor that directly affects mainly the sphere of life support, which gives the initial energy to adaptation processes and thus gives an impulse to a chain reaction of areas. I used to call this trend "ecological deism", but now I'm not sure if this metaphorical designation is a good one, since the word "deism" inevitably causes undesirable associations. Therefore, here, instead of ecological deism, I will simply talk about an ecological or ecological-demographic approach.

The idea underlying the approach under consideration was actively developed only in the second half of the year. XX century, when the methodology of evolutionary biology, represented by the synthetic theory of evolution with its attention to the mechanisms of development, the role of the environment and the reproduction of organisms, became widespread in anthropology, starting from the branch that studies anthropogenesis. However, earlier attempts were also made to approach the problem in this way. The French historian and public figure A. Barnave was probably the first who definitely pointed out the causal role of population growth in the history of economic development and it was he who explained what we would now call the transition to a productive economy (Barnave divided it into the transition first to shepherding, and then to agriculture). In an Introduction to the French Revolution, written in 1792 but published only 50 years later, he explained this transition by saying that " as the population increases, people begin to feel the need for more plentiful and less random means of subsistence." 16 In 1798. An Experiment on the Law of Population by T. Malthus was published, where the author expressed, among other things, the idea that population pressure is a gift from a merciful God, made in order to push people to use their inherent ingenuity more actively and to develop production, a gift without which we would wallow in laziness and apathy. "If population and food had grown in the same proportion," Malthus wrote, " man would probably never have emerged from the wild state." 17 In the nineteenth century, similar conclusions can be found in H. Spencer, who, being in many respects a representative of classical evolutionism and sharing the belief in some unknowable driving force immanent in evolution, nevertheless explained in one of his works the progress of "primitive races" by population growth, which, in his opinion, led to the intensification of their development."mental activity" 18 . Until the 30s. The leading role in the development of primitive culture was also attributed to an external factor by some Marxist theorists. Kautsky, A. A. Bogdanov, and others).

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There is now some disagreement among Marxists (or those who claim to be Marxists) about the significance of natural and demographic changes in explaining cultural development. For the most part, they are very critical of theories that put the process of adaptation to the environment, to the changing ecological situation, at the forefront 19 . These theories are sometimes even denied the right to be called materialistic, calling them "naturist" 20 . However, the main reason for the persistent idiosyncrasy of many Marxists in relation to ecological explanations of the development of culture in prehistory is, in my opinion, not the presence of any serious theoretical contradictions between such explanations and the postulates of historical materialism, and not loyalty to the precepts of the "Short Course" (which states that the influence of geographical conditions and population growth is not decisive It is the belief inherited from evolutionists (at least implicit) in the unity of the mechanism of cultural development in all epochs, which this article aims to shake. The fact is that Marxism is mainly focused on understanding the causality of cultural changes in the historical period, especially in its later stages, and environmental theories, indeed, do not provide much, and therefore cannot satisfy those who are looking for or believe that they have already found a universal mechanism of development.

It has been repeatedly noted that the theoretical model created by Karl Marx in the course of analyzing the capitalist formation is not suitable for explaining the processes in primitive and traditional societies. At the same time, the basic propositions of historical materialism clearly do not contain anything in themselves that would preclude the recognition of population growth or, say, climate change as the driving force of certain cultural transformations in the prehistory (including very significant, epochal ones, such as the transition to a productive economy). The basic postulates of isthmus, in particular the thesis about the determining significance of the relations of production in the life of society and the thesis about the dependence of the level of development of the latter on the level of development of the productive forces, are quite compatible with the recognition of the influence of extracultural agents as the cause of the development of the productive forces themselves in Therefore, it can be emphasized that " the impact of the natural environment and the demographic factor on the development of society in the early stages of its history was enormous." 21 , and still remain a Marxist. Western authors have also written about the absence of contradictions between the historical-materialistic and ecological approaches to primitive society 22

A well-known book by the Danish researcher E. Boserup played an important role in spreading the idea of population growth as the primary engine of economic development 23 Even earlier, R. Carneiro wrote about the same thing. Summarizing the data on the ethnography of primitive farmers of the Amazon basin and starting to formulate on this basis those provisions that were later presented to him as circumscription theory (in which demographic factors occupy the most important place), he came to the conclusion that it was overpopulation, in the absence of emigration, that led to the intensification of agricultural production 24 . After the publication in 1968 of the famous article by L. Binford on the reasons for the transition to a productive economy in the Middle East 25 ecological and demographic explanations of cultural changes are also being actively discussed in archaeology.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the idea of the driving role of natural and demographic processes in the evolution of primitive culture was further developed in the works of F. Smith, M. Harris, J. Hill, M. Cowan, A. Johnson, T. Earle and many other foreign (primarily English-speaking) researchers 26 Among the Soviet/Russian regions-

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some archaeologists expressed more or less similar views with other specialists in prehistory during the same period 27 and the paleogeographers who worked closely with them. Ethnographers have long refrained from directly supporting ecological and demographic explanations, although the idea of the need for external incentives for the development of, for example, appropriating farms has been repeatedly expressed 28 It is also found in the works of geographers 29 .

In the 1990s, many important aspects of the approach under consideration received a thorough theoretical development and successful application in the books of S. Sanderson 30 and articles by M. Rosenberg 31 , as well as in the research of anthropologists and archaeologists who have adopted some methods and models of so-called evolutionary (behavioral) ecology 32 . A useful, though very abstract, theoretical model of population dynamics in pre-industrial societies was proposed by the demographer J. R. R. Tolkien. Voodoo 33 .

Apart from the two main approaches, there are theories that focus on studying the features of the transmission of cultural information from generation to generation and draw the evolution of culture (or individual cultures) as a process of constant changes in the frequency of occurrence of various features (artifacts, ideas, behaviors). The fact of the direction of this process and the question of the ultimate causes of changes are usually ignored, while the immediate causes, on the contrary, are given priority. Explanatory models and terminology are borrowed in whole or in large part from biology and / or communication theory.

In Russia, L. S. Klein tried to introduce information models into the study of prehistory, using the concepts of communication theory to describe and explain the process of changing archaeological cultures 34 However, the research program he outlined remained unfulfilled for a number of reasons. In the West, the approach under consideration is presented in two main varieties. This is the so-called Darwinian or evolutionary archaeology, which has been actively promoted since the early 1980s by R. Dannell and his supporters (who also call themselves selectionists), as well as the theory of gene-cultural coevolution or double inheritance (L. Cavalli - Sforza, M. Feldman, K. Lalande), which was born in the early 1970s. several versions of which, in my opinion, are of the greatest interest to researchers of primitive and traditional societies, are presented in the works of R. Boyd and P. Richerson.

Selectionists, i.e. adherents of the so-called Darwinian archaeology, reject all previous explanations of cultural change as unscientific and vitalistic and declare their goal to be a "complete paradigm shift in archaeology" 35 According to R. Dunnell and his followers, artifacts are part of the human phenotype, and therefore the change in their frequency should be explained by the same processes as the change in phenotypic traits in biology. This is either selection (it affects functional traits), or drift (stylistic changes are explained to them). However, factors that generate phenotypic variation are considered irrelevant for the analysis of evolutionary changes, as is the nature of inheritance 36 What is important is that variability is passed down from generation to generation, and that it affects fitness in different ways, thus providing a field for the selection mechanism to operate. The emergence of new behaviors or artefacts is considered by breeders to be analogous to directed genetic mutations or recombinations, and consequently the role of human intentions and goals in explaining cultural change is deliberately ignored. All explanations are actually reduced to more or less plausible post hoc stories about why this option was retained or, on the contrary, eliminated during the selection process.

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At the same time, it is sometimes implied that selection is carried out through the reproductive success of individuals who are carriers of certain cultural traits, and sometimes that it is the phenotypic traits themselves (behavior and artifacts) that are selected, regardless of whether there is a differentiated reproductive success of carriers.

The most significant weakness of the theory, although not recognized by breeders, is that it ignores the fact that cultural variation, unlike genetic variation, is largely adaptive, directed, at least in the short term. Denial of orientation entails fatal consequences for the theory under consideration, one of which is its complete inability to explain rapid cultural transformations, i.e. cases of "intermittent", "dotted" evolution (which has already been repeatedly noted 37 ). Some of the harshest critics believe that selectionism is "a doomed venture based on false theoretical assumptions," and even express surprise that for so many years this approach has been taken seriously and seriously discussed. 38 This assessment of "Darwinian" archaeology seems perfectly fair to me.

Theory of gene-cultural coevolution 39 It is intended, according to its creators, to reveal the interdependence of the processes of genetic and extragenetic information transfer (hence its second name-the theory of double inheritance) and to show what role their interaction plays in human evolution (biological and cultural). It should not be confused with sociobiology, which also sometimes uses the term "gene-cultural coevolution" to refer to its approach. In contrast to sociobiology, the theory of double inheritance denies the direct dependence of cultural traits on the genetic constitution of their carriers, stating only that the latter sets a certain field of possibilities for culture, i.e. defines the scope of the spectrum (very wide) of its possible variants and makes some of them more likely than others. In addition, it is recognized that the emergence and spread of cultural traits does not necessarily depend on their influence on the physical fitness of an individual, and therefore they can be biologically maladaptive (harmful). A large role as a source of variability is assigned to the conscious actions of people (guided variation), which implies the non-random nature of a significant part of the changes. Theorists of gene-cultural coevolution have also proposed an interesting and useful typology of decision-making processes that affect the spread and disappearance of artifacts, ideas, and behaviors 40 although the question of the reasons for choosing increasingly complex options is not specifically raised, the possible stimulating role of external factors and, in particular, population growth in the development of primitive cultures is recognized 41 . In my opinion, the theory of gene-cultural coevolution is quite compatible with the ecological-demographic approach and, like the behavioral ecology models already mentioned, can serve as a good complement to it, providing the means necessary to explain the microevolutionary aspects of cultural development.

ASSESSMENT OF THE MAIN APPROACHES IN THE LIGHT OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND ETHNOGRAPHIC DATA

As can be seen from the above, approaches to explaining cultural development in prehistory can be very diverse. Obviously, they can also be classified in different ways, using different attributes as the basis for classifications. The most common option, partly used in the previous section, is to group them according to what factors are considered to be driving the changes. These, as we have seen, can be technology or missile defense-

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productive forces in general, social relations, ideology, natural environment, population size and / or density, etc. In this case, most explanations can be divided into endogenist (i.e., those that appeal to intra-cultural factors) and exogenist (those that appeal primarily to factors external to the culture). 42 . Another option is to base the classification of approaches on those factors that, according to the logic of one or another explanation, are thought of as limiting cultural development.

So far, as far as I know, this feature has not been given much importance, and yet it is very important for characterizing and comparing different approaches. Insufficient biological and especially neuropsychological development of people (especially if we are talking about the earliest stages of prehistory)may play a limiting role in the views of various researchers: lack of knowledge and experience, too poor a natural environment, lack of incentives to invent and / or innovate, etc. Here, too, most of the explanations fall into two types, depending on whether the lack of opportunities for cultural development is considered the main obstacle (possibilism), or lack of motivation, necessity (neo-militarism). It is easy to see that the former is typical, as a rule, for endogenistic explanations, and the latter for exogenistic ones.

However, although the groups identified on different grounds generally coincide in composition, so that endogenism corresponds to possibilism and exogenism to non-militarism, the coincidence is still not absolute, since there is at least one version of the exogenist explanation in which the possibility of lack of motivation as a development-limiting factor is completely ignored. In this version, as well as in all endogenist explanations, the possibility of development is considered as a necessary and sufficient condition for such development, while according to the logic of most exogenist explanations, both opportunity and motivation, taken separately, constitute only a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one, and only their combination leads to change.

Above, endogenism and exogenism, as well as other approaches, were evaluated in terms of their self-sufficiency, completeness, and internal logic. Now, by changing the classification of explanations somewhat and presenting the main approaches as possibilism and neo-militarism, we can try to evaluate them in terms of their correspondence to the facts. To what extent are the expectations derived from the initial postulates of the two opposing concepts confirmed by archaeological and ethnographic data on cultural dynamics in primitive times?

I. Possibilism

From the point of view of those who consider the possibility of "progressive" changes as not only a necessary, but also a sufficient condition for their implementation, cultural development in prehistory was a direct consequence of the morphophysiological and intellectual improvement of a person (biological explanation), the accumulation of an increasing amount of knowledge, experience, and skills by people (accumulativism), the formation of favorable a different level of natural conditions. Accordingly, the factors limiting the development of culture can be considered either a biologically determined lack of appropriate abilities, or the lack of necessary knowledge and skills, or insufficiently favorable environmental conditions.

Biological explanation. According to a very popular view, the main driving force behind the evolution of culture in prehistory (or for most of it) was the biological, i.e. morphophysiological and especially neuropsychological development of a person. As the main or only factor, the exhaust gas-

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It is assumed that the lack of intellectual, motor, and other psychophysical abilities is biologically determined by the lack of cultural progress in the predecessors of modern people. However, the indubitable fact that a physical organization has set and still sets a certain "ceiling" of potentially possible cultural achievements does not mean that the degree of cultural development was or is a simple function of the degree of biological development. Such a statement would be incorrect even for the most ancient hominids, and it is all the more unsuitable for the period of existence of Homo sapiens, most of which also falls on prehistory. The facts show that, first of all, even very serious biological changes did not always entail changes in culture (for example, the appearance of modern physical people about 100 thousand years ago). the nature of the archaeological materials of this epoch was practically not affected in any way), and secondly, numerous and important cultural transformations occurred, as a rule, without any noticeable changes in the level of biological organization, and the latter applies not only to modern humans, but also to hominids of other types. From all this it follows that the absence of certain cultural achievements in certain periods of prehistory can not always be explained by biological limitations, and that cultural development took place outside of direct dependence on human evolution.

Accumulativism. Often the development of culture in prehistory, especially in the period after the appearance of modern physical people, is considered simply as the result of a gradual accumulation of knowledge and experience, inventions and discoveries. It is in this spirit that even the "Neolithic revolution" is explained and sometimes still explained, not to mention smaller-scale innovations. An accumulative explanation can be combined with a biological one, or it can act independently. In both cases, the essence of it remains the same: it is assumed that something new has appeared because people have finally become able, learned how to do this new thing. At the same time, it is taken for granted that, having any ability - for example, the ability to carve tips from bone and horns, make polished axes, or sculpt pots from clay-a person must have used it. Meanwhile, archaeology and ethnography know of many cases where opportunities for changes that we perceive as obviously "progressive" have either not been used at all, or have only been used for a long time after their appearance.

The available evidence strongly suggests that from the earliest stages of prehistory, humans, including the predecessors of Homo sapiens, had the ability and knowledge to create much more complex cultures than they actually had. Many, if not all, of the most important innovations were potentially possible long before they were put into practice, often thousands or tens of thousands of years in advance. The fact is that invention and innovation are far from the same thing 43 . If L. White was right about an invention, when it "becomes possible, it also becomes unavoidable." 44 , then you can't say the same about innovation. To become a culturally significant and archaeologically perceptible innovation, a newly invented or borrowed trait (thing, idea, or type of behavior) must be in demand, put into practice, and the chronological distance between the first and second can be huge. In what follows, I will refer to cases where a cultural phenomenon has been widely spread for a long period of time, during which it is known in principle, but has not manifested itself in any way noticeably either in a living culture or in archaeological material, as "deferred innovations" 45

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"Deferred innovation" in primitiveness is not the exception, but the rule. This is evidenced by the history of ceramic production, bone-cutting, stone processing, metallurgy and many other areas of material and spiritual culture. For example, clay products (utilitarian and non-utilitarian purposes) and polished stone tools first appear in a number of areas of Europe and Asia, at least in the middle of the Upper Paleolithic, more than 20 thousand years ago 46 although they are undoubtedly quite well-known and accessible to people of that period if they wish, they still remain a rarity for a long time, something of an anomaly, an archaeological curiosity. Only in the Neolithic period do both of these Paleolithic inventions really become culturally significant innovations, and their widespread introduction into practice even marks the beginning of a new archaeological era for researchers.

A similar situation occurred in the development of the technique of making tools from bone and horn. As is known, the widespread use of such methods of working with bone as cutting, planing, grinding, drilling, is first recorded, starting from the Upper Paleolithic, while bone products of the previous period in the vast majority are either only slightly modified objects, or tools that are morphologically identical to stone artifacts, and made like the latter, using upholstery and retouching. However, already in the Lower Paleolithic, cutting, planing and grinding were used to make wooden objects (as evidenced by the finds of wooden spears and other tools at a number of sites in Europe and Africa) 47 and, therefore, as such were well known to people. In addition, some bone products, which are as complex as the Upper Paleolithic ones and are almost identical in shape, are now known in the Middle Paleolithic. 48 Apparently, the possibility of transferring wood processing methods to bone, being quite affordable, was simply not used for a long time (or was used only in exceptional cases), since there was no practical sense to replace one material with another, which was less pliable and required much more labor and time (the bone must be steamed and dried before planing). etc.).

The appearance of the bow and arrow in the Epipaleolithic, the spread of geometric microliths in the Mesolithic, the transition to a productive economy in the Neolithic, the beginning of mass production of metal products in the Eneolithic, and even the introduction of fire in the Middle Paleolithic-these are also innovations that can rightly be called "postponed", since there is quite convincing archaeological evidence that that the knowledge and technical means necessary for their implementation were mastered long ago (for thousands, and in the case of fire, probably for hundreds of thousands of years 49 ) before their intensive implementation in practice began. All these and many other cultural "achievements", no matter how useful and progressive they may appear in our retrospective perception, from the point of view of many, many generations of Paleolithic or Neolithic people, could remain only an impractical, burdensome complication, potentially quite possible, but requiring unnecessarily large expenditures of labor, time and energy, and therefore unnecessary. The creative activity inherent in man at all times inevitably led to the appearance of such redundant elements in culture. As if duplicating recessive traits in biology, they guaranteed a certain margin of safety in the event of changes in the conditions of existence and provided" raw material " for the mechanism of cultural evolution, which acted, like the mechanism of biological evolution, at the expense of a hidden reserve of variability 50

Favorable environment. Sometimes some innovations in primitive culture are considered as a direct consequence of the formation of natural conditions favorable for their implementation. This is exactly the case when exogenism is combined with pic-

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sibilism. This is especially common in works depicting the transition to a productive economy. Of course, no one will deny that the presence of certain natural prerequisites (for example, plant and/or animal species suitable for domestication) is a necessary condition for change. It is no less obvious that the fulfillment of this condition does not always really lead to the expected innovations. The natural situation that existed at the turn of the Pleistocene and Holocene in the Middle East, for all its peculiarities, was still not unique, but the close conditions that developed in other periods and in other regions did not have any noticeable consequences.

From the observations of ethnographers, it is known that, even living in a favorable environment for conducting a productive economy, many groups of hunter-gatherers of the recent past were in no hurry to apply their extensive botanical and zoological knowledge and become farmers or pastoralists, until they were forced to do so by the crisis of the traditional economic system, which was collapsing due to the depletion of resources, the expansion of etc. 51 This is also indicated by archaeological data. For example, a Mesolithic culture Ertebelle In the west, Denmark has long existed in close proximity to the farmers who lived in what is now Germany. ribbon ceramics, but, despite this, for about a thousand years, its carriers did not move to a productive economy. When the latter did happen, it was only as a result of the crisis of traditional farming based on marine products, not least on the collection of oysters, which were a vital resource in late winter and spring. The crisis was caused by population growth and some natural changes. In particular, the emergence of agriculture in the Heurtebelle zone coincides with a decrease in the salinity of sea water, which led to a sharp decline in the population of oysters, and possibly other food species in the area under consideration 52

Thus, possibilism in all its conceivable versions is in clear contradiction with the facts. When trying to explain certain changes in culture that took place in prehistory, it is obviously impossible to proceed from the premise that they were a direct and immediate consequence of the appearance of the corresponding biological, natural or some other (discovery, invention, borrowing) possibilities. The available opportunities could exist for a long time in a recessive, if we use the genetic term, state, remaining "unmanifested" until such a need arose. To explain the spread of bone arrowheads, or stone micro-tools of geometric shapes, or pottery, means first of all to explain not why these innovations became possible, but why they became necessary, why it was necessary to replace the old technologies and methods of life support that had been fully justified for many thousands and tens of thousands of years with new ones, often much more complex and time-consuming. In other words, the question is not only and not so much that allowed to take one or another step forward on the path of complicating the culture, how much is it that forced, forced take this step 53

II. Neo-militarism

Unlike possibilists, neo-militarists believe that primitive people replaced the old with a new and more advanced (and therefore more complex, requiring a large expenditure of labor, energy, and time) not when they could do it, but when they could no longer not do it. Neo-militarism, as already mentioned, is represented exclusively by exogenist theories, in which the problem of motivation is brought to the fore, and the development of culture is considered as a consequence of the pressure of external factors. A special role is usually assigned to population growth, since it makes it possible to explain the gradual complication of the environment and, accordingly, the directional nature of changes. Neo-militarism before-

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he believes that at least the main events in the history of primitive culture -they can be called "cultural revolutions" - should correlate with some serious changes in the ecological situation.

Although in the history of most, if not all, human populations, periods of their quantitative growth alternated with periods of decline, the main and fairly obvious trend for large periods of time was an increase in the number and, most importantly, population density of most inhabited regions. The inevitable consequence of this trend was the growing pressure on resources, the depletion of which led to the outflow of excess populations outside the original hominid habitat and to the gradual expansion of the ecumene, accompanied by the adaptation of methods and means of life support to new geographical conditions. This first and longest stage in the history of culture was thus a stage of its extensive, mainly, development, the possibilities of which were exhausted only when all the more or less suitable habitats for human life were developed. According to archaeological data, this happened around the end of the Middle Paleolithic, i.e. about 50 thousand years ago. It was a few hundred years ago, when most of the settlement of the Old World (except for the north-east of Eurasia) was completed and all of Africa, almost all of extraglacial Europe, the Middle East, Hindustan, Central and Eastern Asia, and a significant part of Siberia were developed. At the same time, the penetration of people into Australia begins, which can be considered as indirect evidence of increasing demographic tensions in the "metropolis".

Since the maintenance of ecological balance and the maintenance of living standards by moving the surplus population to free territories became more and more problematic, the life support systems, and with them the culture as a whole, had to undergo a significant renewal, which actually took place and was clearly reflected in the archaeological materials relating to the period under consideration. It was at this time, about 45 thousand years ago, that the so-called Upper Paleolithic revolution began in a number of regions of Africa, Europe and Asia, in fact, marking the end of the phase of extensive cultural development and the transition to intensive development 54

Population growth, however, continued, and the scale of intensification within the appropriating economy was naturally limited, and therefore after the very end of the Pleistocene (20-12 ky. years ago) it reached the maximum possible degree (the range of exploited resources was expanded to the maximum extent and the technologies of their extraction and processing were correspondingly complicated, which is recorded by archaeologists as a "broad-spectrum revolution"), the inevitable next step was the transition to a productive economy (the"Neolithic revolution"). This transition was highly polycentric, and its catalyst in the five or six regions where it took place in its pure form (i.e., outside even the indirect influence of a society with an already established producing economy) was the natural changes of the early Holocene, which aggravated the already reached a critical level of demographic (and hence environmental) tensions. As a result of the "Neolithic revolution", the development of the economy went beyond the limits imposed on it by the limitations of directly given natural resources, and from a means of adaptation to the environment, culture itself turned into the main environment for people (while retaining, of course, an adaptive function). As a result, new mechanisms of cultural development began to form, where the leading role was played not by external, natural, but by internal factors and impulses generated by culture.

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This is the most general causal scheme of cultural development in prehistory, as it is drawn from the standpoint of an ecological and demographic approach. To clarify this scheme, it should be noted that, strictly speaking, in the population-economy (or population-culture) system, population growth is not an absolutely independent variable, i.e., it is independent in the same sense and to the same extent that purely natural factors are independent of culture. If the climate changes (regardless of the state of the economy), then the population is limited to the latter and after reaching a certain threshold value, it can only grow further if this state changes (otherwise, the mechanisms of natural regulation come into effect). Therefore, in order to avoid mutual misunderstandings, it is better to consider as an independent variable not population growth as such, but the inherent population growth trend, which, in fact, exists (as a potency) regardless of the state of the economy and leads to an increase in the population size until the moment when, due to the depletion of resources available in this method of farming, mechanisms of natural regulation (reduced birth rate, increased mortality). Before such a moment arrives, the standard of living seems to drop to some minimally acceptable state 55 so, in reality, natural regulation is not always achieved, and more often the problem is solved either through the outflow of excess population, or, if this is not possible, through changes in the life support system. If the minimum acceptable standard of living coincides with that at which only simple reproduction of the population is possible (i.e., at which its natural regulation begins), the impetus for innovation may come from natural changes that reduce the demographic capacity of the landscape (climate, etc.). Of course, both demographic and natural factors can act simultaneously.

Although the intended cause-and-effect scheme suggests that cultural change should begin in areas directly related to life support (the composition of exploited resources, methods and means of their extraction and processing, technologies for the production of tools, etc.), social structure and ideology can also sometimes be directly affected by external factors. In particular, population growth can influence the evolution of the social structure not only indirectly (i.e., not only through the change in productive forces that it causes), but also directly, since there are certain quantitative limits for different types of organization of human communities, i.e., population thresholds that inevitably change the character, society, and its complexity 56 . This is due to the limited capabilities of human memory and the nature of the information processing mechanisms inherent in our species. The limitations of psychological compatibility and tolerance probably also played a role, and they may also have their own quantitative thresholds (here the numerical limits should also depend on the degree of autonomy of an individual or a segment of a community that allows a particular way of life, type of economy, etc.). In particular, for egalitarian farmers of New Guinea It was noted that the relations of kinship, property and mutual assistance are quite sufficient for them to regulate social relations, if the number of people living in the settlement is not more than 150. When these figures are exceeded, organizational relationships tend to become more complex, there is some segmentation, "the group is divided into subgroups at a higher level than households or families", and this is also expressed in rituals 57 . According to some estimates, "classical" egalitarianism under any environmental conditions allows for a maximum community size (consisting of 10-20 local groups) of no more than 500-600 people, and in its late form (with bigmen and

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the size of a community may not exceed 2500-3000 people, and its local components (i.e. groups of people living together)may not exceed 500 people 58 K. Kosse notes that the data of ethnobiology also indicate that when classifying the natural environment, "a person usually works with sets of mutually exclusive units, the number of which reaches about 500" 59 .

One of the main objections raised for a long time against the idea that population growth in the primitive era was not only a consequence, but also a cause of changes in the economy, was that this idea is in contradiction with the supposedly firmly established fact for hunter-gatherers and primitive farmers of the fact of artificial population regulation and deliberate maintenance of its numbers below the level of load-bearing capacity (demographic capacity) of the landscape. However, according to most modern researchers, deliberate regulation in order to maintain homeostasis is most likely a scientific myth that arose as a result of misinterpretation of data. 60 Infanticide, sinilicide, termination of pregnancy and other actions and customs resulting in a decrease in the birth rate or an increase in mortality and indeed quite widespread in primitive (and not only) communities, "were dictated by the interests of the life support of individual families, were not regulated by society as a whole, and did not follow from the population's alleged desire to limit their numbers in a given territory to some kind of "optimum" 61 . Their impact on demographic processes should be taken into account, but should not be overestimated. As for the empirical basis of the objections, i.e., calculations that proved, in the opinion of their authors, that the population density of ethnographically recorded primitive communities is usually much lower than the load-bearing capacity of the landscape, these calculations, as shown by specialists in population ecology 62 , were based on an outdated and incorrect understanding of the concept of "load-bearing capacity" as a certain static, fixed value.

The ecological and demographic explanation of the development of culture in prehistory is not without its weaknesses, but they consist, in my opinion, not in its internal incompleteness, inconsistency or incompatibility with some facts, but primarily in insufficient verifiability and in the unresolved number of methodological problems. One of these problems is the inability in the vast majority of cases to accurately estimate the size and density of the ancient population based on archaeological data. An equally serious obstacle to ecological explanations is the difficulties associated with reconstructing and dating paleogeographic changes and linking them to certain events in cultural history. All this, unfortunately, often does not allow us to properly specify general schemes and make them more convincing. However, almost all theories that are at least partially based on archaeological materials face problems of this kind due to the specifics of the sources. These shortcomings can be partially compensated by using ethnographic data to test the main theoretical postulates of the ecological and demographic approach. One of the most well-known studies of this kind is the work of L. Kiely, where materials on 94 hunting and gathering groups that lived (or still live) in different landscape and climatic conditions from the tropics to the circumpolar zone convincingly show that there is a direct relationship between the degree of population pressure on resources, on the one hand, and the level of socio - economic development of development - on the other hand 63 .

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THE END OF PREHISTORY: THE AXIOLOGICAL REVOLUTION?

The obvious limitations of the material needs of the people of primitive society, as well as the lack of their desire to produce more than is necessary to meet these needs, give reason to believe that in prehistory, biological in nature incentives for economic activity (physical satisfaction, benefits)are considered. they have not yet been subordinated to cultural incentives (prestige, profit). We can say that in the primitive system of values benefit - the quality is primarily biological (it appears only together with the organic world) - it clearly dominated the natural world. with benefits - first of all, it is a social quality that manifests itself only in sufficiently developed economic relations 64 The fact that the process of cultural evolution in prehistory, in contrast to its development in the subsequent period, cannot be explained by the interaction of internal cultural factors alone, most likely stems from the peculiarity of psychological priorities and values that determined the scale and intensity of economic activity of members of primitive communities.

This peculiarity was repeatedly described by authors who had the opportunity to observe the life of hunter - gatherers or primitive farmers quite closely. B. Malinovsky, M. Salins and many other researchers considered it impossible to understand the behavior of representatives of primitive and stadially close communities without taking into account the specifics of their value systems, and also emphasized the inapplicability of many categories of modern economic science to the analysis of their economic activities 65 On the latter point, as is well known, there has been a long debate in Western anthropology between formalists who defended the universality of the principle of profit maximization as the key to explaining economic behavior, and substantivists who argued that the rules and forms of the latter change significantly in the course of historical development and largely depend on the characteristics of specific cultures. The last word in this discussion is clearly reserved for the substantialists 66 The principle of actualism, which guided the formalists, served in this case a bad service. Human psychology is historical, and the values that determined human behavior also changed from epoch to epoch. The prehistory was particularly specific (against the background of modernity) in this respect, which differed from history primarily in the motives underlying economic activity, and, as a consequence, in the special mechanism of cultural development.

The essence of the difference between the culture and cultures of prehistory, on the one hand, and history, on the other, can be illustrated using the well - known rule or Hardy-Weinberg law in biology. The formula derived in 1908 independently by the English mathematician J. Hardy and the German geneticist G. Weinberg shows that under constant conditions, in an ideal infinitely large population of freely interbreeding organisms, constant gene frequencies are preserved and that any changes in these frequencies (i.e., evolutionary changes) occur only under the influence of external factors 67 . Similarly, for a primitive culture (taken as a whole or on the scale of an individual community), it can be assumed that once it had adapted to these conditions, it would not have experienced noticeable evolutionary changes if these conditions were stable (in the absence of external pressure, population density growth, climatic and landscape cataclysms, etc.), despite the fact that accumulation of latent variability as a result of accidental and intentional inventions, discoveries, and other manifestations of human creative activity. Of course, this assumption is unverifiable (experiment here

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it is hardly possible), but the data of archeology and ethnology, at least, do not contradict it. At the same time, for cultures of historical type, whose dynamism is determined not so much by the pressure of external factors and the need to adapt to changing conditions of existence, but rather by the conscious desire of some (sometimes more, sometimes less) of their carriers to change and/or strengthen their position and, if necessary, change the conditions themselves, the Hardy-Weinberg rule clearly does not apply.

Although the reason for the differences between the two types of cultural evolution is rooted, as can be concluded from the above, in the specifics of psychological priorities that set the motivation for economic behavior in the prehistoric period, on the one hand, and in historical time, on the other, this very specificity was due to purely material factors, and the transition from the early type to the changes in the nature of the economy after the establishment of a productive economy and the accompanying changes in relations between people and their communities. If earlier the number of human populations, like the number of populations of any animal, was strictly limited by natural resources, then during the" Neolithic revolution " the natural base of human existence was artificially expanded many times. The rapid growth in population size and density observed for this period led to a significant enlargement of societies, which in itself could not but lead to significant changes in the nature of their organization and structure. The inevitable settlement in the new conditions, along with a sharply increased degree of concentration of resources and efforts invested in their production, resulted in an increase in conflicts between human groups and an increase in the so-called territoriality (which is reflected in Mesolithic-Neolithic skeletal materials from a number of regions). The regular and necessary production of surplus food, which could be stored and used in the event of, say, crop failures, deaths, etc., created the possibility of redistributing it and manipulating it for various purposes. The impact of all these and a number of other quite objective factors caused changes in the value systems underlying economic and social behavior, thus opening the way for "history" and separating it from "prehistory" 68 .

Of course, when I talk about changing the priorities and values that determined human behavior, I do not mean that new psychological attitudes were fixed at the genetic level, and, as a result, the previously dominant type disappeared completely, and a return to the previous state became impossible in principle. The old values or, more precisely, the predisposition to them have been preserved. Only the cultural environment in which individuals were formed has changed, and with it the direction of selection of individual potentials has changed. The psychological makings that were previously less likely to be updated in the new conditions were more likely to be updated, and vice versa. In other words, the potencies themselves remained the same, but their recessive and dominant parts gradually changed places 69 . At the same time, the process of changes was lengthy and was accompanied by many deviations from the main line. Even in highly complex societies with an exclusively productive economy, due to certain features of their history, there was often a situation in which the opportunities for the manifestation of internal, i.e., cultural, development incentives were very limited.

conclusion

Culture emerged as a means of adapting living organisms to the natural conditions of their habitat. Being in essence a kind of supranatural phenomenon,

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она длительное время после своего возникновения развивается под воздействием именно природных, внешних по отношению к ней самой стимулов. Очевидная инертность первобытной культуры объясняется тем, что она не имеет еще внутреннего механизма развития, не способна к самодвижению 70 Механизм самодвижения культуры начал работать сравнительно поздно, когда из средства приспособления к среде обитания она сама превратилась для людей в основную среду (сохраняя, конечно, при этом и адаптивную функцию), и в системе человеческих ценностей и устремлений приоритеты биологического свойства были дополнены и подчинены приоритетам, порожденным культурой. Предполагаемая смена основных ценностей и психологических стимулов начала совершаться вследствие радикального изменения характера экономики и отношений между людьми (и на индивидуальном, и на групповом уровне) после перехода к производящей экономике, появление которой может, таким образом, рассматриваться как "начало конца" преистории. В предшествующий же этому период "классической" первобытности в качестве главного импульса культурного развития выступали факторы естественные, т.е. внешние по отношению к культуре, причем ведущую роль играл рост населения.

notes

1 White L.A. The Evolution of Culture. N.Y., 1959. P. 8; E. S. Markaryan Teoriya kultury i sovremennaya nauka [Theory of Culture and Modern Science], Moscow, 1983, p. 86; Belik A. A. Cultural studies. Anthropological Theories of Cultures, Moscow, 1999, p. 11.

2 For example: Quiatt D. and Itani J. Preface: Culture, Nature, and the Nature of Culture // Hominid Culture in Primate Perspective. Niwot, 1994. P. XIV.

3 E. Tylor, for example, explicitly wrote that, explaining the development of culture, thinking and behavior of people in primitive times, " it is necessary to give ... preference for the doctrine of an unchangeable principle, as in astronomy and geology" ( Tylor E. B. Primeval culture, Moscow, 1989, p. 40.).

4 White L.A. Op. cit. P. 19 (see also White L. A. The Evolution of Culture and the American School of Historical Ethnography // Soviet ethnography. 1932, N 3. P. 69.).

5 Ibid. P. 24.

6 Ibid. P. 26.

7 Ibid. P. 51-52. In practice, however, L. White did not always follow this theoretical position. Thus, in explaining the transition to a productive economy, he attributed the role of the primary cause to external, climatic and demographic factors (Ibid., pp. 285-286).

8 Semenov Yu. I. How humanity emerged, Moscow, 1966, p. 155; Viktorova V. D. Teoreticheskie osnovaniya ekologicheskogo podkhoda k izucheniyu drevnoi istorii [Theoretical foundations of an ecological approach to the study of ancient history]. Sverdlovsk, 1989. p. 14.

9 Learn more about this: Vishnyatsky L. B. Prehistory and materialistic understanding of history (a few comments on Yu. I. Semenov's article "Materialistic understanding of history: pros and cons") / / Orient (Oriens). 1996, N 3.

10 Rumyantsev A.M. The emergence and development of the primitive mode of production. Appropriating economy (political and economic essays), Moscow, 1981.

11 Bender В. Gatherer-Hunter to Fanner: a Social Perspective // World Archaeology. 1978, V. 10, N 2; Price Т.О. Social Inequality at the Origins of Agriculture // Foundations of Social Inequality. N.Y., 1995.

12 Soffer О. Social Transformations at the Middle to Upper Paleolithic Transition: The Implications of the European Record // Continuity or Replacement. Controversies in Homo sapiens Evolution. Rotterdam, 1992.

13 Многие марксисты-структуралисты прямо признают, что их подход не применим к первобытности, поскольку в первобытном обществе не удается отыскать источник возможных структурных противоречий.

14 Sanderson S.K. Social Evolutionism. A Critical History. Cambridge, Mass., 1990. P. 18-19, 34; Bettinger R.L. Hunter-Gatherers. Archaeological and Evolutionary Theory. N.Y., 1991. P. 3; Tschauner H. Archaeological System-atics and Cultural Evolution: Retrieving the Honour of Culture History // Man. 1994. V. 29, N 1. P. 78.

15 Bettinger R.L. Ор. cit. P. 7.

16 Цит. по: Илюшечкин В.П. Теория стадийного развития общества. История и проблемы. М., 1996. С. 36.

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17 Cit. by: Wood J.W. A Theory of Preindustrial Population Dynamics // Current Anthropology. 1998. V. 19, N 1. P. 111.

18 Cit. by: Bettinger R.L. Op. cit. P. 14.

19 See for example:: Averkieva Yu. P. History of Theoretical Thought in American Ethnography, Moscow, 1979, pp. 234-235, 243; Viktorova V. D. Edict op.

20 Semenov Yu. I. [Review of: Shnirelman V. A. Voina i mir v traditsionnykh obshchestvakh [War and Peace in traditional societies]. 1994, N 1. P. 215.

21 Ilyushechkin V. P. Edict. op. p. 131, 365.

22 Gilman A. Marxism in American Archaeology // Archaeological Thought in America. Cambridge, 1989. P. 67.

23 Boserup E. The Conditions of Agricultural Growth. Chicago, 1965.

24 Carneiro R.L. Slash-and-Burn Cultivation among the Kuikuru and Its Implications for the Cultural Development in the Amazon Basin // The Evolution of Horticultural Systems in Native South America. Caracas, 1961.

25 Binford L.R. Post-Pleistocene Adaptations // New Perspectives in Archaeology. Chicago, 1968.

26 Smith P.E.L. Changes in Population Pressure in Archaeological Explanation // World Archaeology. 1972, V. 4, N 1; Cohen M.N. The Food Crisis in Prehistory. New Haven, 1977; Harris М. Cannibals and Kings. The Origins of Cultures. N.Y., 1977; Hill J.N. Systems Theory and the Explanation of Change//Explanation of Prehistoric Change. Albuquerque, 1977; Earle Т.К. A Model of Subsistence Change // Modeling Change in Prehistoric Subsistence Economies. N.Y., 1980; Johnson A.W. and Earle Т.К. The Evolution of Human Societies. From Foraging Group to Agrarian State. Stanford, 1987.

27 Kosarev M. F. On the driving forces of economic development in ancient epochs (based on Ural-Siberian materials) / / Material Culture of the ancient population of the Urals and Western Siberia. Sverdlovsk. 1988; Matyushin G. N. Ecological crises and their role in the change of Stone Age cultures. Priroda i chelovek, Moscow, 1988.

28 E. P. Woodpecker Appropriating economy among bushmen, Pygmies and Tindig: features of reproduction and development / / Africa: the emergence of backwardness and ways of development. Moscow, 1974; Shnirelman V. A. "Diffusion of the idea", crises and economic dynamics in traditional societies / / Soviet Ethnography. 1991, N 2; Shnirelman V.A. Crises and Economic Dynamics in Traditional Societies //Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. 1992. V. 11, N 1.

29 Anuchin V. A. Geographical factor in the development of society, Moscow, 1982, pp. 82-83.

30 Sanderson S.K. Social Transformations: A General Theory of Historical Development. Oxford, 1995.

31 Rosenberg М. Pattern, Process and Hierarchy in the Evolution of Culture // Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. 1994. V. 13, N 4; idem. Cheating at Musical Chairs. Territoriality and Sedentism in an Evolutionary Context // Current Anthropology. 1998. V. 39, N 5.

32 Winterhalder В., Baillargeon W., Cappelletto F., Danial I.L., Prescott Ch. The Population Ecology of Hunter- Gatherers and Their Prey // Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. 1988. V. 7, N 4; Evolutionary Ecology and Human Behavior. N.Y., 1992; Broughton J.M. and O'Connell J .F. On Evolutionary Ecology, Selectionist Archaeology, and Behavioral Archaeology // American Antiquity. 1999, V. 64, N 1.

33 Wood J.W. Op. cit.

34 Клейн Л.С. Проблема смены культур и теория коммуникации // Количественные методы в гуманитарных науках. М.,1981.

35 O'Bien M.J. and Holland Т.О. The Nature and Premise of a Selection-Based Archaeology // Evolutionary Archaeology: Methodological Issues. Tucson, 1995. P. 193-194.

36 Dunnell R.C. Evolutionary Theory and Archaeology // Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory. 1980. V. 3. P. 62; O'Brien M.J. The Historical Development of Evolutionary Archaeology. A Selectionist Approach // Darwinian Archaeologies. N.Y. & L., 1996. P. 27.

37 Rosenberg М. Op. cit. P. 310; Spencer C.S. Evolutionary Approaches in Archaeology // Journal of Archaeological Research. 1997. V. 5, N 3. P. 223.

38 Mithen S. Comment // Current Anthropology. 1998. V. 39. Supplement. P. 163.

39 Cavalli-Sforza L.L. and Feldman M.W. Cultural Transmission and Evolution: A Quantitative Approach. Princeton, 1981; Feldman M.W. and Laland K.N. Gene-Culture Coevolutionary Theory // Trends in Ecology and Evolution. 1996. V. 11, N 11.

40 Boyd R. and Richerson P.J. Culture and the Evolutionary Process. Chicago, 1985.

41 См., например: Boyd R. and Richerson P.J. Cultural Inheritance and Evolutionary Ecology // Evolutionary Ecology and Human Behavior. N.Y., 1992. P. 68.

42 В близком значении оба этих термина использует Холпайк ( Hallpike C.R. The Principles of Social Evolution. Oxford, 1986. P. 19).

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43 Первым или одним из первых, кто заметил и доказал, что, употребляя эти термины как синонимы, археологи совершают серьезную ошибку, был К. Ренфрю ( Renfrew С. The Anatomy of Innovation // Social Organization and Settlement. Oxford, 1978. См. также: Torrence R. and Van der Leeuw S.E. Introduction: What's New about Innovaiton? // What's New? A Closer Look at the Process of Innovation. L., 1989.

44 White L.A . Op. cit. P. 16.

45 I do not think that this term would be appropriate to apply to those cases in the cultural history of the industrial era, when there were also gaps in time between discoveries or inventions, on the one hand, and their implementation, on the other. These gaps are not calculated in thousands or tens of thousands of years, as in prehistory, but in years or, at most, decades (see, for example, fig.: Spratt D.A. Innovation Theory Made Plain // What's New? Fig. 12.5), and their reasons are different.

46 See for example:: Praslov N. D. On ceramics of the Upper Paleolithic era in Northern Eurasia. Issue 1. St. Petersburg, 1992; Rice P.M. On the Origins of Pottery // Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory. 1999. V. 6, N 1.

47 H. Lower Palaeolithic Hunting Spears from Germany // Nature. 1997. V. 385.

48 См., например: Yellen J.E. Barbed Bone Points: Tradition and Continuity in Sahara and Sub-Saharan Africa // African Archaeological Review. 1998. V. 15, N 3; Henshilwood C. and Sealy J. Bone Artefacts from the Middle Stone Age at Blompos Cave, Southern Cape, South Africa // Current Anthropology. 1997. V. 38, N 5.

49 N. The Middle Paleolithic as Development Stage: Evidence from Technology, Subsistence, Settlement Systems, and Hominid Socio-Ecology // Hominid Evolution. Lifestyles and Survival Strategies. Gelsenkirch- en/Schwelm, 1999. P. 322, 325.

50 See also: E. S. Markaryan K ekologicheskoi kharakteristike razvitiya etnicheskikh kul'tury [On the ecological characteristics of the development of ethnic cultures]. Obshchestvo i priroda, Moscow, 1981, pp. 98-99, 107-109.

51 For example:: Kabo V. R. At the origins of the producing economy / / Rannie zemlekateltsy, L., 1980; Shnirelman V. A. Innovations and cultural continuity / / Peoples of Asia and Africa. 1982, N 5; Maretina S. A. Rol ' geograficheskogo faktora v obshchestvennom razvitii gornykh narodov Indii [The role of the Geographical factor in the social development of the mountain peoples of India].

52 Rowley-Conwy P. The Laziness of the Short- Distance Hunter: the Origins of Agriculture in Western Denmark // Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. 1984. V. 3, N 4.

53 Proponents of possibilistic explanations ignore or simply ignore this issue, either because they imagine the life of primitive man as an incessant hard struggle for survival (with hunger, cold, natural disasters, animals, and others like them), when any useful innovation, no matter how large the costs associated with its implementation, was adopted. or because they believe that the main incentive for development is some supposedly immanent mental properties of people, for example, the constant desire to have more material goods, power, honor, etc., the desire for social superiority, self-affirmation. The first point of view, repeatedly debunked by ethnographers, is now characteristic mainly of everyday consciousness (it is enough to recall the most famous films and novels about the life of primitive people) and is not specifically considered here. The second one, designated above as psychological reductionism, on the contrary, is quite widespread among specialists, although it is rarely presented in an explicit form. In fact, the entire critical part of this article is directed against it.

54 Подробней об этом: Вишняцкий Л.Б. "Верхнепалеолитическая революция": география, хронология, причины // Stratum. 2000. N 1.

55 Wood J.W. Op. cit. P. 110.

56 В той или иной форме эта мысль высказывалась еще в конце XIX в. (Г. Спенсер) и самом начале XX в. (Г. Зиммель). Среди преисториков одним из первых взял ее на вооружение и попытался обосновать на данных этнографии Р. Карнейро ( Carneiro R.L. On the Relationship between Size of Population and Complexity of Social Organization // Southwestern Journal of Anthropology. 1967. V. 23, N 3).

57 Forge A. Normative Factors in the Settlement Size of Neolithic Cultivators (New Guinea) // Man, Settllement and Urbanism. L., 1972. P. 371.

58 Kosse К. Group Size and Societal Complexity: Thresholds in the Long-Term Memory // Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. 1990. V. 9, N 3. P. 278-284.

59 Ibid. P. 277.

60 Шнирельман В.А. Демографические и этнокультурные процессы эпохи первобытной родовой общины // История первобытного общества. Эпоха первобытной родовой общины. М., 1986. С. 441; Keeley L. Hunter-Gatherer Economic Complexity and "Population Pressure": A Cross-Cultural Analysis // Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. 1988. V. 7. N 4. P. 375; Rosenberg М. Op. cit. P. 657-658; Wood J.W. Op. cit. P. 18, 20.

стр. 38

61 Пика А.И. Гомеостаз в демографической истории народов Севера (XVII-XIX): реальность или иллюзия? // Советская этнография. 1986, N 3. С. 46.

62 Belovsky G.E. An Optimal Foraging-Based Model of Hunter Gatherer Population Dynamics // Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. 1988. V. 7, N 4. P. 330-331, 359.

63 Keeley L. Op. cit.

64 It is impossible to speak of something as "useful" for an inanimate object (stone, mummy, etc.), or only in a figurative, metaphorical sense. Similarly, to speak of "benefit" in relation to prehistoric people means to use this term not in the modern sense, but as a synonym for the concept of "benefit", which it really is not ( Vishnyatsky L. B. From benefit to benefit // Knowledge is power. 1990, N 5).

65 Malinowski В. Argonauts of Western Pacific. L., 1922. P. 60; Салинз М. Экономика каменного века. М., 1999. С. 19 и след.; Bird-David N. Beyond "The Original Affluent Society" // Current Anthropology. 1992. V. 33, N 1. Оба этих положения нашли применение и на практике, при разработке и осуществлении ряда модернизационных проектов (см. напр.: Kottak С.Р. Culture and "Economic Development" // American Anthropologist. 1990. V. 92, N 3).

66 I really don't think the formalists are wrong about everything. Maximization principle, formulated under a different name by K. Bucher ( Buecher K. The emergence of the national economy. St. Petersburg, 1912, p. 12) is not bad in itself, and it is no accident that it is successfully used in many models of behavioral ecology with their optimization logic. However, maximizing strategies can be aimed at achieving different goals. In particular, in the case of primitiveness, we should rather talk about maximizing benefits than maximizing benefits, and this in this case, as already mentioned above, is far from the same thing.

67 This theoretical position is confirmed in the history of a number of species. "Under long-term unchanged environmental conditions in the habitats of this species, the phenotype can remain virtually unchanged for many millions of years (the so-called persistent forms of organisms, an example of which is the gill-legged crustaceans Triops, brachiopods Lingula etc.), although the genetic system of this species undoubtedly undergoes significant changes during this time" ( N. N. Iordansky Macroevolution. Sistemnaya teoriya [System Theory], Moscow, 1994, p. 57).

68 In the presence of extremely rich natural resources, such changes could also occur in societies with an appropriating economy, where in some cases regular production of excess product, social stratification, and similar phenomena are recorded (see, for example, fig.: Arutyunov S. A., Members M. A., Krupnik I. I. Historical patterns and natural environment (on the example of monuments of ancient Eskimo culture) // Bulletin of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1981, No. 2; Bashilov V. A. The "Neolithic Revolution" in the Central Andes. Two models of the paleoeconomic process, Moscow, 1999). However, it is clear that in an appropriating economy, both the surplus product and the social phenomena associated with its production are naturally limited, even in the most generous nature. That is why, obviously, Karl Marx believed that "peoples engaged exclusively in hunting and fishing are outside the point from which real development begins" ( K. Marx. and F. Engels. Essays, 2nd ed. Vol. 12, p. 733).

69 On the filtering effect of the environment and historical circumstances on the psychological composition of ethnic groups in the 1930s The German ethnographer R. Thurnwald wrote in the 20th century, emphasizing that people are born not with certain properties, but with potentials and opportunities ( Turnwald R. Die Personlichkeit als Schlussel zur Geschichtsforschung / / Zeitschrift fur Volkerpsychologie und Soziologie. 1933. Jg. 9. H. 3). Interesting thoughts about the influence of the social environment on the nature of the manifestation of various "psychophysiological invariants" and the role of this interaction in the evolution of primitive societies were also expressed in Russian literature ( Korotaev A.V. Objective sociological laws and the subjective factor. Issue 1. Novosibirsk, 1998, pp. 222-223).

70 It is interesting that this situation is somewhat similar to that which existed at the early stages of biological evolution, when the interaction between living systems played a smaller role in their development than the influence of various abiotic factors (i.e., those generated by inanimate nature). ( Shaposhnikov G. Kh. Interdependence of living systems and natural selection / / Journal of General Biology. 1974. Vol. 35, No. 2, P. 205).


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