Spatial expansion of the ecumene during the Upper Paleolithic. Formation of the ecumene

§ 45. Preservation of peace on Earth

Section 46. Environmental problem

Section 47. Demographic problem

Section 48. Food problem

Section 49. Energy and raw materials problems

Section 50. Overcoming the backwardness of developing countries

§ 51. Problems of the World Ocean. Interrelation of global problems

Applications

Foreword

The world we live in is changing at an unprecedented rate. The population of the Earth is growing, ecological, energy and raw materials problems are aggravated, economic and cultural ties are intertwined. The destinies of individual peoples merge into one world destiny. A kind of "web" of the modern world - Internet- has already united more than half a billion people. Remaining parts of nation states, people become citizens of the world, learn to live and work in a world without borders. Ahead of this process is Western Europe, where in the near future "border pillars" will turn out to be unnecessary and will only play a symbolic role.

However, "write off" nation states as the main subjects of international relations is still premature. The relatively recent collapse of the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia has shown not only the entire precariousness of the modern world order, but also the unremitting role of state formations. It is the states that shape the face of modern mankind, which is a living, multicolored world of individual peoples in continuous motion. They appear, blossom and disappear. The history of some peoples (Chinese, Greeks, Egyptians) includes

millennia, other peoples (Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Huns, Scythians, Polovtsians) have long gone into oblivion, others are being formed literally before our eyes. Every educated person should have a clear idea of ​​modern countries and peoples.

Any country, any nation contributes to the world economy, science and culture. Thus, the ancient densely populated China entered an era of unprecedented economic growth. Little Netherlands has become a first "rank" agricultural power, a major exporter of food. Japan has created a very effective education and research system, which largely explains its emergence at the forefront of the world's economy. Studying the advanced experience of foreign countries is extremely necessary at a time when international relations in the economy, science and culture are expanding unusually, when our country is also looking for ways to create an effective market economy.

Socio-economic geography of the world– school subject, capable of giving a modern vision of an integral and indivisible world, an idea of ​​its nature, countries and peoples, of the world economy, an understanding of the current global problems of mankind. Particular attention in the textbook is given to the most

more developed or large countries and regions, such as the USA, Western European states, Japan, China, India, African regions, Latin America etc. At the same time, the study of the geography of the world is not a collection of information about countries and peoples, but the perception of their most essential, individual features. Geography should not "dissolve in the economy", since the main wealth of any country is people, their historical experience and culture.

Our discipline combines elements of not only geography, but also sociology TO history, natural and other sciences. This is normal since science is an internally unified whole, and its division into separate areas is due to a large extent to the limited ability of human cognition. In fact, there is an unbroken chain from physics to chemistry through biology, geography and anthropology to the social sciences.

The structure of the textbook is suggested by the logic of the subject itself. The first section is devoted to the development of our planet by man. It guides you towards the object of our study and emphasizes the need to know the past well. The following sections examine the geography of natural resources and the world's population, without which it is impossible to study economics. Further there are sections devoted to the political map of the world, the geography of the world economy and large historical and geographical regions. The textbook ends with an extremely important section, which deals with the global problems of mankind: environmental, food, demographic, energy, etc. See the tutorial for reference tables. Pay particular attention to the questions and tasks at the end of the paragraphs and chapters (as well as in the "Invitation to Discussion" section). When starting to study the course of economic and social geography of the world, remember that the objects of our study - nature, people, countries, economy - are too complex, diverse, unique, and are in constant development. Until recently, we lived in a state called the USSR, and today a number of sovereign states have formed in its place - the Russian Federation, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Kazakhstan, the Baltic countries, Transcaucasia, Central Asia... No textbook can keep up with the rapidly changing world and cannot answer all your questions. Therefore, in order to better understand the world around us, you need to read more special literature, periodicals, listen to radio and television broadcasts, and use information from other school disciplines.
I. Human development of planet Earth

§ 1. From antiquity to the present day

What are the results of economic activities on the Earth of previous generations of people? What is Ecumene? Are there any "white spots" on geographic map?

The earth is the habitat of man. Human life takes place on the earth's surface, the total area of ​​which is about 510 million km 2. Of these, slightly less than a third (149 million. Km 2) falls on the continents and islands. Nature has tried to create conditions close to ideal for the development of organic life on Earth, in particular for human habitation. There are at least three major sources of life on Earth. This is the energy of the Sun, air and clean drinking water... The role of the Sun is especially great. Solar energy is the main "culprit" of the emergence of life on Earth, the basis of many natural processes... Thanks to it, biomass is created (in the process of photosynthesis), the movement of air flows, waters in the oceans. It should be remembered that the atmosphere passes only 67% of the energy inflow to the earth's surface, absorbs 27%, and reflects 6%. A large number of dangerous to humans ultraviolet rays absorbed by the ozonosphere. The air suitable for breathing for humans and animals is concentrated in the lower part of the atmosphere, called, as you remember, the troposphere. Clean air consists of 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 1% argon and other gases, of which carbon dioxide is the most important (0.03%). Owing to oxygen, the work of the muscles of a person takes place, his body is warmed, the work of his nervous system, the activity of the brain, etc. is ensured. Finally, the third main source of life on Earth is water. At the same time, the main condition for human life is clean drinking water. He needs it for cooking, removing waste and toxic substances from the body, etc. Man is an integral part of nature. His home is the geographic shell of the Earth, the sphere of interpenetration and interaction of the lithosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere.

The first steps in the development of the planet. The Earth ... What was it like at the dawn of human civilization and what it has become today? How expanded geographic boundaries human habitation and how was his relationship with nature built? Let us turn over just a few pages of the past to see how man's conquest of the Earth took place.

The history of mankind can be studied using a formational or civilizational approach. In accordance with the first, socio-economic formations are distinguished: primitive communal, slave-owning, feudal, capitalist, etc. In accordance with the second approach, civilizational revolutions are distinguished that raise new step labor productivity. It is believed that the first civilizational revolution was the agricultural one (about 6-8 thousand years ago); the next was industrial (300 years ago); the current revolution is scientific and technical, which moves the population to the sphere of serving human needs (trade, services, transport, education, science, culture, management, etc.).

A civilizational approach devoid of class conventions is more common in modern world... On its basis, it is better to study the process of man's assimilation of the planet Earth.

Throughout the history of mankind, the nature of its relationship with the natural environment has undergone great changes. In very ancient times, human production activity, which consisted of gathering, hunting and fishing, adapted to the natural environment, and did not modify it (Fig. 1).

Areas with a warm and humid climate, abundant in biological resources (primarily herds of large mammals), have always served as centers of attraction for primitive people... The gradual transition of mankind from such an economy, which received the name appropriating, to a producing one (agriculture and cattle breeding) was the greatest economic revolution. It led to a noticeable increase in human impact on nature (Fig. 2).

Especially great diversity began to differ in the relationship of people with the natural environment within the distribution of ancient civilizations, primarily in the valleys of the Nile, Tigris and Euphrates, Indus and Ganges, Yellow River and Yangtze, and later on the territory of Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece, etc. flourishing Agriculture and a variety of crafts. Ancient people built dams, dug canals, drained swamps, stopped sand dunes with the help of green spaces. However, in the rest of the vast spaces of the planet, people still built their relationship with nature at a primitive level.

Rice. 1. What are the characteristics of

human relationship

and the natural environment in this figure?

The world's population in ancient times remained small. Scientists believe that at the turn of the old and new era on the globe only a few tens of millions of people lived. Population growth was slow, as humanity lived in a severe struggle for its existence. In many parts of the world, no human has ever set foot.

Centuries passed, millennia. In the Middle Ages, there was a new expansion of ties in the system society - natural environment. The economic circulation began to involve more widely than before, resources that are not related to the satisfaction of food needs - mineral and forest. This was determined by the ever wider spread of metal tools, the development of shipbuilding, the construction of buildings, etc. The population increased, the load on the land increased, especially in the regions of monsoon Asia, Tropical Africa, and in many European countries. Soils were depleted, pastures were degraded due to overgrazing, and forest area was reduced due to felling, as well as the use of slash-and-burn agriculture.

But even in the Middle Ages, the means and methods of human influence on the natural environment comparatively rarely went beyond the permissible limits. Small plots of land, shallow tillage, organic fertilizers, manual labor - all this made the agriculture of the Middle Ages, although not intensive, but quite rational in environmental terms.

The space mastered by man in the Middle Ages could not be compared with the picture of the modern world: only clumps of population stood out in East and South Asia, Western and Central Europe. The vast territories of the Northern and South America, Australia were generally poorly developed and rarely inhabited.

The rapid expansion of the borders of the Oycumene. A qualitative leap in the development of the planet is associated with the industrial revolution. Already the Great Geographical Discoveries at the dawn of the emergence of capitalist relations significantly expanded the horizons of Oycumene - a part of the Earth inhabited by humans, contributing to the involvement of open and partially not yet inhabited lands in America, Australia, Oceania into economic circulation. Spain, Portugal, England, the Netherlands, France created entire colonial empires, spread out in both hemispheres.

Rice. 2. Stages of society's influence on the natural environment

Millions of black slaves were exported from Africa to work on plantations in America. The indigenous population of many colonies was ruthlessly exterminated. The conquistadors - participants in the Spanish conquest campaigns in Central and South America - especially stained their hands with blood. As the manufacturing industry developed, the scale of human impact on the environment grew. To the previous forms of such impacts were added massive underground mining of mineral raw materials, hydropower construction, etc. There was a rapid transformation of natural landscapes, the development of new sea areas. The spirit of consumerism that struck civilization led to a progressive deterioration of the environment. However, the most dramatic shifts in the relationship between society and the natural environment took place in the second half of the 20th century with the advent of modern scientific and technological revolution. There are practically no "blank spots" left on the geographical map. Even at the bottom of the oceans and deep in Antarctica, you can now find traces of human technical activity (technogenic particles, complex chemical compounds that are not found in nature, etc.). But the main thing is that as a result of a significant increase in the population, intensive industrialization and the growth of cities, the economic burdens began to exceed the ability of natural systems to cleanse themselves everywhere. A very dramatic situation has developed in the world: mankind is faced with the problem of the destruction of almost all life on the planet in the near future. The civilizations of the past also experienced acute crises, but they never reached such proportions. The exceptional power of modern scientific and technical civilization opens a new era in the relationship between man and nature. So, in order to explore and master the Earth, humanity has spent a huge amount of work. Moreover, every nation, every state that exists today, every civilization has contributed to the development of the planet. As a result of the involvement in the sphere of human life, the entire earth's surface, the surrounding atmosphere and even the near space, the destinies of peoples and states were closely intertwined.

The famous Norwegian scientist Thor Heyerdahl compared our Earth to a large raft: “We are all sitting on the same raft ... To survive on it, you need to cooperate. And the raft gets wet and can go to the bottom. This cannot be allowed! " Think about deep meaning of these words.
Questions and tasks. 1. What are the main sources of life on Earth, making it a "miracle" of cosmic evolution? 2. The history of the Earth is the history of nature, on the one hand, and the history of people, on the other. In what cases does the planet change its appearance without human "help"? 3. Why did the Bronze Age precede the Iron Age in the development of mankind, and not vice versa? 4. Trace the links: a) "the era of the great migration of peoples" (the first centuries of our era) with the modern geography of peoples; b) Great geographical discoveries with the specifics of the economic development of some "new" territories; c) the era of colonization with the intensive development of the planet, population migrations and the spread of English, Spanish, Portuguese and French. 5. Using the example of specific regions of the world, analyze the role of maritime, rail and road transport in the development of the planet by man. 6. What are the hallmarks of the second half of the XX century. as a new era in the relationship between man and the natural environment?

§ 2. The current scale of the development of the planet

Is there a limit to the development of our planet? Is it possible to find a harmonious basis for the interaction of society and nature?

Development of uninhabited territories. Although almost the entire earth's surface is already involved in the sphere of human activity, there are still many poorly developed territories that are not inhabited by humans in the world (Fig. 3).

A distinctive feature of our time is the widespread development by man of precisely poorly developed territories, his penetration into previously inaccessible areas, with natural conditions extremely unfavorable for the human body. A pronounced trend in the distribution of the productive forces of the world has become in recent decades development of desert and semi-desert territories in Asia, Africa, America, Australia. Thanks to the achievements of scientific and technological progress, in addition to highly industrialized countries, many developing countries, within which the main tracts of deserts and semi-deserts are concentrated, have begun to develop such territories. Even in the Sahara, new oasis cities appear, in which industrial enterprises are being built, housing construction is underway, areas for agricultural land are reclaimed from the sands, and asphalt roads are laid. Economic construction in the extreme conditions of northern latitudes has also become widespread, despite the fact that low temperatures, polar night, permafrost, and strong waterlogging noticeably burden human life in the tundra. We are talking about such circumpolar territories, the North of Russia, the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, Alaska. A particularly large-scale economic offensive in the North was marked by last years... So, in Russia, the resources of the European North, the basins of the Ob and Yenisei rivers are widely used. Are being developed

apatites, nephelines, copper-nickel ores of the Kola Peninsula, coals of the Pechora basin, Ukhta oil and natural gas, oil and gas raw materials Western Siberia, copper-nickel ores of Norilsk, tin deposits, mica in Yakutia, etc. The modern mining industry has been created in Alaska in the USA (oil, gold, platinum) and in the Canadian North (iron ore, oil, polymetals). The boundaries of the land under development are increasingly moving apart in connection with the development of mountain territories by man. The slopes of the mountains, where vegetables, fruit trees and especially the tea bush are cultivated, are increasingly used for agricultural land (India, Japan, PRC, DPRK, etc.). Of course, it is extremely difficult to develop such territories without the creation of special agricultural equipment capable of effectively working in mountain conditions.

The deep territories of South America - humid tropical forests - are quickly being developed. New settlements appear, enterprises are created, roads are built.

The World Ocean is more and more involved in the orbit of economic activity. Its biological, mineral, chemical and other resources are used. Water spaces in the most direct way are included in the economic

Coastal states activities. Special meaning today it is acquiring the economic development of the south polar waters of the World Ocean. Man is attracted here by the large resources of krill (a small crustacean that serves as a valuable raw material for the production of feed meal), fish, and algae. The idea of ​​transporting giant Antarctic icebergs to the arid zones of the Earth is close to being realized. However, the full-scale economic development of Antarctica, as well as of the southern polar continent itself, Antarctica, still belongs to a more distant prospect.

The expansion of the territorial framework of the world economy was in no small measure due to the growth of the military industry. The creation of fundamentally new types of weapons and the periodic renewal of military equipment had a significant impact on the construction of new enterprises and test sites, not only in old regions, but also in remote, "remote" places. Two types of planetary exploration. we can already say with confidence that the era of extensive development of the planet, which lasted for many centuries, i.e. involvement in the economy of new spaces and cheap natural resources ends. The limit has also come to the extensive development of the economy. In this regard, a legitimate question arises: will our planet be able to feed and drink, clothe and shoe, provide everything necessary for the rapidly growing population of the Earth? Although for each inhabitant of the planet there is more than 2 hectares of earth's solidity, this is still not enough of what it says. After all, about 1/3 of the land is deserts and semi-deserts that are poorly adapted for human life, about 1/4 are permafrost zones, and there are also wetlands, inaccessible mountain areas, etc. It is difficult to imagine that these lands will be or fully populated. To this it should be added that each of us makes incomparably higher demands on the land (primarily from the point of view of its fertility) than our ancestors. Scientists agree that the resources of the planet, if mankind uses them economically, in a businesslike manner, can satisfy the needs of much larger population Earth than the present. At the same time, humanity is obliged to preserve the environment. Such an attitude towards nature, which can be called rational use of natural resources, means, first of all, concern for the preservation of ecological balance in nature and, of course, completely excludes the attitude towards it as an inexhaustible pantry. It presupposes intensive development of the economy, that is, not so much “in breadth” - by involving new geographic regions in the economic circulation, but “in depth” - due to more complete processing of raw materials, reuse of production and consumption waste, and the use of low-waste technology.

Such an environmental system of social production can rightfully be called a new type of development of our planet, the limit of which does not exist. It is a constant search for harmonious foundations of interaction between society and nature, a transition to a closed economic system, that is, to a continuous circulation of substances in the production process.

In the modern world, an extensive type of development of territories is still often manifested, characterized by an extremely low yield of finished products per unit of natural resources used. Today, the end product is often only 1– 2% the mass of the feedstock. The rest is irretrievably lost, as if thrown into the trash can.

The most vividly extensive type of territorial development is manifested in the developing world, where social production is most often based on the wasteful exploitation of natural resources. At the same time, in the most developed countries, the use of secondary raw materials in the production of ferrous and non-ferrous metals, glass, paper, plastics has already reached 70% or more. Our country is not yet in the first row in this respect.

So, the development of the planet is a complex, multifaceted, "extended" in time process, in which economic, social, environmental, military and other problems merge and intersect. At the same time, the era of extensive economic development through the development of new spaces and new sources of natural resources is coming to an end. Ahead - new era development of the planet, based on the collective intelligence of mankind, on his master's attitude to nature.

Questions and tasks. 1... By using political map world, maps of natural zones and maps of population density, establish the nationality of territories with unfavorable natural conditions for human life and the degree of their population. 2. In which countries and regions of the world has terraced agriculture developed? Why? Mostly what crops does it specialize in? 3. What areas of the continental shelf are most widely involved in the economic turnover? 4. What do you know about the scale and environmental consequences of the development of the Amazonian jungle? 5. What does the concept of "extensive type of development of territories" mean and how is it dangerous for the economy of the future? 6. In our country, the eastern regions, rich in natural resources, have traditionally been developed. But can it be considered that the territories of the western regions are fully developed and cultivated? 7. What needs to be changed in psychology, thinking, human activity in order to establish his new relationship with nature?

GENERAL KNOWLEDGE BY THEME

"HUMAN DEVELOPMENT OF THE PLANET EARTH"

I. Invitation

1. If the countdown of history could be started from scratch, how would the process of planetary exploration proceed optimally? Could there be a different path than the one that humanity has chosen?

2. What positive and negative results could the implementation of such ambitious projects as: a) construction of a dam across the Bering Strait; b) construction of a dam across Gibraltar; c) creation of a vast intra-African sea in the area of ​​Lake Chad; d) the diversion of the flow of the northern rivers of Russia to the south?

3. It is known that Canada not in a hurry to develop the Labrador Peninsula, Denmark - Greenland, Norway - Spitsbergen, etc. When developing the rich natural resources of the American North, the United States and Canada widely use a rotational method, that is, workers are sent on a business trip for one or two months. In your opinion, is it worth it for Russia, mastering its endless expanses, to build new cities in extreme natural conditions? Perhaps it is better to develop more intensively the already inhabited territories?

4. How correct is it to talk about the development of Antarctica? If this expression is appropriate, what meaning can be put into it?

5. One of the famous scientists in assessing the nature of the development of the planet in our time used the term "educated barbarism." Do you agree with this statement? If so, what meaning would you put into this concept?

II. Topics for essays

1. Features of the relationship between man and the natural environment in antiquity.

2. Consequences of abrupt changes in the relationship of man with the natural environment in the second half of the XX century.

3. Human development of hard-to-reach territories of the planet.

II. Natural resources

History of mankind- it is also the story of an ever wider and more diverse use of natural resources, the development of earthly space, overcoming the isolation and disunity of various territories. The connection between eras and generations is, as it were, compressed in the shape of the populated and developed spaces of the world, in the nature of the use of natural resources and the development of productive forces.

K. Marx wrote: “... each subsequent one finds the productive forces acquired by the previous generation, and these productive forces serve as raw material for new production, - thanks to this fact, a connection is formed in the human, the history of mankind is formed, which becomes the more the history of mankind than the productive forces of people have grown more, and, consequently, their " (K. Marx and F. Engels. Vol. 27, p. 402).

The early (for example, by the beginning of our era) the distribution of the population of the Earth was completely different than the modern one, and not only because the total number of people has grown many times since then, but also as a result of migrations, often very large.

Originally the main reason mass movement was the lack of means of subsistence within the inhabited areas. the shortage could arise either due to the numerical growth of the tribe, or due to natural disasters, for example, prolonged drought, mass death of animals - objects of hunting.

In the course of historical development, the incentives for migratory movements have changed and become more complex. An increasingly important role began to play an active search for more favorable lands (hunting, pasture, agricultural); later, the wealth of the subsoil (primarily metal ores) became an attractive factor. But for whatever reasons the settlement took place, it was always accompanied by a gradual adaptation of man to new natural conditions, his increasing ability to use a variety of environmental resources.

The most important events that contributed to the ancient migrations of people were the discovery of fire, bows, the domestication of some animals, the mastery of the art of building shuttles and rafts, and then primitive seagoing ships, which made possible the settlement of the islands. Great value to accelerate the settlement of mankind had the emergence of agriculture and animal husbandry. The so-called "Neolithic revolution" immeasurably expanded the possibilities of people, reduced their direct dependence on nature. Among the historically progressive events, one must also name the mastery of the art of pottery, spinning and weaving from wool and plant fibers, and then the discovery of metal smelting.

All these transformations were carried out in different parts of the Earth in very different ways, in various combinations and in different sequences. It also depended on the progress of human communities themselves (on the development of productive forces, changes in production relations), and on the nature of the environment in which they found themselves (for example, the possibility of using metals was determined by the presence of appropriate ores, etc.).

On the stage primitive communal system state formations did not exist yet, humanity in those days did not yet know the state structure. Only in further development productive forces (although it happened then very slowly) and the disintegration primitive society gave rise to the division of labor, private property, class inequality. The leaders and priests who appropriated the surplus product for themselves (now the production product has already begun to provide it!), Sought to protect their privileges, to consolidate their property superiority. This is how class domination was born, this is how early class states were born.

The first historical type of an already fully formed state based on class stratification and exploitation (often the most severe) was slave state. The slave is the master, exploitation is the main productive society. In the era of slavery in spaces from the Iberian Peninsula to The Pacific, in the basins of the so-called great historical rivers - the Tigris, Euphrates, Nile, Indus - vast states arose. They were inhabited by numerous, there were also populous cities.

Creation in the VII-XI centuries. Arabs of a huge state - the Arab Caliphate, from the Iberian Peninsula to India, was accompanied by the conquest of the peoples who lived in this space. In all of North Africa, and partly in South-West, South and South-East Asia, not only the Muslim religion, but also, to a large extent, was established. In turn, they adopted many elements of the culture of the conquered countries.

During this period, as throughout history, as a result of the penetration of aliens on lands with a relatively rare indigenous population (or with a population that was at a lower stage of development than aliens), there was often a slow but steady local residents who adopted new methods of economy and culture, and then language.

Such a course of migration was typical, for example, for more than a millennium for the European part of our country. - the ancestors of the Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians, - settling among the small Finnish-speaking tribes, to a large extent assimilated them, as if they were dissolved in their midst.

At the same time, history knows many such examples when the newcomers perceived the culture of the indigenous population, which was at a higher stage of development. This happened, in particular, in Central Asia, where the Turkic-speaking nomads, having conquered the sedentary Iranian-speaking population, which had a thousand-year tradition of agriculture, only transferred part of this population, but they themselves mastered its agricultural culture, irrigation skills, etc.

The exit of the Europeans at precisely this time was facilitated by the fact that by the end of the 15th century. the development of the productive forces allowed them to make significant progress in shipbuilding, astronomy and cartography. In addition, the Europeans had centuries of sea voyages.

There were legends about overseas wealth in Europe, and the main driving force, which imperiously directed European sea expeditions and detachments of conquerors in search of new lands, was profit. In addition, fortified in the XIV-XV centuries. in the Mediterranean, they blocked the traditional routes along which the trade of European and Asian states went.

On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus, who sailed from Spain in search of a sea route to India, reached the Bahamas in America. In 1498, the Portuguese expedition of Vasco da Gama, circumnavigating Africa, for the first time paved the sea route from Europe to India. The years 1519-1522 turned out to be significant in the history of the development of the World Ocean, when the Spanish, led by the Portuguese Magellan, made the first circumnavigation of the world.

Spanish and Portuguese conquests in the 16th century in America were accompanied by the extermination of the indigenous Indian population, which in the territory of modern Mexico and in the mountainous regions of the Andes created by that time highly developed original civilizations. Ancient America gave the world such major crops like, tomatoes, and many other valuable plants.

The Spanish and Portuguese colonies in America lived apart. They maintained relations only with their metropolises: caravans of ships - the so-called silver flotillas went from the ports of Mexico and to Spain. On the islands of the West Indies and in Brazil, European colonialists began to establish plantations of sugar cane and other perennial tropical crops. Sugar, coffee, cocoa, which were luxury goods in the Middle Ages, were exported to Europe.

As already mentioned, for the ancient world and the Middle Ages were characterized by migrations associated with conquests. But even then there are other reasons for mass resettlement, which in the XVI-XVIII centuries. acquire noticeable proportions, for example, the desire to get away from the heavy oppression of the landlords or from religious persecution. These reasons caused the peasant colonization of the Russian North, Cossack freemen on the Don and Dnieper, resettlement to North America English Puritans, who became the ancestors of the future founders of the United States.

Europeans of both Americas, to India and the "land of spices" - Indonesia, penetration from the sea into the earlier they were only vaguely famous countries The Far East, the first circumnavigation, the discovery of Australia, the exploits of Russian explorers who expanded the knowledge of Europeans about Siberia, the Far East and the North-West of America - all this in a short time made it possible to map the oceans and continents on the world map approximately in the outlines they actually have.

The expansion of the world known to Europeans and the growth of world trade served as important additional factors in the decomposition of the feudal mode of production and the transition to the stage of initial capital accumulation.

In Europe, the industrial sector developed intensively (including the scattered one, in which production was distributed among the villages). But at the same time, they grew much faster than industrial production. The relative importance of the Mediterranean and Baltic states has declined, as it were, as if they were on the sidelines of the new ocean trade routes. The former role of the Hansa passed to Antwerp and London - these new world economic centers of the capitalist era. That was an important stage in his development. “Although the first rudiments of capitalist production are sporadically found in individual cities in Mediterranean Sea already in the 14th and 15th centuries, noted K. Marx, “nevertheless, the beginning of the capitalist era dates back only to the 16th century,” the position of the largest colonial powers of the time — Spain and Portugal — was greatly shaken. precious metals from their possessions in the New World brought \ to the decline of industry in the metropolises, which could no longer compete with goods imported from other countries. The development of the countries of the Iberian sex was strongly hampered by the dominance of large feuds here - I fishing, which fundamentally undermined agriculture. Feudal relations Spanish and Portuguese conquerors sought I to plant in their overseas "vice-kingdoms" and "captaincies", enslaving the Indians to work on plantations and mines.

In Asian countries, as before, the slave system had its own local variants, sometimes significantly different from European ones. was primarily in the fact that in many countries of the East it was widely used, and in which there was a great role state power; the originality was also associated with the dominance in many Asian regions nomadic pastoralism... But all these features did not change the essence: economic development in the Asian states was first based on slave labor, and then on feudal relations (often with the preservation of the features of the slave system).

Even in the depths of feudal society, as the productive forces grew, the relations of production characteristic of feudalism became a brake on development. The very type of feudal state, with its characteristic political fragmentation of the territory and separatism, which hindered the circulation of commodities and money, became an anachronism. This was especially painful for the cities - centers of handicraft and manufactory production and trade exchange. That is why the cities were the main centers of the struggle for the territorial strengthening of states, for the centralization of power, which meant the transition from feudal fragmentation to absolutism. Such states already in the XVI-XVII centuries. became and, where the struggle of the royal power with the feudal lamas was especially fierce and protracted.

In Russia, the centralized market was consolidated in the 17th century .. when the all-Russian market began to form in its main features (which was also facilitated by the expansion of state borders). However, the absolutist reached its peak here in the 18th century, after Peter's reforms.

Of course, as the role of cities grew, their population was freed from some part of the legal restrictions inherent in feudal society. But the development of absolutism did not change the essence of the feudal order: after all, the forms of exploitation of the working people remained basically the same.

The rise in production and improved living conditions contributed to an increase in the population, which, in turn, led to rapid extermination with the help of more advanced hunting means or to a decrease in the number of game in the territories adjacent to settlements. Hunters of the Late Paleolithic began to gradually settle from previously developed places in the previously deserted areas of northern Europe and Asia, on colossal land areas freed from the ice sheet. In the Late Paleolithic, Siberia and the territory of Northern Germany were settled. Moving from Asia through the Bering Strait, people first settled in America. At the end of the Paleolithic and in the Mesolithic time, man, apparently, penetrated into Australia.

In the Late Paleolithic, there are several distinct areas of cultural development. Three areas are especially clearly traced: the European periglacial, Siberian-Chinese, and African-Mediterranean.

The European periglacial area covered the territory of Europe, which was directly influenced by glaciation. People here lived in harsh climatic conditions, hunted mammoths and reindeer, built winter dwellings from animal bones and skins. In the entire periglacial zone of Europe, the unity of the culture of its Paleolithic population was observed, but nevertheless, some peculiarity of cultures is noticeable inside this zone. selected groups population. Thus, the culture of the population of the Russian Plain, the territory of Czechoslovakia and adjacent regions Central Europe different from the culture of the Paleolithic population of Western Europe.

Inhabitants of the Siberian-Chinese region lived in natural conditions similar to the European periglacial area. However, they developed a slightly different stone processing technique and other forms of tools spread. Despite the fact that the Late Paleolithic technique of separating long knife-like blades was known here, the bulk of the tools - side-scrapers - were made in the same way as the European tools of the Mousterian time; occasionally there are even roughly chipped stone tools made from whole oblong pebbles, reminiscent of Acheulean axes.

The African-Mediterranean region covers, in addition to Africa, the territory of Spain, Italy, the Balkan Peninsula, Crimea, the Caucasus, and the countries of the Middle East. Here people lived surrounded by thermophilic flora and fauna, hunted mainly gazelles, roe deer, mountain goats, as well as large predators; here more than in the North, the gathering of plant food and edible mollusks was developed. There are few bone tools in the southern regions, usually the simplest points and awls. The squeezing technique of surface treatment of flint tools was not known here. On the other hand, microlithic flint inserts (see below), which served as blades in wooden tools, had spread here earlier, and, apparently, earlier than in the North, bows and arrows appeared.

Differences in the Late Paleolithic culture of these three regions were still insignificant, and the regions themselves were not separated by clear boundaries. Within each of the regions, there were separate local cultures that were different from each other. Thus, the culture of the Paleolithic inhabitants of Inner Africa developed in a peculiar way, different from the development of North African cultures.

Despite the fact that the Paleolithic of Southeast Asia is poorly studied, there are already grounds to classify it as the fourth large area. The main occupation of the population here was gathering, which did not require the kind of weapons used by the hunters of the North. Wandering hunters and gatherers did not create permanent settlements, but were content with temporary dwellings.

The first traces of human presence in America known to us date back to about 20 thousand years ago. Apparently, people entered America from Asia through the Bering Strait. The basis for this statement is the facts that no great apes have been found in America and all the remains of human skeletons represent only Homo sapiens, that is, in the Western Hemisphere, the humanization of the monkey did not take place and the ancestors of the American Indians had to come from the Old World. Mongolian features in physical characteristics Indians indicate their Asian origin. The people of the Paleolithic era could not penetrate America through the ocean, and the shortest route from Asia leads through the Bering Strait, separating the continents with a water space of only 85 km. In ancient times, this space was probably smaller or the continents were connected by an isthmus.

The oldest tools found in America resemble those of the Chinese Late Paleolithic (upper horizons of Zhoukoudian), as well as the Late Paleolithic cultures of Burma and Indochina. These archaic weapons have been preserved for a very long time in vestigial forms throughout America, right up to Patagonia. The next wave of settlers, apparently, came from Siberia with more advanced hunting equipment. The earliest traces of their presence in America were found in Sandia Cave (near Albuquerque, New Mexico) and date back to about the middle of the 10th millennium BC. NS. A special kind of leaf-shaped stone arrowheads with a lateral recess (sandia type), carefully processed by pressing retouch on both sides, were found together with the bones of a mammoth, bison, camel, and mastodon. The next stage in the development of Paleolithic technology in America is characterized by tips of the so-called Folsom type, dating back 2 millennia later. These points are narrow and long flint blades with longitudinal grooves on both sides, processed even more thoroughly by pressing retouch than the sandia-type points. Folsom settlements are temporary bison hunter camps. Survival phenomena in the cultures of the Stone Age of America persist up to the 5th millennium BC. NS.

Man, apparently, entered Australia from Southeast Asia and Indonesia.

The settlers who used coarse pebble tools, similar to the Paleolithic tools of China, Indochina, Indonesia, were most likely the ancestors of the first Australians and Tasmanians. The next stream of immigrants brought with them disc-shaped axes of the Tula type and narrow triangular points made of plates ("pyrri"); they already knew the new microlysis technique, but they didn’t know the most important invention the Mesolithic era - bow and arrow. In the course of the settling of the ancestors of the Australians around the country, their peculiar culture of hunters and gatherers developed.

The first demographic revolution took place in the Neolithic era and was the result of a colossal leap in the development of productive forces - the emergence of cattle breeding and agriculture. This historic upheaval in manufacturing put the lives of people who previously knew only gathering, hunting and fishing on a completely new economic basis. In turn, "the new economic system did not just serve as the basis for the multiplication of mankind: it accelerated the process, which, due to its striking similarity with the demographic revolution of our time, can be called the" demographic revolution of the Neolithic era. " dwellings, the expansion of knowledge about the world around us weakened the dependence of man on nature, reduced the previously very high probability of death from hunger, made it possible to take the first steps in the fight against death.
It is possible that the decrease in mortality was also facilitated by the transition to exogamy, which excluded consanguineous marriages, which increased the viability of the offspring. At the same time, this contributed to an increase in the average number of children born to one woman during her life. A decrease in mortality, and possibly an increase in fertility in the era of the formation of the tribal system (albeit very insignificant from the point of view of our today's ideas) was an essential moment in the demographic history of mankind. However, this type of population reproduction did not reliably ensure even the maintenance of the population at a constant level. Finding themselves in unfavorable conditions, populations of prehumans could undergo a reduction, and sometimes even complete extinction. Hence the long stagnation, the absence of a noticeable increase in the number of Paleolithic settlements.
The essence of the first demographic revolution lies precisely in the replacement of the archetype with a new type of population reproduction, called the "primitive" type. Although this new type of reproduction is characterized by a very high mortality rate, it is still lower than the mortality characteristic of the archetype, due to which, for the first time in the history of mankind, a steady population growth becomes possible. No matter how little we know about the demographic processes of such a distant past, it can be considered reliably established that it was in the Neolithic era that population growth began - very slow compared to today's growth rates, but unprecedentedly fast compared to Paleolithic times. Without such growth, neither the expansion of the borders of the ecumene that took place in this era, nor the emergence of densely populated centers of civilization of early class societies, their economy based on the joint use of a huge number of people, would have been impossible.
The first demographic revolution and the resulting population growth were not only a consequence of the development of productive forces, but themselves constituted one of the important elements of this development, one of the constituent parts of that material and technical revolution, which ended with the formation of a class society that replaced the primitive communal system.
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A qualitative leap in the development of the planet began in late middle ages, at the dawn of the emergence of capitalist relations. In the era of the Great Geographical Discoveries (XV-XVII centuries), the boundaries of the ecumene, the part of the planet inhabited by mankind, expanded significantly. The economic turnover involved extensive colonial possessions created by the Western European powers (Spain, Portugal, Great Britain, the Netherlands, France) on the uninhabited lands of America, Australia and Oceania, with their innumerable natural resources and a labor force in the form of millions of slaves.
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The Upper Paleolithic period is known as one of the most important milestones in the history of settlement primitive humanity on new territories of the Earth. Man has mastered the large continents - Australia and America. Using the method of paleographic multistage reconstruction, scientists were able to reconstruct the approximate routes of settlement as accurately as possible.
Radiocarbon analysis of finds on the territory of the Australian and American continents shows that by the end of the Upper Paleolithic these lands were occupied by humans. This is an important fact proving the high development of Upper Paleolithic mankind, which was able not only to cross the line polar circle but also get comfortable there. Archaeological research suggests that humans have become fully accustomed to polar extreme conditions, adapting to environment from a biological and cultural point of view. Archaeologists have repeatedly discovered Paleolithic sites in the Arctic.
The end of the Upper Paleolithic era was marked by the fact that the boundaries of the ecumene almost completely coincided with the boundaries of habitable land. Later periods served as a backdrop for all kinds of internal migrations, settlement and domestication of untouched land areas, increasing the technical potential of human society and improving the way of managing. But it is the Upper Paleolithic that has the "honor" to serve as a period of complete development of the earth by man. After that, such an achievement was achieved by man only once and many centuries later - man's egress into open space.
The consequences of the spatial expansion of the ecumene during the Upper Paleolithic are multifaceted. As a result of the resettlement of mankind throughout the earth's land and its habitation of all kinds of ecological areas, the sphere of human biology and culture has changed. Human adaptation to new ecological and geographic conditions entailed the expansion of the rotation boundaries human characteristics... Separate morphological - physiological complexes were revealed, which are still manifested in modern mankind under the name of the adaptive type.
Adaptive types correspond to landscape zones - the high mountain zone and the continental zone, the temperate or arctic belt. Each species exhibits a whole complex of genetically determined adaptations to life in climatic, landscape, geographical and biotic conditions of a certain belt. Adaptations are expressed in various physiological characteristics and combinations of sizes that are optimal for thermoregulation.
Scientists can accurately determine the chronological antiquity and sequence of development of each of the adaptive types. For this, a comparison of the historical stages of human settlement on Earth and the adaptive adaptations of the human group is used. It is known that initially man possessed all morphophysiological adaptations for life in tropical conditions. This point of view is consistent with research according to which the first man appeared in the tropical zone. Thus, the tropics are the ancestral home modern humanity.
The Middle Paleolithic era has become a historical background for the addition of complexes that are adaptive to continental, middle and high-mountain climates. The final adaptive complex was formed during the Upper Paleolithic.
The expansion of the ecumene during the Upper Paleolithic period served as a powerful stimulus for the biological and cultural development of modern mankind. People settled in new, unusual regions, where they encountered completely different hunting prey. This made a person look for new and improve the old ways of hunting. Man learned to identify edible plants. He became acquainted with new types of stone, which allowed him to invent new weapons and new ways of processing materials.
According to the paleodemographic work of the famous German scientist F. Weidenreich, the human population in the Upper Paleolithic era was one million people. At the same time, the scientist claims that in the territories of Eurasia and Africa, the population density was 1 person per 8 square kilometers. The work is based on the results of a study of fossil human skeletons found in China at the Zhoukoudian site, near Beijing, which provide information only on group and individual ages. Weidenreich's theory is impossible to prove or disprove.
The ecumene expanded greatly with the settlement of Australia and America. According to the scientist E. Divi, the population density in the Upper Paleolithic era was about 1 person per 2.5 square meters. km., after which the number steadily increased to 3.3 and 5.3 million people.