Why are people called people? Question for children. But many parents know how difficult it is sometimes to answer "simple" children's "why?".
Encyclopedias note that there are no other thinking living creatures endowed with speech and able to work not only in social production, but also in the manufacture of tools. To such a definition, we can add that it is just our planet that is the place of compact residence of man.
When asked why people are called people, scientists answer that this biological species, having some anatomical differences, is in the same order as the other primates inhabiting the planet. True, he is the only one living that has to do with hominids - a special family.
Our distant ancestor created a developed material and intangible culture, including not only the use, but also the manufacture of labor tools. And this is another answer to the question of why people are called people. In addition, the uniqueness of the species Homo sapiens also lies in the fact that its representatives are able to articulate and abstractly think.
It is not only biologists and anthropologists who are interested in the origin, evolution, and history of racial diversity who are looking for an answer to the question of why people are called people. The non-biological nature and nature of man is occupied by philosophers and religious scholars.
People are a heterogeneous aggregate. It consists of individuals belonging to different cultures and forms of organization of society, which studies sociology and other humanities.
Man is the only species on the planet endowed with the ability to speak and understand speech. Others, for example, representatives of birds, birds, having close acquaintance with people and their speech, can only reproduce it without understanding, that is, they have only onomatopoeic abilities. To create and pronounce words in your mind, you need to have one more signaling system, peculiar only to people. Of course, biologists tried to teach representatives of other species (dolphins, lower primates) a sign system resembling sign language, but this yielded insignificant results.
Among other things, humans are complexly organized beings. Their behavior is determined by both biological factors: physiological needs and instincts; as well as many non-biological ones - cultural features, traditions, prohibitions and values, as well as the laws of various state systems, personal views, worldview and religious beliefs. The degree of impact of these many factors also varies depending on the personality of the individual and the individual community. The relationship between people, their behavior and problems is studied by psychology.
Complex human communities are distinguished from simple groups of other biological species by the collective receipt and transmission of typical conditioned behavior among the social collective. Newly acquired knowledge and experience is passed on by one generation to another.
Biologists know cases of the exchange of new knowledge in animals, but their transmission system is very primitive, and they are often lost at the level of the generation by which they were acquired. Scientists have recorded that wolves encountering traps at their next meeting are able to warn their brethren, but they never pass this experience on to wolf cubs.
Probably, the human ability to create and develop non-existent cultural trends has enabled people to take the leading place in the hierarchy of species and dominate the Earth, learning the most important qualities and skills from the centuries-old experience of their ancestors. Thus, we can conclude that in many ways it was the presence of culture that allowed people to be called people.