According to various testimonies and studies, approximately three million years ago (although an alternative history of mankind names other figures), man came out of the animal world. About 35 thousand years ago, the formation of modern people began. Thirty millennia later civilizations began to take shape in different parts of the world.
If the history of mankind was equated with a day, then from the moment of the formation of classes and states to our time, according to scientists, only 4 minutes would have passed.
The primitive communal system was the longest stage. It lasted about a million years. It should be noted that the exact time when the history of mankind began is difficult to name. The upper boundary (the final stage) of the primitive communal system varies in different limits depending on the continent. So, for example, classes in Africa and Asia began to take shape at the turn of the 4th-3rd century. BC e., in America - 1 century. BC e.
How the history of mankind began, why the first people appeared , where and when it happened, remains a mystery. Unfortunately, there are no monuments of those eras.
Periodization of the history of mankind by different scientists is carried out in different ways.
Even the ancient Roman and ancient Chinese philosophers knew of the existence of three centuries: bronze (copper), stone and iron. In the 19th - early 20th centuries, this archaeological periodization received scientific development. As a result, scientists typologized the stages and eras of these periods.
The Stone Age lasted several times longer than the entire subsequent history of mankind. The division into stages within this era is based on the complication and change in the shape of stone tools.
The Stone Age began with the Paleolithic (ancient stone), in which, in turn, scientists distinguish the stage of the lower (early), middle and upper (late) Paleolithic.
Then begins the Middle Stone Age (the transitional era of the Mesolithic). This period is also called epipaleolithic (post-Paleolithic) or protoneolithic (Pre-Neolithic). Some authors do not mention him at all.
The Stone Age ends with the Neolithic (New Stone Age). At the end of this period, the first copper tools appeared. This indicates the formation of a special stage - Eneolithic (chalcolithic).
The structure of the internal periodization of subsequent centuries (stone, iron and bronze) is presented by different researchers in different ways. The determined cultures within the stages themselves are also quite different.
Archaeological periodization is based entirely on technological aspects and at the same time does not give an idea of the formation of production as a whole. Currently, the stage separation system is not so much global as regional.
Some limited goals are present in the paleoanthropological periodization of the primitive system. It is based on the principle of the biological evolution of humans. According to this system of separation at the developmental stage, researchers talk about the existence of the most ancient (archanthropus), ancient (paleoanthropus), as well as the fossil of modern (neoanthropus) man. Despite some controversial points, the paleoanthropological system of dividing the development of people into stages closely echoes the archaeological system.
At the same time, the indicated special periodizations of human history cannot be compared in importance with the general system of separation of the past of people. The development of the direction of historical and material understanding of human development was first seriously started by Morgan (American ethnographer). In accordance with the division of the whole process into the epoch of civilization, barbarism and savagery that was established in the 18th century, taking into account indicators of the level of development of the production of “livelihoods,” the American ethnographer singled out a higher, middle, and lower level in each indicated era. Subsequently, Engels, praising this periodization, generalized it.