How ancient people lived in caves. Primitive man and primitive society. How ancient people lived: everyday life

In many areas of the countries of the former Soviet Union, especially in the mountains, caves and niches of various origins are widespread. Some of them are blown by the wind into rocks, others were formed in lava flows, and others arose as a result of the dissolving and dynamic activity of river, lake and sea waters. Caves are also found in the thickness of glaciers.

The science of speleology

Studying caves speleology(from the Latin word spelunca – cave). This name was proposed in 1890 by a French explorer E. Rivera. Speleology as a complex science arose and is developing at the intersection of geographical and geological sciences. She studies underground forms, processes that determine them, features of morphosculpture, cave deposits, microclimate, hydrology, vegetation and fauna of caves, as well as underground landscapes.

People and caves in ancient times

Caves have long attracted attention person. At the dawn of its life, caves were the first natural shelters in which ancient people took refuge from unfavorable environmental conditions. Often, caves were given to our distant ancestors after a stubborn struggle with giant predators - a cave lion, a bear and a hyena, who made their lair in them. Tools and household items from the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages found in many caves indicate that prehistoric man used caves for a very long time. The first culture began to emerge here. Later, when people learned to build houses, caves were no longer needed for this purpose. Now they rather aroused curiosity, attracted to the unknown and at the same time gave rise to superstitious fear. Few dared to enter the cold and gloomy dungeon. Mortal horror seized the daredevil when the ominous silence of the cave was suddenly broken by the rumble of a stone falling somewhere or the melodic splashing of a drop. The man left the cave in a cold sweat, retaining vivid and deep impressions of what he saw and experienced. His ardent imagination painted amazing pictures, usually far from reality. This is how legends and tales were then formed, often beautiful and poetic. Rich human imagination has populated the underground world with powerful and mysterious creatures who live surrounded by fabulous riches. And only those who have a pure heart, selflessness, courage and boundless love for people can get them.

Sacred Caves

Many peoples considered caves sacred. Prayer rooms were set up at their entrances. Rich gifts were brought to the “owner of the cave” - household items, food, copper and silver money. Sometimes blood sacrifices were held in honor of the “spirit” of the cave.

In the past, people associated the origin of caves with mysterious forces. This version was strongly supported by priests and clergy. Only in the 18th century, having studied the structural features, conditions of formation and the nature of the placement of caves on the earth’s surface, scientists proved their natural origin. formed as a result of long-term, centuries-long dissolution of carbonate and halogen rocks by water circulating through the cracks of these deposits. Subjected to leaching and mechanical action of water, limestone and gypsum are gradually destroyed, and small imperceptible cracks turn into underground cavities. As the cave develops, large grotto-halls are formed in it, interconnected by narrow and wide passages, often located at different hypsometric levels. But water not only builds magnificent underground palaces and giant cavities, sometimes found at great depths from the surface, it is also a wonderful sculptor. Water decorates the underground halls with fancy calcite, salt and ice columns, candelabra, stone fountains, heavy draperies, transparent curtains, delicate plaster flowers, and other formations that make the grottoes and galleries fabulously beautiful. Sometimes calcite deposits form tiered curtains, creating the complete illusion of frozen northern lights. Particularly interesting

Cappadocia, Türkiye© Depositphotos

Caves in Nottingham© Depositphotos

Civita di Bagnoregio, Italy© Depositphotos

Vardzia, Georgia© Depositphotos

Kandovan, Iran© Depositphotos

Matmata, Tunisia© Depositphotos

Photo 1 of 8: Cappadocia, Türkiye© Depositphotos

Today people can no longer be surprised by the tallest buildings in the world or intricate architecture. Moreover, more and more people sometimes want to escape from the noisy metropolis and settle in some secluded and cozy place. Someone, in search of the pristine and primeval, travels outside the city, closer to nature. And what could be more primitive than life in a cave? So what if we told you that cavemen are just as modern as you and I, and their homes are just as comfortable? If you don't believe me, see for yourself.

Caves houses, Türkiye

Cappadocia, Türkiye © Depositphotos

In Cappadocia, Turkey there are interesting houses carved directly into the rock. The rooms in them have a non-standard shape, but are furnished in a completely modern way: there is furniture, a computer, and a TV. The residents of the house have a good additional source of income: they conduct tours of the house for everyone who wants to see the unusual home. Moreover, a hotel was made from such a house - it consists of six cave houses, and the total number of rooms is 39. The caves date back to the 5th and 6th centuries.

Caves in Nottingham, UK

Caves in Nottingham © Depositphotos

The labyrinth of caves that is located under Nottingham Castle is an eerie and very cold place in which it is very easy to get lost. Some caves have been used as wine cellars as they have a constant temperature of 14 degrees Celsius, making them ideal for storing wine and beer, but most have bloodier stories. During the English Civil War, soldiers stationed at the castle were required to sleep in caves. It was so cold that first thing in the morning they checked to see if they were still alive and had not frozen to death during the night.

Civita di Bagnoregio, Italy

Civita di Bagnoregio, Italy © Depositphotos

Kandovan, Iran © Depositphotos

Kandovan is a unique settlement located in the rocks, between the cities of Tabriz and Osku, where only a thousand people live, who are not only accustomed to their uncomfortable, in the eyes of tourists, dwellings, but also to the healing mineral springs with which their land is rich. The village has long become a real tourist attraction, with many people coming from all over the world to see it.

Buildings in the Fafe mountains, Portugal

Stone house in the mountains of Fafe, Portugal © flickr.com/nessa_flame

In Portugal, in the city of Fafe, there is a cave house. At first glance, it resembles the home of the heroes of the famous cartoon “The Flintstones”. It was built in 1973 between two huge mossy boulders, replacing the building's walls. Over time, the house began to attract a large number of tourists, and its residents were forced to leave their homes.

The longest period in the history of human development is considered to be the era of primitive society.

Since ancient times, the eastern half of the current European part of Russia was inhabited by the peoples of the Turkic and Chud tribes, and the western part on the shores of the Baltic Sea was inhabited by Lithuanian tribes, and Slavs settled near the Volkhov, Sula and Dnieper rivers.

Archaeological periodization of primitive society:

1. Stone Age

Paleolithic

Neolithic

Chalcolithic

2. Bronze Age

3. Iron Age

The life of primitive people was full of dangers and very difficult. Their food was very meager. Men went hunting, waylaid animals, drove them into a dead end or a trap and killed them with clubs, stakes, sharp bones or stones. They pounced on dead prey, cut out bones and sucked out the bone marrow while it was still warm. The rest was dragged into the cave. Women did not go far from their homes and collected fruits, berries and seeds, and also dug up roots. Primitive people mainly took refuge in caves from cold and bad weather. Such shelters were far from safe: sometimes they had to recapture the beast’s home, and more often than not they themselves became victims of a more formidable monster. The caveman did not know how to sew clothes; he covered himself from the cold with skins torn from killed animals; these people had very long hair. Primitive people learned to rub their bodies with paint or cover them with primitive designs. If the game disappeared in the forests surrounding the cave, the cave people had to abandon their home and look for new caves. Often the cavemen went hungry, and when they got large prey, they ate everything and left no reserves. Primitive people spoke little and abruptly. They could not distinguish between good and evil deeds, did not think about higher powers, did not think about improving their lives, but only knew how to rejoice noisily during a successful hunt and groan heavily during illnesses and failures.

But cavemen had one great advantage over other animals. They knew what fire was and learned how to produce it. They just rubbed the dry branches on the boards for a long time. Until now, not a single site of ancient people has been found in which there would be no traces of the use of fire. Sometimes the community simply lit a fire in the middle of the cave and cooked food on it, and then went to bed; special guards did not sleep and made sure that the fire did not go out.

Ancient people had very primitive weapons and therefore survived only in favorable natural conditions. They lived mainly in caves and grottoes. About 80,000 years ago, a massive glacier came and covered most of the places where ancient people lived, and glaciation began. Conditions have become much tougher. It was at this time that a more perfect man appeared - the Neanderthal. His brain volume became equal to the brain of a modern person, the formation of speech centers began, and asymmetry of the limbs appeared.

In such harsh conditions, primitive people learned to gather and hunt.

They were able to create such tools as: flail, bola, scraper, and later - spears, harpoons, piercings, awls.

They took refuge mainly in caves, and it was there that they began to perform the first religious rituals. Religion began to emerge.

The earliest forms of religion are:

1. Animism

2. Totemism

3. Fetimism

In primitive society there was matriarchy.

5000 - 3000 thousand years BC the Neolithic era begins. It was during this period that ancient people discovered the wheel, mastered pottery and learned to build rafts and boats. In the Neolithic, a real revolution takes place - this is a complete revolution in the way of life of people - people learn to produce tools and household items that do not exist in nature.

Next comes the Bronze Age and the era of decomposition of the primitive system begins. From a large single community, pastoral tribes begin to separate. Cattle becomes a sign of wealth, patriarchy replaces matriarchy. The first sites of ancient people appear in the Urals - these tribes were mainly engaged in hunting.

There is a division of labor, that is, agriculture is separated from crafts. Property inequality appears, and an analogue of money enters everyday life.

The tribal community is replaced by the neighboring one.

Since ancient times, the eastern half of what is now European Russia was inhabited by the peoples of the Chud and Turkic tribes, and in the western half, in addition to the peoples of the Lithuanian and Chud tribes, who adjoined the Baltic coast with their settlements, the Slavs settled under different local names, having mastered the banks of the rivers: Dnieper, Western Dvina, Oka, Volga, Lake Ilmen.

The basis of their society were small communities. There were no signs of statehood. The Slavic-Russian tribes were ruled by princes who constantly fought with each other and had weak armies and weapons, so they were often conquered by foreigners.

The Slavs were mainly farmers. They learned to sow cereals: rye, barley, millet, wheat. They even had their first vegetable gardens, where they grew carrots, beets, cabbage and even turnips.

The Slavs knew how to make axes, sickles, hoes and harrows. They learned to build houses from wood, build walls, ditches and embankments from the earth. For fishing they used fishing gear and boats, and took domestic animals to pastures. They spun fabrics, sewed, mastered metal forging, and fired clay. In the society of the ancient Slavs, coins were used and even musical instruments appeared.

During the war, they used spears, arrows and swords. It will be interesting to know that it was the ancient Slavs who became the first divers. They learned to dive under water and breathe through a strong straw or empty reeds.

The evolution of the Slavs moved very slowly.

They were very religious and worshiped the forces of nature, the sun, sky, water, earth, wind, trees, etc.

They also believed in magic, that is, in knowledge of the secret power of things, and had great respect for the wise men and sorceresses, who were considered the bearers of such knowledge. People believed in spirits, brownies, goblin, kikimoras, mermaids and others.

It is known that the distinguishing feature of the ape from the representative of the human race is the mass of the brain, namely 750 g. This is how much is necessary for a child to master speech. Ancient people spoke in a primitive language, but their speech is a qualitative difference between the higher nervous activity of humans and the instinctive behavior of animals. The word, which became a designation for actions, labor operations, objects, and subsequently general concepts, acquired the status of the most important means of communication.

Stages of human development

It is known that there are three of them, namely:

the oldest representatives of the human race;
modern generation.

This article is devoted exclusively to the 2nd of the above stages.

History of Ancient Man

About 200 thousand years ago, the people we call Neanderthals appeared. They occupied an intermediate position between representatives of the most ancient family and the first modern man. Ancient people were a very heterogeneous group. A study of a large number of skeletons led to the conclusion that, in the process of the evolution of Neanderthals against the background of structural diversity, 2 lines were determined. The first was focused on powerful physiological development. Visually, the most ancient people were distinguished by a low, strongly sloping forehead, a low back of the head, a poorly developed chin, a continuous supraorbital ridge, and large teeth. They had very powerful muscles, despite the fact that their height was no more than 165 cm. The mass of their brain had already reached 1500 g. Presumably, ancient people used rudimentary articulate speech.

The second line of Neanderthals had more refined features. They had significantly smaller brow ridges, a more developed chin protuberance, and thin jaws. We can say that the second group was significantly inferior in physical development to the first. However, they already showed a significant increase in the volume of the frontal lobes of the brain.

The second group of Neanderthals fought for their existence through the development of intra-group connections in the process of hunting, protection from an aggressive natural environment, enemies, in other words, by combining the forces of individual individuals, and not through the development of muscles, like the first.

As a result of this evolutionary path, the species Homo sapiens appeared, which translates as “Homo sapiens” (40-50 thousand years ago).

It is known that for a short period of time the life of ancient man and the first modern man was closely interconnected. Subsequently, the Neanderthals were finally supplanted by the Cro-Magnons (the first modern people).

Types of ancient people

Due to the vastness and heterogeneity of the group of hominids, it is customary to distinguish the following varieties of Neanderthals:

ancient (early representatives who lived 130-70 thousand years ago);
classical (European forms, the period of their existence 70-40 thousand years ago);
survivalists (lived 45 thousand years ago).

Neanderthals: daily life, activities

Fire played an important role. For many hundreds of thousands of years, man did not know how to make fire himself, which is why people supported the one that was formed due to a lightning strike or a volcanic eruption. Moving from place to place, the fire was carried in special “cages” by the strongest people. If it was not possible to save the fire, then this quite often led to the death of the entire tribe, since they were deprived of a means of heating in the cold, a means of protection from predatory animals.

Subsequently, they began to use it for cooking food, which turned out to be more tasty and nutritious, which ultimately contributed to the development of their brain. Later, people themselves learned to make fire by cutting sparks from stone into dry grass, quickly rotating a wooden stick in their palms, placing one end in a hole in dry wood. It was this event that became one of the most important achievements of man. It coincided in time with the era of great migrations.

The daily life of ancient man boiled down to the fact that the entire primitive tribe hunted. For this purpose, men were engaged in the manufacture of weapons and stone tools: chisels, knives, scrapers, awls. Mostly males hunted and butchered the carcasses of killed animals, that is, all the hard work fell on them.

Female representatives processed skins and collected (fruits, edible tubers, roots, and branches for fire). This led to the emergence of a natural division of labor by gender.

To catch large animals, men hunted together. This required mutual understanding between primitive people. During the hunt, a driving technique was common: the steppe was set on fire, then the Neanderthals drove a herd of deer and horses into a trap - a swamp, an abyss. Next, all they had to do was finish off the animals. There was another technique: they shouted and made noise to drive the animals onto thin ice.

We can say that the life of ancient man was primitive. However, it was the Neanderthals who were the first to bury their dead relatives, laying them on their right side, placing a stone under their head and bending their legs. Food and weapons were left next to the body. Presumably they considered death to be a dream. Burials and parts of sanctuaries, for example, associated with the bear cult, became evidence of the emergence of religion.

Neanderthal tools

They differed slightly from those used by their predecessors. However, over time, the tools of ancient people became more complex. The newly formed complex gave rise to the so-called Mousterian era. As before, tools were made primarily of stone, but their shapes became more diverse, and the turning technique became more complex.

The main weapon preparation is a flake formed as a result of chipping from a core (a piece of flint that has special platforms from which the chipping was carried out). This era was characterized by approximately 60 types of weapons. All of them are variations of 3 main ones: scraper, rubeltsa, pointed tip.

The first is used in the process of butchering an animal carcass, processing wood, and tanning hides. The second is a smaller version of the hand axes of the previously existing Pithecanthropus (they were 15-20 cm in length). Their new modifications had a length of 5-8 cm. The third weapon had a triangular outline and a point at the end. They were used as knives for cutting leather, meat, wood, and also as daggers and dart and spear tips.

In addition to the listed species, Neanderthals also had the following: scrapers, incisors, piercings, notched, and serrated tools.

Bone also served as the basis for their manufacture. Very few fragments of such specimens have survived to this day, and entire tools can be seen even less frequently. Most often these were primitive awls, spatulas, and points.

The tools differed depending on the types of animals that Neanderthals hunted, and, consequently, on the geographical region and climate. Obviously, African tools were different from European ones.

Climate of the area where Neanderthals lived

The Neanderthals were less fortunate with this. They found a strong cold snap and the formation of glaciers. Neanderthals, unlike Pithecanthropus, who lived in an area similar to the African savanna, lived rather in the tundra and forest-steppe.

It is known that the first ancient man, just like his ancestors, mastered caves - shallow grottoes, small sheds. Subsequently, buildings appeared located in open space (the remains of a dwelling made from the bones and teeth of a mammoth were found at a site on the Dniester).

Hunting of ancient people

Neanderthals mainly hunted mammoths. He did not live to this day, but everyone knows what this beast looks like, since rock paintings with its image were found, painted by people of the Late Paleolithic. In addition, archaeologists have found the remains (sometimes even the entire skeleton or carcasses in permafrost soil) of mammoths in Siberia and Alaska.

To catch such a large beast, the Neanderthals had to work hard. They dug pit traps or drove the mammoth into a swamp so that it would get stuck in it, then finish it off.

Also a game animal was the cave bear (it is 1.5 times larger than our brown one). If a large male rose on his hind legs, then he reached 2.5 m in height.

Neanderthals also hunted bison, bison, reindeer, and horses. From them it was possible to obtain not only the meat itself, but also bones, fat, and skin.

Methods of making fire by Neanderthals

There are only five of them, namely:

1. Fire plow. This is a fairly fast method, but requires significant physical effort. The idea is to move a wooden stick along the board with a strong pressure. The result is shavings, wood powder, which, due to the friction of wood against wood, heats up and smolders. At this point, it is combined with highly flammable tinder, then the fire is fanned.

2. Fire drill. The most common way. A fire drill is a wooden stick that is used to drill into another stick (a wooden plank) located on the ground. As a result, smoldering (smoking) powder appears in the hole. Next, it is poured onto the tinder, and then the flame is fanned. Neanderthals first rotated the drill between their palms, and later the drill (with its upper end) was pressed into the tree, covered with a belt and pulled alternately on each end of the belt, rotating it.

3. Fire pump. This is a fairly modern, but rarely used method.

4. Fire saw. It is similar to the first method, but the difference is that the wooden plank is sawed (scraped) across the fibers, and not along them. The result is the same.

5. Carving fire. This can be done by hitting one stone against another. As a result, sparks are formed that fall on the tinder, subsequently igniting it.

Finds from the Skhul and Jebel Qafzeh caves

The first is located near Haifa, the second is in the south of Israel. They are both located in the Middle East. These caves are famous for the fact that human remains (skeletal remains) were found in them, which were closer to modern people than to the ancients. Unfortunately, they belonged to only two individuals. The age of the finds is 90-100 thousand years. In this regard, we can say that modern humans coexisted with Neanderthals for many millennia.

Conclusion

The world of ancient people is very interesting and has not yet been fully studied. Perhaps, over time, new secrets will be revealed to us that will allow us to look at it from a different point of view.

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Caveman

Introduction

1. Life of a Caveman

2. Cave painting

Conclusion

List of used literature

Introduction

The history of cave exploration began in the Lower Paleolithic era. It was at this time, judging by the small amount of archaeological data that has reached us, that ancient people began to inhabit caves, using them as shelter from bad weather, and then as dwellings. Since then, interest in caves has accompanied the entire history of mankind. A colossal number of articles, brochures, and books have been published, reflecting various aspects of the life of caves and their use by humans. But in Russian and world literature there are practically no works that would highlight the role of caves in the history of mankind as a whole.

In the development of this exciting problem, the Soviet school of Paleolithic studies has its own rich experience and its fruitful traditions. Soviet archaeologists changed their search guidelines. Instead of vertically deepening the excavation in search of individual bright finds, as almost all predecessors did, they began to clear the Paleolithic cultural layer as widely as possible in the horizontal direction, leaving all the finds in the places allocated to all these various objects by the Paleolithic people themselves. Then it became clear that the layer concealed the floor of an ancient dwelling, built from mammoth bones, stones and other durable materials, inside which neither frost nor blizzard frightened the community of primitive hunters. And this community itself, in essence, appeared for the first time as an object of consistent, comprehensive archaeological analysis.

The earliest man was very different from modern people - and looked like a large ape. However, people did not walk on four legs, as almost all animals walk, but on two legs, but at the same time they leaned forward greatly. The man’s hands, hanging down to his knees, were free, and he could do simple work with them: grab, hit, dig the ground. People's foreheads were low and sloping. Their brains were larger than those of apes, but significantly smaller than those of modern humans. The ancient man could not yet speak; he made only a few abrupt sounds, with which people expressed anger and fear, called for help and warned each other about danger.

1. Life of a Caveman

Caveman - since antiquity, the name of wild people who lived in caves. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the term was especially applied to people who lived during the last ice age, whose remains were found in the oldest cave deposits, in layers dating back to the Paleolithic era.

It was believed that caves were the main habitat of Paleolithic people. It is now recognized that Paleolithic hunter-gatherers primarily settled in open areas, and caves were primarily used for storage and ritual purposes.

At first, Europe had a warm and humid climate. We know almost nothing about the people of this time: in the deep layers of the earth, piles of sharpened stones similar to tools are found, but human remains have not yet been discovered. Later, huge ice covered more than half of Europe for a long time; remnants of glaciers still lie on the high ridges of the Alps.

When the ice retreated to the north, the cold remained for several thousand years. At this time, large animals were found in Europe, which have now disappeared or become very rare: rhinoceros, mammoth, i.e. an elephant with thick long hair and strongly curved tusks, a bison, a huge ancient bull, a wild boar, a large (now called reindeer) deer, a cave lion and a cave bear.

You can get an idea about the people of this time. Their skeletons, piles of fragments that served as their tools, and garbage that show what they ate were unearthed in deep, filled-up caves. The lives of these people were surrounded by dangers; their means of subsistence were very scarce. Men went out hunting, waited for the animal, drove it and killed it with a club, stake, sharp bone or stone. They rushed at freshly killed game and ate it right away. Women stayed near the dwellings, collected berries, wild fruits and seeds, and dug roots from the ground. cave housing painting man

The caves themselves, where a person took refuge from the cold and bad weather, were unsafe: sometimes he managed to recapture the beast’s home, but often he himself had to give way to a more terrible rival. The caveman did not know clothes. He covered himself from the cold with the skin torn from the animal; his long hair fluttered in the wind. He rubbed paint on his body or tattooed drawings on it. There was no consistency in his life: having exterminated the game in the neighboring forest, he was forced to abandon his home and look for a new one. He often went hungry for a long time; but when he got rich prey, he ate it with wild greed, forgetting to make a reserve. His sleep was cloudy and heavy. He spoke little and abruptly; celestial phenomena did not interest him. He did not distinguish between good and evil deeds, did not think about a punishing deity, did not ask himself the question of where everything around him came from, who rules the world visible to him. He only knew how to rejoice noisily when there was good luck, and groan heavily when misfortune befell him.

He had one great advantage over animals. He knew fire and knew how to produce it through the friction of dry branches. Until now, no traces have been found of such a wild life in which people were not familiar with fire. A fire built in the middle of the cave brought the family together after a difficult hunt; they warmed themselves around it and spent the night; food was cooked on fire.

2. Cave painting

The greatest success in the spiritual life of people of that time was the appearance of the first, still very timid steps in the field of fine art. At first it was wavy stripes, colorful spots on a stone slab. These still distant approaches to fine art already testified to the complex mental work of primitive man.

For a long time, scientists had no idea that primitive people had skilled artists. As often happens, the discovery took place unexpectedly and as if by accident. In the second half of the nineteenth century, a Spanish archaeologist worked in the Altamira Cave in northern Spain. Once he took his little daughter to an excavation, who, after wandering around her father, wandered into a low cave. And suddenly her surprised cry was heard: “Dad, look, painted bulls!” On the ceiling of this cave there was a forty-meter-long panel, on which bison were frozen in a moment of running, and in the most bizarre poses. The primitive artist used three natural colors: red, black and brown, but at the same time achieved amazing vividness and three-dimensionality of the drawing. The artist’s excellent knowledge of the structure of these animals and the extraordinary realistic authenticity of the unusual poses of the bison in this frantic run are striking.

This is how the cave paintings of Altamira were discovered. This was followed by archaeological exploration of other caves. And the finds followed one after another. The excellent knowledge of nature and the talent of unknown primitive artists were reflected in the rendering of the appearance and characters of animals - sensitive and tremulous deer, swift horses, massive mammoths with heavy gait.

On the walls of the caves there are images of entire scenes, the meaning of which cannot be understood. One of them depicts a hunter falling on his back, for some reason with a bird’s head, and a bison, pierced by the hunter’s spear, is threateningly approaching him with his horns outstretched. A powerful rhinoceros moves away to their left. These mysteries of ancient drawings remain unanswered.

Scientists were also interested in the fact that there are many drawings of wounded and bleeding animals, and all of them are in the depths of caves, where sunlight never penetrates. Trying to understand these mysteries, scientists have come to some conclusions.

Primitive man was very dependent on nature. And since the clan society lived mainly by hunting, it was natural for hunters to fear the disappearance of animals in the forests. Successful hunting of animals and fish allowed the community to survive. Therefore, it was impossible to allow the disappearance of the beast, it was impossible to allow the herds to go somewhere.

The magic of the amazing paintings of cave artists, when it seemed that the depicted animals were alive, caused the primitive people of that time to believe that there was an inextricable connection between the image of the animal and the animal itself. Therefore, the man painted animals in the depths of the cave and, as it were, bewitched the wounded animals so that they would not leave these places.

Conclusion

In the life of primitive man, the cave served primarily as a dwelling. Many of the most ancient Paleolithic sites were discovered in caves. This is the so-called cultural layer, i.e. a set of traces of human activity, which is preserved to this day under sediments of the earth or rock falls from the ceiling of the cave. People lived in a cave, lit a fire there, cooked food, and made tools from flint (a huge number of stone tools were preserved in the cultural layer of many caves). The carcasses of killed animals were brought here, butchered and eaten; Therefore, in the cultural layer, in addition to tools, many remains of burnt and split animal bones are found. Deep internal passages or shallow stone canopies were, in the full sense of the word, the first house in the history of mankind. Caves served as dwellings and burial places in a variety of eras and among a variety of peoples who were at very different stages of culture - from Paleolithic to modern.

Thus, the life of a caveman was difficult. Danger awaited him at every step, so cavemen lived in groups, this allowed them to escape from predators and at the same time hunt for them. It was cavemen who learned to make fire.

The discovery of the caveman continues. The Caucasus, the Urals, Crimea, Tien Shan, Pamir, Altai... In 1996, an international symposium dedicated to the antiquities of its caves took place in Altai. Scientists from the USA, Canada, Japan, together with Russian colleagues, studied the Paleolithic layers in Altai caves to better understand the processes of the initial human settlement of America and the Pacific basin, because the search for the origins of these processes leads here to the caves of Altai. The finds here are unique, and Japanese archaeologists worked here throughout the field season together with their Russian colleagues.

This is also one of the remarkable facts of our days. At the beginning of the 21st century. The study of the caveman reveals its international, planetary character and its relevance is increasing: this is an integral part of the rapidly developing process of self-knowledge by humanity of its origins, and, consequently, its prospects.

There is no need to fear a loss of interest in this area of research. The attraction of secrets hidden underground increases as the modern way of life becomes more hurried and impersonal; Well, the value of cave monuments for scientific knowledge of the past does not require additional comments. A hundred years ago, the Belgian cave explorer E. Dupont described it this way: “Before our eyes, after many millennia of oblivion, those distant tribes with all their customs appear again, and antiquity, like a magic bird that finds a new source of life in its own ashes, is reborn from own ashes."

List of used literature

1. Alekseev V.P., Pershits A.I. History of primitive society. M, 2001.

2. Architecture, fine and decorative arts from ancient times to the Renaissance. Encyclopedia "Avanta +" (vol. 7). M, 2000.

3. Taylor E.B. Caveman. M, 2006.

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