Significant turning point in the development of mankind with a special regard to demography
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http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11956/168431Identifikátory
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- GEOBIBLINE - plné texty [10555]
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2015Human populations have inherited sociability from their animal progenitors. Danger lurked everywhere in nature and it was almost impossible to survive individually. This situation gave rise to the herd-instinct, which we can see in some other populations of mammals. Human herds had tens or hundreds of individuals and communication was important among them. Maternal language evolved gradually and became a basis for further development, although it is possible to recognise certain rudimentary features of communication in some other animal populations. Many languages emerged (many of them have already vanished), but the biological unity of the sub-species homo sapiens sapiens was preserved in spite of the fact that people spread all over the Earth. The invention of numbers and consequently measures (the first quantitative revolution) was an important turning point in the development of science immediately after language. The level of development differed among various populations, some were out front and others lived in isolation for a long time. The invention of agriculture was another turning point, which enabled populations to growth to the hundreds of thousands or even millions of people. This occurred in the period after the last glacial epoch. A few civilisations emerged; we will look at the Western one because of its relative success. Two social structures arose in society with the advancement of rationality and human knowledge and due to the more complicated division of labour, which was originally based only on sex and age. The former is vertical and could be labelled political or a power structure, the latter is horizontal and we can refer to it as humanistic or a social structure. The two only rarely overlap.