Man

The most advanced form of life on earth and the subject of social and historical activity and culture. Various branches of knowledge, including sociology, psychology, physiology, pedagogy, and medicine, are devoted to the study of man. By reworking the various types of data furnished by these sciences, philosophy interprets and gives meaning to their findings.
The question of man’s nature (essence), his origin and purpose, and his place in the world has been one of the fundamental problems in the history of philosophical thought. In ancient Chinese, Indian, and Greek philosophy man was perceived as being a part of the cosmos, of a unified supratemporal “order” and “system” of existence (“nature”). He was viewed as a “microcosm” (Democritus), as a reflection and symbol of the universe, the macrocosm, which was in turn interpreted anthropomorphically as a living being possessing a soul. Man was thought to contain all of the principal elements of the cosmos and to consist of a body and soul (spirit), which were interpreted either as two aspects of a single reality (Aristotelianism) or as two different substances (Platonism). In the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, which was developed in Indian philosophy, the boundary between living beings (plants, animals, men, gods) is not fixed; only man, however, strives for “release” from the fetters of empirical existence and its law of karma-samsara. According to the Vedanta, man’s specific principle is atman (soul, spirit, “self), which is essentially identical with the universal spiritual principle, or brahman. Aristotle’s philosophy expressed the view, characteristic of classical philosophy, that man was a living being endowed with spirit and reason (a “rational soul” as opposed to a sensitive or vegetative soul) and with the capacity for social life.
In Christianity, the biblical concept of man as the “image and likeness of god,” divided against himself after his fall from grace, is combined with the doctrine of the union of the divine and the human in the person of Christ, enabling every man to commune with the divine. (The term “superman”—Latin superhumanus— crystallized in Christian tradition.) Medieval philosophy advanced the concept of personality as distinct from psychophysical individuality and not reducible to some universal “nature” or substance (whether corporeal or spiritual), defining personality as a unique relationship (Richard of St. Victor, 12th century).
The Renaissance was pervaded by a fervent belief in man’s autonomy and his boundless creative capacities (Pico della Mirandola). The specific nature of man’s sphere of existence was acutely felt by such Renaissance thinkers as Nicholas of Cusa (On Conjecture, II, 14). Descartes’s idea of thought as the only reliable testimony of human existence (“I think, therefore I am”) formed the basis of a new European rationalism that perceived man’s uniqueness and essence in his ability to think and reason. The Cartesian dualism of body and soul long determined the kinds of questions raised in anthropology. The body was considered an automaton, a machine common to man and animals (J. de La Mettrie, L’Homme machine), and the soul was identified with consciousness. Benjamin Franklin defined man as “a tool-making animal.”
Kant regarded What is man? as the fundamental question of philosophy. Proceeding from the dualistic concept of man as a being who belongs to two different worlds, that of natural necessity and that of moral freedom, Kant divided anthropology into physiological and pragmatic spheres: the former investigates “how nature affects man,” and the latter studies “what man, as a being possessed of free will, makes or can and must make of himself (Soch., vol. 6, Moscow, 1966, p. 351).
Rejecting both Cartesian rationalism and the sensationalist empiricism of the 17th and 18th centuries, German philosophy of the late 18th and early 19th centuries revived the Renaissance conception of man as a living totality (J. G. Herder, J. W. von Goethe, romantic nature philosophy). Herder described man as the first being emancipated by nature. Man’s sense organs and physical structure, in contrast to those of animals, are not specialized and are more indefinite, which is the source of man’s particular advantage: he must mold himself, creating culture in the process. Herder, the Romanticists, and Hegel developed the idea of the historical nature of human existence; Novalis called history applied anthropology. In German classical philosophy man was perceived as the subject of spiritual activity, creating the world of culture, and as the bearer of a universally significant consciousness and a universal ideal principle, namely spirit and reason. Criticizing these ideas of German idealism, L. Feuerbach effected an anthropological reorientation of philosophy. At the center he placed man, defined as a sensible-corporeal being, as the meeting of the concrete “I” and “thou.” In Russia the anthropological principle was developed by N. G. Chernyshevskii.
Such noncognitive capacities and powers as feeling and will became paramount in the irrationalist conceptions of man that emerged in the 19th and 20th centuries. According to F. Nietzsche, it is the interplay of vital forces and passions that determines man, and not consciousness and reason. S. Kierkegaard gave primacy to the act of free will by which man “gives birth to himself,” to the choice by which the individual—that is, a spontaneous natural being—becomes a personality, a spiritual, self-determining entity. The question of personality is central to the conception of man in personalism and existentialism, which hold that man cannot be reduced to some sort of “essence,” whether biological, psychological, social, or spiritual. Rejecting the social nature of personality, existentialism and personalism differentiate between and oppose the concepts of individuality and personality, viewing the former as part of a natural and social totality and the latter as a unique spiritual self-determination (Existenz). Dilthey’s “philosophy of life” and Husserl’s phenomenology paved the way for the emergence of philosophical anthropology as a distinct trend in 20th-century German philosophy, expounded principally by M. Scheler, H. Plessner, A. Gehlen, and E. Rothacker (Kulturanthropologie). The naturalist approach to man is characteristic both of exponents of traditional Freudian-ism and of many 20th-century naturalists in the West.
IU. N. POPOV
Rejecting the idealist and naturalist conceptions of man, Marxism undertook to explain man’s natural and social aspects on the basis of dialectical-materialist monism. Marxism begins by treating man as a derivative of society, as the product and subject of social labor. Marx wrote that “the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each separate individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations” (K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 3, p. 3).
The Marxist analysis of the question of man is predicated on the discovery of the social essence and concrete historical determination of his consciousness and activity, on knowledge of the historical forms of man’s existence and way of life. It also presupposes a disclosure of the relationship between man’s social and biological aspects.
Man’s social history was preceded by his natural prehistory: the worklike activity of the anthropoid apes, the development of gregarious relations among the higher animals, and the development of acoustic and motor means of communication. According to Marxism, the determining factor in man’s development from these precursors was labor, whose origin marked the transition from anthropoid apes to man (F. Engels, ibid., vol. 20, pp. 489–90). Animals cannot fundamentally alter their living conditions; they adapt to their environment, which determines their way of life. Man, on the other hand, does not simply adapt to prevailing conditions. By uniting in joint labor man transforms these conditions to suit his constantly growing needs, thereby creating a world of material and spiritual culture. Culture is created by man to the same extent that man himself is shaped by culture.
Man is a living system uniting the physical and spiritual, the natural and social, and hereditary and acquired traits. As a living organism, man is part of the natural chain of phenomena and is subject to biological (biophysical, biochemical, physiological) laws; at the level of conscious mind and personality, he is oriented toward society, with its specific laws. In terms of physical and morphological structure, man is the most highly organized matter in the known universe. He embodies everything that mankind has accumulated over the ages. This embodiment is achieved through exposure to cultural tradition and through biological heredity. A child inherits a store of genetic information by virtue of the specifically human structure of his body, brain, nervous system, and instincts. “Man is directly a natural being. As a natural being he is on the one hand endowed with natural powers, vital powers—inasmuch as he is an active natural being. These forces exist in him as tendencies and abilities—as instincts” (K. Marx, in K. Marxarid F. Engels, Iz rannikh proizvedenii, 1956, p. 631).
However, natural (anatomical and physiological) instincts develop and are realized only under the conditions of social life, through a child’s interaction with adults. Marxism repudiates metaphysical concepts about the existence of inborn ideas and capabilities in man. The way in which the biological principles of human life manifest themselves is socially conditioned. Man’s life is determined by a single system of conditions that includes both biological and social elements. The biological components of this unified system are simply the necessary conditions, not the driving force of development. Man’s actions and his way of thinking and feeling depend on the objective historical conditions under which he lives and on the characteristics of the social group and class whose interests he represents, either consciously or unconsciously. His spiritual life and the principles by which he lives are not genetically programmed. This is definitely not the case, however, with respect to certain potential artistic aptitudes and individual gifts, which are shaped by society but are based on inherited traits. The development of man’s propensities and capabilities is also affected to a certain degree by heredity, primarily through characteristics of the central nervous system.
A world of objects and social structures embodying the activity of preceding generations lies before every newborn human being. It is this humanized world, in which every object and process appears to be charged with a human significance, social function, and purpose, that surrounds man. Human cultural achievements, however, are not presented to man in a finished form but are rather implied in the objective circumstances in which they are embodied. The assimilation of social, historically shaped forms of activity is the fundamental condition and pivotal mechanism in the making of an individual. In order to transform these forms of activity into their personal abilities and make them part of their individual character, human beings from early childhood interact with adults, imitating and being taught by them. As a result, the developing individual acquires the ability to deal rationally with tools, various types of symbols, words, concepts, ideas, and the totality of social norms. As he assimilates the humanized natural world, the child becomes familiar with culture by various means. “Each of his human relations to the world—seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, thinking, observing, experiencing, wanting, acting, loving—in short, all of the organs of his individual being” take part in this familiarization (ibid. p. 591).
During acculturation man develops mechanisms of self-control that are manifested as the ability to control by an effort of will a wide range of inclinations and instincts. This self-control, essentially social control, smothers impulses that are unacceptable to a given social group and constitutes a prerequisite for social life. The more intensively mankind develops, the more complex are the problems of education and upbringing, of the shaping of man as a personality.
Historically formed legal and moral norms, customs, rules of thought and grammar, and aesthetic tastes shape man’s behavior and intellect, making individual people representatives of a particular way of life, culture, and psychology. Man “will develop his true nature only in society, and the power of his nature must be measured not by the power of the separate individual but by the power of society” (K. Marx and F. Engels, ibid., vol. 2, p. 146). Marx criticized the concept of man as an isolated monad and emphasized that man remains in full contact with society even when he is alone. Man’s awareness of himself always comes through his interaction with other people. Every man is a unique individual but at the same time he possesses a certain essence of the species. A man emerges as a personality when he attains self-awareness, an understanding of his social functions, and a consciousness of himself as the subject of a historical process. The formation of personality is bound up with social differentiation, with the separation of the individual from the collective through the expansion of personal rights and obligations.
The Marxist concept of man rests on the assumption that man can only be free in a free society, where he is not only the means by which social goals are achieved but is above all an end in himself. Marxism holds that the ideal society is a communist society, for only in such a society can man obtain the means that will enable him to realize fully his individuality.
===REFERENCES===
Problema cheloveka v sovremennoi filosofii (collection of articles). Moscow, 1969.Smirnov, G. L. Sovetskii chelovek. Moscow, 1971.Grigor’ian, B. T. Filosofiia o sushchnosti cheloveka. Moscow, 1973.
Sootnoshenie biologicheskogo i sotsial’nogo v cheloveke. Moscow, 1975.Dubinin, N. P., and Iu. G. Shevchenko. Nekotorye voprosy biosotsial’noi prirody cheloveka. Moscow, 1976.A. G. SPIRKINOrigin of man. Man’s appearance on earth was the culmination of a complex and prolonged evolutionary development, and as a biological being, he retains close ties with the animal world. These ties are closest to the Primates, an order in which man makes up the hominid family. It is widely thought that the human evolutionary branch separated from the common anthropoid stem during the intense adaptive radiation of apes in the Miocene, most likely 12–15 million years ago. The most probable ancestor of man during this stage was Ramapithecus (or Kenyapithecus), a highly developed primate known from jaw fragments found in Asia (India, Pakistan), East Africa (Kenya), and Europe (Hungary).The question of when the first hominids appeared is bound up with the hominization criterion itself, concerning which there are diverse opinions. If hominization is to mean a certain degree of assimilation by man’s ancestors of a fundamentally new adaptive zone associated with the development of work activity and culture and with the appearance of a new mode of behavior, then from the morphological point of view the criterion must include the following: erect posture, initial adaptation of the wrist for performing work, and a fairly high level of development of the brain. Accordingly, the oldest authentic representative of the hominids was until recently considered to have been Homo habilis (“skillful man”), identified by the British scientists L. Leakey, P. Tobias, and J. Napier in 1964 on the basis of finds in the Olduvai Gorge. The advanced morphological features of H. habilis (erect posture and a high level of development of the brain, in which he surpasses all contemporary and fossil anthropoid apes) were linked to the earliest and most primitive stone implements known to science. This hominid, who lived approximately 2 million years ago, was probably the creator of the oldest Stone Age culture, the Olduvai culture.Later discoveries, however, attested to the even greater antiquity of hominids, particularly the genus Homo. In the course of excavations in Kenya in 1972, R. Leakey found “skull 1470” and the accompanying skeletal remains of limbs in the area east of Lake Turkana, formerly Lake Rudolf. The absolute age of the find is more than 2 million years. The skull displays a number of advanced features, even when compared with later hominids, including a relatively high and rounded vault, slight projection of the frontal and occipital bones, and moderate postorbital constriction. The cranial capacity (770–775 cu cm) exceeds that of H. habilis (averaging 625 cu cm) and attains a size characteristic of some specimens of Archanthropinae. The shape of the femur is fully human. Working in Tanzania in 1975, M. Leakey found fragments of fossil hominids and stone implements in a stratum 3.5 million years old. Fossil hominids dating from approximately 3 million years ago had been discovered in Hadar (Ethiopia) in 1973–74. The chronological predecessors of modern man also include the Archanthropinae, who appeared some 1.9 million years ago (or perhaps earlier), and Palaeoanthropus, who lived from 300,000 to 35,000 years ago. The present species of man (H. sapiens)appeared no later than 40,000 years ago and possibly earlier. It would appear that Australia and the Americas were settled as early as the Upper Paleolithic. The predominant type of early H. sapiens was Cro-Magnon man, whose remains have been found both in Europe and elsewhere and who survived beyond the Paleolithic. Cro-Magnon man had a straight forehead, superciliary arches (instead of a supraorbital torus), a clearly formed chin protuberance, and a high cranial vault.The general evolution of the hominids is quite complex and cannot be said to be fully understood. It is likely that during anthropogenesis branchings within polymorphic groups coincided with the direct development of individual branches and their “transformation by stages” (seePALAEOANTHROPUS and NEOAN-THROPINAE). But these stages were widely coexistent, and their representatives may at times have shared the same culture.E. N. KHRISANFOVAMan’s biological features. Man is classified as a member of the species Homo sapiens (thinking man), genus Homo, family Hominidae, order Primates, class Mammalia, and phylum Chordata. The human organism has many characteristics in common with vertebrates, and especially with mammals. As in all vertebrates, the basis of man’s internal skeleton is the spinal column, which is preceded during embryonic development by the notochord. Man has two pairs of extremities, a closed cardiovascular system, and a tubular nervous system. His body is structured on the principle of bilateral symmetry and exhibits metamerism, which is typical of all vertebrates.As a mammal, man has a characteristic skin structure (a highly developed corium, or dermis, numerous sebaceous and sweat glands, and a covering of hair, albeit rudimentary over most of the body), a stable body temperature, pulmonary respiration, a four-chambered heart, erythrocytes without nuclei, and mammary glands producing milk for the nourishment of the young. Development of the embryo within the mother’s body is accompanied in man, as in the other higher mammals, by the appearance of a special organ, the placenta.Mammals have a well-developed nervous system and sensory organs, which helped them to survive and progress. Man advanced beyond the other mammals by virtue of the strong development and differentiation of his cerebral cortex.Man’s most characteristic anatomical and physiological features are his erect posture and gait, free upper extremities (for making and using tools), and highly developed means for social interaction. Also distinctive are certain features of the structure of the teeth, jaws, digestive glands, and alimentary organs. The need to maintain balance while walking erect has resulted in a curvature of the spinal column and a shift in the center of gravity.The freeing of the upper extremities from their functions of body support and locomotion necessitated an increase in the size of the skeleton of the lower extremities, a powerful development of the muscles of the lower extremities, and the appearance of the arches of the feet, with their cushioning function. There was also a significant change in the structure of the pelvis, which became larger and wider and which came to serve as the main support for walking erect. All the internal organs adapted to erect posture; the means for supplying blood from the lower extremities to the heart and from the heart to the brain became more complex. The diaphragm shifted from a vertical to a horizontal position, and the muscles of the abdominal prelum acquired a significantly greater role in respiration.Man interacts with other people by means of gestures, mimicry, and articulated speech, which are made possible by a corresponding development of the muscles, the vocal apparatus, and the means for controlling them, including the speech centers of the cortex. Articulated speech, the main channel of interpersonal communication, is inaccessible to animals.Man’s brain has surpassed the simian brain in both absolute and relative terms. A human brain weighs three times more than the brain of a gorilla, whose body weight is three times that of a man. Because of his remarkably well-organized nervous system, man has the prerequisites for unlimited intellectual and emotional progress.Man is born with incompletely formed anatomical and physiological systems, but they are in the “human” mold. Thus, the parts of the skeleton and the muscles that are involved in walking erect are genetically preadapted even before a child’s birth. The skeleton of children who develop using all four extremities for support (children reared by animals, mental defectives), as well as the skeleton of children with paralyzed lower limbs, remains human. In such animals as monkeys and dogs, enforced two- legged locomotion is capable of altering only certain structural features of the skeleton. Similarly, the morphophysiological characteristics of the vocal apparatus and the prerequisites for the subsequent development of speech are also established before birth. These features are absent even in animals that are closely related to man. Advanced development of the new areas of the cortex, and especially of those areas that will become the most highly differentiated, is observed during the ontogenetic development of the human brain. Consequently, man’s social nature is manifested as soon as his hereditary information is implemented.V. V. KUPRIIANOVAll modern men belong to a single species, which is subdivided into several main races. The main traits of the species H. sapiens are characteristic of all races of man, without exception. All races are thus at an equally high level of biological development, contrary to the reactionary assertions of racists. With respect to the time of origin and the number of centers of racial genesis, several hypotheses have been put forward. According to some of them, there was a single fairly extensive geographic area in which modern man, and the races of modern man, developed. Polycentric hypotheses postulate from two to four or five such centers. During the Paleolithic and Mesolithic the density of the population was extremely low, less than one person per 3 sq km. In the Neolithic the density increased approximately tenfold. By the year 1000 the population of the earth was 275 million, by 1500 it had expanded to 450 million, and by 1600 it had grown to 500 million. In 1800 the earth was inhabited by about 1 billion people, and in 1977 by approximately 4 billion.The early stages in the development of hominids were probably closely associated with tropical forest-steppe and steppe regions. Subsequently, man significantly extended his habitat, settling even in deserts, polar areas, and mountain regions, although the largest modern groups inhabit tropical forests and temperate regions with mixed forests. Thus, H. sapiens is panecumenical, that is, a widely distributed species. He includes numerous populations that, upon interbreeding, produce fertile offspring and that exhibit significant phenotypical variability.The intraspecies polymorphism of man’s physique has been known since ancient times. Attempts to classify the various builds of the human body have resulted in the creation of constitutional schemes generally based on clearly delineated types. Since such schemes make it impossible to classify most people, increasing work has been done on the elaboration of quantitative methods that are based on a continuous distribution of constitutional components (muscles, bones, fat). Modern anthropology takes a comprehensive approach to the question of the human constitution, studying the correlation between morphological, physiological, biochemical, and psychological factors.The quantitatively balanced polymorphism of man as a species reflects, to a certain extent, the adaptive radiation of human populations. Thus, for example, the proportion of the various types of physiques may vary significantly in different groups of mankind. A higher incidence of the “elongated type” is found among Arab desert dwellers, especially the bedouin of the Libyan Desert, or among the Nilotic peoples of Equatorial Africa. The “stocky build,” on the other hand, is typical of certain variants of the arctic race (Eskimo). It is believed that such physiques are better adapted to maintaining physiological functions in a hot (or cold) climate through thermoregulation. As a general principle, the “ecological gradient” (the ratio of body weight to surface area) increases among inhabitants of colder climates and decreases among equatorial groups. Consequently, groups from colder climatogeographical zones are heavier and have a relatively smaller skin area.The most clearly discernible forms of physiological adaptation are also observed under extreme living conditions, found primarily in northern, equatorial, and alpine regions. There is, for example, a decrease in the basal metabolic rate from northern to equatorial regions; the opposite tendency is observed for blood immunoglobulins, whose quantity increases in equatorial groups. Among mountain populations there is an increase in hemoglobin content. The origin of these traits is quite complex, although some of them are apparently genetically determined. For example, an effective method for stabilizing cholesterol has evolved among the East African Masai, whose food is generally very fatty but who nevertheless have low levels of cholesterol and virtually never suffer from atherosclerosis. Yet another example is the presumed decrease in tissue sensitivity to the metabolic effects of the growth (somatotropic) hormone among the nanitic Pygmies of Africa. The phenotype has also been found to depend on a whole range of external factors, the foremost of which are socioeconomic (nutrition, illness).A specific feature of the interrelationship between man and his environment is the fundamentally new form of adaptation that he has created, in the course of which man alters his environment, causing simultaneous changes in human social relationships. This process takes place without a restructuring of man’s morphofunctional organization. But man’s biological adaptation is also of a specific kind for it involves the preservation of both his biological and social functions and is affected by the increasingly important social factor. In contrast to animals, man preserves the morphofunctional characteristics of his species regardless of changes in his natural environment by means of sociohistorical labor activity. As a result of man’s long-term influence on his surroundings a new, “artificial” environment has been created which, in turn, exerts a significant influence over various aspects of his vital activity. This process has gained momentum under the conditions of the scientific and technological revolution, in connection with further industrialization, urbanization, and the creation of artificial ecosystems. Since the middle of the 20th century the question of man’s interrelationship with the environment has become a vital issue and has essentially been treated as the problem of man and the biosphere.Sexual dimorphism and a uniform growth and biomorphosis are typical of all ethnoracial groups of H. sapiens. Sexual differences, manifested from the earliest stages of the postnatal period, are first expressed in the rate of development, inasmuch as indicators of biological growth show girls to be in the lead. Moreover, various harmful influences have a lesser effect on the growth processes of women than those of men, which is sometimes attributed to the “protective” action of the two X chromosomes in women. Sexual dimorphism is clearly manifested morphologically in overall bodily dimensions, proportions (relatively broader hips in women and wider shoulders in men), the development of “bodily components” (the better development of subcutaneous fat in women and of muscles and bones in men), microstructural features (muscle fiber diameter, dimensions and total number of fat cells), and certain histochemical characteristics. At all ages, there is a larger percentage of athletic types among men and of pyknic types among women. Studies also show that the athletic type in men and the pyknic type in women are characterized by relatively high levels of secretion of the sex hormones, androgens in males and estrogens in females. Finally, sexual differences also affect many physiological and biochemical traits. Thus, for example, body temperature, arterial pressure, pulse rate, red and white blood cell indexes, basal metabolism, and other factors exhibit a marked periodicity in women (in contrast to men) associated with the reproductive cycle.A specific characteristic of man’s individual development is his relatively long childhood with a comparatively slow rate of growth, followed by a leap in the growth rate in connection with sexual maturation. Chimpanzees and certain other apes exhibit a similar type of growth process, but with them the interval between rearing and sexual maturity is shorter. For this reason, these principles of growth may be viewed as being characteristic of a certain stage in the evolution of the primates, particularly of the hominids, in whose emergence the longer period of instruction of young individuals played an important role. This type of growth is characteristic of modern man, although there may be certain variations in the rates of development of groups and particularly of individuals.Individual variations in the rate of development are apparent in any group of growing individuals, where there is always morphophysiological differentiation at a particular chronological age that determines, in the final analysis, the “biological age” of an individual. Criteria used to establish biological age include various morphological, physiological, and biochemical tests, including those showing the development of the skeleton (skeletal age) and dental system (dental age), sexual development, and hormonal status. Biological age is also determined on the basis of certain indexes of higher nervous activity that depend mainly on age, as well as indexes of the cardiovascular and muscular systems. All of these indexes can change either more or less synchronously or asynchronously, and they can reveal a tendency toward acceleration or retardation of development. The indexes of skeletal, sexual, and general somatic development, which are particularly closely interrelated, are most often used as criteria of biological age. The various indexes are of different diagnostic value, however, depending on age.Rates of development, and consequently biological age, are influenced by many factors. Studies of twins have shown the importance of hereditary factors in determining the skeletal and dental ages, the quantity of sex hormones secreted, and the age at which menstruation begins. A very important role is also played by the socioeconomic factor; environmental factors (climatic, geochemical) have a lesser effect on biological age.The “secular trend,” which has been observed in many countries, especially during the last century, and which is manifested primarily as an acceleration of the developmental processes, an increase in physical dimensions, and some redistribution of physique types, is evidently just a variational phase within the limits of the H. sapiens species complex. Similar secular, or even epochal, changes may also have occurred much earlier. Indeed, anthropologists have determined that body length and the shape of the face and head have been changing since the Neolithic and even earlier. The dynamics of these phenomena has been thoroughly investigated by Soviet scientists. The processes of brachycephalization (an increase in the relative breadth of the head, expressed in cephalic indexes) and debrachycephalization (the opposite tendency) have been especially well studied. The Japanese researchers S. Morita and F. Otsuki (1973) point out, for example, that just over the past 50 years the cephalic index of Japanese men has increased by 3.3 as a result of a widening of the head. Studies by the Soviet anthropologist V. V. Bunak (1968) show that the average height of young Russian men increased by 3 cm in 40 years. Epochal variations have also been noted in indexes of sexual maturity, and they are possible for many other characteristics as well. All of these changes have been random, and the rate of change has varied with location and the period of human development.The main reasons for these microevolutionary phenomena within the H. sapiens species are evidently of a genetic nature, associated chiefly with the interbreeding of the planet’s populations, changes in gene frequencies, and alterations in dominance, although the manifestation of such phenomena also depends on a series of other factors, including socioeconomic ones. Nevertheless, the freeing of Neoanthropinae from the species-forming type of natural selection, the stabilizing form that natural selection takes in modern society, and the development of panmixia, which conteracts the natural mutational process, make it impossible to predict at this time any important changes in the H. sapiens species complex that emerged in the Upper Paleolithic.
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Williams, R. Biokhimicheskaia individual’nost’. Moscow, 1960. (Translated from English.)
Iskopaemye gominidy i proiskhozhdenie cheloveka. Moscow, 1966.Barnett, S. A. Rod chelovecheskii. Moscow, 1968. (Translated from English.)
Biologiia cheloveka. Moscow, 1968. (Translated from English.)
Adaptatsiia cheloveka. Leningrad, 1972.
Antropologiia 70-khgodov. Moscow, 1972.
Osnovnye zakonomernosti rosta i razvitiia detei i kriterii periodizatsii. Odessa, 1975.
Vozniknovenie chelovecheskogo obshchestva: Paleolit Afriki. Leningrad, 1977.“A New Hominid From East Rudolf, Kenya.” American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 1975, vol. 42, no. 3.
Die Evolution der Organismen: Ergebnisse und Probleme der Abstammungslehre, vol. 3: Phylogenie der Hominiden. Edited by G. Heberer. Stuttgart, 1974.