The problem of the origin of writing

Тихомиров Андрей Ильич

The replacement of the evolutionary type of development with the historical one brought such radical changes in a rather short time compared to the pace of anthropogenesis, which can be defined as a Paleolithic revolution. The product of this revolution was the fundamental anthropological, psychophysiological, psychosocial, spiritual unity of mankind, which will be preserved in history despite the differences in the economic, political, social, linguistic, and everyday development of human communities.

Therefore, the Upper Paleolithic is the epoch when humanity, in addition to biological and species uniformity, acquires that level of integrating ties, which is called culture. Culture is born at the end of the ancient Stone Age as an established system, whereas at the starting point of anthropogenesis we can only talk about individual zones of cultural behavior. The specificity of Paleolithic cultural studies is that its typologies are based on very local and limited material, and the universal laws that emerged from the late Stone Age belong to the deepest, amorphous, dark constants of cultural existence. The archaic basis of civilization is perceived as a collective unconscious formed from a number of discoveries, including the secret of using fire – in South Africa a million years ago. A person used fire earlier than he learned to deliberately extract it. Archaeologists find traces of the use of fire during excavations of the sites of the ancestors of man – a synanthrope and a Neanderthal. Initially, natural fire was used, which arose from spontaneous combustion of dead leaves and grass, from volcanic lava, lightning, etc. Human ancestors, having learned to evaluate the useful properties of fire, preserved it by throwing combustible material into the fire, or in special pits with an angle. The arbitrary production of fire dates back to the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic. There are several ancient ways of producing fire: scraping, drilling and sawing, based on the friction of two pieces of wood against each other (this is how the cross, revered since ancient times, was formed in ancient Egypt, the cross ankh "symbol of life", the shape of which was preserved in the Coptic cross, was placed with the deceased in the coffin), later – carving fire from flint , etc . Scraping is probably the oldest method. Drilling is the most common method of making fire in the past among the peoples of Asia, Africa, America, Australia. Sawing was known to the peoples of West Africa, Indonesia, the Philippine Islands and Australia. The production of fire by carving from flint from the beginning of the Iron Age was improved with the help of flint and existed until the invention of phosphorus matches and, later, lighters in the 19th century. The significance of fire for man is enormous. The ability to make fire "for the first time gave man dominance over a certain force of nature and thereby finally separated man from the animal kingdom" (Engels F., Anti-During, 1953, p. 108). The fire was used for protection from the cold and predatory animals, for lighting, cooking, during round-up hunting of animals. Later, a person learned to use fire for various technical purposes: for firing pottery, when making boats, etc. Among many peoples, getting fire, as well as borrowing someone else's fire, and preserving it is associated with a number of prohibitions and ritual restrictions. The fire became an object of ancestral and later family property. The family cult of the fire of the "sacred hearth" among many peoples was associated with the cult of ancestors.

In ancient mythology, a significant place is occupied by legends about the training of people to produce fire or stealing it from the gods by the heroes of the folk epic, for example, the Georgian Amirani, the Greek Prometheus. The veneration of fire is one of the elements of the religion of Zoroastrianism, in Christianity the Holy Fire is also an object of worship – the descent of the Holy Fire on Easter in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The origin of the "grace fire" is associated with the self-ignition of a mixture that is specially made to form a flame with increased access of heat from people in a closed room who are waiting for the "grace fire". Under certain conditions that are reached during this waiting period, temperature, pressure and heat dissipation, heat does not have time to be transferred to the surrounding space, as a result of which the temperature in the reaction zone of the mixture increases. Self-ignition depends on the chemical composition of the mixture and on the conditions of heat transfer (chain-thermal spontaneous combustion is also possible). Fire was also of great importance in many funerary cults.

The veneration of fire as one of the main forces of nature was widespread in primitive society among almost all peoples of the world – everything falls to the ground, only the smoke from the fire (an option is to burn incense, from Greek. I burn, smoke) rises up, this meant, according to ancient people, that God feels smoke and fire. In one place, the fire was burned for many centuries and those who allowed the flame to fade, and these were mostly women, were killed. In Russia, the caretaker of the fire was called an ognishchanin (from ognishche – pechishche), in the 10th -12th centuries the chief steward of the princely house was a patrimony.

Gehenna is hell, a place of eternal torment, where, according to the teachings of the Christian Church, the soul of a sinner falls after his death. The word goes back to the Hebrew gehinnom, formed from the name of the valley near Jerusalem Geben Hinnom (literally "Garden of the Sons of Hinnom"), where sacrifices were made to idols, after the establishment of Judaism, the former idols were destroyed here and a fire began to burn constantly, destroying the garbage and refuse of a large city, so that this place would not become sacred to non-Judaists again.

Hut on chicken legs – the figurative name comes from those wooden log cabins, which in the old days, in order to protect them from rotting, were placed on stumps with chopped roots and fumigated with smoke from insects. One of the wooden churches in old Moscow, placed, due to the topiness of the place, on such stumps, was called "Nikola on chicken legs". From the Slavic word "smoking", which originally meant burning incense resin or a mixture as a sacrifice, as well as the incense mixture itself, is now used only in the meaning of smoking tobacco. Here are some old Russian games.

SMOKING ROOM. The players sit down next to each other, light a thin splinter and, when it flares up, extinguish it. While the fire is smouldering, the splinter is passed from hand to hand until it stops smoking. Whoever has it extinguished must fulfill some order. While the splinter is being passed, they sing:

Once upon a time there was a Smoking room,

Once upon a time there was a strangler.

Already at the Smoking Room,

Already at the strangler

The legs are small,

The soul is short.

Don't die, Smoker,

Don't die, strangler!

Already at the Smoking Room,

Already at the strangler —

The legs are small.

The soul is short.

Alive, alive

Smoking room,

Alive, alive strangler.

BURNERS. The players form pairs and become a string. Ahead by two steps, "burning" ("gorelytsik", "goryun", etc.) is the one who drives. He is forbidden to look back. The players sing – shout:

Burn, burn clearly,

So that it doesn't go out.

Stay hemline —

Look in the field.

Trumpeters are going there.

Yes, they eat rolls.

Look at the sky —

The stars are burning,

Cranes are screaming —

Goo, goo, goo, I'll run away.

One, two, not a crow,

Run like fire.

The "burning one" has to look at the sky, and meanwhile the rear pair separates and runs – one on one side of the string of pairs, and the other on the other, trying to connect again in front of the "burning one". If the couple succeeds, then the "burning" continues to drive, if not, and the "burning" catches someone, then the one left without a pair drives – becomes "burning". A new pair takes a place directly behind the new "burning" – and the game continues.

Eternal flame is a symbol of eternal memory. The veneration of fire as one of the main forces of nature was widespread in primitive society among almost all peoples of the world – everything falls to the ground, only the smoke from the fire (an option is to burn incense, from Greek. I burn, smoke) rises up, this meant, according to ancient people, that God feels smoke and fire. In one place, the fire was burned for many centuries and those who allowed the flame to fade, and these were mostly women, were killed. In Russia, the caretaker of the fire was called an ognishchanin (from ognishche – pechishche), in the 10th -12th centuries the chief steward of the princely house was a patrimony. Read more in the book by Tikhomirov A.E. When and why did man arise? LitRes, Moscow, 2023