Rubicon of Sapientation: Social-Evolutionary Factors in the Emergence of Homo Sapiens

The article is devoted to the traditional philosophical problem of the essence of man, but an approach to its solution through the reconstruction of the origin of the main distinctive features is chosen. The attention is focused not on the boundary, which somewhere and once hominins from the genus Homo (protosapiens) crossed in their evolution, becoming full-fl edged Homo sapiens. This boundary is called the “Rubicon of sapientation”, and sapientation here is understood as approaching the essential human features associated with “reasonableness”: conscious behavior, speech communication, special sociality, cultural accumulation and openness to subsequent evolution. The thesis that this “Rubicon” was crossed not in the known achievements of the Upper Paleolithic of western Eurasia (c. 50–40 thousand years BP), but several tens of thousands of years earlier in Africa is substantiated. On the basis of generalization of various indirect data the main processes and macroevents of this epoch are reconstructed. The reasons for the formation of intergroup alliances are shown, as well as the cardinal role of abilities necessary for such fundamentally new interactions and relations. The acquisition of essential human traits in this concept is understood as a consequence of the development of special “magic wands” – fl exible polyfunctional structures with high possibilities of modifi cation and synthesis. These include rituals, syntax and “withdrawal communication”, supersituational thinking, arbitrary normativity and institutionality. All of them, on the one hand, are connected in a special way with the ability to create intergroup alliances, and on the other hand, they constitute necessary and suffi cient ingredients for the essential qualities of “rationality”.