The Beginning of History (Anthropological Notes)

Abstract

This is an introduction to the book „The Beginning of History”, whiten by its author. He presents a cultural-anthropological inquiry into the phenomenon of history as ‘history of the human reason’, by tracing its evolutionary-historical types – from pre-verbal, ritual-based to verbal. To demonstrate this, the book critically examines transitions between several types of reason: creative (syntactic); cogni-tive (semantic); axiological (value-oriented or pragmatic). The author explores the evolutionary and historical transitions between these types, their semiotic founda-tions, and respective cultural-historical implications, while also changeling the notion of ‘evental history’. The work argues that human history has a productive purpose, the content of which consists of the semeophores of signification, mean-ing, concept, and value, and their material embodiments; the legislation of each type of reason presupposes its own type of long-term historical time, person, reality, and social paradigm; in particular, before the history of time, there is a history of place.