The lecture is dedicated to the emergence of homo sapiens—the thinking man who can speak and use tools.
Anthropogenesis is part of the biological evolution which has led to the emergence of homo sapiens. The key stages of this process, that allowed humans to separate from the world of animals, include the beginning of producing tools, the mastery of fire, and the development of language. This is how homo habilis (the skillful man) was born. The next important stage was the Neolithic revolution—a transition from the primitive economy of hunters and gatherers to agriculture based on crop and livestock farming. Object writing and pictograms appeared during the same period, marking the start of rapid cultural development.
“…the causes of intelligence … in combinations of accidents which, though neutral when they occurred, later took on a sardonic significance: cannibalism turned out to be a spur to mental development; the threat of glaciers, a prerequisite for civilization; the gnawing of bones, the inspiration for the origin of tools. And the junction of the organs of generation with those of elimination, taken from the fish and reptiles, became the topographic map not only for eroticism but for metaphysics, too, which oscillates between defilement and divinity.” (Stanislaw Lem. His Master's Voice. 1968)