This collection contains the results of the study of the oldest and oldest representatives of the human branch of primates. The first part of the collective work is a review of fossil hominids, from the oldest forms, Australopithecus, to people of the late period of the ancient Stone Age. Each article contains information about individual finds, about the stone tools accompanying them, about the taxonomic grouping of fossil forms and their distribution. The second part, closely related to the first, discusses the evolution of the structure of fossil hominids in the departments of the skull and skeleton of the limbs, the dental system, the brain (casts of the internal cavity of the skull), as well as the evolution of mental activity, speech and behavior. The works of the second group include comparative anatomical information about higher monkeys, modern and fossil, and illuminate the early stages of the evolution of the hominid branch, in particular the question of the emergence of a straightened body position.