A message on the topic of art culture of ancient civilization. Why is the knowledge of ancient civilizations being methodically destroyed? Astrakhan State Technical

FEATURES OF THE FORMATION OF RIVER AGRICULTURAL CROPS

Social formations, which are called ancient, or ancient, civilizations, began to appear in different regions of the Earth no earlier than 10 thousand years ago. From about this time, three “channels” of development emerged in the history of mankind. Some tribes continue the traditions of the Old Stone Age. Some of them - up to the 20th century (Bushmen, pygmies, aborigines of Australia, many inhabitants of Oceania, the Far North, the Amazon basin, individual mountain peoples, etc.). They remain mainly gatherers, hunters, and fishermen. But in different regions of the Earth there was a spontaneous discovery of the possibilities of active cattle breeding and targeted farming. On one and the other basis, more or less large associations of tribes arise, the formation of ethnic groups begins and the formation (at least in embryonic form) of a fundamentally new organization public life- state structures. Both pastoralists and farmers, for their specific production and for a life different from that of tribal communities, need (albeit to varying degrees) the development of crafts.

But pastoral associations are initially less stable than agricultural ones. Developed cattle breeding requires constant movement of livestock (to new pastures). Pastoralists are nomads. Their centers of associations and crafts are poorly organized. And the craft itself is limited by the needs of a modest life, adapted for movement, as well as by the needs of waging wars and making weapons. As pastoralists moved, they inevitably encountered other pastoralists and invaded the lands of farmers. During serious invasions, assimilation occurred and new communities of people were formed. Often, the victorious pastoralists, becoming the elite of the mixed (with part of the defeated) society, adopted the customs, traditions, and culture of the conquered farmers, although they brought something of their own into all this. Actually, pastoral associations (kingdoms, khanates) like the Scythian, Hunnic or Mongolian were at times very powerful, primarily in military terms. They gave rise to some of the values of their civilizations, their pastoral culture: the very methods of domestication and breeding of livestock, leather dressing, epics, songs, norms of relationships, etc. And yet, these associations turned out to be less stable than the agricultural - settled ones, the values of their cultures – less materialized, not so diverse.

All associations of people later called ancient cultures or ancient civilizations were primarily agricultural, although they were influenced by pastoralists and themselves engaged in limited pastoralism, along with agriculture. Moreover, there were apparently quite a lot of primitive cultures that used agriculture. But only a few of them became civilized, having found themselves in special conditions in which agriculture could become the main factor in fundamental changes in people's lives. This happened where agriculture turned out to be an effective type of economic activity (even with primitive cultivation of the land), a type of economy that creates significant surpluses of production. Not all climate zones were suitable for this. All ancient agricultural civilizations appeared in a fairly warm climate zone. In addition, they all arose in the valleys of large rivers or intermountain hollows. Water and natural river silt or natural mineral fertilizers (in mountainous regions), made it possible, with certain technology, to obtain grain yields of up to 200, or even up to 300 grains per sown grain.

On the basis of agricultural production with such rich possibilities, all the features and achievements of ancient civilizations and ancient cultures developed. They are called both civilizations and cultures. And this is completely justified. For the difference between what we consider today to be civilization and culture was only just beginning to emerge at that time. The achievements of early civilizations, including the use of what was created (discovered) by primitive people (the fire they mastered, the artificial tools and techniques they created, certain skills) - all this acted not only in the actual civilizing function, but also in the cultural, although would be at the vital level of culture. And all this also creates opportunities for the generation and development of spiritual culture, for the storage and transmission of spiritual experience.

The transition to civilization was associated with a departure from natural existence, with the creation of an artificial habitat, with the stratification of the population, with the appearance of organized violence and slavery in people’s lives. But this transition made it possible to create an organized society, gave the opportunity to use increasingly diverse resources to improve the comfort of life and for the emergence of knowledge, enlightenment, for spiritual growth, the flourishing of construction and architecture, for the formation artistic activity.

Taken together, interconnected civilizational and culture-forming processes became possible and were realized where societies of settled farmers developed. This happened in the valleys of such great rivers (with powerful floods) as the Tigris and Euphrates (Ancient Mesopotamia), the Nile (Ancient Egypt), the Indus and Ganges (Ancient India), and the Yellow River (Ancient China). It is not for nothing that these crops are often called agricultural river crops. Somewhat later in time, similar civilizations developed in the valleys of the mountains of Mesoamerica. All named and

Some other ancient civilizations are unique, unlike one another in many ways. And all of them, in terms of civilizational and cultural development, are clearly similar and have common features.

First of all, agriculture, which provided the opportunity for the formation of ancient civilizations, was irrigation agriculture, which required the combined efforts of many people inhabiting the valley of one river (or one area in a mountain ravine). Irrigation devices that ensure watering of land, distribution of water, and its conservation in dry times (special reservoirs) - these structures are complex, requiring constant care and clear authority control.

One river - one power. Irrigation agriculture predetermined the processes of centralization, the unification of disparate tribes and their unions. Control centers were created and cities emerged.

In general, civilization is a type of development of society that is associated with the presence of two interacting factors - the city factor and the rural factor (among the nomads, the first factor was very poorly formalized; they did not have cities). For farmers, the city became the center of administrative structures, concentrated the army, wealth, crafts, and trade. The countryside solved problems of production of agricultural products. Rural areas (periphery) and cities are connected by water and land routes.

In ancient civilizations, movement was limited mainly to its closed territory. One of the common features of all ancient cultures is their relative isolation. And in connection with this - the dominance of the vertical over the horizontal, both in the structure of society and in thinking. Ancient cultures, therefore, are agricultural, river and “vertical” cultures.

These civilizations developed along rivers (or in intermountain areas), and usually a narrow strip of habitat was surrounded by desert, steppe, and mountains. This (in some cases, the sea or ocean) limited horizontal movement. And the thought rushed up and down. The entire worldview of the inhabitants of ancient civilizations is cosmogonic. The whole world of transcendental existence went up and down. The gods were located in the heavenly world. And either the Sky itself (as in Ancient China) turned out to be divine, or, more often, the main deity of a given civilization was identified with the Sun, which gave people everything. Harvests depended on the Sky and the Sun; the sun provided light and warmth. But it could also burn crops. The sky and the sun are extremely important for agriculture. The land is just as important. The grain is sown in the ground and sprouts from the ground. After death, a person goes into the earth. And if the Gods are above, then the ancestors (and some Gods) exist in the underworld, or pass through it before getting to heaven.

The verticality of ancient cultures was also expressed externally: in the tendency to build ever higher structures, temples and pyramids; in the device

earthly life, society, in its hierarchy. One of the reasons for the latter was the emergence of the division of labor. Namely, the emergence of managerial work, the emergence of crafts, and the identification of serving the gods and intellectual work as a special type of activity. It is also important that new peoples usually flow into the territory of civilization from the moment of its formation, since existence within the framework of such an organization provides obvious advantages. Among them, perhaps the most important is protection from the endless permanent state of war of everyone with everyone, so characteristic of primitiveness. Finding themselves in a new environment, the arriving tribe had to find an economic gap that would allow the newcomers to exist comfortably. But the main activities - those that were considered the most prestigious - were already occupied by the indigenous population. Therefore, it was necessary to invent something ourselves. Inventions led to greater diversity in both the world of goods and the world of services. But the tribe that arrived earlier, having “staked out” their area of activity, did not allow those who arrived later to enter it, thereby creating a closed community inaccessible to others. The earlier the tribe arrived, the higher the social status of the class it formed. This is how a hierarchical ladder was created, the existence of which contributed to the establishment of the vertical as the main meaning-forming construct of antiquity.

Moreover, the hierarchy was usually quite rigid: moving up in it was impossible, while moving down was quite free. For example, in China during the Qin era, if there were several sons in a family, only the eldest remained in the class to which he belonged by birth. The rest went down one step. In general, the preservation of hierarchy was considered a matter of paramount importance, because order was conceived only in this form. It was not just the basic, but the only, conceivable as an organizing, principle of being. In primitive times, a person felt himself to be a kind of particle merged with the community, practically indistinguishable and equal to others of the same kind. Now, a person’s sense of self has taken the path of determining his place in the world, in a strictly organized system. It is very important that this place is not just occupied by me, but it represents a factor that determines me as a member of the community and a person. That is, a place in the hierarchy is essentially significant for a person. It essentially organizes a person for life.

Indeed, a society formed according to a hierarchical principle is particularly harmonious and stable. But this principle worked not only in the organization of society; any organization was built in this way. Even the family, which was thought of as an analogy of the state, and, accordingly, vice versa. Thus, in China, the emperor was not only the head of the hierarchical ladder, but was also considered the father and mother of the people. And he should have obeyed as unconditionally as the father’s authority in the family is unconditional. Moreover, any attempt on the power of the father was punishable by the most

in the most cruel way, precisely because it was thought of as an attempt to undermine the power of the emperor, to whom he was supposed to show filial piety. He was considered the unlimited ruler of his subjects and their property. “There is no land that does not belong to the emperor; he who eats the fruits of this land is a subject of the emperor.” The whole country was thought of as one big family, where the father was the emperor. Therefore, to act against the father means to act against the emperor. This kind of crime was punished with incredible cruelty. And it’s not just that the government was despotic. Society simply defended itself from those who were capable of pushing it to the level of a structureless state, to a pre-civilization level. At one time, the following punishments for parricide were established: the murderer was quartered, his younger brothers were beheaded, the house was destroyed, his main teacher was executed by strangulation, neighbors living on the right and left were punished by cutting off their ears (They had to hear and take them where they should), others they gouged out their eyes (they had to see and prevent the crime). The murder of a father, of course, is a terrible crime, but the cruelty of the punishment was connected precisely with the fear of returning to a structureless state, “communitas.”

The ancient man's sense of himself as a civilized, cultural person was embodied in many factors of his existence created by himself. But the main thing was the vertical structure of the world and the determination of one’s place at a certain level in this world. This brought order to life, within which a person could navigate and somehow settle down. It was very important that this order acquired an external, and therefore authoritarian, character. All ancient state formations were predominantly tyrannical or totalitarian. One of the reasons for this was that for ancient man the authority of a certain higher order in relation to him turned out to be extremely important. A certain ideal-connecting layer of existence, in accordance with which a person lived. Otherwise he felt lost, everything was wrong. The Chinese have a saying: “Neither elder nor younger.” Its meaning is that in this case, everything is mixed up and spoiled, that is, the norms and gradations that structure society have broken down. That is why in all ancient civilizations a clear hierarchy was established, both in the exercise of power and in the position of layers of the population in relation to each other. The division into varnas (or castes) in Ancient India is only the most expressive example of the hierarchy of classes. Their relationship had to be maintained, because otherwise the orderliness of life, based on the general laws of the universe, would collapse. Therefore, there was no sense of injustice in the fact that there were higher and lower strata. On the contrary, as expressed in one of the ancient Egyptian texts: it is unfair if the prince is dressed in miserable rags, and the son of a poor and hungry man is dressed in luxurious clothes. It is the preservation of everyone’s position that is important, because the orderliness of existence is vitally important. Residents of ancient states knew that violations of this orderliness led to terrible disasters. After all, at the same time

Ancient civilizations: Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, China, America.

Ancient civilizations, for all their dissimilarity among themselves, still represent a certain unity in contrast to the previous states of society and culture.

The emergence and development of cities, writing, the complication of social relations.

The civilizations of antiquity were preserved from primitive society: dependence on nature, mythological forms of thinking, cult and rituals focused on natural cycles. People's dependence on nature decreased. The main thing that marked the transition from primitiveness to ancient civilizations was the beginning of organized human production activity - the “agrarian revolution”.

The transition from primitiveness to civilization is also associated with a change in the nature of interaction between people in society, with the birth of a new type public relations caused by urban growth.

A person was no longer required to simply repeat accepted patterns of behavior, but to think and analyze his own actions and states.

Writing provided new opportunities for storing and transmitting information.

Ancient civilizations excluded the stranger and despised the inferior, and they despised openly and calmly, without resorting to hypocrisy or reservations. And at the same time, it was in the bosom of ancient civilizations that the principles of all-human unity and moral improvement of the individual, their awareness of the possibility of choice and responsibility, arose. These principles were established along with the emergence and development of world religions, which certainly involved attracting to their side believers who consciously chose a given faith, and did not belong to it by law of birth. In the future, it was world religions that played the role of one of the factors of civilizational integration.

Culture of Ancient Egypt.

Ancient Egypt is one of the oldest civilizations that arose in the northeast of the African continent along the lower reaches of the Nile, where today the modern state of Egypt is located.

Among the achievements of the ancient Egyptians were mining, field surveying and construction technology; mathematics, practical medicine, agriculture, shipbuilding, glass production technology, new forms in literature. Egypt has left a lasting legacy. His art and architecture were widely copied, and his antiquities were exported to all corners of the world.

Egyptian despotism is a classic form of unlimited autocratic power.

Ancient Egyptian mythology is a set of Egyptian legends, in which the central place is occupied by the main cycles: the creation of the world - the birth of the sun god Ra from a lotus flower, from the mouth of Ra came the first gods, and from the tears - people.

The culture of Egypt arose in 4 thousand years BC; before the formation of the state, Egypt consisted of nomes (separate regions). Pharaoh Akha (Greek Menes) in 3 thousand years BC. united Egypt into a single whole. He is the founder of the first dynasty of pharaohs. The symbol of unification is the double crown. Akha built the first capital (Memphis), since then power has been sacred, because Pharaoh is the son of the gods and his descendants carry divine blood. Historical time in Egypt begins with Aha: 1. Epoch of Dr. Kingdoms 30-23c BC 2. The era of the Middle Kingdom 22-17 centuries BC. 3. New Kingdom 16-6 centuries BC.

Ancient Kingdom. At this time, a centralized, strong slave state was formed in Egypt, and the country experienced economic, military-political and cultural prosperity. Hieroglyphic writing appears (the first household inscriptions, then prayers, encrypted by the Frenchman Champollion), the first pyramid (Djoser, consisting of 5 steps), sciences arose from the pyramids: mathematics, astronomy, geometry, medicine, the use of brick begins.

Pyramids of Giza. This ancient Egyptian necropolis consists of Cheops, the somewhat smaller Pyramid of Khafre and the relatively modestly sized Pyramid of Mekerin, as well as a number of smaller accompanying buildings known as the Pyramids of the Queens, the Pavements and the Valley Pyramids. The Great Sphinx is located on the eastern side of the complex, facing east. Many scientists continue to believe that the Sphinx bears a portrait resemblance to Khafre.

During the Middle Kingdom, Thebes became the center of the country. The independence of nomes (regions) increased, which caused the flourishing of local art schools. The pyramids have lost their grandeur. The rulers of the regions - nomarchs - now built tombs not at the foot of the royal pyramids, but in their domains. A new form of royal burial appeared - a rock tomb. They housed wooden figurines of slaves, often depicting entire scenes (a boat with rowers, a shepherd with a herd, warriors with weapons). Statues of pharaohs, intended for public viewing, began to be placed in temples. Funeral temples are often separated from tombs, have an elongated axial composition, and significant space is devoted to colonnades and porticos (Temple of Mentuhotep 1 in Deir el-Bahri).

The New Kingdom is known for the largest number of ancient Egyptian monuments, the period of the heyday of ancient Egyptian statehood and the creation of a large Egyptian “world” state.

OK. 1700 BC e. Egypt survived the invasion of Asian tribes - the Hyksos. The time of their 150-year rule was a period of decline. The expulsion of the Hyksos from the country in the beginning. 16th century BC e. marked the beginning of the New Kingdom era, during which Egypt achieved unprecedented power. Successful campaigns in Asia and the influx of wealth led to the exceptional luxury of life of the Egyptian nobility of this time. The harsh, dramatic images of the Middle Kingdom era were replaced by sophisticated aristocratic ones. The desire for grace and decorative pomp has intensified (?Portraits of Pharaoh Amenhotep with his wife Nefertiti)

In architecture, the trends of the previous period were further developed. In the temple of Queen Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahri, which is an architectural complex unfolded in space, partially carved into the rocks, the strict lines of cornices and proto-Doric columns contrast with their reasonable orderliness with the chaotic crevices of the rocks.

Mesopotamian culture

Civilization is a community of people united by fundamental values and ideals. Signs of civilization: 1. The appearance of writing 2. The appearance of cities 3. The separation of mental labor from physical labor General in Ancient civilizations: 1. Elements of primitive thinking (dependence on nature, mythological consciousness) 2. Beginning knowledge of nature Features of Ancient Eastern civilizations: 1. Disunity. 2. Locality of the development process. 3. Economics. The political form is despotism. 4. The elements of primitive thinking have been preserved. 5. The nature of the interaction between society and nature is changing. Knowledge of nature begins. A person still recognizes himself as a part, but already plays the role of a creator. 6. Concentration of population and economic activity in cities. 7. Complications of social structure. Due to the emergence of new activities

Mesopotamia– Mesopotamia (Tigris and Euphrates, Iraq). The culture arose in 4 thousand years BC. The earth and everything belong to the gods, people are their servants. The first city-states: Urek, Lagash, Ur, Kish - were dedicated to the gods. This is the birthplace of the harp. Several civilizations emerge:

Sumer 4-3 tes years BC The first epic works are created: the Epic of Gilgamesh (king of the city of Ur). A 60-digit measurement system was invented, the Wheel, Great astronomers and astrologers, the first Gods of the Mesopotamian pantheon: An (god of the sky), Ki (goddess of the earth), Enlil (god of air, fate), Enki (God of waters and underground waters), Ishtar ( goddess of love, Dimuzi (her husband is the god of dying and resurrecting nature), Si (god of the moon, Shamash (sun). Philosophy - live here and now. The afterlife from which there is no return. Architecture (no windows to the outside), Temples ziggurats ( looks like Josser's pyramid, but the entrance is on the side, tiled, colored paints, there are lions at the entrance).

Sumerian-Acadian beginning of the 3rd – end of the 3rd millennium BC The Sumerian civilization attracted wild tribes and constant raids. The Simite tribe of the Amorites descended on Sumer and disappeared into the culture. Writing is being improved, among the Sumerians - pictography (pictures), gradually turning into cuneiform (written on clay with a stick). Monuments to literature, hymns to the gods, myths, legends. Composed of the 1st library catalogue, 1st medical books, 1st calendar, 1st map (clay), a lyre appears.

Babylon(in the lane - the gates of God) beginning - end of 2 thousand years BC. The main god is Marduk (god of war) - the patron saint of Babylon. The main architectural monuments: the Tower of Babel - the ziggurat of Marduk (destroyed in the 8th century BC), the development of Mantika (fortune telling by animals and nature, the Cult of water (this is a source of good will, bringing life, the cult of heavenly sanctuaries (the immutability of their movement, it was believed manifestation of divine will, Great development of mathematics, astronomy (lunar and solar calendar).

Assyria 1 thousand years BC Babylon is captured by the Assyrians. This is the most militarized state. They adopt the entire culture. The gods are the same, but renamed. Distinctive feature: depiction of winged bulls, bearded men warriors, military battles, violence against prisoners.

Culture of Ancient India

For the definition of civilization, see earlier

India from the Indus River, first called Sindhu, then Hind, the local population of Hindi. Periodization: 1. The most ancient culture of 25-18 centuries BC. Pre-Aryan period. 2. Vedic period Ser 2 thousand - 7 centuries BC. 3. Buddhist period 6-3c BC 4. Classical period 2nd century BC – 5th century

Pre-Aryan culture (Dravidian). Dravidians are a local population, an Australian-Negroid race. They create 2 great civilizations near the Indus River - Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro. High level civilization. Cities were based on the quadrangle principle, had no sharp corners, and were separated by streets. Jewelry. The deity in the lotus position in a state of meditation is proto-Shiva. Yoga and tantra - they are associated with women's cults). This culture dies mysteriously, the end coincides with the arrival of a new people - Arya (they came from the territory of Eastern Europe).

European race. A language close to ours. Arius - noble. Located near the Ganges River - the Vedas - sacred books of religious and philosophical content: Rig-Veda, Samoveda, Atharva-Veda, Ayur-Veda, Vedic literature - Upanishads. The caste system, varna (color, varna system) was introduced. A) – Caste, varna – brahmans (spiritual teachers) color white ( religious figures. B) – Kshatriyas (warriors) – rajas, color – red. B) – Vaishya – all (the general population – farmers, traders) are yellow in color. A and B were allowed to listen and study Vedic literature. D.) Shudras (servants) color – black cannot be listened to or read Vedic literature. D) – The untouchables are the local population. 3 main creator Gods: 1. Brahma - created the universe, 2. Vishnu - keeps order in the universe 3. Shiva - fertilizes, burns. The population of India is divided into Vaishnavites (nature) and Saivaites (blood). The idea of Vedic literature: the idea of sacrifice - you have to pay for everything, sacrifice to the most dear; the idea of karma is the law of causes (actions, desires) and consequences (happiness or misfortune. Karma is energy that has its own vibration and color. Reincarnation is reincarnation, rebirth. Incarnation is the incarnation of God on earth. The next stage of development of the Vedic lyra is Brahmanism 15-7 century BC From 7 century Axial time - many religions appear, in India 2:

Buddhism is the first world religion. Originated 7-6c BC. In Northern India, later distributed in Tibet, Mongolia, China, Japan and South-East Asia. Indian people– teacher Buddha is not a name, it is a state of awakening or enlightenment, the name is Sithartha. This is a religion without God, all existence consists of Dharmas (that which holds molecules, atoms, the code of the universe). Life is a flow of Dharmas, unstable dharmas are Samsara, stable ones are Nirvana.

Trilakshina (three principles of Buddhism) 1. The absence of Atman (soul) in man and the creator; the task of a Buddhist is to interrupt the existence of the soul. 2. Everything is emptiness, where there is nothing permanent. 3. Everything in this world is suffering. The essence of Buddhism is that the world is suffering. They prayed to Bothisattva (this is Buddha on earth), and at later stages they began to deify the Buddha. The sacred book is the Tipitaka.

Vedic civilization- Indo-Aryan culture associated with the Vedas, the earliest sources about the History of India.

The Buddhist period was a time of crisis in India for the ancient Vedic religion, the guardians of which were the priests.

Classical period The classical era is characterized by the final formation of a stable religious, communal-caste and economic system of many possessions of opposing small dynasties, alternately creating fragile major powers of varying scope.

Culture of Ancient China

The culture of China arose 3 thousand years BC. near the Yellow River. They descended from the divine ancestor Huangdi (yellow man. 1st cult - they deified the emperor - he is the son of heaven, the entire Chinese empire is under heaven. The Emperor - Wang - is a conductor between worlds. 2nd cult of the dead. The position of man in the culture of China is not a king, and the grains of sand that are between heaven and earth. The task of man is not to remake the world, but to fit into it. The symbol of the worldview is the boat.

The Chinese worldview is complex; there is no concept of disharmony, enmity, imperfection, there is only a combination of opposites. Light - darkness, Husband-wife... 5 perfections that are inherent in nature and man: duty, decency, wisdom, sincerity, humanity. Death is a return to one's origins. The most famous book is the book of changes I-ching (religious and philosophical treatise, fortune telling by pentagrams). Main religions: Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism.

Taoism– Tao is a great nothing and a great something from which the whole world will be created. Originated in the 6th-5th century BC. Distributed in Japan and Korea. Founder of Lao Tzu. This is a religious and philosophical teaching of a pantheistic orientation (everything is a manifestation of God). Religion without God.

Confucianism arose 6-5 centuries BC. Founder: Confucius. Distributed in China, Japan, Korea. Founder of Kung Fu Tzu. This is an ethical-religious system. Religion without God. Writing originates in the 15th century BC. in the form of hieroglyphs. 1st inscriptions on vessels and oracle bones. 1st book - a collection of songs, hymns from the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC, Shi-dzyn - a book of historical collections.

Architecture – The Great Wall of China (221-224 BC). The houses were built on stilts, with scattered roofs, and roofs with curved edges. The boat is a residential building. Chinese Inventions - Printed books, porcelain, silk, mirrors, umbrellas and paper kites are just a small portion of those everyday items that were invented by the Chinese and which people still use today all over the world. It is noteworthy that the Chinese developed porcelain production technology a thousand years before the Europeans! And two of the most famous Chinese inventions arose from philosophy. In their search for the elixir of immortality, Taoist alchemists accidentally deduced the formula for gunpowder, and the magnetic compass was created based on a tool used for geomancy and feng shui.

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If we look at a map of the world and mentally plot on it the states that existed in ancient times, then before our eyes there will be a gigantic belt of great cultures, stretching from northern Africa, through the Middle East and India to the harsh waves of the Pacific Ocean.

There are different hypotheses about the reasons for their occurrence and long-term development. The theory of Lev Ivanovich Mechnikov, expressed by him in his work “Civilizations and Great Historical Rivers,” seems to us the most substantiated.

He believes that the main reason for the emergence of these civilizations were rivers. First of all, a river is a synthetic expression of all the natural conditions of a particular area. And secondly, and this is the main thing, these civilizations arose in the bed of very powerful rivers, be it the Nile, Tigris and Euphrates or Yellow River, which have one interesting feature, explaining their great historical mission. This peculiarity lies in the fact that such a river can create all the conditions for growing absolutely amazing crops, but it can overnight destroy not only crops, but also thousands of people living along its bed. Therefore, in order to maximize the benefits of using river resources and minimize the damage caused by the river, collective, hard work of many generations is necessary. Under pain of death, the river forced the peoples who fed near it to unite their efforts and forget their grievances. Everyone performed their clearly defined role, sometimes not even fully realizing the overall scale and focus of the work. Perhaps this is where the fearful worship and abiding respect felt for rivers comes from. In Ancient Egypt, the Nile was deified under the name Hapi, and the sources of the great river were considered the gateway to the other world.

When studying a particular culture, it is very important to imagine the picture of the world that existed in the minds of a person of a given era. The picture of the world consists of two main coordinates: time and space, in each case specifically refracted in the cultural consciousness of a particular ethnic group. Enough complete reflection Pictures of the world are myths, and this is true both for antiquity and for our days.

In Ancient Egypt (the self-name of the country is Ta Kemet, which means “Black Land”) there was a very branched and rich mythological system. Many primitive beliefs are visible in it - and not without reason, because the beginning of the formation of ancient Egyptian civilization dates back to the middle of the 5th - 4th millennium BC. Somewhere at the turn of the 4th - 3rd millennium, after the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt, an integral state was formed led by Pharaoh Narmer and the famous countdown of dynasties began. The symbol of the reunification of the lands was the crown of the pharaohs, on which together were a lotus and papyrus - respectively, signs of the upper and lower parts of the country.

The history of Ancient Egypt is divided into six central stages, although there are intermediate positions:

Predynastic period (XXXV - XXX centuries BC)

Early Dynastic (Early Kingdom, XXX - XXVII centuries BC)

Ancient Kingdom (XXVII - XXI centuries BC)

Middle Kingdom (XXI - XVI centuries BC)

New Kingdom (XVI - XI centuries BC)

Late Kingdom (8th - 4th centuries BC)

All of Egypt was divided into nomes (regions), each nome had its own local gods. The central gods of the entire country were proclaimed to be the gods of the nome where the capital was currently located. Capital Ancient kingdom was Memphis, which means the supreme god was Ptah. When the capital was moved south, to Thebes, Amon-Ra became the main god. For many centuries ancient Egyptian history the following were considered the fundamental deities: the sun god Amon-Ra, the goddess Maat, who was in charge of laws and world order, the god Shu (wind), the goddess Tefnut (moisture), the goddess Nut (sky) and her husband Geb (earth), the god Thoth (wisdom and cunning ), the ruler of the afterlife kingdom Osiris, his wife Isis and their son Horus, the patron saint of the earthly world.

Ancient Egyptian myths not only tell about the creation of the world (the so-called cosmogonic myths), about the origin of gods and people (theogonic and anthropogonic myths, respectively), but are also full of deep philosophical meaning. In this regard, the Memphis cosmogonic system seems very interesting. As we have already said, at its center is the god Ptah, who was originally the earth. Through an effort of will, he created his own flesh and became a god. Deciding that it was necessary to create some kind of world around himself, Ptah gave birth to gods who helped in such a difficult task. And the material was earth. The process of the creation of gods is interesting. In the heart of Ptah the thought of Atum (the first generation of Ptah) arose, and in the tongue - the name “Atum”. As soon as he uttered this word, Atum was born from the Primordial Chaos. And here the first lines of the “Gospel of John” immediately come to mind: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1-1). As we see, the Bible has powerful cultural roots. Indeed, there is a hypothesis that Moses was an Egyptian, and, having led the people of Israel to the Promised Land, retained many of the customs and beliefs that existed in Ancient Egypt.

We find an interesting version of the origin of people in the Heliopolis cosmogony. God Atum accidentally lost his children in the primordial darkness, and when he found them, he cried with happiness, the tears fell to the ground - and from them people emerged. But despite such a reverent history, life ordinary person was completely subservient to the gods and pharaohs, who were revered as gods. A person had a clearly assigned social niche, and it was difficult to go beyond it. Therefore, just as there were dynasties of pharaohs above, so below there were centuries-old dynasties, for example, of artisans.

The most important myth in the mythological system of Ancient Egypt was the myth of Osiris, which embodied the idea of an ever-dying and ever-resurrecting nature.

A vivid symbol of absolute submission to the gods and their governors, the pharaohs, can be the scene of the trial in the afterlife kingdom of Osiris. Those who came to the posthumous trial in the halls of Osiris had to pronounce the “Confession of Denial” and renounce 42 mortal sins, among which we see both mortal sins recognized as such by the Christian tradition, and very specific ones, associated, for example, with the sphere of trade. But the most remarkable thing was that to prove one’s sinlessness it was enough to utter a renunciation of sins, accurate to the point of a comma. In this case, the scales (the heart of the deceased was placed on one bowl, and the feather of the goddess Maat on the other) would not move. The feather of the goddess Maat in this case personifies the world order, strict adherence to the laws established by the gods. When the scales began to move, the balance was upset, a person was faced with non-existence instead of continuing life in the afterlife, which was the most terrible punishment for the Egyptians, who had been preparing for an afterlife all their lives. By the way, it was for this reason that Egyptian culture did not know heroes, in the sense that we find among the ancient Greeks. The gods created a wise order that must be obeyed. Any change is only for the worse, so the hero is dangerous.

The ancient Egyptians’ ideas about the structure of the human soul, which has five components, are interesting. The main ones are Ka (astral double of a person) and Ba (vital force); then come Ren (name), Shuit (shadow) and Ah (shine). Although, of course, Egypt did not yet know the depth of spiritual self-reflection that we see, suppose, in the culture of the Western European Middle Ages.

So time and space are ancient Egyptian culture turned out to be clearly divided into two parts - “here”, that is, in the present, and “there”, that is, in the other world, the afterlife. “Here” is the flow of time and the finiteness of space, “there” is eternity and infinity. The Nile served as the road to the afterlife kingdom of Osiris, and the guide was the “Book of the Dead,” excerpts from which can be found on any sarcophagus.

All this served the cult of the dead, which steadily occupied a leading position in ancient Egyptian culture. An important component of the cult was the funeral process itself, and, of course, the ritual of mummification, which was supposed to preserve the body for subsequent afterlife.

The relative immobility of cultural consciousness served as one of the important reasons for the strange immutability of ancient Egyptian culture for about 3 millennia. And conservation of customs, beliefs, norms of art, etc. has intensified over the course of history, despite serious external influences. For example, the main features of ancient Egyptian art, both in the Ancient and New Kingdoms, remained canonicity, monumentality, hieraticism (sacred abstraction of images), and decorativeness. For the Egyptians, art played an important role precisely from the point of view of the afterlife cult. Through art, a person, his image, life and deeds were immortalized. Art was the “road” to eternity.

And, probably, the only person who seriously shook not only the foundations of the state structure, but also cultural stereotypes, was the pharaoh of the 18th dynasty named Akhenaten, who lived in the 14th century BC during the era of the New Kingdom. He renounced polytheism and ordered to worship only one god, Aton, the god of the solar disk; closed many temples, instead of which he built others dedicated to the newly proclaimed deity; being under the name of Amenhotep IV, he took the name Akhenaten, which translated means “Pleasing to Aten”; erected a new capital Akhetaten (Heaven of Aten), built according to completely different criteria than before. Inspired by his ideas, artists, architects, and sculptors began to create new art: open, bright, reaching towards the sun, full of life, light and solar warmth. Akhenaten's wife was the beautiful Nefertiti.

But this “sacrilege” did not last long. The priests were sullenly silent, the people grumbled. And the gods were probably angry - military luck turned away from Egypt, its territory was greatly reduced. After Akhenaten’s death, and he reigned for about 17 years, everything returned to normal. And Tutankhaten, who ascended the throne, became Tutankhamun. And the new capital was buried in the sands.

Of course, the reasons for such a sad ending are deeper than the simple revenge of the gods. Having abolished all the gods, Akhenaten still retained the title of god, so monotheism was not absolute. Secondly, you cannot convert people to a new faith in one day. Thirdly, the implantation of a new deity took place by violent methods, which is completely unacceptable when it comes to the deepest layers of the human soul.

Experienced several foreign conquests during his career long life Ancient Egypt, but always kept its culture intact, however, under the blows of the armies of Alexander the Great, it ended its centuries-old history, leaving us a legacy of pyramids, papyri and many legends. And yet, we can call the culture of Ancient Egypt one of the cradles of Western European civilization, whose echoes are found in the ancient era and are noticeable even during the Christian Middle Ages.

For modern culture, Egypt became more open after the work of Jean-François Champollion, who in the 19th century solved the mystery of ancient Egyptian writing, thanks to which we were able to read many ancient texts, and above all, the so-called “Pyramid Texts”.

Ancient India.

Characteristic ancient Indian society- dividing it into four varnas (from Sanskrit “color”, “cover”, “shell”) - brahmanas, kshatriyas, vaishyas and sudras. Each varna was a closed group of people occupying a certain place in society. Belonging to Varna was determined by birth and inherited after death. Marriages took place only within a single varna.

Brahmins (“pious”) were engaged in mental work and were priests. Only they could perform rituals and interpret sacred books. Kshatriyas (from the verb “kshi” - to own, rule, as well as destroy, kill) were warriors. Vaishyas (“devotion”, “dependence”) made up the bulk of the population and were engaged in agriculture, crafts, and trade. As for the Shudras (the origin of the word is unknown), they were at the lowest social level, their lot was hard physical labor. One of the laws of Ancient India says: a sudra is “a servant of another, he can be expelled at will, killed at will.” For the most part, the Sudra varna was formed from local aborigines enslaved by the Aryans. The men of the first three varnas were introduced to knowledge and therefore, after initiation, they were called “twice-born.” This was prohibited for Shudras and women of all varnas, because, according to the laws, they were no different from animals.

Despite the extreme stagnation of ancient Indian society, in its depths there was a constant struggle between the varnas. Of course, this struggle also involved the cultural and religious sphere. Over the centuries, one can trace the clashes, on the one hand, of Brahmanism - the official cultural and religious doctrine of the Brahmins - with the movements of Bhagavatism, Jainism and Buddhism, behind which stood the Kshatriyas.

A distinctive feature of ancient Indian culture is that it does not know names (or they are unreliable), therefore the individual creative principle has been erased in it. Hence the extreme chronological uncertainty of its monuments, which are sometimes dated within the range of a whole millennium. The reasoning of the sages is concentrated on moral and ethical problems, which, as we know, are the least amenable to rational research. This determined the religious and mythological nature of the development of ancient Indian culture as a whole and its very conditional connection with scientific thought itself.

Important integral part ancient Indian culture were the Vedas - collections of sacred songs and sacrificial formulas, solemn hymns and magical spells during sacrifices - “Rigveda”, “Samaveda”, “Yajurveda” and “Atharvaveda”.

According to the Vedic religion, the leading gods were considered: the sky god Dyaus, the god of heat and light, rain and storms, the ruler of the universe Indra, the god of fire Agni, the god of the divine intoxicating drink Soma, the sun god Surya, the god of light and day Mithra and the god of the night, the keeper of eternal order Varuna. The priests who performed all the rituals and instructions of the Vedic gods were called brahmins. However, the concept of “Brahman” in the context of ancient Indian culture was broad. Brahmanas also called texts with ritual, mythological explanations and commentaries on the Vedas; Brahman also called the abstract absolute, the highest spiritual unity, which ancient Indian culture gradually came to understand.

In the struggle for hegemony, the Brahmins tried to interpret the Vedas in their own way. They complicated the rituals and order of sacrifices and proclaimed a new god - Brahman, as the creator god who rules the world along with Vishnu (later “Krishna”), the guardian god and Shiva, the destroyer god. Already in Brahmanism a characteristic approach to the problem of man and his place in the world around him crystallizes. Man is a part of living nature, which, according to the Vedas, is completely spiritualized. There is no difference between man, animal and plant in the sense that they all have a body and a soul. The body is mortal. The soul is immortal. With the death of the body, the soul moves into another body of a person, animal or plant.

But Brahmanism was the official form of the Vedic religion, while others existed. Ascetic hermits lived and taught in the forests, creating forest books - the Aranyakas. It was from this channel that the famous Upanishads were born - texts that brought to us the interpretation of the Vedas by ascetic hermits. Translated from Sanskrit, the Upanishads mean “to sit near,” i.e. near the teacher's feet. The most authoritative Upanishads number about ten.

The Upanishads lay down a tendency towards monotheism. Thousands of gods are first reduced to 33, and then to a single god Brahman-Atman-Purusha. Brahman, according to the Upanishads, is a manifestation of the cosmic soul, the absolute, cosmic mind. Atman is the individual-subjective soul. Thus, the proclaimed identity “Brahman is Atman” means the immanent (internal) participation of man in the cosmos, the original kinship of all living things, affirms the divine basis of all things. This concept would later be called “pantheism” (“everything is God” or “God is everywhere”). The doctrine of the identity of objective and subjective, bodily and spiritual, Brahman and Atman, world and soul is the main position of the Upanishads. The sage teaches: “That is Atman. You are one with him. You are that.”

It was the Vedic religion that created and substantiated the main categories of religious and mythological consciousness that have passed through the entire history of the cultural development of India. In particular, from the Vedas the idea was born that there is an eternal cycle of souls in the world, their transmigration, “samsara” (from the Sanskrit “rebirth.” “passing through something”). At first, samsara was perceived as a disorderly and uncontrollable process. Later, samsara was made dependent on human behavior. The concept of the law of retribution or “karma” (from Sanskrit “deed”, “action”) appeared, meaning the sum of actions committed by a living being, which determines the present and future existence of a person. If during one life the transition from one varna to another was impossible, then after death a person could count on changing his social status. As for the highest varna - brahmanas, it is even possible for them to liberate themselves from samsara by achieving the state of “moksha” (from Sanskrit “liberation”). The Upanishads record: “As rivers flow and disappear into the sea, losing name and form, so the knower, freed from name and form, ascends to the divine Purusha.” According to the law of samsara, people can be reborn into a variety of beings, both higher and lower, depending on their karma. For example, yoga classes help improve karma, i.e. practical exercises aimed at suppressing and controlling everyday consciousness, feelings, and sensations.

Such ideas gave rise to a specific attitude towards nature. Even in modern India, there are sects of the Digambaras and Shvetambaras, who have a special, reverent attitude towards nature. When the first ones walk, they sweep the ground in front of them, and the second ones carry a piece of cloth near their mouths so that, God forbid, some midge does not fly in there, because it could once have been a person.

By the middle of the first millennium BC, great changes were taking place in the social life of India. By this time, there are already a dozen and a half large states, among which Magatha rises. Later, the Maurya dynasty unites all of India. Against this background, the struggle of the kshatriyas, supported by the vaishyas, against the brahmanas is intensifying. The first form of this struggle is associated with bhagavatism. “Bhagavad Gita” is part of the ancient Indian epic tale Mahabharata. main idea This book will reveal the relationship between a person’s worldly responsibilities and his thoughts about the salvation of the soul. The fact is that the question of the morality of social duty was far from idle for the kshatriyas: on the one hand, their military duty to the country obliged them to commit violence and kill; on the other hand, the death and suffering that they brought to people cast doubt on the very possibility of liberation from samsara. God Krishna dispels the doubts of the kshatriyas, offering a kind of compromise: every kshatriya must fulfill his duty (dharma), fight, but this must be done with detachment, without pride and fanaticism. Thus, the Bhagavad Gita creates a whole doctrine of renounced action, which formed the basis of the concept of Bhagavatism.

The second form of struggle against Brahmanism was the Jain movement. Like Brahmanism, Jainism does not deny samsara, karma and moksha, but believes that merger with the absolute cannot be achieved only through prayers and sacrifices. Jainism denies the sanctity of the Vedas, condemns blood sacrifices and ridicules Brahmanical ritual rites. In addition, representatives of this doctrine deny the Vedic gods, replacing them with supernatural creatures - genies. Later, Jainism split into two sects - moderate (“dressed in white”) and extreme (“dressed in space”). They are characterized by an ascetic lifestyle, outside the family, at temples, withdrawal from worldly life, and contempt for their own physicality.

The third form of the anti-Brahmanical movement was Buddhism. The first Buddha (translated from Sanskrit - enlightened), Gautama Shakyamuni, from the family of Shakya princes, was born, according to legend, in VI BC from the side of his mother, who once dreamed that a white elephant entered her side. The childhood of the prince's son was cloudless, and moreover, they did everything they could to hide from him that there was any kind of suffering in the world. Only after reaching the age of 17 did he learn that there are sick, weak and poor people, and the end of human existence is miserable old age and death. Gautama embarked on a search for truth and spent seven years wandering. One day, having decided to rest, he lay down under the Bodhi tree - the Tree of Knowledge. And in a dream four truths appeared to Gautama. Having known them and become enlightened, Gautama became Buddha. Here they are:

The presence of suffering that rules the world. Everything that is generated by attachment to earthly things is suffering.

The cause of suffering is life with its passions and desires, because everything depends on something.

It is possible to escape from suffering into nirvana. Nirvana is the extinction of passions and suffering, the breaking of ties with the world. But nirvana is not the cessation of life and not the renunciation of activity, but only the cessation of misfortunes and the elimination of the causes of a new birth.

There is a way by which one can achieve nirvana. There are 8 steps leading to it: 1) righteous faith; 2) true determination; 3) righteous speech; 4) righteous deeds; 5) righteous life; 6) righteous thoughts; 7) righteous thoughts; 8) true contemplation.

The central idea of Buddhism is that a person is able to break the chain of rebirths, break out of the world cycle, and stop his suffering. Buddhism introduces the concept of nirvana (translated as “cooling, fading”). Unlike Brahmanical moksha, nirvana does not know social boundaries and varnas; moreover, nirvana is experienced by a person on earth, and not in the other world. Nirvana is a state of perfect equanimity, indifference and self-control, without suffering and without liberation; a state of perfect wisdom and perfect righteousness, for perfect knowledge is impossible without high morality. Anyone can achieve nirvana and become a Buddha. Those who achieve nirvana do not die, but become arhats (saints). A Buddha can also become a bodhisattva, a holy ascetic who helps people.

God in Buddhism is immanent to man, immanent to the world, and therefore Buddhism does not need a creator god, a savior god, or a manager god. At the early stage of its development, Buddhism came down primarily to the identification of certain rules of behavior and moral and ethical problems. Subsequently, Buddhism tries to cover the entire universe with its teachings. In particular, he puts forward the idea of the constant modification of everything that exists, but takes this idea to the extreme, believing that this change is so rapid that one cannot even talk about being as such, but one can only talk about eternal becoming.

In the 3rd century BC. Buddhism is accepted by India as an official religious and philosophical system, and then, breaking up into two large directions - Hinayana (“small vehicle”, or “narrow path”) and Mahayana (“big vehicle”, or “broad path”) - spreads far outside India, in Sri Lanka, Burma, Kampuchea, Laos, Thailand, China, Japan, Nepal, Korea, Mongolia, Java and Sumatra. However, it must be added that the further development of Indian culture and religion followed the path of transformation and departure from “pure” Buddhism. The result of the development of the Vedic religion, Brahmanism and the assimilation of beliefs that existed among the people was Hinduism, which undoubtedly borrowed a lot from previous cultural and religious traditions.

Ancient China.

The beginning of the formation of ancient Chinese culture dates back to the second millennium BC. At this time, many independent states-monarchies of an extremely despotic type were emerging in the country. The main occupation of the population is irrigation farming. The main source of existence is land, and the legal owner of the land is the state represented by the hereditary ruler - the van. In China there was no priesthood as a special social institution; the hereditary monarch and sole landowner was at the same time the high priest.

Unlike India, where cultural traditions developed under the influence of the highly developed mythology and religion of the Aryans, Chinese society developed on its own basis. Mythological views weighed much less heavily on the Chinese, but nevertheless, in a number of positions, Chinese mythology almost literally coincides with Indian and the mythology of other ancient peoples.

In general, unlike the ancient Indian culture, which was subject to the colossal influence of mythology, which fought for centuries to reunite spirit with matter, atman with brahman, ancient Chinese culture is much more “down to earth”, practical, coming from everyday common sense. It is less concerned with general problems than with problems of social and interpersonal relations. Magnificent religious rituals are replaced here by a carefully developed ritual for social and age purposes.

The ancient Chinese called their country the Celestial Empire (Tian-xia), and themselves the Sons of Heaven (Tian-tzu), which is directly related to the cult of Heaven that existed in China, which no longer carried an anthropomorphic principle, but was a symbol of a higher order. However, this cult could only be carried out by one person - the emperor, therefore, in the lower strata of ancient Chinese society, another cult developed - the Earth. According to this hierarchy, the Chinese believed that a person has two souls: material (po) and spiritual (hun). The first one goes to the ground after death, and the second one goes to heaven.

As mentioned above, an important element of ancient Chinese culture was the understanding of the dual structure of the world, based on the relationship of Yin and Yang. The symbol of Yin is the moon; it is feminine, weak, gloomy, dark. Yang is the sun, the masculine principle, strong, bright, light. In the ritual of fortune telling on a mutton shoulder or turtle shell, common in China, Yang was indicated by a solid line, and Yin by a broken line. The result of fortune telling was determined by their ratio.

In the VI-V centuries BC. Chinese culture gave humanity a wonderful teaching - Confucianism - which had a huge influence on everything spiritual development China and many other countries. Ancient Confucianism is represented by many names. The main ones are Kun Fu Tzu (in Russian transcription - “Confucius”, 551-479 BC), Mencius and Xun Tzu. Teacher Kun came from an impoverished aristocratic family in the kingdom of Lu. He went through a stormy life: he was a shepherd, taught morality, language, politics and literature, and at the end of his life he achieved a high position in the public sphere. He left behind the famous book “Lun-yu” (translated as “conversations and hearings”).

Confucius cares little about the problems of the other world. “Without knowing what life is, how can you know what death is?” - he liked to say. His focus is on man in his earthly existence, his relationship with society, his place in the social order. For Confucius, a country is a big family, where everyone must remain in his place, bear his responsibility, choosing the “right path” (“Tao”). Confucius attaches particular importance to filial devotion and respect for elders. This respect for elders is reinforced by appropriate etiquette in everyday behavior - Li (literally “ceremonial”), reflected in the book of ceremonies - Li-ching.

In order to improve order in the Middle Kingdom, Confucius puts forward a number of conditions. Firstly, it is necessary to honor old traditions, because without love and respect for its past, the country has no future. It is necessary to remember ancient times, when the ruler was wise and intelligent, officials were selfless and loyal, and the people prospered. Secondly, it is necessary to “correct names”, i.e. placing all people in their places in a strictly hierarchical order, which was expressed in the formula of Confucius: “Let the father be the father, the son the son, the official the official, and the sovereign the sovereign.” Everyone should know their place and their responsibilities. This position of Confucius played a huge role in the fate of Chinese society, creating a cult of professionalism and skill. And finally, people must acquire knowledge in order, first of all, to understand themselves. You can ask from a person only when his actions are conscious, but from a “dark” person there is no demand.

Confucius had a unique understanding of social order. He defined the interests of the people, in whose service the sovereign and officials were, as the highest goal of the aspirations of the ruling class. The people are even higher than the deities, and only in third place in this “hierarchy” is the emperor. However, since the people are uneducated and do not know their true needs, they need to be controlled.

Based on his ideas, Confucius defined the ideal of a person, which he called Junzi, in other words, it was the image of a “cultured person” in ancient Chinese society. This ideal, according to Confucius, consisted of the following dominants: humanity (zhen), sense of duty (yi), loyalty and sincerity (zheng), decency and observance of ceremonies (li). The first two positions were decisive. Humanity meant modesty, justice, restraint, dignity, selflessness, and love for people. Confucius called duty a moral obligation that a humane person, by virtue of his virtues, imposes on himself. Thus, the ideal of Junzi is an honest, sincere, straightforward, fearless, all-seeing, understanding, attentive in speech, careful in deeds person, serving high ideals and goals, constantly seeking the truth. Confucius said: “Having learned the truth in the morning, you can die in peace in the evening.” It was the ideal of Junzi that Confucius laid as the basis for the division of social strata: the closer a person is to the ideal, the higher he should stand on the social ladder.

After the death of Confucius, his teaching split into 8 schools, two of which - the school of Mencius and the school of Xun Tzu - are the most significant. Mencius proceeded from the natural kindness of man, believing that all manifestations of his aggressiveness and cruelty are determined only by social circumstances. The purpose of teaching and knowledge is “to find the lost nature of man.” The state structure must be carried out on the basis of mutual love and respect - “Van must love the people as his children, the people must love Wang as their father.” Political power, accordingly, should have as its goal the development of the natural nature of man, providing it with maximum freedom for self-expression. In this sense, Mencius acts as the first theorist of democracy.

His contemporary Xunzi, on the contrary, believed that man is naturally evil. “The desire for profit and greed,” he said, “are innate qualities of a person.” Only society through appropriate education, the state and the law can correct human vices. Essentially, the goal state power- to remake, re-educate a person, to prevent his natural vicious nature from developing. This requires a wide range of means of coercion - the only question is how to use them skillfully. As can be seen, Xunzi actually substantiated the inevitability of a despotic, totalitarian form of social order.

It must be said that Xunzi’s ideas were supported not only theoretically. They formed the basis of a powerful socio-political movement during the reign of the Qin dynasty (3rd century BC), which was called legalists or “legists”. One of the main theoreticians of this movement, Han Fei-tzu, argued that the vicious nature of man cannot be changed at all, but can be limited and suppressed through punishments and laws. The legalists' program was almost completely implemented: uniform legislation was introduced for all of China, a single monetary unit, a single written language, a single military-bureaucratic apparatus, and the construction of the Great Wall of China was completed. In a word, the state was unified, and the Great Chinese Empire was formed in place of the warring states. Having set the task of unifying Chinese culture, the legalists burned most of the books, and the works of philosophers were drowned in outhouses. For concealing books, they were immediately castrated and sent to build the Great Wall of China. They were rewarded for denunciations, and executed for non-denunciations. And although the Qin dynasty lasted only 15 years, the bloody rampage of the first “cultural revolution” in China brought many victims.

Along with Confucianism, Taoism became one of the main directions of the Chinese cultural and religious worldview. After the penetration of Buddhism into China, it entered the official religious triad of China. The need for a new teaching was due to the philosophical limitations of Confucianism, which, being a socio-ethical concept, left unanswered questions of a global ideological nature. Lao Tzu, the founder of the Taoist school, who wrote the famous treatise “Tao Te Ching” (“Book of Tao and De”) tried to answer these questions.

The central concept of Taoism is Tao (“right path”) - the fundamental principle and universal law of the universe. The main features of the Tao, as defined by Yang Hing Shun in the book “The Ancient Chinese Philosophy of Lao Tzu and His Teachings”:

This is the natural way of things themselves. There is no deity or “heavenly” will.

It exists forever as the world. Infinite in time and space.

This is the essence of all things, which manifests itself through its attributes (de). Without things, Tao does not exist.

As an essence, Tao is the unity of the material basis of the world (qi) and its natural path of change.

This is an inexorable necessity of the material world, and everything is subject to its laws. It sweeps away everything that interferes with it.

The basic law of Tao: all things and phenomena are in constant movement and change, and in the process of change they all turn into their opposite.

All things and phenomena are interconnected, which is carried out through a single Tao.

Tao is invisible and intangible. Inaccessible by feeling and cognizable by logical thinking.

Knowledge of Tao is available only to those who are able to see harmony behind the struggle of things, peace behind movement, and non-existence behind being. To do this, you need to free yourself from passions. “He who knows does not speak. The one who speaks does not know.” From here the Taoists derive the principle of non-action, i.e. prohibition on actions contrary to the natural flow of Tao. “He who knows how to walk leaves no traces. He who knows how to speak does not make mistakes.”

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Discipline: Cultural Studies

Subject: CULTURE OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS

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CULTURE OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS

Let's move directly to the history of foreign culture. And we will begin our story from times that are usually called historical, since these eras brought to us written monuments that make it possible, with varying degrees of reliability, to restore cultural images of various periods human history. So, a few words about the culture of ancient civilizations.

Political economic theory in relation to ancient cultures distinguishes between two modes of production that existed at that time - ancient Asian and ancient and, accordingly, two systems of slavery - patriarchal (aimed at the production of direct means of subsistence) and a higher (“civilized”) one, aimed at the production of surplus value. From the point of view of the development of productive forces, these two slave-owning modes of production correspond to the Bronze Age and the Iron Age.

Bronze Age societies arose in the third millennium BC and created three centers of ancient civilization: eastern (Ancient China), middle (Ancient India) and western (Sumerian-Akkadian kingdom, Ancient Egypt, then Babylonia, Crete-Mycenaean states). The ancient method of production (from the beginning of the Iron Age) in its classical form developed in the Eastern Mediterranean, in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. If there are many specific features in each region, these centers of civilizations had a number of common features.

Bronze Age

Age of Iron

subsistence farming associated with product exchange;

absence private property to the ground;

community resilience;

economic dominance of the village over the city;

the patriarchal nature of slavery;

caste (almost complete mutual impenetrability of social layers);

“Oriental despotism” (a person’s position in society is determined by his affiliation with state power);

the existence of a state religion and a class of priests - the ideologists of a given society.

the beginning of commodity-money relations; separation of crafts from agricultural activities;

the emergence of trading capital;

community decay;

establishing the economic dominance of the city over the countryside;

abolition of debt slavery;

the penetration of slave labor into the sphere of production;

the formation of slave-owning democracies in a number of states;

the absence of an organized class of priests as a special division of state power.

He believes that the main reason for the emergence of these civilizations were rivers. First of all, a river is a synthetic expression of all the natural conditions of a particular area. And secondly, and this is the main thing, these civilizations arose in the bed of very powerful rivers, be it the Nile, Tigris and Euphrates or Yellow River, which have one interesting feature that explains their great historical mission. This peculiarity lies in the fact that such a river can create all the conditions for growing absolutely amazing crops, but it can overnight destroy not only crops, but also thousands of people living along its bed. Therefore, in order to maximize the benefits of using river resources and minimize the damage caused by the river, collective, hard work of many generations is necessary. Under pain of death, the river forced the peoples who fed near it to unite their efforts and forget their grievances. Everyone performed their clearly defined role, sometimes not even fully realizing the overall scale and focus of the work. Perhaps this is where the fearful worship and abiding respect felt for rivers comes from. In Ancient Egypt, the Nile was deified under the name Hapi, and the sources of the great river were considered the gateway to the other world.

When studying a particular culture, it is very important to imagine the picture of the world that existed in the minds of a person of a given era. The picture of the world consists of two main coordinates: time and space, in each case specifically refracted in the cultural consciousness of a particular ethnic group. Myths are a fairly complete reflection of the picture of the world, and this is true both for antiquity and for our days.

The history of Ancient Egypt is divided into six central stages, although there are intermediate positions:

Predynastic period (XXXV - XXX centuries BC)

Early Dynastic (Early Kingdom, XXX - XXVII centuries BC)

Ancient Kingdom (XXVII - XXI centuries BC)

Middle Kingdom (XXI - XVI centuries BC)

New Kingdom (XVI - XI centuries BC)

Late Kingdom (8th - 4th centuries BC)

All of Egypt was divided into nomes (regions), each nome had its own local gods. The central gods of the entire country were proclaimed to be the gods of the nome where the capital was currently located. The capital of the Ancient Kingdom was Memphis, which means the supreme god was Ptah. When the capital was moved south, to Thebes, Amon-Ra became the main god. For many centuries of ancient Egyptian history, the following were considered the fundamental deities: the sun god Amon-Ra, the goddess Maat, who was in charge of laws and world order, the god Shu (wind), the goddess Tefnut (moisture), the goddess Nut (sky) and her husband Geb (earth), the god Thoth (wisdom and cunning), the ruler of the afterlife kingdom Osiris, his wife Isis and their son Horus, the patron saint of the earthly world.

Ancient Egyptian myths not only tell about the creation of the world (the so-called cosmogonic myths), about the origin of gods and people (theogonic and anthropogonic myths, respectively), but are also full of deep philosophical meaning. In this regard, the Memphis cosmogonic system seems very interesting. As we have already said, at its center is the god Ptah, who was originally the earth. Through an effort of will, he created his own flesh and became a god. Deciding that it was necessary to create some kind of world around himself, Ptah gave birth to gods who helped in such a difficult task. And the material was earth. The process of the creation of gods is interesting. In the heart of Ptah the thought of Atum (the first generation of Ptah) arose, and in the tongue - the name “Atum”. As soon as he uttered this word, Atum was born from the Primordial Chaos. And here the first lines of the “Gospel of John” immediately come to mind: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1-1). It turns out that the Bible has powerful cultural roots. Indeed, there is a hypothesis that Moses was an Egyptian, and, having led the people of Israel to the Promised Land, retained many of the customs and beliefs that existed in Ancient Egypt.

We find an interesting version of the origin of people in the Heliopolis cosmogony. God Atum accidentally lost his children in the primordial darkness, and when he found them, he cried with happiness, the tears fell to the ground - and from them people emerged. But despite such a reverent history, the life of an ordinary person was completely subject to the gods and pharaohs, who were revered as gods. A person had a clearly assigned social niche, and it was difficult to go beyond it. Therefore, just as there were dynasties of pharaohs above, so below there were centuries-old dynasties, for example, of artisans.

The most important myth in the mythological system of Ancient Egypt was the myth of Osiris, which embodied the idea of an ever-dying and ever-resurrecting nature.

The ancient Egyptians’ ideas about the structure of the human soul are interesting: it has five components. The main ones are Ka (astral double of a person) and Ba (vital force); then come Ren (name), Shuit (shadow) and Ah (shine). Although, of course, Egypt did not yet know the depth of spiritual self-reflection that we see, suppose, in the culture of the Western European Middle Ages.

So, the time and space of ancient Egyptian culture turned out to be clearly divided into two parts - “here,” that is, in the present, and “there,” that is, in the other world, the afterlife. “Here” is the flow of time and the finiteness of space, “there” is eternity and infinity. The Nile served as the road to the afterlife kingdom of Osiris, and the guide was the “Book of the Dead,” excerpts from which can be found on any sarcophagus.

The relative immobility of cultural consciousness served as one of the important reasons for the strange immutability of ancient Egyptian culture for about 3 millennia. And conservation of customs, beliefs, norms of art, etc. has intensified over the course of history, despite serious external influences. For example, the main features of ancient Egyptian art in both the Ancient and New Kingdoms remained canonicity, monumentality, hieraticism (sacred abstraction of images), and decorativeness. For the Egyptians, art played an important role precisely from the point of view of the afterlife cult. Through art, a person, his image, life and deeds were immortalized. Art was the “road” to eternity.

And, probably, the only person who seriously shook not only the foundations of the state structure, but also cultural stereotypes, was the pharaoh of the 18th dynasty named Akhenaten, who lived in the 14th century BC during the era of the New Kingdom. He renounced polytheism and ordered to worship only one god, Aten, the god of the solar disk; closed many temples, instead of which he built others dedicated to the newly proclaimed deity; being under the name of Amenhotep IV, he took the name Akhenaten, which translated means “Pleasing to Aten”; erected a new capital Akhetaten (Heaven of Aten), built according to completely different criteria than before. Inspired by his ideas, artists, architects, and sculptors began to create new art: open, bright, reaching towards the sun, full of life, light and solar warmth. Akhenaten's wife was the beautiful Nefertiti.

Of course, the reasons for such a sad ending are deeper than the simple revenge of the gods. Having abolished all the gods, Akhenaten still retained the title of god, thus monotheism was not absolute. Secondly, you cannot convert people to a new faith in one day. Thirdly, the implantation of a new deity took place by violent methods, which is completely unacceptable when it comes to the deepest layers of the human soul.

Ancient Egypt experienced several foreign conquests during its long life, but always kept its culture intact, however, under the blows of the armies of Alexander the Great, it completed its centuries-old history, leaving us a legacy of pyramids, papyri and many legends. And yet, we can call the culture of Ancient Egypt one of the cradles of Western European civilization, whose echoes are found in ancient times and are noticeable even during the Christian Middle Ages.

Ancient India. The formation of ancient Indian culture is associated with the arrival of Aryan tribes (“Aryans” or “Aryans”) in the Indus and Ganges valleys in the second half of the second millennium BC. According to scientists, Aryan tribes were formed already in the middle of the third millennium BC. north of the Black and Caspian Seas, in the area between the Dnieper, Don and Volga rivers. Their closeness to the Proto-Slavic and Proto-Scythian tribes is undeniable, as evidenced by many common features of these cultures, including linguistic proximity. In the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. The Aryans, for a still unknown reason, moved to the territory of what is now Iran, Central Asia and Hindustan. The migration apparently occurred in waves and took at least 500 years.

A characteristic feature of ancient Indian society is its division into four varnas (from Sanskrit “color”, “cover”, “sheath”) - brahmins, kshatriyas, vaishyas and sudras. Each varna was a closed group of people occupying a certain place in society. Belonging to Varna was determined by birth and inherited after death. Marriages took place only within a single varna.

An important component of ancient Indian culture were the Vedas - collections of sacred songs and sacrificial formulas, solemn hymns and magical spells during sacrifices - “Rigveda”, “Samaveda”, “Yajurveda” and “Atharvaveda”.

It was the Vedic religion that created and substantiated the main categories of religious and mythological consciousness that have passed through the entire history of the cultural development of India. In particular, from the Vedas the idea was born that there is an eternal cycle of souls in the world, their transmigration, “samsara” (from Sanskrit “rebirth”, “passing through something”). At first, samsara was perceived as a disorderly and uncontrollable process. Later, samsara was made dependent on human behavior. The concept of the law of retribution or “karma” (from Sanskrit “deed”, “action”) appeared, meaning the sum of actions committed by a living being, which determines the present and future existence of a person. If during one life the transition from one varna to another was impossible, then after death a person could count on a change in his social status. As for the highest varna - brahmanas, it is even possible for them to liberate themselves from samsara by achieving the state of “moksha” (from Sanskrit “liberation”). The Upanishads record: “As rivers flow and disappear into the sea, losing name and form, so the knower, freed from name and form, ascends to the divine Purusha.” According to the law of samsara, people can be reborn into a variety of beings, both higher and lower, depending on their karma. For example, yoga classes help improve karma, i.e. practical exercises aimed at suppressing and controlling everyday consciousness, feelings, and sensations.

By the middle of the first millennium BC, great changes were taking place in the social life of India. By this time, there are already a dozen and a half large states, among which Magatha rises. Later, the Maurya dynasty unites all of India. Against this background, the struggle of the kshatriyas, supported by the vaishyas, against the brahmanas is intensifying. The first form of this struggle is associated with bhagavatism. “Bhagavad Gita” is part of the ancient Indian epic tale Mahabharata. The main idea of this book is to identify the relationship between a person’s worldly responsibilities and his thoughts about the salvation of the soul. The fact is that the question of the morality of social duty was far from idle for the kshatriyas: on the one hand, their military duty to the country obliged them to commit violence and kill; on the other hand, the death and suffering that they brought to people cast doubt on the very possibility of liberation from samsara. God Krishna dispels the doubts of the kshatriyas, offering a kind of compromise: every kshatriya must fulfill his duty (dharma), fight, but this must be done with detachment, without pride and fanaticism. Thus, the Bhagavad Gita creates a whole doctrine of renounced action, which formed the basis of the concept of Bhagavatism.

The second form of struggle against Brahmanism was the Jain movement. Like Brahmanism, Jainism does not deny samsara, karma and moksha, but believes that merger with the absolute cannot be achieved only through prayers and sacrifices. Jainism denies the sanctity of the Vedas, condemns blood sacrifices and ridicules Brahmanical ritual rites. Later, Jainism split into two sects - moderate (“dressed in white”) and extreme (“dressed in space”). They are characterized by an ascetic lifestyle, outside the family, at temples, withdrawal from worldly life, and contempt for their own physicality.

The presence of suffering that rules the world. Everything that is generated by attachment to earthly things is suffering.

The cause of suffering is life with its passions and desires, because everything depends on something.

There is a way by which one can achieve nirvana. There are 8 steps leading to it:

1) righteous faith;

2) true determination;

3) righteous speech;

4) righteous deeds;

5) righteous life;

6) righteous thoughts;

7) righteous thoughts;

8) true contemplation.

Ancient China. The beginning of the formation of ancient Chinese culture dates back to the second millennium BC. At this time, many independent states-monarchies of an extremely despotic type were emerging in the country. The main occupation of the population is irrigation farming. The main source of existence is land, and the legal owner of the land is the state represented by the hereditary ruler - the van. In China there was no priesthood as a special social institution; the hereditary monarch and sole landowner was at the same time the high priest.

Unlike India, where cultural traditions were formed under the influence of the highly developed mythology and religion of the Aryans, Chinese society developed on its own basis. Mythological views weighed much less heavily on the Chinese, but nevertheless, in a number of positions, Chinese mythology almost literally coincides with Indian and the mythology of other ancient peoples.

In general, unlike the ancient Indian culture, which was subject to the colossal influence of mythology, which struggled for centuries to reunite spirit with matter, atman with brahman, ancient Chinese culture is much more “down to earth”, practical, coming from everyday common sense. It is less concerned with general problems than with problems of social and interpersonal relations. Magnificent religious rituals are replaced here by a carefully developed ritual for social and age purposes.

The ancient Chinese called their country the Celestial Empire (Tian-xia), and themselves the Sons of Heaven (Tian-tzu), which is directly related to the cult of Heaven that existed in China, which no longer carried an anthropomorphic principle, but was a symbol of a higher order. However, this cult could only be performed by one person - the emperor, therefore, in the lower strata of ancient Chinese society, another cult developed - the Earth. According to this hierarchy, the Chinese believed that a person has two souls: material (po) and spiritual (hun). The first one goes to the ground after death, and the second one goes to heaven.

In the VI-V centuries BC. Chinese culture gave humanity a wonderful teaching - Confucianism - which had a huge influence on the entire spiritual development of China and many other countries. Ancient Confucianism is represented by many names. The main ones are Kun Fu Tzu (in Russian transcription - “Confucius”, 551-479 BC), Mencius and Xun Tzu. Teacher Kun came from an impoverished aristocratic family in the kingdom of Lu. He went through a stormy life: he was a shepherd, taught morality, language, politics and literature, and at the end of his life he achieved a high position in the public sphere. He left behind the famous book “Lun-yu” (translated as “conversations and hearings”).

His contemporary Xunzi, on the contrary, believed that man is naturally evil. “The desire for profit and greed,” he said, “are innate qualities of a person.” Only society can correct human vices through appropriate education, the state and the law. In fact, the goal of state power is to remake, re-educate a person, and prevent his natural vicious nature from developing. This requires a wide range of means of coercion - the only question is how to use them skillfully. As can be seen, Xunzi actually substantiated the inevitability of a despotic, totalitarian form of social order.

This is the natural way of things themselves. There is no deity or “heavenly” will.

It exists forever as the world. Infinite in time and space.

This is the essence of all things, which manifests itself through its attributes (de). Without things, Tao does not exist.

As an essence, Tao is the unity of the material basis of the world (qi) and its natural path of change.

This is an inexorable necessity of the material world, and everything is subject to its laws. It sweeps away everything that interferes with it.

The basic law of Tao: all things and phenomena are in constant movement and change, and in the process of change they all turn into their opposite.

All things and phenomena are interconnected, which is carried out through a single Tao.

Tao is invisible and intangible. Inaccessible by feeling and cognizable by logical thinking.

Bibliography:

1. Dmitrieva N.A., Vinogradova N.A. Art of the Ancient World. - M., 2005

2. Erasov B.S. Culture, religion and civilization in the East. - M., 2003

3. Keram K. Gods. Tombs. Scientists. - St. Petersburg, 1999

4. Lazarev M. Egypt and Rus': solar connection. // Science and religion, 2000

5. Lipinskaya Y., Marciniak M. Mythology of Ancient Egypt. - M., 2002

6. Mathieu M.E. Ancient Egyptian myths. - M.-L., 1999

7. Mechnikov L. Civilization and great historical rivers. - M., 2003

8. Rak I.V. Myths of Ancient Egypt. - St. Petersburg, 2001

9. Jung K.-G. On the psychology of Eastern religions and philosophies. - M., 2003

10. Jaspers K. The meaning and purpose of history. - M., 2002

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“Do not the terms: ancient, middle and modern history (even if used more correctly than is now done) turn into words without meaning and meaning if they are applied not to the history of individual civilizations, but to world history?” - wrote N. Ya. Danilevsky. “Ancient world - Middle Ages - Modern times: here is an incredibly meager and meaningless scheme, the unconditional dominance of which over our historical thinking endlessly prevented us from correctly perceiving the actual place, rank, gestalt, above all, the life span of a small part of the world manifesting itself on the soil of Western Europe since the time of the German emperors, in his relation to general history higher humanity,” this is how O. Spengler assessed the historical classification of cultures. After these words, is it worth combining a number of powerful cultures and a huge period of time of several thousand years into the Ancient World, if it turns out to be comparable to the Middle Ages - with a period that fits into several centuries of one civilization? And even more so, with the New Time, which is even shorter? Since the formation of the civilizational paradigm, the linear concept of history has been criticized so much that it no longer seems possible to consider such dissimilar social systems and such a long period of time as some kind of integrity.

Nevertheless, we will consider precisely as a set of social systems that arose as a result of the Neolithic revolution, many of which lasted until modern times. There are reasons for this. The method of classifying research objects can assume any basis. For sociocultural systems, these may be time boundaries, spatial location, linguistic affiliation, organization of power, etc. Such classifications are of an official nature - they are compiled to solve limited problems and do not reveal the essential characteristics of culture; they may be based on a random feature. Classification always presupposes the presence of clear boundaries between classes of objects and a certain place of the object under study in the classification scheme. The typologization procedure, which makes it possible to identify the fundamental properties of a cultural system and predict its behavior on the basis of this, involves determining the structure-forming, core characteristics of a culture that determine its functioning and on which variable characteristics depend. Typologization does not provide clear boundaries between types (there may be transitional types); its main procedure is to identify the ideal core - an ideal model that allows us to explain aspects of the existence of a culture, its behavior and evolution.

In cultural studies there is not yet an exhaustive typology (allowing one to determine the typological affiliation of any cultural system), but the historical approach makes it possible to identify the typological characteristics of cultures that explain them as wholes. From this point of view, firstly, the different temporal extent of ancient civilizations and medieval or modern culture is not a basis for denying the presence of unifying features for similar cultures. For example, types of living beings have unequal chronologies and different distributions in geographical space. Secondly, the uneven distribution of societies according to cultural types (the presence of only one culture in a type, with several representatives of another type) also cannot serve as a basis for denying the existence of such a typology. Therefore, it is natural that primitive cultures are united on the basis of appropriative production (obtaining food directly from nature - hunting, fishing and gathering), which is associated with the social organization of society based on blood ties, which, in turn, determines the absence of a political-legal apparatus and institutionalized spiritual culture. Regardless of whether such cultural systems are archaeological (belonging to the deep past) or modern, they are representatives of the same type. In this case, if cultures that arose as a result of the evolution of a primitive sociocultural system and the transition to a new form of culture in ancient times, and cultures that have preserved the traditional way of life to the present day, are united by interrelated characteristics, then they belong to the same cultural type.

Systemic changes in culture associated with the transition from an appropriating economy to a producing economy - agriculture and cattle breeding

(which arose later) were called the Neolithic Revolution. The term “Neolithic revolution,” like “urban revolution,” was proposed by the Anglo-Australian archaeologist G. Child in his fundamental work “At the Origins of European Civilization” (1925). In his concept of social evolution, these two revolutions are essentially two parts of one process. He believed that civilization arises as a result of two interrelated processes, which he called revolutions: the transition to a productive economy and the transition to an urban way of life. Since these processes are interconnected, they were later united in the concept of the Neolithic revolution. It was Child who developed ten criteria by which civilization differs from previous types of culture:
increasing the size and density of settlements, turning them into cities;
social stratification (class stratification), which provides for the existence of a privileged ruling class that uses the state machine to maintain its superiority over the oppressed;
mechanisms for extracting “social surpluses” to maintain the state apparatus, including taxes or tribute;
a political organization built on territorial, and not just kinship, grounds - the state; concentration of power;
social division of labor, allowing the identification of categories of artisans and specialists in non-production areas;
intensive economy involving foreign trade;
writing or its substitutes, ensuring registration of the product and recording of knowledge;
the emergence of the rudiments of exact sciences necessary to ensure the labor process;
developed fine arts;
monumental public buildings.

The transition to a productive economy (agriculture and later to nomadic cattle breeding) initially occurred in places with favorable natural and climatic conditions. They became the centers of the first civilizations, where the spiritual and material foundations of the historical civilizations of Mesopotamia, North Africa, the Far East, and Central America were laid. The first settled agricultural societies arose in the Middle East 10-9 thousand years BC, but civilizations, as complexly organized urbanized societies, formed after the advent of writing, around the 4th millennium BC.

Another type of culture that emerged in the process of the Neolithic revolution was a culture that was also based on a more complex technology - a productive economy, but fundamentally opposed to the urban society of agricultural civilizations - nomadic cattle breeding. Nomadic cattle breeding developed in the arid steppe and mountainous regions of Central Asia around the 3rd millennium BC. after the domestication of the horse (for the first time in Ukraine in the 4th-3rd millennium BC). Thus, the Neolithic revolution stretched over several millennia and gave rise to types of culture that exist to this day.

The productive type of economy is not only agriculture and nomadic cattle breeding, but also metallurgical production, which has become the technological basis of the trade and craft economy. Among the first, complexly organized social systems were societies located in territories where the dry climate and the absence of large rivers did not contribute to the emergence of agriculture (as the main type of economy) and nomadic cattle breeding, the development of which required extensive meadows. However, there were resources for metallurgy, other types of crafts and convenient maritime means of communication. The availability of sources of raw materials and means of communication contributed to population growth and the formation of complex social systems. Such social systems were formed later, since their existence required a higher level of technology. Therefore, a civilization of this type took shape at the turn of the 2nd and 1st millennia BC. in the eastern Mediterranean.

These three types of sociocultural systems had their own character and vector of evolution and determined the main geocultures. Period from the 4th millennium BC (when the first civilizations took shape) until the 4th century. AD (when a new stage of global history begins) unites the cultures of the Ancient World. This period includes the formation of the main geocivilizations, the main vectors of evolution (stagnation type of development, cyclical and progressive), the main types of culture. The period called Ancient history, these are diverse cultural coexistence, mutual influences and independent, local existence of cultures. The Ancient World gave birth to all the main types of cultures that exist today; it is marked by greater diversity compared to the Primitive World. The vectors of cultural development during this period were not linear: social systems merged, passed from one state to another, and situations of reverse evolution occurred - a return to original technologies. But, as the domestic philosopher and culturologist M. S. Kagan said, “in the history of mankind it happened once - only once! - such a situation when the production of inedible objects - tools and weapons, clothing and housing, household utensils and even works of art devoid of any utilitarianism - became the basis of the socio-cultural existence of an entire people, and agriculture and livestock breeding acquired an auxiliary character! (“Introduction to the history of world culture”, 2003). The formation of this civilization took place within the framework of the Ancient World, but the cultural vector and cultural potential developed in the depths of this sociocultural system became the source of a new stage in global history.

Antiquity is characterized by another important trend. In addition to cultural diversity, the opposite tendency appears in Antiquity - the formation of a single supersystem, which directly follows from organizational laws that are valid for any complex self-organizing systems. These laws assume that the orderliness of a new level arises from the diversity of the previous stage. For orderly interaction, coexisting systems must take organizational and structural form. This trend - the formation of the foundations for the coexistence of a future united world, originating in Antiquity, is practically realized in the period 800-200. BC. This period, called the Axial Time by the German philosopher K. Jaspers (“The Meaning and Purpose of History,” 1949), is remarkable in that among the diversity of peoples, social systems, and cultures, three main cultural circles were formed, which became the birthplace of philosophical and religious systems, reflecting the “axis of world history” - the emergence of universal values and universal human culture. During this period, a pivotal period for global history, the main value systems were formed, embodied in the philosophical and religious sermons of the Mediterranean region (the teachings of the Palestinian prophets, the Iranian Zarathustra and Greek poets, philosophers), in the sermons of the Buddha (Indian cultural circle), in the philosophical and political ethical teachings of Taoists and Confucius (China). With all the differences and independence of these religious and philosophical systems, they all posed fundamental questions to humanity, the answer to which marked the path to a universal human culture, which does not imply the homogenization of social existence, but necessarily provides for the existence of common principles of interaction. Characterizing the culture of the Ancient World, it is appropriate to quote the words of Hegel (Lectures on the Philosophy of History, 1821): “... We, surveying the past, no matter how great it may be, deal only with the present, because philosophy, as dealing with the true, deals with what is eternally present. Everything that happened in the past is not lost for her... The present present form of the spirit contains all the previous steps. True, these stages developed one from the other as independent ones; but the spirit has always been in itself what it is; the difference lies only in the development of this being in itself. The life of the present spirit is a circulation of stages, which, on the one hand, appear as the past. Those moments which the spirit seems to have left behind itself, it contains within itself and in its true depth.”

The earliest traces of permanent Neolithic agricultural settlements were discovered in the so-called “fertile crescent”. This is an area in the Middle East with rich soil and frequent rainfall, covering the area from the Persian Gulf to the Nile Delta. It includes Mesopotamia, the Levant (Syria and Palestine) and the lower Nile. The oldest settlements date back to the 10th millennium BC, the most famous of them being the biblical Jericho. This territory is the oldest cradle of civilization and the first geocultural center of humanity: from the 4th to the 1st millennium BC. More than 10% of the total population of the Earth lived in this small area. Already by the 6th millennium BC. in Mesopotamia there were developed irrigation systems (canals and dams), grandiose temples, around which city-states grew. In Mesopotamia this process began earlier, a little later in Egypt - in the middle of the 4th millennium BC, and even later in the Indus Valley - around 2500 BC. and after 1800 BC in China. There was no single center in Mesopotamia; the struggle for dominance between different city-states lasted almost 3 thousand years. In the Indus Valley, the cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro competed. In China, although there was a state of Shang (Yin), it was a fragile confederation. And only in Egypt did a single centralized state emerge.

Early empires of Mesopotamia. The toponym “Mesopotamia” is of Greek origin, it means “interfluve” (between the Tigris and Euphrates). This is what Alexander the Great called the conquered province. In ancient times, these lands were called Sumer and Akkad, after the name of the people who came “from the land of high mountains” - the Sumerians and one of the most powerful city-states of Akkad. Already in the middle of the 4th millennium BC. (Uruk era) in Sumer, the first archives of economic documents written in pictography are created (Tablet from Kish), social inequality arises associated with the emergence of public management structures, and centralized temple farms are created. The Sumerians even form their own colonies in Upper Mesopotamia.

The first city-states of Sumer were ruled by priest-kings, and the economy was concentrated around temples. Thanks to contacts with neighboring civilizations, the Sumerians knew and used the wheel (the oldest models of wheels are known from the 5th millennium BC, found in Ukraine and Romania), the potter's wheel and bronze, and invented colored glass. But their most remarkable achievements were writing; the oldest texts date back to the mid-4th millennium BC. (mentioned Tablet from Kish), a legal code, the oldest of which is the laws of Hammurabi, and arithmetic, which was based on the sexagesimal number system.

The image of Nature in which the Sumerians lived left its mark on thinking and social institutions. In addition to the cosmic rhythms on which both the farmer and the pastoralist depended, man in Mesopotamia experienced the powerful pressure of Nature - sultry winds, frightening thunderstorms and catastrophic and unpredictable annual floods. Nature here was ruled by a collection of gods, but the decisive opinion remained with the seven main gods, the supreme of which were Anu (god of the Sky) and Enlil (god of the Storm). The cosmos seemed to man as a sum of wills - a state built on obedience, on the unconditional acceptance of power, for it controls the earth and provides water. Therefore, the main virtue of the Sumerians was “good life” - “obedient life”.

The problem of death in Sumerian culture was resolved quite realistically: in the main epic of Mesopotamia, the myth of Gilgamesh (beginning of the 2nd millennium BC), the idea is conveyed that man is mortal, and his immortality is only in glory, in his name and deeds left to his descendants.

The science of the Sumerians, despite great achievements in natural science (for example, astronomy, technology, etc.), was socially oriented. Sumerian thinkers created the concept of the laws of the universe "Me", which contain all wisdom and science and which are manifested in living and inanimate matter, which, although created by the gods, exist outside the gods and to which the gods obey. According to myth, the queen of heaven and queen of Uruk, Inanna, stole the divine laws "Me" from Enki. A list has been preserved containing over a hundred Me laws, most of which served the purposes of governing the empire.

The high level of culture of the Sumerians, apparently, was achieved largely due to the careful development of norms regulating all spheres of life. The history of Sumer has preserved the name of the first fair ruler - this is the king of Lagash Uruinimgina (last third of the 4th millennium BC), who established fair laws according to which not a single priest “went into the garden of the poor man’s mother” (apparently, it was the priest who tax collector), and “if a poor man’s son casts a net, no one will take his fish.” The later laws of Hammurabi (3rd millennium BC) continued to develop this line. Hammurabi made the principle of justice the basis of legislation - “so that the strong do not oppress the weak, so that justice is given to the orphan and the widow.”

The Sumerian social system was based on irrigation agriculture: the main groups were farmers, temple and palace administration, artisans and merchants, and soldiers. The family was a small copy of the state: the power of the king and father was unlimited, but both in the family of God and in the family of man, the mother had great weight. Interestingly, the marriage was monogamous (although at the beginning of Sumerian history there was polyandry, which Uruinimgina prohibited), protected by a marriage contract, where the husband and wife were almost equal partners.

The aesthetic ideas of the Sumerians are expressed primarily in architecture. The principles of architecture, which are based on the principles of aesthetic measure and rhythm, were embodied in multi-storey buildings and ziggurats - temples. Sumerian literature is based on these principles: various types of repetitions, choral refrains, and the metrical form of works.

Culture of Ancient Egypt. The name of the country, Egypt, was a Greek rendering (aigyuptos) of the name of the Egyptian city of Memphis (“Hi-Ku-Pta” - lit. “House of Ka Pta”). The self-name of the Egyptians is “people of the Black Land,” based on the color of the fertile soil of the Nile Valley. The neighbors - the peoples of Mesopotamia - called Egypt “A populated place, a city” - Misr (as the Egyptians call themselves today), since by the standards of antiquity, Egypt had a high population density and a large number of cities. The natural conditions for the emergence of civilization in the Nile interfluve were more favorable for agriculture than in the unpredictable Tigris and Euphrates basin, but natural cereals suitable for domestication did not grow there. Therefore, agriculture spread there from the area of wild wheat - from the foothills of Anatolia and the Jordan Valley a little later. The history of Egypt begins with the predynastic period - the end of the 5th millennium BC. (the first agricultural communities) and the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt by Pharaoh Narmer, whose successor completed the unification by about 3100 BC. But already by the turn of the 4th millennium BC. In Egypt, hieroglyphic writing developed, capable of conveying complex shades of thought, a developed counting system (the Egyptians had signs to indicate 1 million), and geometry, which also served practical needs.

The architecture of Ancient Egypt is known only from temples and afterlife structures. In Egypt there was no wood suitable for construction at all, and residential buildings were built from dried mud, which were destroyed as a result of the rise in the level of the Nile, which occurred every millennium, or the usual annual flood. The earliest pyramid (c. 2650 BC) - the tomb of Pharaoh Djoser, is the oldest large stone building on earth. No fastening mortars or even metal fasteners were used in the construction (only sometimes, for repairing cracked slabs, wooden, dovetail-shaped ones were used). The stone blocks were richly decorated with carvings and sculptures and cut so precisely that they could stand without significant damage for several thousand years. Ancient Egyptian sculpture was intended for open spaces, unlike other civilizations that placed images of gods in temples. But, despite this, it was perfectly preserved and, in addition to the gods, depicted pharaohs, kings and queens. In sculpture, as in the art of Egypt in general, there was a very strict canon, which over almost three thousand years of history did not undergo changes, but was periodically slightly weakened. For example, Akhenaten's (c. 1400 BC) reforms in art were evident in realistic depictions of the king and his family. The statues and reliefs were brightly painted, the technology for fixing the pigment was imperfect (plaster made of mud and mineral pigment, bonded with egg tempera and various viscous substances), but the dry climate preserved the painting. The coloring of the statues followed the canon of wall frescoes, which used the main colors: black, blue, green, yellow (ocher to orange and red) and white. The Egyptians achieved great art in the smelting of colored glass, which was considered as a jewel.

Egyptian thinking is characterized by dualistic ideas about the nature of existence: the opposition of earth and water, black earth and white sand, earth and sky, male and female, life and death, Upper and Lower Egypt. Dualism also characterizes the ideological foundations of statehood. Each community had its own patron god, but the gods were considered the parents of the pharaohs, who became the guardians of the cults. A person's position was determined by his parents' name and administrative title, but advancement up the social ladder largely depended on personal qualities and successful performance of duties.

Man and woman were equal before the law, all people were equal before the Creator (gods), everyone could hope for personal resurrection, and physical one at that. But at the beginning of Egyptian history, during the era of the Old Kingdom, the afterlife was considered accessible only to the pharaohs. Written sources indicate that in the middle of the 3rd millennium BC. the ancient Egyptians made a unique social revolution. Its goal is not material equality (redistribution of material resources), not access to management, not improvement of living conditions or working conditions. As a result of this revolution, the Egyptians received equal access to the secrets of the afterlife - to rituals and magical means of achieving individual immortality. The revolution abolished inequality after death.

Knowledge in Egypt was of an applied nature. Medicine was needed not only for healing, but also for mummification. Mathematics (arithmetic and geometry) was required by the administrative system for construction and accounting and distribution of products. But cognitive activity was not yet institutionalized - medicine, astronomy and mathematics were practiced by priests, and there was no sharp boundary between knowledge and religion.

The economic activities of the Egyptians were associated with the need for centralization and bureaucratization. Irrigated agriculture required organization large-scale works(a system of canals and dams), a large number of officials and strict discipline (the existence of the entire social system depended on coordinated work), so the state sought to subordinate the lives of people, including the pharaoh, to the goals and needs of the whole. Already in the era of the first dynasties, the Egyptians created a unique social institution“House of Life”, whose task was to regulate and control the most important aspects of people’s lives. The "House of Life" was located in close proximity to the pharaoh, but had its branches in every significant city and temple. Tasks of the “House of Life”: processing and editing theological treatises, as well as treatises on the theory of management and power; systematization, storage and free access to magical books that recorded knowledge about medicine and mummification (which in the ideas of the ancient Egyptians was one and the same); development of basic principles, directives and canons in the field of artistic activity; mathematical, astronomical calculations necessary not only for irrigation work, distribution of products, but also for construction, artistic creativity, and magic.

The daily life of the Egyptians, like the life of the pharaoh, was regulated by the rules of Maat. Maat is the name of the goddess of justice and order, but it is also the world order itself, and a set of rules or principles of life. The name Ma'at means "law", "that which is straight", "rule", but also "justice" and "order". The principle of maat, which permeates the entire life of Egyptian society, united both the ordinary Egyptian and the pharaoh, who had to not only follow maat, but also monitor its observance by the people. It was believed that social conflicts and unrest resulted from the violation of this principle. Ma'at prescribed helping the poor, modesty, maintaining discipline, and maintaining an unchanging peace and society. The manual for the Egyptians included 42 negative confessions, among which were moral requirements common to any social system (I did not commit a sin, I did not indulge in food, I did not steal, I did not kill, etc.), as well as not quite ordinary ones ( I was not a spy, I did not get involved in questions, I never stopped the flow of water, i.e. I did not destroy canals and dams).

Despite the large number of secrets, many achievements of Egyptian culture were included in the fund of universal human heritage and became the foundation for European culture. The Egyptians created the solar calendar, the basics of medicine, astronomy, and the beginnings of geometry; many elements of their beliefs were adopted by the Semitic peoples and through them entered Christian culture; Alexandria, a Greek city on Egyptian soil, became the center of learning of the ancient world.

Culture of Ancient India. The name “India” comes from the name of the river, which was called Indos by the Greeks, Hindu by the Persians, and Sindhu by the Indians. It is believed that the oldest civilization in India was the culture of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro (c. 2600 to 1800 BC), but archaeological studies have shown that settled agricultural societies in India existed already in the 7th millennium BC . Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, discovered by archaeologists in 1922 and explored in the 30s and 60s. XX century, were the most densely populated cities of the ancient world; according to researchers, from 40 to 100 thousand people lived there. Presumably the creators of the Indus civilization were proto-Dravidian tribes, whose descendants, the Dravidians, still inhabit South India. The culture of the Indus Valley was distinguished by its extraordinary conservatism: the layout of cities and the location of houses on the streets did not change throughout the history of this civilization, despite numerous floods; writing, which has not yet been deciphered, has also been preserved throughout history; according to indirect data, the political organization did not change either; despite regular connections with Mesopotamia, there were no borrowings of technical achievements from a more developed civilization. At the same time, some technical achievements of the Indus culture were not surpassed for several more millennia - the inhabitants of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro built multi-story cities, had large-scale water supply and perfect sewerage systems (water supply in Rome appeared only in 312 BC, and Europe remained without sewerage throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance). The cities of Indian civilization became deserted around the time of the Aryan invasion.

The invasion of Aryan tribes occurred in the 2nd millennium BC. The Aryans were nomadic tribes and did not have statehood or writing, but they had military equipment that was perfect for that time. Having conquered the Indus Valley, they assimilated or displaced the local tribes, adopted their material culture and created a powerful state. From this time begins the Vedic period, which received its name from a written source, a collection of religious texts, the Vedas. The rise of the Vedic civilization is associated with the rise of the Mauryan dynasty. Their most successful representative, King Ashoka, created a developed system of state administration, a secret service that controlled all classes, a diplomatic service, and developed legislation. The surviving edicts of Ashoka indicate that eight years after ascending the throne, the king turned from a fearless and stern warrior into a peace-loving and righteous ruler. His moral rebirth coincides with and, apparently, is a consequence of the spread of Buddhism in India. Ashoka pursued a policy limiting the arbitrariness and privileges of the aristocracy, and concentrated in his hands the financial levers of control, which he used to develop the economically backward regions of the country - Central and Southern India. After the demise of the dynasty, Ashoka's reforms were forgotten, India lost its political unity for almost two thousand years, but the adoption of Buddhism as the state religion ensured the cultural unity of India almost forever. The new flourishing of civilization in Hindustan was associated with the Gupta dynasty and continued from 320 AD. before its conquest by the Huns in the 6th century. AD

The foundation of Indian culture is three components: the caste system, Hinduism and Buddhism. The caste system was formed on the basis of four varnas, from classes formed by the Aryan conquerors. Varnas consisted of several castes, the number of which increased to hundreds over time. Caste relations prescribed marriage, occupation, place in the social hierarchy and were distinguished by strict social boundaries. Hinduism is a set of religious traditions dating back to the pre-Vedic period (apparently also pre-Harappan). The name Hinduism was given by Europeans in the 30s. XIX century, in India this religious system in Sanskrit is called sanatana-dharma (“eternal religion”, “eternal path” or “eternal law”), it has no founder, there is no single system of beliefs. Despite the fact that Hinduism is a mixture of religious systems and beliefs, based on monotheism and polytheism, pantheism and monism, and even atheism, three main deities emerged in its pantheon over time: Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. The triad, trinity (trimurti) of these main deities is perceived as a manifestation of a single supreme deity. Buddhism is currently one of the three world religions whose creator lived around the same time as Aristotle. The moral message of Buddhism comes down to four “noble truths,” the essence of which is the way to get rid of suffering - renunciation of desires. Buddhism does not recognize either a Creator God or an afterlife. Salvation lies in the complete renunciation of one's own Self.

The achievements of Indian culture, despite the extraordinary conservatism, became known to European civilization through the mediation of the Arabs. The Indian contribution to modern science is especially impressive. The creation of a decimal number system (using zero), the concept of “emptiness,” and some mathematical terms, such as “digit,” “sine,” and “root,” which are also used by modern scientists, are of Indian origin. The ancient Indian number system determined the modern numbering system and formed the basis of modern arithmetic.

Culture of Ancient China. The name “China”, like India, is of European origin. The Chinese called their state Zhongguo, which is erroneously translated as “Middle State” or “Middle Empire”. It actually means "Central Country" or "Central State". Over time, the Chinese state began to be called “The Celestial Empire”, as a reflection of its uniqueness. The first Chinese state was called Shang (toponym - the name of the area) or Yin, after the name of the dynasty (c. 1600 BC). The Latin name "China" comes from the name of the Chinese Qin dynasty (221-206 BC). The word “China” comes from the name of the proto-Mongol group of nomadic tribes from Manchuria - the Khitans (Chinese), who in 907 captured Northern China and founded their Liao dynasty there.

People appeared in China about 2 million years ago. About 500 thousand years ago, the “Beijing man” - Sinanthropus - lived in the southeast. About 30 thousand years ago, neoanthropes appeared in the north. The first agricultural communities arose almost simultaneously in China and the Middle East - around 7500 BC, but the first civilization in China appeared later than in Mesopotamia, Egypt or India. Around the middle of the 1st millennium BC. Chinese civilization developed in isolation. In the middle of the 1st millennium BC. The Chinese began to create irrigation systems, which led to the centralization of the state and the formation of an empire. The decline of China's first civilization is associated with the collapse around 220 AD. Han Empire.

All great civilizations of Antiquity are unique. What is common to the civilizations of the classical cultures of the East (including Egypt, which is geographically located in the west, not to the east of Greece) is conservatism, religious and philosophical ways of organizing knowledge, dogmatism in thinking and communitarian consciousness (lack of awareness of one’s own Self). The specificity of Chinese civilization lies in its rationalism, pragmatism and ritual truth. Chinese society was alien to deep religiosity and the need for an ideological justification for conservatism and communitarianism, necessary for the coordinated activities of all social groups population in the process of irrigation economic activity, led to hypertrophied ethical and ritual principles. This feature of Chinese society was long ago recognized by Europeans, at the level of everyday consciousness - as “Chinese ceremonies.”

It is impossible to establish the reasons for the profound differences between Chinese thinking and other civilizations of the classical East, but its main feature is rationalism. The Indian sought to escape from the troubles of the world and suffering by dissolving his own Self in the Absolute and liberating himself from the shackles of matter. The Egyptian sought rebirth in a material body. A Sumerian or a Babylonian turned to the gods for relief. The Chinese valued life in his material body most of all. The consequence of this perception of the world was the desacralization of the Divine and the ritualization of the profane. The Supreme Divine Principle in Chinese religious structure The sky, unlike the personal deities of the Middle East, is impersonal, abstract and indifferent to man. The sky is a symbol and embodiment of the universality of existence, it is indifferent to the behavior and fate of a person, there is no point in turning to it, there is no connection with it, but one can only be in it (the universality). Therefore, in Chinese culture there is no class of priests. In such a situation, the place of the divine regulator of human behavior is taken, in addition to ritual, by the figure of the deified ancestor and progenitor. We can say that the basis of Chinese culture is the cult of Heaven (as universality and inviolability), the cult of ritual (as dogma) and the cult of ancestors (as bonds).

The main difference between Chinese civilization is the insignificant role of the priesthood in the social system and the rational foundations of ethics in the ideological system. The cult of Heaven, as an abstract, impersonal and all-encompassing principle indifferent to man, could not become the basis of a full-fledged religious system, therefore the place of religion in China is taken by philosophical and religious systems. The so-called san jiao - a triumvirate of religions (Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism), initially represented philosophical-ethical and philosophical-political systems, which over time acquired some features of religious systems (cult, canon, ritual).

Lao Tzu (born 604 BC) is considered the founder of Taoism. The main book “Tao Te Ching” (Canon of the Way and its Good Power), written by him in 517, became the source of Taoism. According to legend, Lao Tzu met with Confucius, but was disappointed with the meeting. The main requirement of Lao Tzu's philosophy is that it is necessary to follow Tao (literally, the path), for “man follows the Earth, the Earth follows Heaven, Heaven follows Tao, and Tao follows naturalness.” The Taoist picture of the world is characterized by the absence of a dichotomy of good and evil, hell and heaven, and the identity of opposites. The main values of Taoism: virtue as responsibility, maintaining order (conformity to the movement of the world), collectivism as the basis of order, people as an indicator and goal of order.

Confucianism developed around the same time as Taoism. Kong Fuzi (Latinized name Confucius) was born around 551 BC. The main source of Confucianism is a book written down by friends, Lun Yu - Judgments and Conversations. The teachings of Confucius were called "Ru Jia" - "School educated people" The ideal of a perfect person, taught by Confucius, “junzi,” includes two most important virtues: humanity and a sense of duty. Duty is due to knowledge and higher principle, but not to calculation; Humanity - ren: what you don’t wish for yourself, don’t do to others. The social doctrine of Confucius is based on the following principles: the principle of filial piety (xiao), the principle of decency (li - etiquette), the principle of correcting names - bringing things into accordance with their names (Zheng ming). Confucianism in the 3rd century. BC. became the official ideology of the Han Dynasty empire, whose officials were selected solely on the principle of impeccable knowledge of the wisdom of the teacher. The basic principle of social order since the Han Dynasty is “let the father be the father, the son the son, the sovereign the sovereign, the official the official.” The followers of Confucius taught that of the three most important elements of the state, the people are in first place, the deities in second, and the sovereign in third. However, the people themselves cannot understand their own interests without the tutelage of educated rulers.

In the II-III centuries. Buddhism penetrates into China. In China, it was greatly modified under the influence of traditional values and acquired a specific Chinese form - Chan Buddhism (which in Japan was called Zen). But traditional Chinese values were also influenced by Buddhist preaching. This was especially evident in architecture, literature, and art.

Ancient Chinese medicine, health practices, and technical achievements amazed Europeans even in modern times. The rich cultural heritage influenced the culture of many neighboring peoples, including the culture of the West.

Culture of Antiquity. The culture of the Greco-Roman world occupies a special place in world history. In the Western cultural circle, in the eastern Mediterranean, an artistic culture was created, which still serves as the standard of artistic creativity, scientific knowledge was born, and the foundations of democratic institutions were laid. Greco-Roman culture received the name of Antiquity (from the Latin antiquitas - antiquity) during the Renaissance, when the Italians took Greek art as a role model, and then the ideals of Greek humanism. The culture of Antiquity became one of the spiritual sources of European civilization and the entire Western world.

Greco-Roman civilization began on the island of Crete and mainland Greece, and then spread to Italy, Egypt, the Middle East and even the Black Sea coast. The first permanent settlements on the island. Crete and mainland Greece arose later than other civilizations of the Ancient World, at the turn of the 3rd-2nd millennium BC. This is explained by the fact that in these territories there were no conditions for primitive agriculture (arid lands and the absence of large rivers), therefore the flourishing of this civilization is associated not with agriculture, but with the invention of metallurgy. Only with its advent can craft and trade become the main ways to ensure life. In the most general form, the periodization of ancient culture can be divided into stages: 1) III-II millennium BC. - Cretan-Mycenaean civilization (prehistory of Antiquity); 2) the origin of the Greek polis in the 8th-2nd centuries. BC.; 3) the time of the unity of Greco-Roman culture in the 1st century. BC. - II century AD; 4) the collapse of the Roman Empire in the III-VI centuries, from which the European Middle Ages began.

The ethnicity of the ancient Cretan and pre-Greek populations is unknown, but these were not Indo-European tribes. The excavations of Schliemann, Derpfeld and Evans at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, which discovered pre-Greek civilization, demonstrated a culture that was not at all similar to the classical culture of Greece, but rather akin to ancient Eastern civilizations. The pre-Greek population of Crete created majestic palaces, huge warehouses for storing food (which was then distributed among the population), and a writing system that has not yet been deciphered. Around 2200-2000 BC. Indo-European tribes invaded mainland Greece and Crete - the Minii (who later, together with other Greek tribes - Dorians, Achaeans, Ionians, Aeolians, would be called Hellenes). Around 1200, the second wave of invasion by related Indo-European tribes - the Dorians - began. At this time, cities were born in Greece, which would later form the centers of the ancient world: Corinth, Megara, Aegina, Sparta. The first and second invasions of the Greek tribes led to a decline in the general level of culture - the newcomers had a more primitive culture, but had iron weapons and discipline characteristic of nomadic tribes.

The so-called Homeric period, from the 11th to the 9th centuries. BC, represents the “dark ages” of Greek history, about which very little is known, but at this time the foundations of the spiritual culture of ancient Greece were laid. From the 8th century BC. Greek city-states appear, in which institutions and procedures are formed that served as the source of European democracy. The establishment of the first Olympic Games in 776 BC is considered to be the beginning of ancient culture. Polis democracy reached its heyday in the 5th-4th centuries BC, its decline was associated with the aggressive campaigns of Alexander the Great. After this, the decline of Greek cities and the flourishing of Roman culture, the heir of ancient civilization, began.

Ancient culture is in many respects unique to the Ancient world. Unlike the civilizations of the Ancient East, which were characterized by conservatism and isolation, sometimes in extreme forms, an important feature of ancient Greek culture is its interactive

(from English, interaction - interaction) character. The Greeks adopted many of the achievements of previous and neighboring cultures. This was largely facilitated by geography - the eastern Mediterranean was a field of large-scale migration processes (simultaneously with the Dorian invasion, there was an invasion of the Hittite tribes into the Middle East); in mountainous, arid areas, the population could not subsist on agriculture and was forced to turn to trade; the rugged coastline and shipbuilding adopted from the Mycenaeans made the Greeks seafarers and travelers. The Greeks actively adopted Egyptian geometry and medicine, Cretan religion and writing, and Sumerian mathematics.

The next important feature of Greek culture was democracy. Greek democracy is a product of their economy. The dominant technology for ensuring the reproduction of the Greek population was trade and craft technology. Craft, in contrast to irrigation agriculture, with which the flourishing of earlier ancient Eastern civilizations is associated, required personal control of the entire production process and responsibility for the final product (whereas agricultural products in to a greater extent depends on climatic fluctuations). The consequence of this is the emergence of private property, which became the economic basis for the independence of the producer. An independent person responsible for the well-being of the family not only could, but also had to responsibly participate in regulating interactions both within the social system and between communities. The state, unlike the ancient Eastern agricultural despotisms, was not “above” the citizens; citizens were not subordinate to the state, but were themselves the state. The independence of the producer determined the organizational structure of Greek society: direct democracy could not function in the empire, so the size of the community was determined by the limits of visibility and hearing of the citizen. Greek society consisted of independent policies that united to solve foreign policy problems. The lack of officiality, the separation between public and private, determined the uniqueness of the spiritual life of the Greeks. In the cultures of the Ancient East, personality as a value could not even arise; in these sociocultural systems everything was subordinated to the primacy of the whole, the social. In ancient Greece, despite the birth of the personal Self, associated with individual responsibility both in industrial life and in public life, direct participation in the affairs of society formed a sense of unity of the personal and public, specific and universal, sacred and profane. This worldview served as one of the factors determining aesthetic values Greeks The cult of the naked body, the physical culture of physicality, determined the absence of boundaries between the personal and the public.

Another feature of Greek culture is rationalism, the formation of which was also associated with democratic institutions. Rational thinking, completely unusual for the emotional, sensual East, was formed in the depths of the existence of ancient man. Analytical mental procedures were required in the process of craft production (for effective agriculture, observation was sufficient, while crafts involved the decomposition of the production process into stages). The need to compare (evaluate) incomparable goods and currencies also formed the ability to abstract to serve trade and craft technology. The development of craft technology was possible, in contrast to agriculture, only under the condition of the accumulation of knowledge in rational, theoretical and public forms. Finally, democratic institutions required the development of rational decision-making procedures.

Another specific feature of Greek culture, which permeates the entire existence of man, is associated with craft and trade. This is a struggle, a competition: bargaining, political debate, a philosophical treatise as a dialogue, a competition of poets, a competition of two half-choirs in a classical comedy, a competition of athletes. The competition dates back to the cult practices of the Cretan-Mycenaean culture (a competition between a bull and a man, a competition in physical exercises), but the existence and development of a craft depends on improving the process, democratic institutions are most effective in conditions of a competition of opinions, therefore agonistic (from the Greek agon - dispute, competition) the character of Greek culture was consolidated in numerous institutions: the Olympic Games, the Pythian Games (held in honor of the god Apollo), theater, politics.

Finally, Greek culture distinguishes it from ancient Eastern civilizations, which are characterized by a nature-centric picture of the world and anthropocentrism. Among the Greeks, anthropomorphic gods personify not natural elements, as in agricultural cultures, but human activities. The world of the Greek gods is a copy of the ancient polis, where each of the gods has its own sphere of influence, where even the supreme god, who is only the first among equals, cannot interfere, and the gods are also mortal and have the same weaknesses as people. The main object of art is man and his activities; artists depict not only gods, but also the winners of the Olympic Games, people in their everyday worries.

In ancient culture, spiritual values developed that became the basis of modern Western society and the heritage of humanity. The Greeks laid the foundations of scientific knowledge, formulated the basic laws and categories of logic, and in their civilization the institutions of democracy and law were practically tested. The artistic culture of Antiquity became the standard to which artists have strived for thousands of years. Ancient civilization for the first time discovered values that were not yet in demand in ancient Eastern cultures. Concepts such as civic duty, freedom, personality, the very concept of culture, truth, law arose in ancient civilization and were in demand later.