ANCIENT WORLD: The depth of time. Discoveries and revelations

The aim of the paper, despite its concise form of presentation, is to provide a systematic review of the leading trends in world art culture at the stage of the Ancient World. The fundamental positions of the proposed consideration are formulated as follows: the creation of the world, the creation of man, and the creation of art in general. Such significant phenomena as a large number of rock carvings and initial attempts at sculptural plastic arts serve as the research material, moreover, the movement from animalistic images to man’s images turns out to be a crucial issue. In ancient architecture, the defining moment is the promotion of geometrism as a technical and aesthetic category. In literature, the most important evolutionary processes were associated with a gradual transition from glorifying the gods to recreating images of people. In the course of the establishment of human society, the fundamental action was the formation of early civilizations, which found its expression in the appropriate level of artistic thinking, in the assertion of a developed emotional sphere, in a qualitatively different character of man’s attitude to nature.