Abstract

If anthropogenesis was a transition from nature to society and the Neolithic revolution culminated in the breakthrough of human beings into history, then the appearance of cities on our planet, the "urban revolution," marked the rise of civilization, mankind's induction into the spiritual universe. The rise of cities marks the onset of what K. Jaspers called the Axial Period" (eighth-second centuries B.C.). This is the period in which the spiritual preconditions of humanity took shape: the Bible, the Iliad and Odyssey, ancient philosophy and Greek culture, the Upanishads, Zoroastrianism, Taoism, and Confucianism. In world culture the city proved itself as a powerful mediator between the earth and the heavens.