The article is devoted to the research of heroes - suggestive, super significant characters of the cultural space that accumulate the main values of the epoch in themselves, represent the ideal life model and are cult objects. Special attention is paid to the heroes' attitude to death because death is the irreducibility that distinctly highlights the world of personal values. The first heroines who meet us at the origin of cultural genesis are paleolith venuses. Embodying ordinary features of paleolith women they are a symbol and a pledge of life endlessness as well as a plentiful source and fertile force of the human race. Palaeolithic rock painting introduces the first hero, namely a beast or a man who has gained the strength of beasts and birds and as a result has acquired superman's qualities, the qualities of a spirit and a host for spirits. The brightest hero of the first eastern civilizations is Gilgamesh - an epic character, a philosopher and an ascetic looking for immortality. In the Ancient Egypt there aren't any heroes except a pharaoh. He combines both divine and human natures, gains all attributes of power, grandeur and bravery. In the Judaic culture a new type of a hero appeared. He is God's choice, a prophet, a holy man following God's will. The higher hero caused by antiquity is half god; he is a child of a false marriage. The ancient hero is interested only in glory and valour; earthly benefits for them are ephemeral. He obtains them easily and loses without regrets. The Christian hero is a saint, a godlike man - the highest point for hero's evolution in culture. In the new age identification of "a hero" with " a personage" has taken place. A hero is formed by philosophy and literature and becomes a function of stylistic fashion. In the epoch of post- modernism a new totality is vigorously growing - mass culture with its heroes. The nature of a modern hero is revealed through such attributes as "glamour", sexuality, "star image". Glamour heroes lead a luxuriant life. Post- modernism destroys meanings. The power of things substitutes the power of meanings. An ancient beast of a man acquires different qualities of many animals accumulating their force; a modern man gains power through possessing things. A special place in the new totality is occupied by a cult of "stars" - great heroes of the modern age. "A star" is a new icon. Many stars are spoken about as "style icons", " epoch icons". A cult of stars has religious feelings as its origin connected with pagan ideas about fate, destiny and luck. The last decades gave a birth to a new hero reigning only in the science and fiction world - a post-modernism man. This type of a human being is a being with physical, mental and intellectual possibilities wondrously expanded as a result of technical progress. It is the highest phase of human development passing into the stage of post- humanity, a crossbreed of "a machine" that will conquer age, diseases and death. A comparative analysis of heroes' characters of different epochs enables us to see one common feature that can be looked upon as an important cultural problem, namely a problem of some existential, metaphysic incompleteness of an individual. A hero has to be connected with something powerful, meaningful, great, super human (a beast, God, power of science and technical progress) in order to overcome its partiality. Realization of this incompleteness is related to the very beginning of cultural genesis. Humanity as though feels the diversity of an existing human being with the plan of pre-existence and seeks for ultramundane perfection.
