The article offers a new cultural-anthropology approach within which a civilization is looked upon as the incarnation of an organic system of interrelated ideas and ideal complexes appertaining to social consciousness, in social matter. This system of mutually coordinated ideas (Ideengestalt of society) is usually styled culture. It presents the uttermost mental field (metaframe) characterized by ideal objects specific for the given civilization and representing in social consciousness real natural and social objects and phenomena, items of material culture, as well as the laws of all these entities’ interaction, known to the given society (natural and societal laws). According to the author’s concept, history is permanent movement of cultures in social matter, which causes the appearance of new combinations of ideal complexes, that form new cultures.