The social attitudes that predominated in the ancient societies towards people with disabilities are presented in the article. Depending on a culture and a region, these attitudes were different. Disability was treated as manifestation of supernatural forces, bad omen, or gods’ punishment for parent’s doings. Discrimination and segregation predominated. People with disabilities did not hold offices, were not inducted to run serious public matters, and their participation in public life was limited. Eugenics was also practiced through abandoning or killing infants whose physique was ascertained as deviated from the established appearance. With time, the able people attitude towards the disabled started to be regulated by religious sanctions and later on, by legal sanction.