Axial Age

Axial Age (Karl Jaspers, 1883 – 1969)- from 1500 B.C.E.E until 200 C.E. (or 600 B.C.E. to 600 C.E.)

Confucius, the Buddha, Lau Tsu in India and China establish value systems and codes of human behaviour. This is the time when the Great Masters of the humankind Zarathustra (for the Mesopotamians), Moses (for the Jews), Zamolxis (for the Thracians) received from God a set of rules of living for their people, for them to obey and respect. Moses brought to the Israelis the Decalogue containing the 10 laws. This is also the time of the great empires of antiquity (the Roman, the Macedonian, the Thracian Empires). These disseminate culture, legal frameworks and a sense of belonging to larger realities across tribal and ethnic boundaries. Jaspers saw this period as a particularly intense period of intellectual and religious development which continues to resonate in thought and society. The ‘Classic Age’ saw the emergence of democracy in Athens, the flowering of philosophy (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle in Greece), and great artistic achievements. The ancient Olympic games saw the birth of competitive sport and of the idea that sport can help to promote generositry, understanding and international co-operation and concern for human dignity and peace .In the 18th and 19th centuries, in Europe and North America, this period was romanticized but Hippocrates and Galen still form the basis of medical science. Virgil (17 B.C.E. to 19 C.E.) spoke of a Golden Age when people had lived in utopia but also believed that there are recurrent cycles of history. The Torah teaches that humanity became estranged from God in the fall. Buddhism that the ‘dharma’ declines