The middle of the first millennium B.C. was one of the most astonishing times in the history of humanity. Between 800 B.C. and 200 B.C. there appeared a cohort of brilliant individuals whose teachings left deep—and perhaps indelible— impressions on the way human beings thought about themselves and the world around them. And today, we are still living out and living through the ideas that were introduced in this period.

Remarkably, this burst of creativity occurred almost simultaneous in four areas of the Eurasian continent. In East Asia, in the area we now call China, Confucius and his followers provided the religious, philosophical, and political foundations fore over 2000 years of Chinese culture. At the same time, Daoist philosophy produced a compelling alternative to Confucianism, impacting Chinese culture in an equally powerful but very different way. In South Asia, a counter culture movement of ascetics and mystics composed a collection of profound teachings called the Upanishad that gave nascent Hinduism its characteristic features. Near the same time and place, both Buddha and Mahavira attained new insights that inaugurated Buddhism, the first major international religion, and Jainism, a small but highly influential Indian Religion. In West Asia, in Palestine, the prophets of Judah—such as Jeremiah and Isaiah—helped shape what was to become many years later Judaism. In Iran Zoroaster had recently established Zoroastrianism which served as the state religion of three powerful empires and contributed to the development of ideas that later became important in Judaism and Christianity. Finally, in northern Mediterranean region in the land of ancient Greece, Thales, Pythagoras, Heraklitus, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle essentially invented the Western philosophical tradition.

Rarely in human history do we find such a dense concentration of creative individuals in such a short period of time , especially individuals whose lives and teachings have had such an extensive and long-lasting impact. But just as fascinating as the density of the genius in this era, is the similarity of ideas and modes of thinking that these individuals developed despite their geographical distance from one another. Although they did not always come to the same conclusions or advocate the same practices and beliefs, they struggled with many of the same fundamental issues, such as the nature and destiny of the self, the basis and practices of morality, and the highest goods of human life.

The 20^th century philosopher Karl Jaspers identified this extraordinary period as die Achenzeit or the Axial Age. By choosing this name, Jaspers signified that this era was pivotal in human history, demarcating a decisive change between what came before and what came afterwards. During the Axial Age, as Jaspers eloquently put it, ‘The spiritual foundations of humanity were laid simultaneously and independently... And these are the foundations on which humanity still subsists today.

What was going on here? What was happening at this particular time and in these particular places that might account for the prodigious output of critical ideas and the appearance of some of the greatest individuals know to the world? To begin to answer this weighty question we must look at social and political developments that were occurring during the Axial Age.

First, the Axial era occurred at a time and in places of increasing urbanization. More and more people were living in closer proximity to one another in towns and cities. People, of course lived in urban settings prior to Axial Age, but now that practice accelerated and expanded. Previously nomadic peoples began to settle down and to take up agriculture and enjoy the benefits of more sedentary existence. Those who lived in villages moved to larger towns to take advantages of new economic opportunities that awaited them.

Urbanization was significant because of its effects on social structures and on the human psyche. Urban life often disrupts one’s sense of identity and places traditional beliefs and values in doubt. In towns and cities, one often meets other quite unlike oneself, and that fact frequently challenges a person to look at himself/herself in very different ways. Conventional beliefs and ways of being are thrown into flux. Some persons are challenged by such conditions to entertain new ideas, while others cling more steadfastly to their old ones. In either case, customs and tradition often lose their taken-for-granted character. Higher concentrations of persons also intensify exposure to the realities of life. One sees more sickness and more suffering, more death, more instances of humanity’s inhumanity. Reinhold Niebuhr’s classic work, Moral Man and Immoral Society argued quite persuasively that persons who ordinarily behave very morally as individuals are often moved to act immorally as a member of the collective. It’s almost as if we humans tend to lose our moral bearings when we congregate and end engage in “group-think.”

Second, the Axial centers were generally characterized by politics and legal upheaval. The Chinese Axial Age overlapped an epoch in Chinese history known as the warring states. In China, the traditional—relatively stable—feudal system was disintegrating and small principalities began to vie for hegemony. The result was an extremely brutal era in which hundreds of thousands of Chinese lost their lives. The Indian ascetical movement was set in the context of profound and rapid political and economic transformation in the area surrounding the Ganges River. The Axial Age in the land of Judah proceeded under the constant threat (and eventually actuality) of the tiny nation’s engulfment by larger surrounding nations. And Zoroaster’s reform of Iranian religion was undertaken at a time of great lawlessness in West Asia, as his society was plagued by independent warlords and bands of warriors with little respect for human life. Rapid political and social change of course generates great uncertainly and insecurity for many. But interestingly— and this is much less frequently observed—such times are often the most innovative for religious and philosophical thought. The context of political and social instability fosters just the right conditions to evoke the best (and the worst), in human beings. With their words in a time of change, and their received traditions under question, the bold individuals of the Axial Age experienced a freedom to think and live their lives in new ways.

Third, sages in all the Axial centers became increasingly anxious about death and preoccupied with what, if anything lay beyond death. Pre-Axial humans of course were not unconcerned with death, but they seemed more generally to accept death as a natural part of life and rarely give attention the afterlife. For the most part, they valued a long life with many descendants but hardly expected anything more than that. The human sense of identity prior to the Axial Age was more firmly rooted in one’s participation in the family, or the clan, or tribe. Ideas about who and what one was and what life was about were derived from being part of a larger human reality. Accordingly, death could be accepted, knowing that the family would survive one’s personal demise.