2,500 years ago, a period of unforeseen incubation of ideas occurred across the globe, which has rarely happened in the history of human civilization. Maybe you are unaware that Buddha, Socrates and Confucius lived at the same age, and that in the period of around 100 years, at the turn of the 6th to the 5th century BC, completely unimaginable ideas in philosophy, science and religion developed, which nowadays constitute fundamentals of the understanding of the world.
In this age of Democritus, Herodotus, Aeschylus, Anaxagoras, Phidias, Pericles and Hippocrates, the greatest Greek dramas were written, as well as the first Indian grammar and first compilations of Chinese pearls of wisdom, and the foundations of historical sciences, medicine and physics were established.
According to a legend observed in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Prophet Daniel, an educated and distinguished Hebrew in the Persian emperor’s court, met an angel (the image shows one of the numerous artistic representations of mythical stories on Daniel and lion’s den whence he was thrown). The actions of this prophet brought about Cyrus’ victory and power reorganisation in Babylon, after which the half-century Babylonian slavery of the Jews ended in 537 BC. They returned to Jerusalem, and built another Temple, and the age when new ancient texts, from Moses’ story to prophets’ books, were to be compiled, ensued, while the Old Testament gained the form we are nowadays familiar with.
At the same time, in 528 BC, in northern India, young prince Gautama Buddha from the Shakya clan was travelling across plains at the foothills of the Himalayas, pondering why life was so painful, when he achieved enlightenment. His teachings would spread across the Indian region and reach Indochina. In time, Buddhism became one of the leading world religions.
Interestingly, another Indian philosopher Mahavira, who defined Jainism teachings, preached at the same time. However, in Persia, during this period, Zoroastrianism, a religion on good and evil, practised and fostered by the royal family and established by Zarathustra, thrived. He is believed to have lived around 1,200 BC, at the time of the Trojan War, although some authors claim this to be untrue and that he was Buddha’s contemporary, one of the thinkers of the century of ideas.
Far to the east, in China, where people for two centuries had forged iron and dug irrigation canals, among aristocrats and scholars, there was the so-called Contention of a Hundred Schools of Thought. In the Chinese province Zhou, in the late sixth century BC, a young successor of a prematurely dead general, Master Kǒng or Kǒng Fūzǐ, better known as Confucius in the Western culture, set up a new doctrine on the ethics in life and state affairs, which was to become the foundations of Chinese order and religious thought known as Confucianism.
Simultaneously, in the year 510 BC, in the Apennine Peninsula, in a hostile city-state, at the banks of the Tiber River, civil unrest broke out, the last king of Rome was overthrown, and the Roman Republic was instated, a creation which, in the following few centuries, conquered not only Italy but the entire known world in the Mediterranean. On the other side of the world, in Central America, another civilization was gaining momentum – from 650 BC, the cities of the ancient Maya civilization were spreading, and their first calendar is considered to have been established at this period.
With the dawn of the fifth century BC, Persians launched the attack against Greece, and the well-known Greco-Persian Wars, which would become a symbol of the conflict between Europe and Asia, broke out, while cities-states of Athens and Sparta managed to resist the superior Eastern empire – legendary battles in Marathon, followed by battles at Thermopylae and Salamis were fought.
Athens saw the construction of the Parthenon, and the most magnificent works of Greek art were created. This is the age of Pericles and of a series of figures who would become a part of global historical and spiritual heritage. This is the time of the pinnacle of classical Greek philosophy, made flesh in the central figure of a sage from Athens, Socrates. The depth of world insight that Greek philosophers of this epoch descended into has never been reached on such a scale.
This century is also marked by ever more use of cast iron – with a considerable amount of carbon, cast iron does not possess the elasticity of steel, but in the smithies of this age, it facilitated the casting of various forms, tools and decorations. The first catapults, anchors, cranes and the first application of perspective emerged in this era.
It is not quite clear why such abrupt simultaneous thriving of the most diverse teachings occurred precisely in this period. It might have been brought about by the accumulation of knowledge, as well as the number of people. The human population reached 100 million people for the first time, but this is a subject of numerous demographic discussions.
Human history set the modern course, having domesticated cereals and some animals over 10,000 years ago, which is considered an agricultural revolution. From this point forward, the first settlements were founded, food could be stored, human communities blossomed, and people had more time. New changes came with the new development of the technological paradigm – the discovery of metallurgy and the onset of the Bronze Age.
And then, in cities-states thriving in the first millennium BC, merging and transforming from one empire into another one, in a continuous struggle for resources, both technological knowledge and sprouts of spiritual epiphanies accumulated. It was then, in 500 BC, that a new horizon of ideas opened up, just like in phase change, and spiritual explosion echoed so that we can still clearly hear it to this day.
S.B.
Photo: Briton Riviere – Daniel in the lion’s den, oil on canvas, 1892 – Manchester City Art Gallery – Wikimedia Commons