The Buddha and the Axial Age
New ideas about being human appear across Eurasia at once
See it on the timeline →In depth
Karl Jaspers called the period around 800–200 BCE the "Axial Age": the Buddha and Mahavira in India, Confucius and Laozi in China, the Hebrew prophets, and the Presocratic philosophers in Greece all appear within a few centuries. What they share is a turn away from ritual that binds the group and towards ethics and inner experience that concern the individual. Explanations are contested — Iron Age wealth, urbanisation, coinage and warfare between peer states recur. Every major living world religion has roots in this period.
For children
A prince named Siddhartha gave away everything he owned to find out why people suffer. At almost the same time, Confucius in China, the prophets in Israel and the philosophers in Greece were thinking new thoughts about how to live. Strangely, it happened in several places at once.
Connects to
Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org