An “Axial Age”

Some modern thinkers call the mid-first millennium BCE the Axial Age to emphasize its pivotal and transitional role between the declining old empires of ancient Egypt, Southwest Asia, northern India, and Zhou China and the later empires of Alexander the Great, Chandragupta’s Mauryan Empire in India, Augustus’s Rome, and Han Wudi’s China (see Chapters 6 and 7). Instrumental to this dynamic period were the ethical, philosophical, and religious innovations taking place in India, China, and Europe.

In this Axial Age, societies on the edges of regional empires or within declining empires of Afro-Eurasia started to follow innovative paths. (See Map 5.1.) These new communities were not just extensions of old ways of life. In each, dramatic innovations in cultural and religious beliefs were expanding people’s social, political, and cultural options. Although each of the resulting cultures—in East Asia, South Asia, and the Mediterranean—was distinct from the others, we might call them all second-generation societies, given that they built on their predecessors yet represented a departure from ancient legacies. (See Current Trends in World History: What Makes an “Axial Age”?)

While Afro-Eurasia experienced an Axial Age and the emergence of second-generation societies, other parts of the world saw complex, urban-based societies emerge for the first time. The first of these in the Americas was established by the Olmecs in Mesoamerica, with artistic and religious reverberations well beyond their homelands. In Africa, distinct regional identities spread in the Upper Nile (in Nubia) and West Africa (among the Nok). One of the most striking features of the first millennium BCE is the long-lasting impact of both the Axial Age second-generation societies that stretched across Afro-Eurasia and the first complex societies isolated from them by oceans and desert.