Axial Age

Proposed age of religious and philosophical change from the 8th to 3rd centuries BCE Part of a series onHuman history ↑ Prehistory (Stone Age) (Pleistocene epoch) Holocene TimelinesNeolithic – Contemporary(11,650 BP – present) Age of the human race Recorded history (Common Era) Earliest records Protohistory Proto-writing Ancient Copper Age Bronze Age Iron Age Axial Age Classical antiquity Late antiquity Africa North America South America Oceania East Asia South Asia Southeast Asia West Asia Europe Postclassical Timeline Africa Americas Oceania East Asia South Asia Southeast Asia West Asia Europe Renaissance Modern Early modern Late modern Contemporary Africa North America South America Oceania East Asia South Asia Southeast Asia West Asia Europe See also Age of Discovery Modernity Postmodernity Futurology Political history ↓ Future vte Axial Age (also Axis Age, from the German Achsenzeit) is a term coined in 1949 by the German philosopher Karl Jaspers. It refers to broad changes in religious and philosophical thought that occurred in a variety of locations from about the 8th to the 3rd century BCE. According to Jaspers, during this period, universalizing modes of thought ap