The Penguin History of the World

Book Three

THE CLASSICAL AGE

Measured in years, more than half the story of civilization is over by about 500 BC. We are still nearer to that date than were the men who lived then to their first civilized predecessors. In the 3,000 or so years between them, humanity had come a long way; however imperceptibly slow the changes of daily life in them had been, there is an enormous qualitative gap between Sumer and Achaemenid Persia. By the sixth century BC, a great period of foundation and acceleration was already over. From the western Mediterranean to the coasts of China a variety of cultural traditions had established themselves. Distinct civilizations had taken root in them, some firmly and deeply enough to survive into our own era. Some of them lasted, moreover, in gradually evolving forms, for hundreds or even thousands of years. Virtually isolated, they contributed little to mankind’s shared life outside their own areas, but they are of great importance in showing the extent of the possible in human achievement.

For the most part, even the greatest centres of civilization were indifferent to what lay outside their spheres for at least 2,000 years after the fall of Babylon, except when troubled by an occasional invasion. It was a world in which the contents of some of these civilizations were deepening to create an age that would set patterns for what was to come later. This is what we mean by a classical age. But not all of the civilizations that were established around Year 0 produced classical heritages that were to survive up to our own time. Some were transformed by conquest, migration or profound religious change. In China elements of the classical age, centred on the Han dynasty, were preserved through the continuity of the Chinese state. In India, they were preserved through continuities in religion and the shape of society. And from the eastern Mediterranean a classical age emerged that would last for over a thousand years without a break in its tradition and that would, much later, become the seedbed of global change in the modern age.