500 B.c.

[Atilius]

It can't be trade...

Prior to this age both Halicarnassus and Gordion were major tradinghubs...We don't hear much of them because what we have preserved is what the Greeks wrote of them.

I'm arguing that trade was especially favorable for the transmission of ideas during this period because for the first time there was a significant overlap in trade among the Mediterranean, Persian, Nile, and Indus civilizations.

To say it was the trade that did it would mean we would think Greek trade was more important because it was Greek. That can't be right.

I'm not saying this. Anyone involved in trade at this time would have had a opportunity to benefit: Greeks, Persians, Indians, and others.

I don't mean to say that trade must result in the development of new modes of thought. I simply think that involvement in trade was the most important factor. It's also the only factor which could explain the simultaneous advances in the Mediterranean, Persian, Indian, and (perhaps) Chinese worlds. Perhaps it was just a coincidence, but I doubt it.

But this of course also demanded some sort of personal freedom an in Greece at least, that was exactly what was happening... The first Greek philosophers came about during the various tyranies.

You're getting at cultural conditions required for developing new ideas. I agree that this is vital, but was not prepared (and won't ever be) to compare cultural conditions fostering the advances I listed in my post in the Greek, Persian, Indian, and Chinese worlds.

Unique cultural characteristics probably explain why the Greeks were doing something different than the Persians, Indians, and Chinese during the Axial Age. Their speculations were not religious in nature, and they showed a much greater interest in the structure and behavior of the physical world.