The Marvellous Century Archaic Man and the Awakening of Reason

<p>In this fascinating and scholarly overview, George Woodcock, author and poet, allows us to experience the beauty, the savagery and the all-encompassing impact of <i>The Marvellous Century.</i></p> <p>It was an era of personalities and uprisings.</p> <ul> <li>It was the time of Xenophanes, Cyrus, Solon the lawmaker, Sappho, the Buddha, Aeschylus, Pythagoras, Confucius, Lao-tzu and Nebuchadnezzar.</li> <li>It was an era of prose reawakenings, the exploration of rational thought, the central Asian silk trade, and the writing of the Upanishads.</li> <li>For the Chinese, it was the period of Spring and Autumn under the Chou Kingdom.</li> <li>Christianity, Islam, Zoroastrianism and Modern Judaism had their roots in the sixth century.</li> <li>The Greek philosopher, Thales, studied astronomy and geometry;<br> <br> - passing on knowledge picked up from the Egyptians, and<br> <br> - he was the one that first postulated the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle to be equal.</li> <li>In India, atomic theories emerged, and geography, geology and physics all developed as disciplines.</li> </ul> <p>"History never arranges itself in neat capsules of a hundred years each, and what I am writing about when I name the sixth century is a period of between 120 and 130 years, characterized by a cluster of events that changed irrevocably the way men looked upon the universe and even upon themselves."<br> <br> - George Woodcock</p>