Looking at this Axial phenomenon we are confronted with an inexplicable mystery. But the clue to the riddle lies in seeing that this period is not unique, but one in a series.  The resolution of the mystery comes to us quickly, as long as we are not distracted by the interpretations of the Axial period solely as a spiritual age of religions. We ask, are there any other periods like this? The great clue is the remarkable resemblance of the Greek Axial interval and the sudden rise of modernity from 1500 to 1800. Moving in the opposite direction, can we find a similar period of rapid innovation and sudden advance? We don’t have far to look. We suddenly see that the birth of civilization, and the rise of modernity are different phases of a larger pattern, with the Axial Age in the middle. Seeing the rise of the modern as a kind of second Axial Age suddenly makes sense of the data. In fact it is a third, at least, the extraordinary rise of Dynastic Egypt and early Sumer being a giveaway. We are forced to consider that the Axial Age is really a step in a sequence, and moving backwards and forwards we suddenly discover the full pattern. We can see three turning points equally spaced, with an interval of about 2400 years, clear evidence of a cyclical phenomenon.

TP1: the rise of advanced civilization in Egypt, Sumer, ca. -3000
TP2: the sudden synchronous effect of the Axial Age, ca.-600
TP3: the rise of modernity, ca. 1800

The idea of a turning point means that there is a staging area and period for a major advance, which ratchets the overall development of civilization to a new level. In fact, starting with our second turning point, taken in isolation, we could ask, is this period unique? Once posed, the question answers itself: we can see three such periods, if we can see the unity behind them. This first turning point is by no means an absolute beginning. Clearly we have only a fragment of a greater pattern. A three beat sequence is difficult to analyze, the bare minimum needed to show sequentiality at all. Note the equal length of the interval between these points, about 2400 years. It seems like a frequency phenomenon, but our data thins out very quickly. We must have rich data for the Neolithic, and that we don't have. 

Despite the logistics of correct study and observation, the general sense of this pattern, to a bird's eye view, is quite simple: it induces recognition, like the pieces of a puzzle falling together. We recognize a system operating in a kind of drumbeat alternation.  Its action is transparent: we see three surges of several centuries, along a complex mainline of selected cultures, with 'medieval' periods in between. The Middle Ages never made any sense, and was always an obstacle to assertions about historical progress. But now we see the simple explanation. We sense that there is a strange driver behind the drama of civilizations. It switches on, advances a handful of regions, then switches off. The process behind this pattern seeds new cultural advance areas, which flow into oikoumenes, as it sets an overall direction. It always restarts in a new area at each step.  It can operate both in parallel and in sequence. The most telling clue is the successive recursive action in the sequence of steps. And this periodization brings the question of historical dynamics into our recent past, rich in detail, and we must be careful about what we mean by modernity. We will soon find 'eonic data' at the level of decades, to remind us that even our first two turning points have a thin record. 

This system, as it draws us into contradictions as we explore its 'causal' explanation, is an ingenious 'widget' operating on two levels, a clever way to balance diversity and unilinear advance. It is still not clear how the two aspects, sequential and parallel fit together. But we are in the presence of a clear historical dynamic, a point especially obvious from the data of the Axial Age. This system, by default, gives us a free gift: the key to a 'science of history' (but only after we call into question the idea of such a causal science). We have found our missing 'force', but it isn't a force, although the resemblance to a 'field' effect is remarkable. The reason we claim the pot for a ‘science of history’ is simple:  no other phenomenon could compete with the comprehensive character of this pattern, whose action derandomizes the expected random occurrence of the historical chronicle. This pattern includes all the key advances of human civilization. The first alternate candidate to be challenged is the economic interpretation of history. Economic 'evolution', while braided with this pattern, is something, we will show, that is distinct from it. Causal statements about this pattern suffer immediate difficulties. We are in the presence of a phenomenon that apparently does nothing on its own, but only induces action in man, who performs an executive function in a sudden state of creativity. There is no other explanation for the diversity of realizations in the pattern, a good example being the synchronous emergence in the Axial interval of an atheist religion next to a theistic one.

The strongest evidence in our pattern is its demonstration of recursive action. Note the way democracy and science are born, reborn twice, in successive transitions. In a real sense the Greek Enlightenment is a first draft of the modern Enlightenment, and gives birth to all the essential characteristics of modern secularism. The resolution of the paradox of common denominator will turn out to be fairly simple, and will emerge as we go along. But the basic idea resembles the contrast of libertarian and collectivist perspectives: all the way through we see the dialectic of state and individual. We see the evolution of the state balanced by the evolution of the individual. Then the religions do the same thing. Note how the first eonic step creates the rise of the State, while the second starts to generate the freedom factor of the individual inside the state, Greek democracy. With this clue, we see that 'religions' are simply dialectical variants of the state/individual nexus, with the idea of the state found wanting before the possibility of a still larger transcultural aggregates. This play of collectivist aggregates and individuals is present throughout. The connecting point is the 'self-consciousness' of man as individual versus the mechanized consciousness of man as state person. The libertarian/collectivist paradox is especially clear in the religions generated in the wake of the Axial Age, and we see the way they talk to the self-consciousness of the individual, yet leave us (moderns) puzzled by their clear collectivist tendencies. But we see this is no paradox at all. The state/religion 'paradox' should be obvious from the all time classic Axial transition phenomenon: the 'Israel/Judah' transformation in the Old Testament, simultaneously a state history and the generation period of the materials for a series of later religions. It is worth remembering this point: the Axial interval shown by the Old Testament is the chronicle of a State history, not the creation of a world religion, which comes much later. We must constantly refine our top-level observations, and be wary of teleological assumptions. 

This pattern, once seen, is highly coherent, and defies all odds of being random, not only because of its clustering, but also because of its interior significance.  The pieces of the puzzle have sudden new meanings once conjoined, and make sense on their own terms. This system is evolving higher civilization, but only partially since the effect merely seeds new starts and leaves the result unfinished. Later we will elaborate on this with our distinction of 'system action' and 'free action'. We are almost helpless: the pattern forces itself on us, even though its complexity would seem to surpass our powers of comprehension. The pieces of this puzzle fall into place in the corner of a still larger puzzle and we can recognize what is going on without having the full data set or any understanding of what is driving this amazing process with independent branches that don't communicate and remorph so fast mutual diffusion could not explain them. And it is clear that our triple sequence is merely a fragment of a greater whole, probably encompassing the Neolithic and before. Later we will propose a frequency hypothesis for our sense that this intermittent series is a set of equally paced transitions with their intervals between them.