We assume the flow of world history follows random logic, conditioned as we are by Darwinism. The rapid growth of archaeological knowledge since the nineteenth century has greatly expanded our views of world history and, significantly, crossed a threshold of five thousand years, the bare minimum interval, we are about to see, for grasping the logic of historical evolution. This data begins to show the unmistakable evidence of a non-random pattern in world history since the invention of writing. This pattern can be seen from two angles:

1.   The first is of the so-called Axial Age, the enigmatic synchronous emergence of cultural innovations and advances across Eurasia in the period of the Classical Greeks and early Romans, the Prophets of Israel, the era of the Upanishads and Buddhism in India , and Confucius in China .

2.   The second, related to the first, is of the mysterious drumbeat pattern of turning points or transitions proceeding down a mainline of the diversity of civilizations. Looking at this Axial phenomenon we are forced to consider that it is really a step in a sequence, and moving backwards and forwards we suddenly discover the full pattern. Note that these turning points are equally spaced, with an interval of about 2400 years, clear evidence of a cyclial 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

In one stroke we discover what was said not to exist, a complete Universal History, rich in interior significance and meaning. We call this pattern the ‘eonic effect’, a superset of the core Axial Age phenomenon. This pattern is vast, and yet we can in this unique case get a better sense of it from a high-level view beyond the details, a stroke of good fortune.