Around 2,500 years ago, we see qualitatively new forms of social...

Around 2,500 years ago, we see qualitatively new forms of social organization-the larger and more durable Axial mega-empires that employed new forms of legitimation of political power. The new sources of this legitimacy were the Axial religions, or more broadly ideologies, such as Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, and Confucianism {and later Christianity and Islam}. During this time, gods evolved from capricious projections of human desire {who as often as not squabbled among themselves} into transcendental moralizers concerned above all with prosocial behavior by all, including the rulers. The

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