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hello 400 BC to 200 a.d is known as the Axial Age when great civilizations in Asia and the Mediterranean

forged the ideas that dominated the next 2,000 years.

In China, the equivalent to the golden age in Greece was the warring states period.

It was a time of political turmoil, economic change, and intellectual ferment that laid the foundations

for the first Chinese Empire. Astronomy was systematized, acupuncture

developed, the principles of Yin and Yang were invented. Confucianism grew and Taoism emerged

as a hundred schools of thought are reputed to

abide for the patronage of rival kings. Why was a period of war such a fertile age

for culture and thought? What kind of ideas were developed and how do they still inform the thinking of nearly

a fifth of the world's population.

With me to discuss the warring states period in China, a Chris Cullen, Director of the

Needham Research Institute at Cambridge University, Carl Michelson, a and at the Welcome Trust Center for the History of Medicine.

Chris Cullen, the period when the great ideas in Chinese philosophy flourish was the warring states period.

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