<P> Jaspers described the Axial Age as "an interregnum between two ages of great empire, a pause for liberty, a deep breath bringing the most lucid consciousness". It has also been suggested that the Axial Age was a historically liminal period, when old certainties had lost their validity and new ones were still not ready . </P> <P> Jaspers had a particular interest in the similarities in circumstance and thought of its figures . Similarities included an engagement in the quest for human meaning and the rise of a new elite class of religious leaders and thinkers in China, India and the Occident . </P> <P> These spiritual foundations were laid by individual thinkers within a framework of a changing social environment . Jaspers argues that the characteristics appeared under similar political circumstances: China, India, the Middle East and the Occident each comprised multiple small states engaged in internal and external struggles . The three regions all gave birth to, and then institutionalized, a tradition of travelling scholars, who roamed from city to city to exchange ideas . After the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period, Taoism and Confucianism emerged in China . In other regions, the scholars were largely from extant religious traditions; in India, from Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism; in Persia, from Zoroastrianism; in The Levant, from Judaism; and in Greece, from Sophism and other classical philosophies . </P> <P> Many of the cultures of the axial age were considered second - generation societies because they were built on the societies that preceded them . </P>

What were the main areas of axial age thinking in eurasia