What was the most interesting *overlapping* century in world history?

[puzzlegal]

Seeing this now due to the unhappy passing of @TriPolar , whose last post was in this thread…

I don’t dispute the twentieth century as a pick, but surely the 5th century BCE must get some kind of runner-up award. It featured a blossoming of new religions (and thus, probably, new ways of thought) all around the globe:

• 5th century BCE: The first five books of the Jewish Tanakh, the Torah (Hebrew: תורה), are probably compiled.[42]
• 551 BCE: Confucius, founder of Confucianism, was born.[37]
• 600 BCE – 500 BCE: The earliest Confucian writing, Shu Ching, incorporates ideas of harmony and heaven.
• 599 BCE – 527 BCE: The life of Mahavira, 24th and last Tirthankara of Jainism.[43]
• c. 570 BCE: Pythagoras, founder of Pythagoreanism, was born.
• 563 BCE – 400 BCE: Siddhartha Gautama, founder of Buddhism, was born.[44][45][46]

I don’t think we have any good dates for the history of philosophy in the Americas, but I’d be curious what was happening then on this side of the pond.

[Slithy_Tove]

That was the century featured in Gore Vidal’s novel Creation, which was sort of a travelogue of all the different schools of thought at the time.

Let’s not give the 20th C. Short shrift, just because so many of us were its products. A similar novel of it would be Anthony Burgess’ Earthly Powers, where he chose Somerset Maugham and Pope John XXIII as tour guides through the events both historical and moral between the Spanish Flu and the Jonestown Massacre

[Clearbluesky]

The development of River Valley Civilizations.

None of which were in Europe.