Golden age is a term from the antique Greek mythology. It calls one ideal condition regarded Urphase of mankind history. One finds a similar conception in religious-philosophical traditions of the far east. In certain respects different, but ideas comparable in important aspects were common in approaching and the middle east.

The myth

Both in Europe and in approaching and the far east it concerns a mythische historical interpretation, those of several successive world ages (and/or in the Near East: World realms or historical epochs) goes out. First and best was the golden age (in India the Satya Yuga). The silver age etc. the latter and worst followed is the present, with which the deepest possible conditions of the culture purge are reached. It concerns thus the opposite of the progress idea. The age teachings are the mythische expression of a culture-pessimistic historical philosophy, which understands the historical development primarily as nature-necessary purge process of the culture or civilization.

Greek and Roman antique ones

The myth of the ages meets in Europe for the first time with Hesiod (late 8. or early 7. Century v. Chr.). This poet describes the time of the golden sex of the mortal ones, i.e. that, in works and days (109ff.) in which the God Kronos (the father of the Zeus) prevailed. At that time humans in complete peace, carelessly like Gods, lived their bodies aged not, their death were falling asleep, and they enjoyed their festivenesses. Outstanding feature of this age was that the earth brought all food out necessary on its part plentifully. Therefore agriculture was unnecessary. This outstanding feature marks also nearly all later variants of the myth.

The Orphiker, a religious movement originating from Thrakien, itself in 6. Century v. Chr. in Greece spread, represented similar conceptions including the designation after metals. Some of them identified the golden age however with the epoch of the God Phanes still before Kronos. In 5. Century stressed the philosopher Empedokles the idea of the initial Friedfertigkeit, innocence and unity in entire nature including the human society.

Platon gives different, partly contradictory data concerning prehistory in its dialogues. In the statesman (271f.) it describes the age of the Kronos in such a way: Humans did not know war or Zwiespalt. They nourished themselves only of what gave them the earth automatically. They moved unbekleidet in the free one, since the climate this made possible. Between humans and animals there was linguistic communication. Also under the animals peace, it prevailed served each other not yet for the meal. The motive of the animal peace, which had already stepped out with Empedokles, originated from orphischer tradition.

In the 3. Century v. Chr. presented in the future extraordinarily influential poets Aratos of Soloi another version in its training poem Phainomena, to school reading and into the Byzantine time many pupil generations trust were. According to this version there was agriculture with plow animals in the golden age already. The nutrition was not however still purely vegetarian, it animals was killed. Above all slaughtering the plow animal was only many later (in the Ehernen ages) arisen a Frevel. Aratos stresses the contrast between this self-sufficient, being sufficient seeds and completely peaceful way of life on the one hand and navigation and trade, which arose only later, on the other hand. The work was read also in Rome and was common also in latin versions.

The Roman poet Ovid gave, those to the myth in its metamorphosis (1, 89-112 and 15, 96ff.) in the Middle Ages (since that 11. Jh.) and in the Renaissance much likes was, a and famous shape. The golden age did not know laws and no punishments, since everyone behaved ethicalally correctly without obligation. Ovid calls the traditional characteristics: without agriculture an earth satisfying all food needs, complete peace among humans as well as between humans and animals, general Sorglosigkeit and innocence, no navigation, eternal spring and life in the free one. Only in the silver age first dwellings were needed. Similarly Tibull describes the golden age.

The Near East

In the Biblical book Daniel is described more inspired) a dream, in which a statue made of different metals appears from descending quality. The metals symbolize successive world realms, their first and most important, the golden, the newBabylonian realm of the king Nebukadnezar II. are (Daniel 2, 31-40). In the Persian Prophetie Bahman Ya"št (6. Jh. n. Chr., the material originates however from far older excessive quantity) meets a variant from the zarathustrischen main religion at that time of the Sassanidenreichs: Zarathustra sees in a dream a tree with four branches made of different metals, which for large historical epochs, beginning naturally with the golden, the early period of the

These Middle East excessive quantities follow like the Greek epoch pattern after metals of descending quality. They do not act however of mythischer past, but of well-known historical conditions of the time since that 6. Century v. Chr.

Furthermore the east

In India a cyclic world age model was lasting for thousands of years the only relevant basis of the historical and cultural philosophy. In traditionally oriented and religious circles this aspect exists this very day. This historical view prevails both in the Hinduismus and in the Buddhismus and in the Jainismus. Over the Buddhismus variants of the age model spread to China and into other eastern countries. For Chinese primeval times conceptions see Urkaiser (China).

Agreements

The Indian world age teachings differentiate the four world age (Yugas) not according to metals, but according to colors, whereby the white color belongs to the first, ideal age. These colors were originally assigned to the planet Jupiter, Saturn, Merkur and Mars just like the metals. The Indian teachings are not vedischer origin; it exhibits agreements with the Babylonian Kosmographie, on which also the Iranian and the Jewish version depend. Also Hesiods metal pattern, which came over switching from Asia to Greece (extent and is details of the asiatic influence on Hesiod are disputed), Babylonian origin. Thus an extraordinarily spacious eurasischer tradition connection appears: One can open a Urmythos, which contained four descending and cyclically following each other world ages, which were symbolized by four metals. After the world fall at the end of the fourth, worst age (to that the present at that time belonged) the cycle should be continued with a new golden age.

Opposite standpoint

The myth of the initial golden age draws the picture of a sound and normative past, from which the future departed by Dekadenz gradually. This conception belongs to the most common ideas of mankind. The opposite standpoint was the antique progress idea. It proceeded from a animal-similar original state of mankind; it forced the emergency due to it to the community formation and to the development of technical talents with which a cultural ascent was introduced. Humans invented arts and techniques, or in other opinion they were instructed by side about it. Such views of humans as a lack nature, which escaped from a primitive original state by its adaptability, represented among other things Xenophanes, Demokritos, Epikur and Poseidonios. The most detailed received culture developing theory of this kind is those of the Lukrez, which stresses on the one hand the misery Urmen, on the other hand in addition, elements of the civilization criticism of the world age myth takes up.

Usually it came with the philosophers and poets to the mixture of the two competitive aspects, about as a raw initial period was set still before the lucky age or by recognizing ambivalence both the original natural state and the civilization and its consequences.

It did not lack in the antique Greece which took the paradiesische life in the golden age "“under Kronos"” in the comedy on the grain. The topic was reduced to the motive for paradise, which itself.

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