Humans were given a privileged place in this new order: made in the image of the gods themselves, and thus possessed of the right to rule over the rest of creation. This idea – the principle of ‘dominion’ – grew firmer during the Axial Age with the rise of transcendental philosophies and religions across the major Eurasian civilisations: Confucianism in China; Hinduism in India; Zoroastrianism in Persia; Judaism in the Levant and Sophism in Greece.
