[MD] Babylonian intellectuals

[ARLO J BENSINGER JR]

[DMB]
I see what you mean. How about this; things as advanced as the precessional
calculations would be something like the intellectual level as it existed
within the womb of the social body, a growing potential that would soon emerge
as a separate, distinguishable being. Then the Axial age is the time when this
potential is actually born and achieves something like independence in Ancient
Greece. Dominance, as Pirsig draws the line, didn't come until the post-WWI
period, less than a century ago. 

[Arlo]
This sounds good to me. And you're right, I didn't mean to suggest that since
Ancient Greece intellectual patterns have dominated. I like "Axial age", I was
thinking earlier something like "critical mass". Maybe something like that was
reached with the social level with the advent of a stable agriculture or
perhaps codified law; where prior social units were more or less still under
the rule of "might" and biological patterns more or less dominated social ones.

This is, by the way, a reason I like the border regions of the levels much more
than the middle. Much more interesting. :-)