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551 BCE

This year falls in the Iron Age (c. 1200–500 BCE). Iron tools and weapons spread, and new powers rise, among them Assyria, Babylon, the Zhou dynasty in China and the Greek city-states. Alphabets and coined money spread, and the Persian Empire is founded in the sixth century BCE.

Dated to 551 BCE

Philosopher · Iron Age · ChinaConfuciusc. 551–479 BCTeacher of ritual and judgment in the state of Lu in the late Spring and Autumn period. The Analects are layered school texts, not a stenograph of one life.

Within fifteen years

Civilization · Iron Age · Achaemenid EmpireAchaemenid Empire550–330 BCEThe Achaemenid Empire was the first Persian Empire and the largest the ancient world had seen. Cyrus the Great founded it in 550 BCE; at its height it ruled from India to Greece. Alexander the Great destroyed it in 330 BCE.

Ruler · Iron Age · IranCyrus the Greatr. 559–530 BCFounder of the Persian Empire, ruling from 559 to 530 BC. He overthrew the Medes, took Lydia and its king Croesus, and captured Babylon in 539 BC without a siege. His empire ran from the Aegean to Central Asia, the largest the world had yet seen.

Philosopher · Iron Age · NepalThe Buddhac. 563–c. 483 BC (traditional)Siddhartha Gautama, the awakened one, whose teaching on suffering and its end founded Buddhism, one of the world's great philosophical and religious traditions. Tradition dates him about 563 to 483 BC; some scholars place him about a century later.