“It was a spectacular example of the advantages of backwardness, combining organizational methods pioneered in an older core with military methods honed on a violent frontier. It slaughtered, enslaved, and dispossessed millions; and drove social development forward at an accelerated pace.”
Another, more adamant, critic of the Axial Period was Antony Black, writing in the Review of Politics, 2008.
Black disputes any notion of an Axial “Period” because the change was not rapid enough and did not involve a greater number of cultures. He agrees that this period saw an advancement in complex human but wonders if it were merely due to the state of societies of that time - that turmoil was causing a rejection of the status quo and the desire to “invent” a new path forward.