As an idea, whatever we now recognise as peace predates written history.
It was probably shaped then by human behaviours and experiences that we now call caution, co-operation, kindness, generosity and sharing. For another's insight on life then read Alice Roberts' 'Wolf Road'.
Some of today's variety of European words used for what is called 'peace' in English, for example paix, pace, paz may have had a common origin in primitive sounds such a 'pax'. Today's words for peace in other language regions may well have had primitive roots in different sounds such as "bek", "fri", "mir", "raua" or "vre".
Written records suggest that ancient Greek society considered Peace as the natural condition of a settled state where well-ordered arrangements prevailed for governance and justice and military force was used rarely and only if needed to maintain internal national peace.
In the subsequent era of ambitious expansion from Rome the character and understanding of Peace was naturally influenced by the large scale of military might entailed in acquiring and maintaining an Empire. Within that climate Roman era Peace was nevertheless governed by a legal system alongside contemporary ideas such as of individual virtue and self-control, together with a belief in divine authority such as was symbolised by their goddess Pax.
Peace was also pursued and maintained through processes of diplomacy and arrangements settled in recorded Treaties between empires and city-states. That Peace appears though to have been fragile and vulnerable as it is today to the reliable maintenance of agreed payments or other 'tributes' and to the integrity and survival of state leaders.
Meanwhile, within the wide range of social ideas and traditions, understandings about Peace seem to have developed in different ways in many parts of the world. Those developments were in relative isolation in many parts of the ancient world, becoming more widely known only in the centuries since human exploration discovered and could report that the world continues beyond the visible horizon.
Do some features of what's known from about the ancient European accounts of Peace strongly resemble our 21st century experience of Peace; for example in the role of violence and military might, in Peace being kept by force alongside ideas that there is a role too for acknowledged legal, moral and ethical frameworks.
How much and what kind of development has there been in humanity's understanding of Peace?Aren't there some worryingly strong resemblances between the understandings of peace in the ancient world and those in the 19th and 20th centuries before the World Wars and the emergence of modern social sciences?
