The attempt to define “right” and “wrong” in universally objective terms is one of humanity’s oldest intellectual pursuits. Early societies developed moral rules through religion, custom, and authority: the Code of Hammurabi, ancient Egyptian Ma’at, and classical Greek ethics all sought consistent standards for human behavior. Greek philosophers debated whether morality was discovered through reason or dictated by the gods, while traditions like Confucianism emphasized harmony and duty rooted in social order. In the Middle Ages, natural law theorists argued that moral truths were embedded in human nature and accessible through rational thought. The Enlightenment pushed this further, with thinkers like Kant proposing rational universal laws and utilitarians defining morality through measurable outcomes. The 19th and 20th centuries expanded the debate with cultural relativism, existentialism, and early anthropological studies showing that moral norms vary dramatically across societies. Advances in psychology and evolutionary biology later explored whether moral instincts arise from human cognition and survival mechanisms. In the modern era, global human rights frameworks represent an effort to establish shared moral principles across cultures, while emerging technologies—especially AI—revive the challenge of encoding objective ethics into machines. Across thousands of years, the question remains unsettled: can morality ever be fully universal, or is it shaped unavoidably by cul