Pal t`Sa'ovaya - refers to the era before Surak
The Vulcan historians' name for the period has always been Age of Expansion. Only much later did it begin to be referred to as the "pre-Reformation" or "pre-Awakening" period. It was the time in which many of the petty kingdoms of the old world had been unified - mostly against their will. This process had, of course, been going on for a long time.
There are historians who will point out that from the time of Earth's Bronze age, around 10,000 BCE, and the fall of the Spartans at Thermopylae, there was only one period of ten standard years during which as much as ten percent of Vulcan was not at some kind of war, economic or political. But in the Age of Expansion the process of "unification" sped up considerably.
It was actually consolidation, rather than unification: larger territories and clans swallowing smaller ones, either by annexation or political blackmail. Vulcan technology, especially weapons technology, was becoming more and more advanced. Atomics had been achieved, were used a few times with results similar to those at Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Earth ... but the result was not the eventual disarmaments that Earth achieved. Instead, the Vulcans retailored their atomic weapons to be less "dirty" - neutron bombs were an early "happy" solution to the problem - and there was also much research into chemicals, and artificial amplifications of such psi talents as the Killing Gift. The latter was refined until it could strike down thousands at a distance of thousands of kilometers. It usually also killed the adept, but since most of those with this talent were using it under threat of harm to their families, it did nothing to stop the gift, or the governments who bred for it.
Nor were conventional weapons abandoned: guns and bombs and particle weapons of all kinds continued to proliferate in endless variety. And more to the point, the anger of the annexed, and the outrage of the great nations that the annexed should attempt to resist their will, proliferated as well, until nearly the whole planet was a patchwork of ancient grudges, constantly being avenged on the "wrongdoers" - and countervengeances were taken, endlessly. It perhaps says more about the time than anything else that the Vulcan language included no less than several thousand words for terrorism and its applications, each precisely describing or defining a different kind of violence as to degree and type.
The terrorism spread into space, but not as quickly as it might have, since Vulcan merchant ships by tradition were never armed, and military ones, oddly enough, had not yet been conceived of. (Earth historians who find this astonishing should also remember that, until fairly late in its history, [[Vulcan {Planet)|Vulcan]] did not have the concept of the standing army ... simply because for thousands of years, there were not the resources to support such a thing. There was no way to feed such a monster, or give it water, and usually nowhere to keep it.^1 Technology changed this, much later ... but mercifully it did so very late.) Space stayed peaceful for a while, and many people who were able to, chose to live there full time, rather than on the turbulent surface of the planet.
Their only mistake was in believing that they had left the warfare behind them.
^1 - for historical exceptions see V'Ket and The Warlord of Khomi
Sources:
- Vulcan Science Academy History Archives