nick_indian
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Agree with you overall but the significance of Magna Carta is because it was, as you mentioned, the first relatively complex codified document of common law. It is given lot of significance from a historical perspective in legal communities for this reason in common law countries. Also, that it came out in the early 1200s which is more than 5 centuries before the modern legal philosophers like Locke and Rousseau propounded their theories. French Revolution was also an event of the 18th century.The concept of human rights existed in several civilizations of antiquity. As man progressed from a nomadic to a pastoral life and societies began to develop the concept of human rights too became more complex and codified.
The ancient Sumerians, Egyptians, Vedic and Buddhist polities of India all had some form of protection for the common man. In fact most of the religions(Abrahamic or Dharmic) had mantras, shlokas, preaching, commandments to promote and protect the right of its adherents. In Ramayana the triumph of good against evil is nothing but a reaffirmation of the rights of a law abiding citizen of Ram rajya.
As for the human rights in a codified or written form, the Babylonians and Sumerians were the first civilizations to do so in the form of tabulated laws as per recorded history.(Google code of Hammurabi .IVC may also have done it but its script is not yet deciphered) Also ancient Greek city states too developed a system of laws and rights and they had influential philosophers who greatly propagated the concept of rights for each man, strong or weak. The Romans took on most of these ideas from the Greeks and developed most of their laws around them.
Coming to Magna Carta it was not as big a deal as most Anglophiles make it out to be. The Magna Carta was created as a result of the Baron`s War. The French Normans had conquered and subjugated the native Anglo Saxons and disregarded the rights of the native Anglo Saxon populace. The king reigned supreme and ruled with absolute impunity and even curtailed the rights of his Dukes and Barons. So when the lower nobility rebelled against the king they implemented certain number of safeguards for them. It did not make England a country where a peasant/serf was equal to the king. It did give certain rights to the peasantry but most of the safeguards were for the Barons. True human rights was only promoted after the English civil war and execution of their king under Oliver Cromwell. Even then there was an ossified class system in England.
It was the American and French revolution that actually brought about the modern concept of human rights where even a pauper is equal to the richest man of the land. The American constitution, the French Declaration of Rights of Man and the Napoleonic Code were the flag bearers for the rights of man. Most of the rights were inspired from the works of philosophers l Rousseau, Locke and Voltaire. Even in India where we follow the English system of law(common law as opposed to civil law) the Constitution owes much to the Americans and French. The Magna Carta is hyped up simply because it was the first codified document of the common law. However the Magna Carta pales in comparison to both the American and French concept of human rights.