Periodization
The Sumerian King List dates to the second millennium BC and divides history into dynastic regnal eras. This ancient document serves as one of the earliest known attempts to categorize time into named blocks for study. While most parts of the list are not considered historically accurate, it established a method of periodizing human activity that persists today. The classical division into ages goes back to Hesiod in the 8th , 7th century BC. He described a sequence including a Golden Age, Silver Age, Bronze Age, Heroic Age, and Iron Age. These early frameworks provided a structure for understanding how civilizations rose and fell over vast stretches of time.
Saint Paul created a theological division of history into three distinct ages during the first century AD. His scheme placed the first age before Moses under nature, the second under Mosaic law, and the third in the age of Christ under grace. A more widely discussed system emerged in the early 5th century AD called the Six Ages of the World. This framework counted every age as exactly one thousand years from Adam to the present. By the Middle Ages, people believed they lived in the sixth and final age of this biblical timeline. Such religious calendars offered a divine order to human history that differed sharply from modern secular approaches.
Italian poet Petrarch lived between 1304 and 1374 and conceived the idea of a European Dark Age. He compared his own period to the Ancient or Classical world and saw his time as a rebirth after a dark intermediate phase. This concept evolved into the tripartite periodization of Western history into Ancient, Post-classical, and Modern blocks. The dominant usage of Renaissance refers to cultural changes in Italy that culminated around 1500, 1530. Scholars now often refer to the Renaissance and Reformation as the start of the Early Modern Period instead. The term Middle Ages remains in use but carries negative connotations in colloquial speech even if it does not in academic terminology.
Giorgio Vasari applied the word Gothic as a pejorative term to all things Northern European and hence barbarian. He coined the term to describe architecture he found objectionable during subsequent stylistic periods when the preceding style was unpopular. The word baroque derives from similar words in Portuguese, Spanish, or French and literally refers to an irregular or misshapen pearl. Its first use outside jewelry manufacture occurred in the early 18th century as criticism of music viewed as over-complicated and rough. The Baroque period was first designated as such in the 19th century and is generally considered to have begun around 1600 in all media. Music history places the end of the period in the year 1750 with the death of J. S. Bach.
Archaeologists rely on changes in material culture and technology to periodize the distant prehistoric past. This method defines the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age along with their subdivisions based on different styles of material remains. John Lubbock partitioned the Stone Age into Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic periods in 1865. Despite modern abilities through radiocarbon dating to give actual dates for many sites or artefacts, these long-established schemes remain in use. Neighboring cultures with writing often left some history of cultures without it which may be used to cross-reference findings. These systems provide a practical framework for understanding human development before written records existed.
Historian Eric Hobsbawm argued for what he calls the short twentieth century encompassing the period from the First World War through to the end of the Cold War. Other historians adopted labels such as the long 19th century spanning 1789, 1914 to reconcile arbitrary decimal chronology with meaningful cultural phases. The historian Arthur Marwick noted that the 1960s began in the late 1950s and ended in the early 1970s due to specific economic conditions. Cultural terms like Victorian often negatively suggest sexual repression and class conflict while Renaissance carries strongly positive characteristics. Some popularized periodizations using the terms long or short challenge traditional boundaries by extending meaning beyond simple decade blocks.
Continue Browsing
Common questions
What is the Sumerian King List and when was it created?
The Sumerian King List dates to the second millennium BC and divides history into dynastic regnal eras. This ancient document serves as one of the earliest known attempts to categorize time into named blocks for study.
Who proposed the Six Ages of the World system in the early 5th century AD?
A more widely discussed system emerged in the early 5th century AD called the Six Ages of the World. This framework counted every age as exactly one thousand years from Adam to the present.
When did Italian poet Petrarch live and what concept did he conceive?
Italian poet Petrarch lived between 1304 and 1374 and conceived the idea of a European Dark Age. He compared his own period to the Ancient or Classical world and saw his time as a rebirth after a dark intermediate phase.
In which year did music history place the end of the Baroque period?
Music history places the end of the period in the year 1750 with the death of J. S. Bach. The Baroque period was first designated as such in the 19th century and is generally considered to have begun around 1600 in all media.
What date did John Lubbock partition the Stone Age into three periods?
John Lubbock partitioned the Stone Age into Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic periods in 1865. Archaeologists rely on changes in material culture and technology to periodize the distant prehistoric past.