Ages of History

We explain what the ages of history are, the characteristics of each one and the events that mark their beginnings and ends.

What are the ages of the story?

The stages or ages of history are the different periods or segments of time into which the history of the humanity with the purpose of facilitating its study and understanding its main patterns. These are conventional, relatively arbitrary divisions, elaborated and continually revised by scholars for centuries.

Over the years, historians have tried to develop a model that allows them to take into account a large part of human cultures throughout their historical journey. Although it is not a perfect model or devoid of biases (for example, it offers a view largely focused on Europe), so far the most accepted and disseminated model recognizes four ages of history: Ancient, Medieval, Modern and Contemporary. The times before the invention of writing are called prehistory.

Prehistory (2,500,000 BC-3300 BC)

Traditionally, history is considered to be the periods in which the use of writing is documented. Therefore, prehistory is called the times before the invention of writing that is, prior to the invention of some form of registration based on signs that allows obtaining information about what happened, through the study of historical sources. Without written sources, study is necessary of the archaeological remains of prehistoric societies obtained through excavations and other methods throughout the world.

Although detailed information is not available, prehistory is the longest period that produced some of the most significant changes in humanity. It extends from the appearance of the first hominids of the genus Homo about 2,500,000 ago years, including the emergence and expansion of Homo sapiens approximately 300,000 years ago and the extinction of the rest of the human species. It goes all the way back to the invention of the first writing systems in the Middle East around 3300 BC. c.

In this extensive period of time, human beings learned to master fire, to communicate with an articulate oral language, to make and use lithic and then metallic tools, and finally to practice agriculture. Agriculture forever changed their way of life by giving rise to the first sedentary human settlements and, later, to the first cities.

The prehistory It is commonly divided into six stages grouped into two ages: the Stone Age and the Metal Age. It is difficult to place these periods on a specific date, since they did not occur uniformly and simultaneously in all parts of the world.

The Stone Age or Lithic Stage

The Stone Age is so called because Most of the utensils obtained in archaeological finds are made with various types of stone and bone. This stage was also characterized by the domestication of fire, the invention of clothing, human expansion throughout the world and the partial abandonment of the nomadic hunter-gatherer model in favor of a sedentary agricultural model. This stage is divided, in turn, into three periods:

• Paleolithic Period whose name means “ancient stone” and covers the events prior to the adoption of agriculture.
• Mesolithic Period whose name means “middle stone” and covers the transition between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic.
• Neolithic Period whose name means “new stone” and covers the events of the new agricultural and livestock existence model, until the beginning of the handling of metals.

The Age of Metals

The Metal Age is the period in which instruments began to be made from different metals. This age is traditionally divided into three different segments, defined by the emergence of working with a specific metal:

• Copper Age or Chalcolithic in which this metal made its appearance, along with gold and silver. The oldest copper objects were dated around 8500 BC. C. in the Middle East. However, copper began to be smelted and widely used around 5500 BC. c.
• Bronze Age in which a greater degree of metallurgical knowledge was evident, since bronze is obtained by alloying copper and tin. It is known that this metal began to be used in Mesopotamia, at a time that was no longer prehistoric for this region (as there were written testimonies), and it was ideal for the manufacture of utensils, statues and weapons (spears, shields).
• Iron Age in which humans learned about iron and some of its various alloys. It was the last of prehistory in some regions and a historical phase in others. The first traces of iron had meteoric origin, and it took centuries for humans to discover how to obtain terrestrial iron, which became the most coveted metal. The iron forge gave way to more resistant implements and weapons, and marked the military difference of some peoples over others.

Ancient Age (3300 BC-476 AD)

The Ancient Age or Antiquity is the historical period that It began with the invention of writing in the Middle East, around 3300 BC. c and in which the first great state civilizations (known as ancient civilizations) emerged. These were mostly of a monarchical and in some cases imperial type, whose knowledge, products and visual and literary compositions are largely preserved today.

In Antiquity the first cities emerged, as part of an urbanization process driven by civilizations such as the Mesopotamian and the Indus Valley. Later, cities characterized Western civilizations, such as the Greeks and Romans. Also were born on State he right the law and the social classes in addition to the first religious, mythological and literary texts.

The Ancient Age was the period of origin of some of the great religions current such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism and Christianity. In this and other aspects it was about the era in which the cultural and social foundations of today's world were laid.

Among the many states that were founded in ancient times, eastern states, such as pharaonic royalty and the Mesopotamian empires, are usually differentiated from western states, such as the Greek city-states and the Roman Empire. Greco-Roman cultural institutions and traditions are usually considered those that contributed the most elements to the contemporary Western world. To the point that the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD. C. is considered the end of Antiquity and the beginning of the European Middle Ages.

The final phase of Western Antiquity is usually divided into two stages:

• Classical Antiquity which was the period of expansion of Greco-Roman culture and had its peak between the 5th centuries BC. C and II d. C. Its peak was the emergence of the Roman Republic (509 BC) and its subsequent transformation into the Roman Empire (27 BC).
• Late Antiquity which began around the 3rd century AD. C and it was a period of crisis for the Roman Empire, with internal wars, rebellions and foreign invasions (such as those of Germanic populations). In addition, it was the time of expansion of Christianity, which became the official religion of the Roman Empire in the 4th century.

Middle Ages (476-1453)

The Middle Ages or Middle Ages is the stage following the Ancient Age, but it is a division that for many reflects only the history of Western civilization, that is, of Europe and its surrounding regions.

It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD. c. It lasted for almost a thousand years until the fall of the Byzantine Empire (or Eastern Roman Empire) to the Ottoman troops in 1453, or according to some historians until the European discovery of America in 1492.

Those who initially conceived the existence of the Middle Ages thought of it as a dark stage without much value for Western civilization, as a mere interval between classical antiquity (a time of splendor of Greco-Roman culture) and the Renaissance and the age of reason. typical of the Modern Age.

For a long time it was thought that the Middle Ages had been a period of obscurantism and little artistic and philosophical production, under the empire of the Christian religion that spread throughout Western Europe. Nowadays it is considered that this is not so.

The Middle Ages was effectively an era of religious fanaticism and the abandonment of some social and urban models of Antiquity, in favor of a feudal model that assigned to the nobility the economic and political control of the lands within the Christian kingdoms of the West, under the spiritual authority of the pope in Rome. However, during the Middle Ages, philosophical thought and technological innovations did not disappear, and urban life re-emerged in the 11th century. Furthermore, in the regions neighboring Europe, new political forms emerged, such as Islamic caliphates, and the Byzantine Empire experienced moments of splendor.

The Christian and Muslim religions were involved in a conflict that spawned numerous wars. of conquest, such as the Crusades and the Reconquista, which contributed to breaking the cultural unity of the Mediterranean.

The Middle Ages are usually divided into three major periods:

• The High Middle Ages or Early Middle Ages which spanned between the 5th and 10th centuries, although for many scholars some of it could be better understood as part of Late Antiquity.
• The Middle Ages which spanned between the 11th and 13th centuries, and was characterized by the rise of feudalism, economic and demographic growth, and the Crusades.
• The Late Middle Ages which lasted between the 14th and 15th centuries, and which meant a period of crisis in the feudal model, which laid the foundations for the arrival of the Modern Age. Some scholars date the Late Middle Ages between the 11th and 15th centuries, because they reject the concept of the Full Middle Ages.

Modern Age (1453-1789)

The Modern Age was a brief but significant era in world history. Between the 15th and 18th centuries, it was characterized by the resurgence of classical culture in Europe (called the Renaissance) and the beginning of the so-called age of reason. In this era, the ideas of the Enlightenment expanded, the foundations for scientific thought were laid, and the religious, dogmatic, and superstitious values ​​of the Middle Ages were combated. It was also the time of the Protestant Reformation that divided Western Christianity.

This stage is understood as an artistic and philosophical flowering in the West, whose peak was marked by the birth of science. Furthermore, the separation between Church and State, monarchical centralization and the growth of commerce put an end to the feudal model of the Middle Ages and granted more and more power to a relatively new social class: the bourgeoisie.

The bourgeoisie, made up of merchants and businessmen, came to displace the aristocracy as the dominant social class. The most representative event of this was the French Revolution of 1789, and previously the independence of the United States regarding the British Empire in 1776. Both events are considered the end points of the Modern Age.

During the Modern Age the exploration and colonization of the American continent by the empires of Europe took place as well as his first explorations of Oceania. In fact, this period is considered the beginning of Europe's colonial relationship with the rest of the world, as European powers competed with each other for control of the world's trade routes and raw materials. Mercantilism was the zeitgeist, and absolutist monarchies were the dominant political regime in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Contemporary Age (1789-present)

The Contemporary Age is the last of the divisions of history and extends to the present day. It is considered a stage of accelerated and sudden changes brought about by science, technology and political and economic transformations. The beginning of this era is located in the outbreak of the French Revolution and in the repercussions of republican and liberal ideas in the world, which greatly promoted the wars of independence in America.

These events, along with the Industrial Revolution, encouraged European colonization of Africa and Asia. In the first half of the 20th century, two were produced world wars in which inventiveness and scientific mastery were put at the service of military activity and caused millions of deaths. One of its consequences was the decolonization of Asia and Africa, which marked the end of European imperial rule.

The modernization of most aspects of human life, including telecommunications and transportation, led to an unprecedented global interaction, known as globalization guided by the values ​​of liberalism and which generalized the so-called consumer society.

What were formerly conflicts between religions or civilizations became largely rivalries between political ideologies, especially the confrontation between the collectivist ideas of socialism or communism and the emphasis on the individual freedoms of capitalism defended by liberalism. For some decades, the ideologies of fascism and Nazism were also strong, the latter responsible for the Holocaust during World War II.

The collapse of the European empires after the Second World War (1939-1945) allowed The emergence of two new world powers: the United States and the Soviet Union each at the head of two new world blocs in the so-called Cold War: the Western capitalist bloc and the Eastern communist bloc.

Some technical, technological and political milestones of the Contemporary Age were the use of nuclear energy (whose first relevant use was the explosion of two atomic bombs on Japan at the end of World War II), the exploration of outer space, the creation of the first multilateral international institutions, the invention of birth control pills, which in turn led to a sexual revolution in the mid-20th century, the revolution in communications and computing and the fall of the communist bloc, which consolidated the dominant position of the United States.

Why is history divided into ages?

The currently accepted division of history was not always in force. Over many centuries, humanity divided its history according to mythological or religious criteria. In each culture this manifested itself according to its own conception of the world and the cosmos, including its own interpretation of what were the great historical milestones of humanity.

So, The great religions offered their own models of history based on sacred texts such as the Bible. In fact, the traditional way of organizing historical time in the West has as its central element the birth of the main figure of Christianity, Jesus Christ. Still There is talk of events located “before Christ” (BC) and “after Christ” (AD) a trend that modern historians try to rethink by changing the names to “before the common era” (bce), or “before our era” (ane), and “of the common era” (ec).

The current division of history into four ages (five, with prehistory) arose thanks to the proposals of numerous historians and scholars. Thus, the terms “Ancient Age”, “Middle Age” and “Modern Age” were proposed in 1685 by the German historian Christoph Cellarius (1638-1707), and were so successful that they were soon copied in later studies.

Until then, the prevailing model in Europe was based on the Bible. He proposed a series of ages marked by events from the biblical text, such as the creation, the fall, the flood or the exodus, and the last of them, beginning with Jesus Christ, was considered a time prior to the Apocalypse or Final Judgment to come.

For its part, the term “Contemporary Age” appeared in the 19th century, as a way to make sense of the profound rupture that the French Revolution (1789) had meant in modern history.

Any periodization model of history requires milestones or key events that mark the beginning and end of an era, and that is also subject to debate among specialists, since an event of vital importance in one region did not necessarily have relevance in others. regions or for other cultures. In any case, The current model is usually accepted as a conventional criterion subject to review and criticism.

References

• Adams, R.M. et al. (2023). Stone Age. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/
• Burke, P. (ed.) (2003). Ways to make history. Second edition. Alliance.
• Graeber, D., & Wengrow, D. (2022). The dawn of everything. A new history of humanity. Ariel.
• Hunt, L. et al. (2016). The Making of the West. Peoples and Cultures. 5th edition. Bedford/St. Martin's.