Periodization and Related Topics

The Cross of Mathilde, a crux gemmata made for Mathilde, Abbess of Essen (973–1011), who is shown kneeling before the Virgin and Child in the enamel plaque. The figure of Christ is slightly later. Probably made in Cologne or Essen, the cross demonstrates several medieval techniques: cast figurative sculpture, filigree, enamelling, gem polishing and setting, and the reuse of Classical cameos and engraved gems.

Middle Ages

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In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history.

A late Roman sculpture depicting the Tetrarchs, now in Venice, Italy

Barbarian kingdoms and tribes after the end of the Western Roman Empire

A coin of the Ostrogothic leader Theoderic the Great, struck in Milan, Italy, c. AD 491–501

A mosaic showing Justinian with the bishop of Ravenna (Italy), bodyguards, and courtiers.

Reconstruction of an early medieval peasant village in Bavaria

An 11th-century illustration of Gregory the Great dictating to a secretary

Map showing growth of Frankish power from 481 to 814

Charlemagne's palace chapel at Aachen, completed in 805

10th-century Ottonian ivory plaque depicting Christ receiving a church from Otto I

A page from the Book of Kells, an illuminated manuscript created in the British Isles in the late 8th or early 9th century

Medieval French manuscript illustration of the three classes of medieval society: those who prayed (the clergy) those who fought (the knights), and those who worked (the peasantry). The relationship between these classes was governed by feudalism and manorialism. (Li Livres dou Sante, 13th century)

13th-century illustration of a Jew (in pointed Jewish hat) and the Christian Petrus Alphonsi debating

Europe and the Mediterranean Sea in 1190

The Bayeux Tapestry (detail) showing William the Conqueror (centre), his half-brothers Robert, Count of Mortain (right) and Odo, Bishop of Bayeux in the Duchy of Normandy (left)

Krak des Chevaliers was built during the Crusades for the Knights Hospitallers.

A medieval scholar making precise measurements in a 14th-century manuscript illustration

Portrait of Cardinal Hugh of Saint-Cher by Tommaso da Modena, 1352, the first known depiction of spectacles

The Romanesque Church of Maria Laach, Germany

The Gothic interior of Laon Cathedral, France

Francis of Assisi, depicted by Bonaventura Berlinghieri in 1235, founded the Franciscan Order.

Execution of some of the ringleaders of the jacquerie, from a 14th-century manuscript of the Chroniques de France ou de St Denis

Guy of Boulogne crowning Pope Gregory XI in a 15th-century miniature from Froissart's Chroniques

Clerics studying astronomy and geometry, French, early 15th century

Agricultural calendar, c. 1470, from a manuscript of Pietro de Crescenzi

February scene from the 15th-century illuminated manuscript Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry

Medieval illustration of the spherical Earth in a 14th-century copy of L'Image du monde

The early Muslim conquests
Expansion under Muhammad, 622–632
Expansion during the Rashidun Caliphate, 632–661
Expansion during the Umayyad Caliphate, 661–750

Tripartite periodisation became standard after the 17th-century German historian Christoph Cellarius divided history into three periods: ancient, medieval, and modern.

Florence, the birthplace of the European Renaissance. The architectural perspective, and modern systems and fields of banking and accounting were introduced during the Renaissance.

The Renaissance is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas and achievements of classical antiquity.

From the Apocalypse in a Biblia Pauperum illuminated at Erfurt around the time of the Great Famine. Death sits astride a lion whose long tail ends in a ball of flame (Hell). Famine points to her hungry mouth.

Late Middle Ages

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France in the late 15th century: a mosaic of feudal territories

Silver mining and processing in Kutná Hora, Bohemia, 15th century

Ottoman miniature of the siege of Belgrade in 1456

Battle of Aljubarrota between Portugal and Castile, 1385

Peasants preparing the fields for the winter with a harrow and sowing for the winter grain. The background shows the Louvre castle in Paris, c. 1410; October as depicted in the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry

European output of manuscripts 500–1500. The rising trend in medieval book production saw its continuation in the period.

Urban dwelling house, late 15th century, Halberstadt, Germany.

Dante by Domenico di Michelino, from a fresco painted in 1465

A musician plays the vielle in a fourteenth-century Medieval manuscript.

The Late Middle Ages or Late Medieval Period was the period of European history lasting from AD 1250 to 1500.

World population, 10,000 BCE – 2,000 CE (vertical population scale is logarithmic)

Human history

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Narrative of humanity's past.

Cave painting, Lascaux, France, c. 15,000 BCE

Monumental Cuneiform inscription, Sumer, Mesopotamia, 26th century BCE

Persepolis, Achaemenid Empire, 6th century BCE

Pillar erected by India's Maurya Emperor Ashoka

The Pantheon in Rome, Italy, originally a Roman temple, now a Catholic church

Hagia Sophia, in Istanbul, is among the most recognizable symbols of the Byzantine civilization.

Great Mosque of Kairouan, Tunisia, founded 670 CE

Notre-Dame de Paris in Paris, France: is among the most recognizable symbols of the civilization of Christendom.

Battle during 1281 Mongol invasion of Japan

Angkor Wat temple, Cambodia, early 12th century

Gutenberg Bible, ca. 1450, produced using movable type

Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man (c. 1490), Renaissance Italy

1570 world map, showing Europeans' discoveries

Hagia Sophia, Istanbul (formerly Constantinople), Turkey

Ming dynasty section, Great Wall of China

Watt's steam engine powered the Industrial Revolution.

The first airplane, the Wright Flyer, flew, 1903.

Atomic bombings: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, 1945

Civilians (here, Mỹ Lai, Vietnam, 1968) suffered greatly in 20th-century wars.

China urbanized rapidly in the 21st century (Shanghai pictured).

World population, from 10000 BCE to 2000 CE, with projection to 2100 CE

Reconstruction of Lucy, the first Australopithecus afarensis skeleton found

Overview map of the peopling of the world by early humans during the Upper Paleolithic, following to the Southern Dispersal paradigm.

This scheme of historical periodization (dividing history into antiquity, post-classical, early modern, and late modern periods) was developed for, and applies best to, the history of the Old World, particularly Europe and the Mediterranean.

From the Winchester Bible, showing the seven ages within the opening letter "I" of the book of Genesis. This image is the final age, the Last Judgement. For images of the other six ages, see External links below.

Six Ages of the World

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The Six Ages of the World (Latin: sex aetates mundi), also rarely Seven Ages of the World (Latin: septem aetates mundi), is a Christian historical periodization first written about by Augustine of Hippo circa AD 400.

Bayeux Tapestry depicting the Battle of Hastings during the Norman Conquest

High Middle Ages

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Miniature representing the delivery of the fortress of Uclés to the Master of Order of Santiago in 1174

France in the 12th century. The Angevin Empire held the red, pink and orange territories.

Poland under the rule of Duke Mieszko I between c. 960 - 992

After the successful siege of Jerusalem in 1099, Godfrey of Bouillon, leader of the First Crusade, became the first ruler of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Cathars being expelled from Carcassonne in 1209

A map of medieval universities and major monasteries with library in 1250

Detail of a portrait of Hugh de Provence (wearing spectacles), painted by Tommaso da Modena in 1352

Ships of the world in 1460, according to the Fra Mauro map.

Fresco from the Boyana Church depicting Emperor Constantine Tikh Asen. The murals are among the finest achievements of the Bulgarian culture in the 13th century.

John the Apostle and Marcion of Sinope in an Italian illuminated manuscript, painting on vellum, 11th century

Musicians playing the Spanish vihuela, one with a bow, the other plucked by hand, in the Cantigas de Santa Maria of Alfonso X of Castile, 13th century

Men playing the organistrum, from the Ourense Cathedral, Spain, 12th century

The cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris, whose construction began in 1163, is one of the finer examples of the High Middle Ages architecture

The High Middle Ages, or High Medieval Period, was the period of European history that lasted from around AD 1000 to the 1300s.

History

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Study and the documentation of the past.

The title page to The Historians' History of the World

Ban Zhao, courtesy name Huiban, was the first known female Chinese historian.

Historians give these periods of time names in order to allow "organising ideas and classificatory generalisations" to be used by historians.

Gilded Age

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Era extending roughly from 1870 to 1900.

The celebration of the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad, May 10, 1869

Toluca Street Oil Field in Los Angeles oil district, c. 1895–1901

Grand Central Depot in New York City, opened in 1871

Cornelius Vanderbilt versus James Fisk Jr. in a famous rivalry with the Erie Railroad

Oswego starch factory in Oswego, New York, 1876

Scottish immigrant Andrew Carnegie led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry

Octopus representing Standard Oil with tentacles wrapped around the U.S. Congress and state capitals, as well as the steel, copper, and shipping industries, and reaching for the White House

Cartoon showing Cyrus Field, Jay Gould, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Russell Sage, seated on bags of "millions", on large heavy raft made of low wages and high prices being carried by workers

New York police violently attacking unemployed workers in Tompkins Square Park, 1874

A Group of Vultures Waiting for the Storm to "Blow Over" – "Let Us Prey," a cartoon denouncing the corruption of New York's Boss Tweed and other Tammany Hall figures, drawn in 1871 by Thomas Nast and published in Harper's Weekly.

"The Bosses of the Senate" (1889). Reformers like the cartoonist Joseph Keppler depicted the Senate as controlled by the giant moneybags, who represented the nation's financial trusts and monopolies.

Celebrating ethnic pluralism on 4th of July. 1902 Puck editorial cartoon

Businessman and politician P. J. Kennedy of Boston in 1900; his grandson John F. Kennedy became president in 1960

Temporary quarters for Volga Germans in central Kansas, 1875

Norwegian settlers in front of their sod house in North Dakota in 1898

The Home Insurance Building in Chicago became the world's first skyscraper when it was built in 1885

Map of the United States, 1870–80. Orange indicates statehood, light blue territories, and green unorganized territories

A group of students, together with a non-white man, 1893

This 1902 cartoon from the Hawaiian Gazette shows a WCTU activist using the water cure to torture a brewmaster as the Anti-Saloon League mans the pump

In the 1920s and 1930s the metaphor "Gilded Age" began to be applied to a designated period in American history.

Iron Age

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Final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity.

Europe in the year 700 BC, during the Iron Age

Maiden Castle, Dorset, England. More than 2,000 Iron Age hillforts are known in Britain.

Silla chest and neck armour from the National Museum of Korea in Seoul (3rd century CE)

Lingling-o earrings from Luzon, Philippines

Iron Age finds in East and Southern Africa, corresponding to the early 1st millennium Bantu expansion

The development of the now-conventional periodization in the archaeology of the Ancient Near East was developed in the 1920s to 1930s.

Post-classical history

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Post-classical history, as used in global history, generally runs from about 500 CE to 1500 CE (roughly corresponding to the European Middle Ages).

Leonardo Bruni, Renaissance historian who helped develop the concept of "Middle Ages"

Piquillacta, an administrative urban center of the Wari Empire, a South America Andean civilization that thrived from the 5th to the 8th century

Pakistan's Babusar Pass, part of the Silk Road

Reconstructed depth of Little Ice Age varies among studies. Anomalies shown are from the 1950–80 reference period.

Djenne Terracotta Equestrian (13th–15th century), within the Mali Empire

Bobolice Castle, in Boblice Poland. Medieval European castles were centers of feudal power.

6th century Sassanid defense lines in modern-day Derbent, Dagestan Russia. Prior to the Muslim conquest of Persia, Sassanid Persia with its Zoroastrian Religion was prevalent

The Hagia Sophia in Constantinople was the center of the Orthodox Church in the Byzantine Empire

Brihadisvara Temple, Thanjavur constructed by Rajendra Chola.

View of Borobudur, from center point of view. Located in Megelang, Central Java, Indonesia. Built in the 9th century Borobudur is the largest Buddhist Temple in the world.

In China public examinations gave citizens the opportunity to be employed by the Imperial Government through meritocracy. The examination system reached its maximum effectiveness in the 11th–12th centuries. Painting from Ming dynasty era.

A Japanese Buddha sculpture from the Asuka Period

Letter from the Mongolian-Persian Ilkhanate to France, 1305. The Chinese style stamp was used outside China as the official symbol of the Khans and their messengers

Westerner and Arab practicing geometry 15th century manuscript

12th century illustration from the Tale of Genji, the world's first novel.

Authentic reconstruction of Norse site at L'Anse aux Meadows. Photo provided by Dylan Kereluk.

Toltec Atlantean figures at the Tula site. The Toltec Civilization inspired the later Aztecs.

Micronesian navigational chart, these were used by Polynesians to navigate through wind and water currents.

Hale o Keawe, a restored Heiau in the U.S State of Hawaii, used as sacred temple and sacrificial altar. The statues represent traditional gods.

Authentic Maori Waka, used for warfare and navigation in New Zealand

Genoese world map, 1457 it suggests the possibility of sea travel to India from Western Europe though this had not yet been done at the time.

Post-classical history is a periodization used by historians employing a world history approach to history, specifically the school developed during the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

A report on Periodization

12 related topics with Alpha

Middle Ages

Renaissance

Late Middle Ages

Human history

Six Ages of the World

High Middle Ages

History

Gilded Age

Iron Age

Post-classical history