List of time periods

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The categorization of the past into discrete, quantified named blocks of time is called periodization.[1] This is a list of such named time periods as defined in various fields of study. Major categorization systems include cosmological (time periods in the origin and mass evolution of the universe), geological (time periods in the origin and evolution of the Earth), anthropological (time periods in the origin and evolution of humans) and historical (written history).

Human Time Periods[edit]

Main article: History by period

These can be divided broadly into prehistorical (before history began to be recorded) and historical periods (when written records began to be kept).

Further information: List of archaeological periods

In archaeology and anthropology, prehistory is subdivided around the three-age system. This list includes the use of the three-age system as well as a number of various designation used in reference to sub-ages within the traditional three.

The dates for each age can vary by region. On the geologic time scale, the Holocene epoch starts at the end of the last glacial period of the current ice age (c.10,000 BC) and continues to the present. The beginning of Mesolithic is usually considered to correspond to the beginning of the Holocene epoch.

General Periods[edit]

Further information: Universal history

American Periods[edit]

Further information: History of the Americas and History of the United States

Southeast Asian Periods[edit]

Further information: History of Southeast Asia

Filipino Periods[edit]

Further information: History of the Philippines

Chinese Periods[edit]

Further information: History of China

Central Asian Periods[edit]

Further information: History of Mongolia

Egyptian Periods[edit]

Further information: History of Egypt

European Periods[edit]

Further information: History of Europe

Indian Periods[edit]

Further information: History of India

Japanese Periods[edit]

Further information: History of Japan

Middle Eastern Periods[edit]

Further information: History of the Middle East and History of Mesopotamia

Mythological and Astrological Time Periods[edit]

Marxian Stages of History[edit]

Main article: Marx's theory of history § The stages of history

The Marxian theory of history identifies five major distinct periods of history:[8][9][10][11][12]

Primitive Communism[edit]

The First Stage: is usually called primitive communism. It has the following characteristics.

  • Shared Property: there is no concept of ownership beyond individual possessions. All is shared by the tribe to ensure its survival.[citation needed]
  • Hunter / Gatherer: tribal societies have yet to develop large scale agriculture and so their survival is a daily struggle.[citation needed]
  • Proto-Democracy: there is usually no concept of "leadership" yet. So tribes are led by the best warrior if there is war, the best diplomat if they have steady contact with other tribes and so forth.

Slave Society[edit]

The Second Stage: may be called slave society, considered to be the beginning of "class society" where private property appears.

  • Class: here the idea of class appears. There is always a slave-owning ruling class and the slaves themselves.
  • Statism: the state develops during this stage as a tool for the slave-owners to use and control the slaves.
  • Agriculture: people learn to cultivate plants and animals on a large enough scale to support large populations.
  • Democracy & Authoritarianism: these opposites develop at the same stage. Democracy arises first with the development of the republican city-state, followed by the totalitarian empire.
  • Private Property: citizens now own more than personal property. Land ownership is especially important during a time of agricultural development.

Feudalism[edit]

The Third Stage: may be called feudalism; it appears after slave society collapses. This was most obvious during the European Middle Ages when society went from slavery to feudalism.

  • Aristocracy: the state is ruled by monarchs who inherit their positions, or at times marry or conquer their ways into leadership.
  • Theocracy: this is a time of largely religious rule. When there is only one religion in the land and its organizations affect all parts of daily life.
  • Hereditary Classes: castes can sometimes form and one's class is determined at birth with no form of advancement. This was the case with India.
  • Nation-state: nations are formed from the remnants of the fallen empires. Sometimes, they rebuild themselves into empires once more; this was the case with England's transition from a province to an empire.

Capitalism[edit]

Capitalism may be considered The Fourth Stage in the sequence. Marx pays special attention to this stage in human development. The bulk of his work is devoted to analysing the mechanisms of capitalism, which in western society classically arose "red in tooth and claw" from feudal society in a revolutionary movement. In capitalism, the profit motive rules and people, freed from serfdom, work for the capitalists for wages. The capitalist class are free to spread their laissez faire practices around the world. In the capitalist-controlled parliament, laws are made to protect wealth.

Capitalism appears after the bourgeois revolution when the capitalists (or their merchant predecessors) overthrow the feudal system, and it is categorized by the following:

  • Market Economy: In capitalism, the entire economy is guided by market forces. Supporters of laissez-faire economics argue that there should be little or no intervention from the government under capitalism. Marxists, however, such as Lenin in his Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, argue that the capitalist government is a powerful instrument for the furtherance of capitalism and the capitalist nation-state, particularly in the conquest of markets abroad.
  • Private Property: The means of production are no longer in the hands of the monarchy and its nobles, but rather they are controlled by the capitalists. The capitalists control the means of production through commercial enterprises (such as corporations) which aim to maximise profit.
  • Parliamentary Democracy: The capitalists tend to govern through an elected centralised parliament or congress, rather than under an autocracy. Capitalist (bourgeois) democracy, although it may be extended to the whole population, does not necessarily lead to universal suffrage. Historically it has excluded (by force, segregation, legislation or other means) sections of the population such as women, slaves, ex-slaves, people of colour or those on low income. The government acts on behalf of, and is controlled by, the capitalists through various methods.
  • Wages: In capitalism, workers are rewarded according to their contract with their employer. Power elites propagate the illusion that market forces mean wages converge to an equilibrium at which workers are paid for precisely the value of their services. In reality workers are paid less than the value of their productivity — the difference forming profit for the employer. In this sense all paid employment is exploitation and the worker is "alienated" from their work. Insofar as the profit-motive drives the market, it is impossible for workers to be paid for the full value of their labour, as all employers will act in the same manner.
  • Imperialism: Wealthy countries seek to dominate poorer countries in order to gain access to raw materials and to provide captive markets for finished products. This is done directly through war, the threat of war, or the export of capital. The capitalist's control over the state can play an essential part in the development of capitalism, to the extent the state directs warfare and other foreign intervention.
  • Financial Institutions: Banks and capital markets such as stock exchanges direct unused capital to where it is needed. They reduce barriers to entry in all markets, especially to the poor; it is in this way that banks dramatically improve class mobility.
  • Monopolistic Tendencies: The natural, unrestrained market forces will create monopolies from the most successful commercial entities.

But according to Marx, capitalism, like slave society and feudalism, also has critical failings — inner contradictions which will lead to its downfall. The working class, to which the capitalist class gave birth in order to produce commodities and profits, is the "grave digger" of capitalism. The worker is not paid the full value of what he or she produces. The rest is surplus value — the capitalist's profit, which Marx calls the "unpaid labour of the working class." The capitalists are forced by competition to attempt to drive down the wages of the working class to increase their profits, and this creates conflict between the classes, and gives rise to the development of class consciousness in the working class. The working class, through trade union and other struggles, becomes conscious of itself as an exploited class. In the view of classical Marxism, the struggles of the working class against the attacks of the capitalist class will eventually lead the working class to establish its own collective control over production

Socialism[edit]

After the working class gains class consciousness and mounts a revolution against the capitalists, socialism, which may be considered The Fifth Stage, will be attained, if the workers are successful. Marxist Socialism may be characterised as follows:

  • Common Property: the means of production are taken from the hands of a few capitalists and put in the hands of the workers. This translates into the democratic communes controlling the means of production.
  • Council Democracy: Marx, basing himself on a thorough study of Paris Commune, believed that the workers would govern themselves through system of communes. He called this the dictatorship of the proletariat, which, overthrowing the dictatorship (governance) of capital, would democratically plan production and the resources of the planet.

Marx explained that, since socialism, the first stage of communism, would be "in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges", each worker would naturally expect to be awarded according to the amount of labor he contributes, despite the fact that each worker's ability and family circumstances would differ, so that the results would still be unequal at this stage, although fully supported by social provision.

Geologic Time Periods[edit]

Main articles: Geologic time scale and List of Global Boundary Stratotype Sections and Points

The geologic time scale covers the extent of the existence of Earth, from about 4600 million years ago to the present day. It is marked by Global Boundary Stratotype Sections and Points. Geologic time units are (in order of descending specificity) eons, eras, periods, epochs, and ages; and the corresponding chronostratigraphic units, which measure "rock-time", are eonothems, erathems, systems, series, and stages.

The second and third timelines are each subsections of their preceding timeline as indicated by asterisks. The Cenozoic is sometimes divided into the Quaternary and Tertiary periods, although the latter is no longer used officially.

Cosmological Time Periods[edit]

13.8 billion years ago: The Big Bang Theory[edit]

Main article: Timeline of the Big Bang
Time Period Duration Description
Planck Epoch From the start to 10−43 seconds after the Big Bang Very little concrete information is known about this epoch. Different theories propose different views on this particular time.
Grand Unification Epoch Between 10−43 to 10−36 seconds after the Big Bang The result of the universe expanding and cooling down during the Planck epoch. All fundamental forces except gravity are unified.
Electroweak Epoch Between 10−36 seconds to 10−12 seconds after the Big Bang The universe cools down to 1028 kelvin. The fundamental forces are split into the strong force and the electroweak force.
Inflationary Epoch Between 10−36 seconds to 10−32 seconds after the Big Bang The shape of the universe flattens due to cosmic inflation.
Quark Epoch Between 10−12 seconds to 10−6 seconds after the Big Bang Cosmic inflation has ended. Quarks are present in the universe at this point. The electroweak force is divided again into the weak force and electromagnetic force.
Hadron Epoch Between 10−6 seconds to 1 second after the Big Bang The universe has cooled enough for quarks to form hadrons, protons, neutrons.
Lepton Epoch Between 1 second to 10 seconds after the Big Bang Most hadrons and anti-hadrons annihilate each other, leaving behind leptons and anti-leptons.
Photon Epoch Between 10 seconds to 370,000 years after the Big Bang Most leptons and anti-leptons annihilate each other. The universe is dominated by photons.
Nucleosynthesis Between 3 minutes to 20 minutes after the Big Bang The temperature of the universe has cooled down enough to allow atomic nuclei to form via nuclear fusion.
Recombination About 377,000 years after the Big Bang Hydrogen and helium atoms form.
Reionization Between 150 million and 1 billion years after the Big Bang The first stars and quasars form due to gravitational collapse.

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Adam Rabinowitz. It’s about time: historical periodization and Linked Ancient World Data. Study of the Ancient World Papers, 2014.
  2. ^ Iles, Dr Louise (2016-12-30). "Big digs: The year 2016 in archaeology". BBC News. Retrieved 2017-01-03.
  3. ^ https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/sunday-review/big-datas-impact-in-the-world.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
  4. ^ The area had settlements as far back as 9000 BC; see Timeline of ancient Greece
  5. ^ Bowman 2000, pp. 118–161.
  6. ^ a b c The Venture of Islam, Volume 2: The Expansion of Islam in the Middle Periods (1974), p. 3.
  7. ^ A Concise History of the Middle East (2015), p. 53.
  8. ^ Marx, Early writings, Penguin, 1975, p. 426.
  9. ^ Charles Taylor, "Critical Notice", Canadian Journal of Philosophy 10 (1980), p. 330.
  10. ^ Marx and Engels, The Critique of the Gotha Programme
  11. ^ Marx and Engels, The Civil War in France
  12. ^ Gewirth, Alan (1998). The Community of Rights (2 ed.). University of Chicago Press. p. 168. ISBN 9780226288819. Retrieved 2012-12-29. Marxists sometimes distinguish between 'personal property' and 'private property,' the former consisting in consumer goods directly used by the owner, while the latter is private ownership of the major means of production.
Works Cited
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