History by period

See also: List of time periods

Whether one can precisely define a time window as 'High Middle Ages' or 'Early Middle Ages' the title evokes an image and expectations in the reader of certain sets of characteristics—the essential essence of such labeling—a communications tool from one mind to another.

Nonetheless, periods have a generally accepted meaning within all disciplines even though a given community of scholarship applies different criteria to their meaning of the same general term used in other disciplines; consequently squabbles about exact date ranges are mostly shrugged aside a s counter-productive— in large part this is an extension of the recognition that one region develops at a different pace and under different influences and so at a different rate. A city or town will generally adopt a new practice as it hears about things first simply because it is in greater more frequent contact with a larger farther section of the world. Sometime later the idea or practice or characteristic spreads to the whole region, people, or continent.

Pre-historical periods

See Prehistory, Stone Age, Paleolithic age, Mesolithic age, Neolithic age, Holocene epoch, Pleistocene epoch, Quaternary period (recently replaced by Neogene period)

Historical periods

Bronze Age
Antiquity
- Iron Age
- History of Mesopotamia 6000 BC - 1100 BC
- Indus Valley Civilisation 3300 BC - 1300 BC
- Old Kingdom (Egypt, 3000 BC - 2000 BC)
- Middle Kingdom (Egypt, 2000 BC - 1300 BC)
- Shang Dynasty (China 1800 BC - 1200 BC
- New Kingdom (Egypt, 1300 BC - 700 BC)
- Zhou Dynasty (China 1200 BC - 500 BC)
- (Ancient Greece, c:a 1000 BC-, see Timeline of Ancient Greece)
- Ancient Rome 509 BC - 476)
- Period of the Three Kingdoms (China, 220 - 280)
- Dark Age (Europe, 4th century - 900)
Middle Ages (Europe, 5th century - 15th century)
In the strictest sense, the term 'Middle Ages' is a reference to Europe and western Asia. Parallel existence by peoples elsewhere has led to expansion of the term in the most general sense to convey similar epochs of the locality under discussion.
- Early Middle Ages (Europe, 5th century - 10th century)
- High Middle Ages (Europe, 10th century - 13th century)
- Late Middle Ages (Europe, 14th century - 15th century)
Non-European 'Middle History' Periods
- Viking Age (Scandinavia, Europe, 793 - 1066)
- Nara period (Japan, 709 - 795)
- Period of Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms (China, 907 - 960)
- Sengoku period (Japan, 1478–1605)
Early Modern (Europe, 14th century - 18th century)
- The Renaissance (Europe, 14th century - 16th century)
- Age of Discovery (or Exploration) (Europe, 15th century - 17th century)
- Age of Sail, referring to commercial and military impact of technology. Usually dated as: 1571—1863.
- Elizabethan period (United Kingdom, 1558–1603)
- The Protestant Reformation (Europe, 16th century)
- The Age of Enlightenment (Europe, 18th century)
- Tokugawa shogunate (Japan, 1603–1868)
Modern (Europe, 18th century - 20th century)
- Industrial Revolution (Europe, United States, elsewhere 18th and 19th centuries)
- Napoleonic Era, 1799–1815
- Victorian era (United Kingdom, 1837–1901)
- Edwardian period (United Kingdom, 1901–1910)
- Meiji era (Japan, 1868–1912)
- World War I (Much of Earth, 1914–1918)
- Interwar period (Earth, 1918 - 1939 or 1937)
- World War II (Earth, 1937 or 1939–1945)
- Cold War (Soviet Union and United States, as well their allied states, 1945–1989)
- Space Age (after 1957)
- Information Age (1971–present)
- Post-communist period (Russia and other former Soviet states, after 1991)