•
Geologic Time – Period prior to humans. 4.6 billion to 3 million years ago. (See "prehistoric periods" for more detail into this.) •
Prehistory – Period between the appearance of
Homo ("humans";
first stone tools c. three million years ago) and the invention of writing systems (for the
Ancient Near East: c. five thousand years ago). •
Paleolithic – the earliest period of the Stone Age •
Lower Paleolithic – time of
archaic human species, predates
Homo sapiens •
Middle Paleolithic – coexistence of archaic and
anatomically modern human species •
Upper Paleolithic –
worldwide expansion of anatomically modern humans, the disappearance of archaic humans by extinction or
admixture with modern humans; earliest
evidence for pictorial art. •
Mesolithic (
Epipaleolithic) – a period in the development of human technology between the Palaeolithic and Neolithic periods. •
Neolithic – a period of primitive
technological and
social development, beginning about 10,200 BC in parts of the Middle East, and later in other parts of the world. •
Chalcolithic (or "Eneolithic", "Copper Age") – still largely Neolithic in character, when early
copper metallurgy appeared alongside the use of stone tools. •
Bronze Age – not part of prehistory for all regions and civilizations who had adopted or developed a writing system. •
Iron Age – not part of prehistory for all civilizations who had introduced written records during the Bronze Age. •
Ancient history – Aggregate of past events from the beginning of recorded human history and extending as far as the Early Middle Ages or the Postclassical Era. The span of
recorded history is roughly five thousand years, beginning with the earliest linguistic records in the third millennium BC in
Mesopotamia and
Egypt. •
Classical antiquity – Broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of
ancient Greece and
ancient Rome, collectively known as the
Greco-Roman world. It is the period in which Greek and Roman society flourished and wielded great influence throughout Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. •
Post-classical history – Period of time that immediately followed ancient history. Depending on the continent, the era generally falls between the years AD 200–600 and AD 1200–1500. The major classical civilizations that the era follows are
Han China (ending in 220), the
Western Roman Empire (in 476), the
Gupta Empire (in the 550s), and the
Sasanian Empire (in 651). •
Middle Ages – Lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. It began with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and is variously demarcated by historians as ending with the
Fall of Constantinople in 1453, or the discovery of America by Columbus in 1492, merging into the
Renaissance and the
Age of Discovery. •
Early Middle Ages •
High Middle Ages •
Late Middle Ages •
Modern history – After the post-classical era •
Early modern period – The chronological limits of this period are open to debate. It emerges from the
Late Middle Ages (c. 1500), demarcated by historians as beginning with the
fall of Constantinople in 1453, in forms such as the
Italian Renaissance in the West, the
Ming dynasty in the East, and the rise of the
Aztecs in the New World. The period ends with the beginning of the
Age of Revolutions. •
Contemporary history – History within living memory. It shifts forward with the generations, and today is the span of historic events from approximately 1945 that are immediately relevant to the present time. ==Forms of modernity==