Historical+Periods

toc

Lesson: History and Historical Periods
media type="slideshare" key="45079802" height="420" width="510"

Although **History** is made up of many people's stories of the past, **as a science History is the investigation, analysis, organization and presentation of information about past events in the most objective way**. Historians discover, collect and investigate different versions of the same event to understand and objectively determine the characteristics of the event and the patterns of cause and effect that determine them.

Trying to help people understand History, historians have divided it into different periods or stages: Prehistory, Ancient Age, Middle Ages, Early Modern Age, Contemporary History or Modern Age.

These historical blocks are designed to help people understand what happened in the past allowing us to locate past events, people and facts and to compare them with the ones that happened in other periods.

Although there is an agreement in the basic characteristics, these periods may vary from one civilization to the other.

Nevertheless, we may understand that nothing happens all at once. Life does not stop on December 31 of one year, and begin all over in a different manner on January 1 of the next.

__**The Middle Ages**__
The Middle Ages is a historical period that endured from the year **476 AD with the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the year 1492 when Cristopher Columbus discovered America**. Other historians establish the end of the Middle Ages in the year **1453 when the Byzantine empire dissapeared** as Constantinople was conquered by the Turks.



To better understand the changes that took place during the Middle Ages, historians have divided this period in different stages:


 * The Early Middle Ages:**a period of transition from the Ancient world to the feudal world. It develops between the 5th and the 10th centuries. The most important events that happened during this period are the fall of the Western Roman Empire (476 AD), the Byzantine Empire splendour, the creation of Islam and the development of the Islamic Empire.


 * The High Middle Ages:** the period of feudalism, economic and urban growth. It develops between the 11th and the 13th centuries. It is the expansion of Romanesque and Gothic art.


 * The Late Middle Ages:** a period of transition from feudalism to the modern world. Europe is devastated by plagues and economic crisis, political and social conflict expanded everywhere. It is a period of conflict between the ideas of the feudal monarchy and the new ideas of a monarch with a strong power and control over the nobles and the clergy. It comprises the 14th and the 15th centuries.