Developed by María Jesús Campos Fernández, teacher of Geography, History and Social Studies at a bilingual section in Alcorcon, Madrid (Spain)

1. HISTORICAL PERIODS: ORGANIZING
HISTORY THROUGH TIME
María Jesús Campos
learningfromhistory.wikispaces.com

2. HISTORY
 History is a science that
investigates, analyses, organizes
and present 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 an event and
the patterns of cause and effect
that determine them.

3. HISTORICAL PERIODS
 Historians have divided
the past into different
periods or stages to help
people understand past
events:
 Prehistory
 Ancient Age
 Middle Ages
 Early Modern Age
 Contemporary History

4. HISTORICAL PERIODS
Prehistory Ancient Age Middle Ages Modern Age
Contemporary
History

5.  Prehistory: is the
historical period that
goes from the
beginning of human
life on Earth, 2 million
years ago, to the
invention of writing
around the year 3500
B.C.

6.  Ancient Age: is the
historical period that
goes from the invention
of writting, around the
year 3500 B.C. until the
fall of the Western
Roman Empire in the
year 476 A.D.

7.  Middle Ages: is the
historical period that goes
from the fall of the
Western Roman Empire,
in the year 476 A.D., until
the discovery of America
by Christopher Columbus
in 1492 or the conquest of
Constantinople by the
Turks in the year 1453.

8.  Early Modern Age: is the
historical period that goes
from the discovery of
America by Christopher
Columbus in 1492 A.D. to
the French Revolution in
1789 A.D.

9.  Contemporary
History or Modern
Ages: is the historical
period that goes from
the French Revolution
in 1789 until nowadays.

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

12.  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.

13. CHRONOLOGY
 It is the order in shich a succession of events
happened.
 The common reference point is the birth of Christ:
 B.C. means “Before Christ”. It is used to date events before
the birth of Jesus.
 A.D. stands for “Anno Domini” which means “in the year of
the Lord”. It is used to date events after Jesus’ birth.

14.  However, currently as not everybody is Christian, some
historias have developed a new dating system by using:
 B.C.E. which stands for “Before the Common Era” for the dates
before Jesus birth.
 C.E. which stands for “Common Era” for the events after Jesus
birth.

15.  Historical units of time:
 Year
 Decade = 10 years
 Century = 100 years
 Millennium = 1000 years
 The Anglo-Saxon world
uses Arabic numbers to
represent time:
 1st century; 15th century…
 The Hispanic world uses
Roman numerals to
represent time:
 I century; XV century…

16.  An easy way to find out to
which century a year
corresponds to is to add “1”
to the first 2 figures of the
year:
 476 year = 0476
 04 + 1 = 5
 So it’s the 5th century
 1492 year = 1492
 14 + 1 = 15
 So it’s the 15th century

17. TIMELINES
 Timelines are the best way to understand when events
happened and how much time occured between
different events.
 It is a way to visually present events, discoveries or
facts during a particular period.

18.  To create a timeline you need to:
 Identify the events you are going to use and their
dates
 Calculate the number of segments (parts) that your
timeline will have. If you are using years, calculate
how many years have passed from the earliest event
to the latest one and divide the line in that number of
equal segments.
 Label the dates on the appropriate segments and
write the name of the event to which they
correspond.
 Take into account if the events you are recording
happened B.C. or A.D. Locating the year 0 may help.

19. HOW TO RECORD HISTORY
 Descriptive
Vocabulary:
 Before
 After
 Ancient
 Old
 New
 Decade
 Century
 Modern
 From….to
 Technical Vocabulary:
 BC
 AD
 “the nineteenth century”
 “the year….”

21. WHY STUDY HISTORY?

24. Developed by María Jesús Campos
Chusteacher
wikiteacher