Page 154 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

periodization—overview 1455

Three Steps in the
Evolution of Periodization

Schemes
Most modern attempts at large, synoptic histories
Jesuit Priest and have preferred schemes that are fundamentally linear.
Scientist Teihard de Such schemes have been greatly influenced by the work
Chardin of archaeologists and anthropologists, for whom the
problem of constructing a periodization covering the
Stage I: Cosmogenesis (5 billion years ago)
whole of human history was often more urgent than it
Stage II: Biogenesis (4 billion years ago) was for historians, who normally focused on shorter peri-
ods of time. Because archaeologists, unlike historians,
Stage III: Anthropogenesis (4.5 million years
deal mainly with material artifacts, it was natural for
ago)
them to construct their periodizations around aspects of
Stage IV: Endomorphosis (40,000 years ago) material culture. The nineteenth-century Danish archae-
ologists Christian Thomsen (1788–1865) and Jens Wor-
Lewis Henry Morgan saae (1821–1885) constructed a scheme comprising
(1877) three ages—a Stone Age, a Bronze Age, and an Iron Age
—that still has some influence within the study of pre-
Stage I: Savagery (Fire, bow and arrow, pottery)
history. In the twentieth century, G. Gordon Childe
Stage II: Barbarism (Domestication of animals, (1892–1957) built on the Marxist insight that particular
smelting of iron, phonetic writing) technologies imply distinctive lifeways and social struc-
tures to argue that the major turning points in human
Stage III: Civilization: Alphabetic writing
prehistory were the appearance of agriculture (the “Neo-
lithic Revolution”) and the appearance of cities and
Archaeologist V. states (the “Urban Revolution”). Nineteenth-century
Gorden Childe anthropologists such as Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–
1881) and Edward Tylor (1832–1917) offered parallel
Stage I: Paleolithic
schemes in which different eras were distinguished by dif-
Stage I: Neolithic ferent social structures in a progressive movement from
“savagery” to “barbarism” to “civilization.”
Stage III: Civilization (Life in cities in which
In the late twentieth century, historians, anthropolo-
writing of any kind is used)
gists, and archaeologists became increasingly sensitive to
the dangers of using schemes that imply easy value judg-
ments. So, while most modern schemes of periodization
Patterns of rise and fall have reappeared in more retain a sense of directionality in history, they usually
recent writings, such as in the work of Oswald Spengler resist the assumption that directionality implies either
(1880–1936) or Arnold Toynbee (1889–1975). Marx- progress or decline. On the other hand, most modern
ian historiography offered a combination of cyclical and schemes of periodization at the largest scales still rely pri-
linear chronologies, beginning with an era of simple per- marily on a combination of technological and sociolog-
fection (the era of primitive communism), which was fol- ical factors to distinguish between different eras. This is
lowed by stages characterized by increasing productivity a tradition with roots going back to the earliest written
and increasing inequality and exploitation. But the Marx- histories. The Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh, which dates
ist scheme culminated in a future that would resolve from the third millennium BCE, recognizes, in the con-
these contradictions by combining high productivity trast between the urban warrior hero Gilgamesh and his
with a return to the egalitarianism of the first era. great friend Enkidu, who came from the wild lands