Talk:List of time periods

Lots more periods need to be added to the "historical periods" bit
Some examples could be found at pages beginning "Age of". See here. Some examples (some geological or biological alternative names need including as well):
 * Age of Pericles
 * Age of Persecution
 * Age of Reptiles (Mesozoic)
 * Age of Fish (Devonian)
 * Age of Revolution
 * Age of mammals (Cenozoic)
 * Golden Age
 * Age of Imperialism
 * Age of Liberty
 * Age of Migrations
 * Age of New Imperialism
 * Age of Reason (a big omission!)
 * Age of the Sturlungs
 * Age of Heroic Medicine
 * Period of Disunity
 * Age of Extremes


 * I've just noticed the Golden Age is already there. But many of these periods are not in the article, and there are many, many more not mentioned here or there. Carcharoth 10:43, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Not sure what the scope of this article is
Do you want more localized terms like Directoire (France 1795-1799), English Regency (Great Britain 1811-1820), etc.? I hesitated about adding them to the list the way it is now... Churchh 03:03, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I thnk the scope of the article is anything and everything! Please do add examples like that, but if they are very specific and narrow, maybe start a new section. Carcharoth 10:09, 6 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I Carcharoth, the scope of this page isn't anything and everything. Josephscottstevens (talk) 20:10, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Some more periods

 * Historical Periods Stone age, Bronze age, Iron age — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jlhenshaw (talk • contribs) 01:58, 4 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Sociocultural evolution - describes the progression of societies, and each stage of progression is generally a period, and researchers love to name periods. This article leads to others which list such periods, such as Rostovian take-off model.
 * Society (missing links italicized):
 * Hunter-gatherer bands → Social rank → tribes → Social stratification → chiefdoms → Neolithic Revolution → Civilization: Agrarian society (Pre-industrial society): Agrarian villages → Towns → Cities → City-states → Nation-states → Industrial Revolution → (Modern) Industrial society → (Postmodern) Post-industrial society → Informational Revolution →  Information society →  Digital Revolution →  Globalization → ?

--The Transhumanist 15:52, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Don't forget Agricultural revolution, especially the British Agricultural Revolution (which preceded the Industrial Revolution, which also started in Britain, by the way).
 * Modernity lists some periods.
 * This article lists 4 Astrological Ages, but there are 7 listed on Astrological age.
 * Why isn't the Chinese zodiac listed in the Mythological and astrological time periods section?
 * Centuries are an obvious time period, and each century is highly characterized by the historical events and progress which took place in it. See List of centuries.
 * And so are decades, like the the Gay Nineties, the Roaring Twenties, the Thirties, Forties, Fifties, Sixties, Seventies, Eighties, Nineties, etc. See List of decades.
 * Another type of period is the Era. See Chinese era name, Japanese era name, and Korean era name.
 * Periodization explains the naming of periods, and is sprinkled with period names.
 * Movements are often used as period names, especially Cultural movements.
 * Periods are often named for Epochs.
 * Wikipedia's timelines are sprinkled throughout with epochs. See List of timelines, especially the technology section.
 * If you want to go regional, then you'll find a lot more periods in regions' local history. See History of present-day nations and states.
 * There are some Ages listed in Wikipedia's All Pages, like the Age of sail. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AAllpages&from=age&namespace=0
 * The reigns of kings and Presidential Administrations are also often used to specify periods. Such as "during the Reagan Administration".
 * The Reign of Terror.
 * Six Ages of the World


 * Time periods from some geographical areas are listed under periods which exclusively refer to different geographical areas. One example are Asian dynasties listed under The Middle Ages, which refers exclusively to Europe. This needs to be fixed.   Ordosingularis (talk) 23:58, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

I've had a go at tidying the antiquities bit and making cosmological easier to follow.

I've linked to Mesopotamian and Roman timeline pages rather than include lots of separate mentions. I think this works better than trying to include everything here.Filceolaire 17:31, 29 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Anyone know what the starting date would be for the Oil Age?- J Logan t: 10:22, 31 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Lots of dates can be used.
 * 1846 - Abraham Gesner invents kerosene making coal and oil practical raw materials for lighting fuel.
 * 1859 - Edwin Drake invents the first modern drilling process for deep wells. Launches large scale oil exploration in Pennsylvania and many other places.
 * 1879 - Karl Benz produces the first practical gasoline-powered automobile.
 * 1901 - Anthony F. Lucas strikes a gusher at Spindletop, Beaumont, Texas, creating by far the most productive well ever established and causing oil prices to plummet (making oil products very cheap worldwide).
 * The 1901 date is probably the most commonly used.
 * --Mcorazao (talk) 16:39, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

-- "Big data age"? -- that's a new one. I think the "conceptual age" is replacing the information age, and there is an article about it. The new age is definitely NOT about data, it's about what can be done with it.

Greg -- —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.160.118.1 (talk) 02:43, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Historical periods
I'm not sure Post-modern is US period only (: 194.84.48.51 (talk) 09:59, 10 March 2008 (UTC) Andrew B.

African Continent & South America

This is a Eurocentric account of historical time periods. There is an absence of information on African history and South American history on the page. What about the Nomadic Tribes? Slave Trade? Pre-Colonialism, Colonialism, post-colonialism, neo-colonialism. Do these not count as time periods? Lisa B.

suggestion for grouping of historical time periods
As it is now, the list of historical time periods (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_time_periods#Historical_periods) is loosely chronological without any other type of organization. Time periods for very different civilizations are all on top of each other, and it makes the list confusing.

My suggestion is to have seperate categories for different continents or civilizations. For example, having one category for china and its dynasties, another category for europe, another for the middle east (before and after islam) would make the list much more clear and easy to understand.. as well as easier to expand.

Perhaps we could have a modern category for time periods that included most world affairs, like wwII and information age which are there now. Bigdan201 (talk) 09:37, 23 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, this would be WAY more coherent if the periods were at least grouped into world regions. This is viable for the ancient periods of time. I'm not sure what to do for modern world events though. FUTURI (talk) 21:52, 3 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Finally grouped everything up to make it more organized. Hope this works. FUTURI (talk) 21:24, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

How do they name the periods?
For example the 'Edwardian' period is named after prince Edward, the 'Elizabethan' period named after queen Elizabeth and so on. What is it called when you turn someones name into a period, how do you go about doing it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fatcud (talk • contribs) 15:36, 4 October 2009 (UTC)


 * They name the periods after significant people or events that took place during this time. For example, the period of the Industrial Revolution was the time where technology developed rapidly and allowed cities to form instead of Europe relying on rural and agricultural means. The Elizabethan era was named after Queen Elizabeth the First. The Bronze Age was where the usage of Bronze appeared in early human civilizations. FUTURI (talk) 21:54, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Big Data Age
There is not yet such formulated thing as "Big Data Age" since all the written history could be characterised as "Data Age" and at last 200 years as "Big Data Age". However as I agree that this age will be characterised by large amount of data I will just change it to something more grammatically accurate:"Large Amount of Data Age" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.142.92.126 (talk) 05:40, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Frankly, we should close the data age and start a new segment named the Cyberpunk era, or something along those lines. We are pretty much living in a Gibson novel both technologically and politically.193.213.47.203 (talk) 14:49, 30 November 2017 (UTC)


 * The Gibson Age 92.221.231.167 (talk) 22:28, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Formation of Population I stars
What is this section doing here? pasted in by accident or what? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.210.195.131 (talk) 21:12, 11 December 2010 (UTC)


 * I have no idea, but I took it down because it doesn't have any relevance to the topic. I'm surprised that section was left up here so long. I just joined yesterday and saw it while browsing. FUTURI (talk) 21:07, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Age of Information
Would it be a viable idea to add a mention of the Age of Information? Also, I believe that we need to update and add the decade of 2000-2010. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.16.194.115 (talk) 00:14, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Re-did the Cosmological time period section
I tried to expand it and make it more understandable...sort of like a primer to Big Bang theory. It's not that great, but I'm hoping it's a start. FUTURI (talk) 21:47, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Geologic Time Periods should be listed
Under Geologic Time Periods, only a link to the main Wiki article is given (which itself is very voluminous). Suggest summarizing the main Geologic Time Periods in this article; it is one of the most important time periods of our planet and should be at least summarized here. Also, the newest Geologic Time Period is being suggested as the Anthropocene ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene ) which should at least be mentioned in the listing as it appears to have a lot of acceptance by the Geologic community. Tony (talk) 15:24, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Marxism timeline is off-topic for this section.
Included Marxism in the List of Time Periods is a very strange thing to do. Marxism is political ideology, and is widely criticized. Josephscottstevens (talk) 20:11, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

To expand upon Churchh point. The Marxist timeline is an irrelevant section to include.

Edit: --Josephscottstevens (talk) 15:03, 28 July 2019 (UTC) I intend to remove the section in two weeks, unless there are objections. Marxism is highly political viewpoint on history, and does present a neutral point of view in regards to the List of time periods. Source

Difficulty finding this page and the "Time Periods" category
I was recently trying to find related pages for the Information Age. While the "See Also" section certainly helped lead me to a lot of content, I eventually had to resort to searching different keywords to finally find this page, the one I was looking for. It would have been a lot easier to find this page and related pages if they were all categorized as "Time Periods". Anyone on board with this new category? How do I go about creating it? MXMLLN (talk) 09:50, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

Hmm
Yes 98.97.141.42 (talk) 03:45, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

Weird Unsourced Speculation? in "The Future" section
The writing style is strange and there are no references for any of it. 24.151.200.198 (talk) 06:22, 23 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Yes, such things shouldn't exist, per WP:CRYSTAL, referencing issues aside. It's removed now. Iskandar323 (talk) 09:29, 23 April 2023 (UTC)