He Object of study of history Is the past of human beings, especially the events that transcend humanity, including the prehistoric and historical period, after the appearance of writing.
Through scientific methods, history analyzes everything related to the past of all human beings and all the processes that these entail.
The main objective of the study of history is not simply to record facts and actions, but to try to understand past situations in context and their causes and consequences, in order to understand the present.
History is therefore both the facts and the study of them and is constantly built because the past is extended in each moment.
The object of study of history
The main purpose of history is to focus on the evolution and transformation of societies in time and with it to interpret everything that happened in humanity, as well as its causes and consequences.
Historians are professionals who through methods manage to develop research of multiple types, inspired by different Philosophical currents And focused through different methodologies.
When research is carried out, a fraction of the universal history is taken and analyzed, which is the work of the historical researcher.
When research is carried out, a fraction of the universal history is taken and analyzed, which is the work of the historical researcher.
Historical studies can be oriented in many ways. All sciences and studies have their history, so it is common to find experts in history of certain areas of thought.
The field of work of the historians is vast, because the investigations that are carried out are completely adaptable to the latent needs that they have and the prevailing desire that they want to materialize in a work.
In what is meant by history as the time period, there is a consensus in dividing it into four major stages.
The story begins when the prehistory , With the appearance of writing, in the fourth millennium BC and gives rise to protohistory, which is quickly replaced by the first age, Antigua.
From there, they would continue the Middle Ages, Modern and Contemporary. This classification has been criticized by pointing out that it can only be applied to Western history and not to that of Eastern civilizations.
Different periods of time in history
Prehistory
The scientific disseminator Carl Sagan Extrapolated the entire history of the universe, from the Big Bang to the present, in a calendar year for didactic purposes, being midnight on January 1 as the time when the Big Bang took place.
Discovery of the fire
The appearance of the hominids would be only December 30, which was what started the prehistory more than two million years ago.
History has been classified into four major stages: Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic and the Age of Metals.
In the Paleolithic, also known as Stone Age, the man knew the fire and began to carve the stone. The men then began to gather in hordes and to develop the language.
The Mesolithic was a process of transition to the Neolithic, where began to replace hunting, fishing and harvesting by agriculture and livestock in small portions. In addition, groups began to settle in villages and leave nomadism behind.
Subsequently, it followed the Age of Metals, where humans began to develop technical activities such as plowing or metal processing, that is, metallurgy.
Among the metals most worked at this time were copper, bronze and iron. The villages began to become large settlements that united and formed civilizations, with religion and state. Then came the writing and began the story.
Old age
Egypt was one of the most important agricultural civilizations
In its beginnings, protohistory was presented where writing began to consolidate in much of the globe. The beginning of the Old Age is understood with the constitution of civilizations, especially in the Near East.
One of the earliest of these was Ancient Egypt, as were Phenicia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria. The indicative of these civilizations was the development of cities with temples and governments that dominate territories that comprise several cities and towns.
School of Athens. Rafael Sanzio.
Also in this age arose the culture that became the cradle of the western civilization: the Ancient Greece. Later Roman civilization arose which absorbed the Greek.
From these empires came the concepts of democracy And citizenship, in addition to all the approaches in all sciences made by philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle .
In other latitudes, the Persian civilization was consolidated. Finally came the Christian and Islamic religions, which still dominate the world.
Middle Ages
The all-powerful Roman Empire was divided into two: that of the West and that of the East. In turn, in the western empire began to emerge the great European monarchies , Which imposed a Feudal system .
Christianity ceased to be persecuted and became the official religion of the new governments, which imposed it by force.
The church became the most powerful institution of this historical period, followed by the monarchs and the feudatories. A society with very determined classes was imposed.
Feudal monarchy
This Age Concludes with the the fall of the Roman empire The Byzantine Empire, in the fifteenth century, as well as with the discovery of America The 12 of October of 1492.
Modern age
Christopher Columbus discovering America
Modernity begins clearly with the amplification of the world. Although the Middle Ages were an eminently European process with the emergence of the Modern Age, the world began to be an entity communicated between all its continents.
This fact is reflected especially with the conquest by the European empires of the American continent, bringing with it the imposition of the western civilization in most of the continents.
Extract of the 95 theses of Martin Luther
Added to this, in the Modern Age the European colonial empires had their maximum splendor, but at the same time they underwent a vertiginous descent in the end, that would end up leaving them with residual colonies in America.
At this stage of history, art was strongly expressed in periods such as the Renaissance and the Baroque . The Church suffered a break with the Protestant Reformation Of Martin Luther who divided Europe.
The crown, the greatest symbol of European absolutism
The culmination of this age is usually located with the End of absolutism In France through the French Revolution, although there are also authors who relate it to the independence of the United States or the emergence of the Industrial Revolution .
Contemporary age
It is the age that is currently in progress. The national states spread throughout the planet, originating the independence of the American nations and later, in the twentieth century, of the African.
World War I was the first armed conflict in which civilians were also enemies.
In the world there is a demographic explosion, promoted mainly by the economic success brought by the Industrial Revolution and the subsequent use of products such as oil.
Electricity is consolidated throughout the globe and begins a transition from the countryside to the city. In the twentieth century two world wars took place.
The first, from 1914 to 1918, which confronted the Austro-Hungarian, German and Ottoman Empire with France, Russia, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States, among others, resulted in the latter winning the European map.
In 1939 occurs World War II that faced a Nazi Germany believer in the superiority of the Aryan race, which allied with fascist Italy and the Empire of Japan against the Allies: United States, United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union .
Cold war between the USSR and the US as visible heads
With the triumph of the Allies, the United States and the communist Soviet Union would become the two world superpowers, who led a space race that reached the moon, and which maintained a risk of nuclear war, until the latter would dissolve in 1991 .
In the 21st century, the main problems of global scale are due to the rise of terrorism as a major threat to the stability of nation-states, the consolidation of the capitalist model and the emergence of emerging powers such as China.
References
- Anderson, J. (1870). A Manual of General History. New York, United States: Clark & Maynard Publishers. Retrieved from archive.org.
- Andorfer, G. and McCain, R. (producers). Malone, A. (director). (1980). Cosmos: A personal voyage. [TV series]. United States, PBS.
- Bloch, M. (1952). Introduction to History. Mexico City, Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
- Carr, E. (s.f.). What is History? Winterbourne, United Kingdom: Winterbourne International Academy.
- Hirst, K. (February 28, 2017). What Is History? - A Collection of Definitions. Thought Co. Recovered from thoughtco.com.
- Sánchez, L. (2005). History as science. Latin American Journal of Educational Studies. 1 (1). 54-82. Retrieved from redalyc.org.
- Yépez, A. (2011). Universal history. Caracas, Venezuela: Larense.