The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. 2002.
World History to 1550
This section covers the period from the beginnings of civilization in the Stone Age through the rise and fall of the ancient Mediterranean civilizations, to the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, and the beginnings of the Renaissance and the Reformation. The Stone Age ended roughly around 4000 B.C. with the beginning of the Bronze Age, which encompassed the years from about 4000 B.C. to 2000 B.C., at which point the Iron Age began. The great civilizations of Egypt, Greece, and Rome developed during the Iron Age. Egyptian civilization flourished in the second millennium B.C. and then declined. Ancient Greece reached the pinnacle of its influence in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. and then saw its influence wane after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. The importance of Rome increased dramatically in the century before the birth of Jesus, in large measure because of the military conquests of Julius Caesar. Rome consolidated its rule over much of Europe, Asia Minor, and North Africa in the reign of the first Roman emperor, Augustus Caesar, who died in A.D. 14.
The period from the Fall of Rome in the fifth century A.D. to roughly the tenth century is often called the Dark Ages. In the Medieval period, which is sometimes referred to as the age of chivalry, modern nation-states emerged. That period peaked between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries and then waned with the rise of the Renaissance in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The Renaissance, a cultural rebirth during which many of the literary and artistic treasures of the ancient world were rediscovered, lasted into the seventeenth century. Starting in the fifteenth century, the religious rift of the Reformation divided Europe between Protestants and Roman Catholics.
Although American schools and colleges still use these divisions of history, we should be mindful that a growing number of Muslim, African, Asian, and Latino immigrants to the United States carry a different set of historical markers in their heads. To Muslims, for example, the Dark Ages, which Europeans associate with ignorance and barbarism, coincided with a glorious time, the rise and spread of Islam, whereas South Americans recognize that the civilization of the Mayas flourished during Europe’s Dark Ages. To Asians, the period that Europeans call the Middle Ages coincided with the empire established by Genghis Khan, the largest land empire in history; to Africans, the Middle Ages paralleled the Mali empire.
