Sign In
Create Account
Last year I made an interesting past timeline, but I forgot about it. Now found that notebook.
In this timeline, I diveded the recorded human history in 10 periods, with the same number of people living in each period.
Since the world population was lower in past periods, the old periods were longer (It took more time for the same amount of people to accumulate). I don't remember exactly if I used just number of people, or people/years, (i.e. the number of years they lived) to calculate periods, but in both cases the point is similar.
The idea is, for example, now, in 10 years happens much more events, because there is much more people, and the number of years lived by humanity, in 10 years now, is much greater than in the past. So with that much more time available, now, in 10 years can happen much more change then in the past.
I got date for population from Wikipedia, and I made estimates for every single year in excel, from the data that was given.
Anyway, here are my resuts. (It's quite strinking that those periods correspond quite well with some established historical periods, which I will give in brackets)
I. period: 4000 BC - 389 BC ( Early civilizations. Eastern absolute monarchies.)
II. period: 389 BC - 374 AD (Classical antiquity. Greece and Rome)
III. period: 374 - 909 ( Early middle ages)
IV. period: 909 - 1290 (High middle ages)
V. period: 1290 - 1543 (Transition to modern era, humanism and renaissance)
VI. period: 1543 - 1742 (Early modern period)
VII. period: 1742 - 1878 (Enlightenment, scientific revolution, industrial revolution, bourgeois revolutions)
VIII period: 1878 - 1953 (World in conflict, re-structuring the world, world wars, period of strongest scientific progress. Most of the contemporary institutions and customs established)
IX period: 1953 - 1990 (Cold war, space race and arms race)
X period: 1990 - 2013 (Informational revolution, post cold war world)
Using the same logic, the next period, XI. should last even shorter, and bring the same amount of change as the any of the previous periods. They all usually brought the same amount of change, but now change is faster, because periods are shorter.
So period number XI. could be, say, 2014 - 2030 maybe... Just guessing, didn't do complete population extrapolation for that period.
Anyway just to make the whole idea clear once more--- in each of these periods lived the same number of people. And the assumption was that with the same number of people being present in one period, the same amount of change will occur. So even though period no. 1 lasts more than 3000 years, the same number of people lived in that period as in period No. 10 which lasted just 23 years. And the hypothesis, is that the same amount of change occurred in both periods. What used to take 3500+ years, now happens in 2 decades, just because there are more people around.
Back to top
