The great periods of history
The periodisation taught in France: finding your bearings in time, reading a timeline, and knowing where a date comes from.
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- One page per chapterEvery chapter is a web page at its own address: it can be read, shared and printed on its own.
- Readable offlineThe site installs itself and can be read again with no network. A page already open stays open.
- The text can be reusedUnder CC BY 4.0: adapt it, translate it, print it, and sell the print run too.
What this volume contains
A book of tables and timelines about the division of time into five periods as it is taught in France: Prehistory, Antiquity, the Middle Ages, Modern Times and the Contemporary Era. It gives the landmark dates with their source, it presents this division as a convention and never as a universal truth, and it shows how an object, a text or an excavation makes it possible to date what is being told.
What the volume assumes you already know Assumes that you can read a number and count forwards and backwards. Installs the basic moves of finding your bearings in time: reading a timeline, placing a period, writing a century, and asking where a date comes from.
The contents
- 1About this bookWhat this volume does, what it does not do, in what order to read it, and to whom ODERSA owes the documents it rests on.
- 2Chapter 1. Counting timeThe units that measure time, the way to write a century, the point from which years are counted, and why the calendar has already been corrected.
- 3Chapter 2. Reading a timelineWhat a timeline shows, what it hides, how one is made, and why a written timeline is worth a drawn one.
- 4Chapter 3. The five great periodsThe division into five periods, the dates that separate them, the reason for each boundary, and what this convention files well or badly.
- 5Chapter 4. PrehistoryThe longest and the least dated period: what the word designates, its two great phases, its landmarks, and why its dates are wide.
- 6Chapter 5. AntiquityThe period that begins with writing: what this change of source brings, the great centres, and the two dates that close it.
- 7Chapter 6. The Middle AgesA thousand years filed under a name coined afterwards: what the word covers, its three phases, its sources, and why its bad reputation is false.
- 8Chapter 7. Modern TimesThree centuries in which writing multiplies, States grow stronger and Europe sets out on the oceans: what the word modern means here.
- 9Chapter 8. The Contemporary EraThe only period the convention leaves open: its starting boundary, its problem of length, and what the abundance of its sources changes.
- 10Chapter 9. The sources of the historianHow we know what we know: the three families of traces, the way to question them, and what their silence means.
- 11Chapter 10. Dating an object, a text, a siteHow a date is made: the order given by the layers, the measurement given by the material, and the margin that comes with every date.
- 12Chapter 11. The great timelineAll the landmarks of the book gathered in a single order, with the source of each, and the way to build your own timeline from them.
- 13GlossaryEvery word this book uses that a reader may not know, in alphabetical order, with a short definition.
- 14Appendix. The level of this volume and the French-speaking school systemsWhere this volume stands in the house's own vocabulary of levels, and why that level translates into no class name in any country.
- 15SourcesEvery document this book rests on, with its exact address and the date on which ODERSA consulted it.
- 16The images in this volumeThe four photographs in this volume, with their title at the source, their author, the address of their original page, their licence and the date on which it was checked.
The volume in detail
- Shelf
- History
- Stage in the progression
- Foundations
- What the volume assumes you already know
- Assumes that you can read a number and count forwards and backwards. Installs the basic moves of finding your bearings in time: reading a timeline, placing a period, writing a century, and asking where a date comes from.
- Chapters
- 16
- Estimated pages in print
- ≈ 94
- Formats served
- Reading online
- Languages published
- 2
- Licence of the text
- CC BY 4.0
- Checked on
The caveat about mistakes
Every volume from this house is read by someone who did not write it. Double checking reduces mistakes, it does not remove them: this volume may still contain some. Report what you find to labibliotheque@odersa.org, giving the chapter and the exact sentence; ODERSA corrects it, redates the volume and says what changed. The division into five periods set out here is the convention taught in France: this volume presents it as a convention, with its sources, and never as a universal truth, and it never substitutes another country's periodisation for it. This work informs; it replaces neither an official curriculum, nor a teacher, nor a professional in the field.
The colophon
- Written by
- L'ODERSA
- Checked by
- A cross-check by ODERSA, carried out as a separate pass: the reasoning taken up again chapter by chapter, the dates recounted one by one, the sources reopened at their own addresses.
- Typeset
- Typeset in Source Serif 4 and Public Sans, two typefaces under the OFL, by the house generator, with no outside dependency. The timelines and the diagrams are set as tables and lists, without a single image.