WHAT IS THE OBJECT OF STUDY OF HISTORY? - HISTORY - 2024

The object of study of history is the past of human beings, especially the transcendent events for 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 events and actions, but to try to understand past situations in their context and their causes and consequences, in order to better understand the present.

Thus, history is both the facts and the study of them, and it is constantly being built because the past expands at every moment.

The object of study of history

The main purpose of the story is to focus on the evolution and transformation of societies over time and thereby 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 world history is taken and analyzed, which is properly the work of the historical researcher.

When research is carried out, a fraction of world history is taken and analyzed, which is properly 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 in certain areas of thought.

The field of work of historians is vast, since the investigations that are carried out are completely adaptable to the latent needs they have and the prevailing desire that they want to materialize in a job.

In what is understood by history as the period of time, there is a consensus in dividing it into four major stages.

The story begins when prehistory ends, with the appearance of writing, in the 4th millennium BC and protohistory begins, which is quickly replaced by the first age, the Ancient One.

From there, the Middle Ages, Modern and Contemporary would continue. This classification has been criticized when indicating that it can only be applied to Western history and not to that of Eastern civilizations.

Different time periods in history

Prehistory

The scientific popularizer Carl Sagan extrapolated the entire history of the universe, from the Big Bang to the present, in a calendar year for educational purposes, with midnight on January 1 being the time when the Big Bang occurred.

Discovery of fire

The appearance of the hominids would only be on December 30, which was what started 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 the Stone Age, man knew fire and began to carve stone. The men then began to gather in hordes and develop language.

The Mesolithic was a process of transition to the Neolithic, where hunting, fishing and gathering began to be replaced by agriculture and livestock in small portions. In addition, groups began to settle in villages and leave nomadism behind.

Later, the Age of Metals followed, where humans began to develop technical activities such as plowing or metal processing, that is, metallurgy.

Among the most worked metals at this time were copper, bronze and iron. Villages began to become large towns that came together and formed civilizations, with religion and state. Next came the writing and the story began.

Old age

Egypt was one of the most important agricultural civilizations

In its beginnings, the protohistory was presented where writing began to consolidate in much of the globe. The beginning of the Ancient Age is understood with the constitution of civilizations, especially in the Near East.

One of the first of these was Ancient Egypt, as well as Phenicia, Mesopotamia, and Assyria. The indicative of these civilizations was the development of cities with temples and governments that dominated territories that included several cities and towns.

School of Athens. Rafael Sanzio.

Also in this age arose the culture that became the cradle of Western civilization: Ancient Greece. Later the Roman civilization arose that absorbed the Greek.

From these empires the concepts of democracy and citizenship were born, in addition to all the approaches in all the sciences made by philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle.

In other latitudes, the Persian civilization was consolidated. Eventually the Christian and Islamic religions emerged, which still dominate the world.

Middle Ages

The almighty Roman Empire was divided into two: that of the West and that of the East. In turn, the great European monarchies began to emerge in the Western Empire, which imposed a feudal system.

Christianity stopped being 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 monarchs and feudataries. A society with very determined classes was imposed.

Feudal monarchy

This Age ends with the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantine Empire, in the 15th century, as well as with the discovery of America on October 12, 1492.

Modern age

Christopher Columbus discovering America

Modernity clearly begins with the amplification of the world. Although the Middle Ages was an eminently European process with the emergence of the Modern Age, the world began to be a communicated entity 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 Western civilization in most of the continents.

Excerpt from the 95 theses of Martin Luther

In addition to this, in the Modern Age the European colonial empires had their maximum splendor, but at the same time they suffered a dizzying decline in the end, which would end up leaving them with residual colonies in America.

At this stage in 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 that divided Europe.

The crown, the greatest symbol of European absolutism

The culmination of this age is usually placed 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 20th century, of the African nations.

World War I was the first armed conflict in which civilians were also enemies.

There is a demographic explosion in the world, mainly promoted 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 a transition from the countryside to the city begins. In the twentieth century there are two wars on a world scale.

The first, from 1914 to 1918, which pitted the Austro-Hungarian, German and Ottoman Empire against France, Russia, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States, among others, and which resulted in the latter winners, which made the European map redraw.

In 1939 the Second World War took place that faced a Nazi Germany believing in the superiority of the Aryan race, which allied with fascist Italy and the Empire of Japan against the Allies: the United States, the 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, which 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 on a global scale are due to the rise of terrorism as the main threat to the stability of nation-states, the consolidation of the capitalist model and the emergence of emerging powers such as China.

References

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