It’s extraordinary difficult for humans to comprehend really long periods of time. For example, think about the Roman Empire in relation to the ancient Egyptians: In 2015, we are closer in time to the Romans than the Romans were to the Egyptians when they started building the pyramids. To the Romans, the Egyptians were ancient history.

Discerning when events occurred within the vast gulf of time would be just about impossible without a framework to make sense of what would otherwise be a chaotic heap of random events. Enter periodization, a process that helps us put events into context.

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