Wooden hourglass by S Sepp for Wikipedia “Clock” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en
TOP 10 AGES (SPECIAL MENTION)
I’ve previously compiled my top ten ages – that is, my top ten ages of human history, or rather, the usage of the term age or ages as nomenclature for historical eras (or, in some cases, prehistorical eras – or mythic or scientific eras).
It was not so much ranking them by the quality of each age of itself but the name or title for the age, particularly in terms of resonance or versatility – hence Golden Age, Stone Age, and so on.
However, as usual, I don’t just have a top ten but a whole host of special mentions. My usual rule is twenty special mentions for each top ten, where the subject matter is prolific enough, as it is here – surprisingly so, although I had to push the boundaries of the use of age as nomenclature to include other time periods or titles. After all, my special mentions are also where I can have some fun with the subject category and push some boundaries or splash out with some wilder entries.
Geological time scale, proportionally represented as a log-spiral with some major events in Earth’s history by Jarred C Lloyd for Wikipedia “Geologic Time Scale” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en
(1) GEOLOGICAL TIME – EON, ERA, PERIOD, EPOCH & AGE
We’re talking the big time – or deep time. Time periods so vast that the ages of human history, indeed the entirety of human history or even human prehistory, are blinks of the eye in comparison. Time measured in geological strata. Time based on events throughout the history of the planet itself, a time span of about 4.5 billion years or so.
Eons, eras, periods, epochs, and ages of geological time – enough for their own top ten list, many times over (unless you confined yourself entirely to geological eons, of which there are only four).
Presently we are in the Phanerozoic Eon (over half a billion years), Cenozoic Era (66 million years), Quaternary Period (2.6 million years), Holocene Epoch (11,700 years) (with the informal Anthropocene Epoch often proposed), and Meghalayan Age (4,200 years)
Longest of all, you have eons. These are the big boys of geological time – so big there are only four of them in our planet’s history, spanning from half a billion years to almost two billion years each. Our present eon – the Phanerozoic Eon – is one of the two runts of the litter, just over a half a billion years in length, albeit corresponding to most life on earth (hence its name derived from the Greek for plentiful or abundant life).
Next, you have eras – of which there are ten defined eras, spanning hundreds of millions of years, except for our own current era or Cenozoic Era, the runt of the litter at only 66 million years, commencing with the extinction of the (non-avian) dinosaurs.
Next, periods – of which there are 22 defined periods (and two sub-periods used for the Carboniferous Period), ranging from 20 million to 250 million years, including the big stars of geological time, not least the Jurassic Period thanks to the film franchise of that name. Once again, the runt of the litter – and exception at only 2.6 million years of age (which corresponds to hominid prehistory), is our current period, the Quaternary Period.
Epochs – of which there are 37 formal defined ones (and the informal Anthropocene Epoch named for our environmental impact as well as 11 sub-epochs within our own Quaternary Period and the preceding Neogene Period). Like periods, epochs include some more of the big names of geological time. They mostly come in at 2.5 million years to 42.6 million years – again with our current epoch, the Holocene Epoch, as the exception at only 11,700 years ago, corresponding with the entirety of human history and agricultural prehistory (with change left over from the Stone Age).
Ages are actually the shortest period of geological time, from thousands of years to millions of years, with 96 formal ages and five informal ones. Our current age is the Meghalayan, only four thousand years or so before the present.
RATING: S-TIER
GOD-TIER (OR IS THAT EARTH-TIER?)
Leonardo Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man – public domain image
(2) RENAISSANCE
Renaissance has something of the same resonance as golden age, except by way of revival or restoration – the word is literally rebirth in French.
The most famous use of the term is for the Renaissance in Europe, usually connoting the Italian Renaissance in the 15th and 16th century – marking the transition from the medieval period to modernity via the rebirth of classical art, culture and ideas.
One could easily compile a top ten renaissances, indeed even just from its most famous usage alone. While the focus tends to be on the Italian Renaissance to the exclusion of all else, it was part of a wider European cultural movement that was nearly universal throughout Europe – such that the Renaissance can be and is labelled by its national or regional variations, of which the next most famous may well be the English Renaissance, thanks to the Elizabethan era and William Shakespeare representing its peak.
However, the term has been used more broadly than that, including for earlier revivals within the medieval period such as the Carolingian Renaissance, as well as elsewhere in history and culture – essentially for any revival or restoration of former glory or new golden age.
And of course the Renaissance – the famous one – inspired the use of the term Renaissance Man, from such archetypal polymaths such as Leonardo da Vinci.
RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
(3) ERA
The end of an era…
There’s cosmological, geological, calendar, regnal, musical, and above all, historiographical or historical eras.
The last seems to be common usage for eras in American and British history. British historical eras tend to coincide with royal periods – Elizabethan, Victorian, Edwardian, and so on.
RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
(4) MILLENNIUM
That thousand year stare…
Yes, yes – I know the saying is thousand yard stare but I couldn’t resist adapting it for millennium as the period of a thousand years.
Interestingly, Wikipedia lists fifteen millennia BC and three millennia AD in its list of decades, centuries, and millennia – so going all the way back to 15,000 BC, although only the first millennium BC or so is recorded history as such.
Speaking of BC, that prompts the usage of millennium for millenarianism, particularly in Christianity (where it is known as millennialism) – in which millennium connotes return to a golden age (as messianic age)
Millenarianism occurs in some other religions, just not as prevalently, and even in secular movements. Rome celebrated its millennium (from the year of the traditional founding of Rome in 753 BC) – ironically during the Crisis of the Third Century in 248 AD. More infamously, Nazi Germany touted its own millennium for its Third Reich of a thousand years, akin to that for the First Reich or Holy Roman Empire.
RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
Logo of 20th Century Studios, formerly 20th Century Fox
(5) CENTURY
Well, this just seemed the natural one to follow after millennium, reflecting our tendency to demarcate history into centuries or periods of a hundred years.
On that point, I’m not sure (and would like to find out) when we began referring to numbered centuries as such in common parlance – at least as commonly as we do to the twentieth or twenty-first century. I suspect people in the nineteenth century referred to it as such but did people do so before then? Say, did people in the fifteenth century refer to themselves as being in the fifteenth century? When did it originate? Obviously, it could not have originated before the concept of the Christian common era – numbering calendar years from the birth of Jesus Christ – which I understand to originate in the sixth century, albeit it would have taken longer to be common parlance (and perhaps the Gregorian calendar).
Another use of century has been to connote predominant world economic or political power. The best known or most famous is probably the American Century, as coined by Time magazine publisher Henry Luce for American predominance in the twentieth century or at least from the middle of it.
However, before that there is Britain’s Imperial Century from 1815 to 1914 as the height of Britain as world power (and empire).
And there has been a number of centuries proposed for the twenty-first century or other successors to the American Century, usually reflecting the resurgence of Asia within the world economy or the rise of China and India – Asian Century, Chinese Century, Indian Century, and Pacific Century.
RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
(6) DECADE
As my entry for century naturally seemed to follow from that for millennium, so too my entry for decade seems to flow naturally from that for century.
Although apparently the contemporary convention of denominating decades by grouping years based on their shared tens digit, that is from a year ending in 0 to a year ending in 9, is just that – contemporary, dating back to the late nineteenth century.
As is the convention of nicknaming decades, such as the Roaring Twenties or the Swinging Sixties.
RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
(7) PATRIARCHAL AGE
All of them, some feminists might quip.
However, the Patriarchal Age usually connotes the (mythic) era of the three Biblical patriarchs in the Book of Genesis – Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
One might well identify the patriarchal age for any nation or phenomenon that asserts a founding father or fathers as being the period contemporary to those father figures.
RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
(8) HEROIC AGE
People mostly remember the “ages of men” in Greek mythology as fourfold – the glittering Golden Age, declining into a still somewhat lustrous Silver Age, before declining further into a war-like Bronze Age and finally rusting into that worst of ages, the Iron Age (the latter two not to be confused with the Bronze Age and Iron Age nomenclature in prehistory).
However, Hesiod who coined these ages of men also included the Heroic Age between the Bronze Age and Iron Age – the time of superhuman heroes from Thebes to Troy that improved upon the preceding Bronze Age (and possibly the Silver Age as well), albeit not quite a return to Golden Age.
Although one might well identify a heroic age for every nation (or even phenomenon) that lays claim to heroes or heroic times. Indeed, there are assertions of British and Germanic Heroic Ages to match the Greek Heroic Age – as well as claims to a Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration and Heroic Age of Medicine.
RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
(9) AXIAL AGE
Coined by German philosopher Karl Jaspers, the Axial Age referred to broad but profound changes in philosophical and religious thought that, despite occurring in various locations throughout the ancient world (China, India, Persia, Judaea and Greece), laid “the spiritual foundations of humanity…upon which humanity still subsists today”.
“Jaspers identified a number of key thinkers as having had a profound influence on future philosophies and religions, and identified characteristics common to each area from which those thinkers emerged. Jaspers held up this age as unique and one to which the rest of the history of human thought might be compared”.
Jaspers was talking about the half millennium or so from the 8th century to the 3rd century BC and “presented his first outline of the Axial Age by a series of examples” – Confucius and Lao Tse in China, Buddha in India, Zaruthustra in Persia, the Jewish prophets of the Old Testament, Homer and the Greek philosophers.
It has proved an enduring trope, despite being so broadly drawn as to be somewhat amorphous – one of the major criticisms of it. The other major criticism is that it omits arguably the two most foundational figures in religious thought – Jesus and Mohammed – although presumably Axial Agists would argue that those two figures were influenced by their Axial Age predecessors. One might fix that by proposing a second Axial Age from the birth of Christ through to Mohammed – it certainly is striking that no major world religion of any substance (or at least originality) has arisen after Christianity or Islam.
RATING: 4 STARS****
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)
(10) VIKING AGE
The term given to the period in which, not surprisingly given the name, the “Norsemen known as Vikings undertook large-scale raiding, colonising, conquest, and trading throughout Europe and reached North America”.
It is typically used for the period from the first Viking raid in Britain in 793 AD to 1066 AD – the latter for the failed invasion of England attempted by the Norwegian king Harald III rather than the successful Norman conquest that comes to mind for that year (and arguably also falls within the Viking Age).
Some propose a “long Viking Age” stretching as far as the 15th century, given that Norway retained Orkney and Shetland until 1469.
RATING: 4 STARS****
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)
(11) AGE OF DISCOVERY
Here be dragons no longer!
Also dubbed the Age of Exploration and largely overlapping with the Age of Sail, typically the period from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries when European nations – primarily Portugal, Spain, France and England – “discovered” the Americas and circumnavigated the world, largely mapping it to our present understanding, at least in the size of oceans and shape of continents (except Australia and Antarctica).
Of course, discovery and exploration continued after the seventeenth century (continuing even now with new ages of space exploration) but perhaps without the same definitive impact as this age, although I remain disappointed that ending the age in the seventeenth century excludes Captain Cook and much of the exploration of Australia.
RATING: 4 STARS****
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)
(12) AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT
Also called the Age of Reason or simply the Enlightenment, typically the intellectual and philosophical movement (or movements) in Europe from the late 17th century to the French Revolution or start of the 19th century, although the term itself appears to date from the late 19th century.
Often divided or classified by nation or geography, but particularly into two Enlightenments – the British Enlightenment (extending to the colonies in America) and the continental Enlightenment, the latter usually focused on the French Enlightenment. Think John Locke and Adam Smith for the former – and Voltaire and Rousseau for the latter, although each was far broader than that.
Essentially the origin of modern philosophy and political ideology, overlapping with the scientific revolution – as well as the major impetus for my next entry…
RATING: 4 STARS****
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)
(13) AGE OF REVOLUTION
Following on from the Age of Enlightenment, the period from about 1764 to 1849 – with the revolutionary part commencing with the American and French Revolutions through to 1848 as a year of revolution (also called the Spring of Nations) throughout Europe. Significantly, that includes the Industrial Revolution ongoing throughout the period, which arguably did more than any of the political revolutions to, well, revolutionize the world.
Although come on – it could have extended to the world-shaking Eureka Rebellion in 1854. I suppose at least it included the equally as important Rum Rebellion in 1808 – poor old Captain Bligh kept getting those mutinies.
The term was popularized by communist English historian Eric Hobsbawm as the title of one of his series of histories of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, each with age in the title – albeit from 1789 to 1848 in his title. Despite being communist (and his consequent blind spot towards the flaws of Soviet communism), Hobsbawm had a knack for turns of phrase in his writing – not unlike Marx himself come to think of it. And at least it gave him his perspective of the Industrial Revolution and French Revolution as the two revolutions, economic and political, looming above all others to define modern history – if anything, with the former looming larger.
RATING: 4 STARS****
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)
(14) AGE OF IMPERIALISM
The period from 1875 to 1914, according to the title of the book by historian Eric Hobsbawm – as sequel to his Age of Revolution (from 1789 to 1848) and Age of Capital (1848 to 1875).
And in fairness, it’s a pretty good title for that period. While imperialism has been ubiquitous throughout history upon the emergence of states, that period saw imperialism at its largest extent throughout the world, with almost all of it in one empire or another, predominantly those of the European imperial powers of course, but with outliers such as the Ottoman Turks and Japan.
One might well call it the Golden Age of Imperialism (and indeed at least popular historian Paul Johnson did, at least implicitly) – to rival the Golden Age of the Barbarians proposed by James C. Scott in Against the Grain (that extended to about 400 years ago).
RATING: 4 STARS****
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)
(15) LONG 19TH CENTURY & SHORT 20TH CENTURY
The long 19th century – from 1789 to 1914 (or the French Revolution to the First World War) – a concept popularized by English historian Eric Hobsbawm (but not originating from him).
It essentially reflects that the historical momentum of a period connoted by a century may not fit neatly within the tidy nomenclature of years numbered from 00 to 99. It’s a concept that has been applied to other centuries as well – the long sixteenth century proposed by French historian Fernand Braudel (from 1450 to 1640), as well as similar proposals for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Not surprisingly, given what some historians have noted as the acceleration of historical momentum or change in modern history, the twentieth century gets the reverse treatment with the concept of the short twentieth century, which Hobsbawm also adopted – typically from 1914 to 1991 or from the First World War to the end of the Cold War (the Long War popularized by Philip Bobbitt).
Speaking of war as well as those two centuries, I can’t resist throwing in the seemingly paradoxical observation by historian H.P. Willmott that the Second World War was the last war of the nineteenth century, while the First World War was the first war of the twentieth century.
RATING: 4 STARS****
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)
(16) KALI YUGA
And we round out my special mentions for Top 10 Ages with some wild-tier mythic or mystical ages, starting with one of the biggest – the Kali Yuga, named for the Hindu goddess of destruction.
It’s “the fourth, shortest and worst of the four yugas (world ages) in Hinduism”, similar to the Iron Age of classical mythology, although given the cyclical nature of Hinduism, it is immediately followed by the first age of the next cycle.
Naturally people identify the worst of world ages with our own present age.
RATING: 4 STARS****
X-TIER (WILD TIER)
(17) FIVE SUNS
The five distinct cycles or world-ages of creation and destruction in Aztec mythology, with ours being the fifth.
Being Aztec mythology, they all kind of suck, each with their own apocalyptic destruction – particularly now that we aren’t feeding the sun god with blood sacrifices…
RATING: 4 STARS****
X-TIER (WILD TIER)
(18) AGE OF AQUARIUS
“This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius!
Age of Aquarius!
Aquarius!
Aquarius!”
Yes – that’s from the 1967 musical Hair and is about as trippy, hippy, New Age mysticism as it sounds.
The song is catchy though – even if I can’t now get out of my head the cheeky adaptation of it in the Illuminatus trilogy
“This is the dawning of the Age of Bavaria!
Age of Bavaria!
Bavaria!
Bavaria!”
RATING: 4 STARS****
X-TIER (WILD TIER)
The Downfall of Numenor and the Changing of the World (from Second to Third Age) – Ian Alexander based on Tom Shippey, The Road to Middle-Earth, for Wikipedia “History of Arda” licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
(19) FOUR AGES OF MIDDLE-EARTH
Yes – I know it’s not real world history but Tolkien did intend it as mythology for England and I just can’t resist including the ages of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth as special mentions for my Top 10 Ages.
Of course, fans are most familiar with the Third Age, as the setting for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Ring – even almost all the backstory in the appendices of the latter. It’s over three thousand years long, with the main events of book books within the last century or so.
The Second Age was the period of almost three and a half millennia before the Third Age, ending with the defeat of Sauron (and his loss of the Ring) by the Last Alliance of Men and Elves. Of course, the only thing more destructive to the Second Age than Sauron was its desecration by The Rings of Power.
The First Age was the most cosmic of Middle Earth’s ages, with its most prominent feature as the war against the uber-Sauron, Morgoth.
The Fourth Age is essentially everything as epilogue (literally in the appendices) to the destruction of the Ring and final defeat of Sauron, although it was nice enough to wait until Sam got home from seeing off Frodo at the Grey Havens before starting.
The Fourth Age then merged with the ages of our own history – so that there would indeed be a Fifth and Sixth Age or even more – as apparently 6,000 years or so before the twentieth century.
RATING: 4 STARS****
X-TIER (WILD TIER)
Romans during the Decadence by Thomas Couture, 1847 – public domain image
(20) AGE OF DECADENCE
It is one of my rules in my top tens to throw in a kinky entry amidst my wilder special mentions, usually as my final or twentieth special mention, at least where the subject matter permits. So I’m going with age of decadence here. If it’s decadent enough, it might skip the age and simply be known as decadence or the decadence.
And yes – it may be the title of a video game but the term decadence “implies moral censure, or an acceptance of the idea, met with throughout the world since ancient times…declines are objectively observable and that they inevitably precede the destruction of the society in question”.
It does not necessarily connote moral or s€xual decadence or degeneration, as it may connote other forms of decline, but let’s face it – it usually does (or at least there’s an overlap).
The people who tend to decry decadence often tend to do so in contemporary terms – that is, they tend to see themselves in an age of decadence, leading inevitably through decline to destruction, albeit they also tend to see themselves as aloof from any of it. In other words, declinism – “the idea that a society or institution is declining is called declinism”.
Typical ages of decadence in history are like those attributed to the Roman Empire before its fall – reveling in luxury, in its extreme characterized by corrupting “extravagance, weakness, and s€xual deviance”, as well as “orgies and sensual excesses”.
The concept of decadence also lent itself to a late-19th-century movement in art, culture and literature – “emphasizing the need for sensationalism, egocentricity, and bizarre, artificial, perverse, and exotic sensations and experiences”.
In his book, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, historian Jacques Barzun gave a more useful definition of decadence without moral judgement – not as a slur but as a technical label – albeit seemingly evoking The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats: “The forms of art as of life seem exhausted, the stages of development have been run through. Institutions function painfully.”
RATING: 4 STARS****
X-TIER (WILD TIER)
TOP 10 AGES (SPECIAL MENTION):
TIER LIST
S-TIER (GOD TIER – OR IS THAT EARTH TIER?)
(1) GEOLOGICAL TIME – EON, ERA, PERIOD, EPOCH & AGE
A-TIER (TOP TIER)
(2) RENAISSANCE
(3) ERA
(4) MILLENNIUM
(5) CENTURY
(6) DECADE
(7) PATRIARCHAL AGE
(8) HEROIC AGE
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)
(9) AXIAL AGE
(10) VIKING AGE
(11) AGE OF DISCOVERY
(12) AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT
(13) AGE OF REVOLUTION
(14) AGE OF IMPERIALISM
(15) SHORT 19TH CENTURY & LONG 20TH CENTURY
X-TIER (WILD TIER)
(16) KALI YUGA
(17) FIVE SUNS
(18) AGE OF AQUARIUS
(19) FOUR AGES OF MIDDLE EARTH
(20) AGE OF DECADENCE
