Arqueología

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1. Introduction

The absolute dating was a discovery for archaeologists in the middle of this century. Until the decade of the 50s, despite the numerous archaeological finds, dating could only be relative, which consist of methods of seriation, language dating, faunal dating, stratigraphy, etc.., Which are still used. Since the revelation of the radiocarbon revolution in 1948, have discovered several ways to measure the passage of time that have changed the history of archeology.
Some of these methods, which are an important aid to individual investigators who are in need of dating a particular event or some object in the past in a more accurate, they are, for example, dendrochronology, radiocarbon dating, the OCR new method, the thermoluminescence, dating by the rate of cations, and so on.
Here are exhibited different absolute dating procedures following its history (when possible), its functioning, its use in the field of archeology and some comments made about each. It has been referred to the division of the methods adopted by Hannibal John Figini and also by Colin Renfrew and Paul Bahn.

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2. Calendars and historical chronologies

A century earlier, before the appearance of absolute dating methods, scientists relied almost exclusively on the methods related to the story. They were based on archaeological connections with the schedules and timelines that were established men of the past. These dating methods even today are still used.
Societies were possessed greater technical development, who used their own calendars and set a timeline. For example, the Romans left records of events in relation to the year of the mandate of its consuls and emperors, but almost always referred them to the chronology of the city of Rome. The Greeks based the calculations on the date of the first Olympic Games, which are set in 776 BC C. In Egypt, the Near East and ancient China, history is recorded on the basis of lists of kings who were about dynasties. In Mesopotamia there was also calendrical systems. As for the new world, the Mayan calendar was one of the most accurate and was used to record the dates in columns and inscriptions on stone stelae erected in the Maya cities during the Classic Period (300 - 900 AD). Now is emerging Maya history dated with a precision that forty years ago was not suspected.
There are three fundamental aspects about ancient historical chronologies to be taken into account the archaeologists:
1) The system must be reconstructed chronological very carefully and lists of kings and leaders should be reasonably comprehensive.
2) The list of kings has to be related to our own calendar.
3) The artifacts, structures and buildings dating from a given site should be linked to the historical chronology (Renfrew and Bahn, 1993: pp. 118 - 123).

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3. Annual Cycles

Varvara Dating:
It is one of the oldest systems for determining absolute ages. It was developed in the last century by Baron Swedish geologist Gerard de Geer, who observed that certain clay deposits are stratified in a uniform way. He realized that these strata were deposited in lakes around the margins of the Scandinavian glaciers due to the annual melting of ice sheets, which had been retreating steadily since the end of the Pleistocene. The thickness of the levels varied from year to year, producing a thick layer in a warm year, with increases in glacial melting, and a finer level under cooler conditions. Measuring the thickness of successive complete sequence and comparing the model with varves of nearby areas, it proved possible to link together long sequences (Renfrew and Bahn, 1993: pp. 123 - 124).

Dendrochronology
Dendrochronology is the dating and interpretation of past events through analysis of tree rings. It was discovered by American archaeologist and astronomer Andrew Ellicott Douglass. In the '30s established numerous absolute dates for many sites of the American Southwest (Heizer and Graham, 1988: pp. 297). Dendrochronology currently has two different archaeological uses: it can be used as a means to correct fruitful radiocarbon dates and as an independent method of absolute dating.
The trees produce one growth ring per year, but these rings are not as thick. The same varies by age of trees and climate fluctuations. The dendrochronologists the measure and combine and create a diagram that indicates the thickness of successive rings of a particular tree. Trees growing in one area and are of the same species, present the same pattern of rings so that you can compare the growth sequence of increasingly older trees to develop a chronology of an area.
Unlike the radiocarbon, dendrochronology is not a universal dating method because it only applies to trees in the outer regions to the tropics (where marked seasonal contrasts produce well-defined annual rings), as a direct dendrochronological dating limited to wood species that have provided a wealth manager going back back from today and that people have actually used in the past (Renfrew and Bahn, 1993: pp. 124 - 127).

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4. Physical methods of dating

Dating archaeomagnetic:
The Earth's magnetic field has relatively frequent changes in direction and intensity. The various historical archives have allowed archaeologists to recreate the changes in the direction of magnetic north seen in places such files from compass readings of the past 400 years, or earlier times through the magnetization of structures Clay ancient periods have been dated independently (Renfrew and Bahn, 1993: pp. 145 - 147).

Thermoluminescence dating
The materials with a crystalline structure, such as ceramics, contain small amounts of radioactive elements, especially uranium, thorium and potassium. They disintegrate at a constant rate and known, emitting alpha, beta and gamma rays that bombard the crystal structure and displace electrons, trapped in cracks in the crystal lattice. As time passes are increasingly trapped electrons. Only when the material is heated rapidly to 500 ° C or more, electrons can escape retained by adjusting the clock to zero and while they do emit light known as thermoluminescence.
Thermoluminescence dating can be used for ceramics, inorganic material more abundant in the archaeological sites of the last 10,000 years, and allows dating inorganic materials (such as burnt flint) up to 50,000 to 80,000 years old. The disadvantage of this method is that, according to some experts, is less accurate and reliable than the radiocarbon contamination of the sample means (Renfrew and Bahn, 1993: pp. 135 - 137).

Dating by electronic resonance of the "Spin":
This method relatively recent count allows the trapped electrons in a bone or a shell without the need for heating thermoluminescence. The number of trapped electrons indicates the age of the specimen. The purpose of dating is placed in a strong magnetic field. The energy absorbed by the object as it varies the magnetic field strength provides a spectrum from which one can count the number of trapped electrons.
The electronic resonance of the "spin" has helped to resolve the controversy surrounding the date of a skull found in 1959 in Petralona cave in northern Greece. This method can be helpful for archaeologists to study samples of bones and teeth that do not fall within the radiocarbon dating (Renfrew and Bahn, 1993: pp. 137 - 138).

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5. Chemical methods of dating

Radiocarbon dates
The radiocarbon dating was developed immediately after World War II ended in 1947 by Willard F. Libby and his collaborators, and has provided years determinations in archeology, geology, geophysics and other sciences (Greg Marlowe, 1992: p. 9.).
This method measures the decay of the radioactive isotope carbon 14 (C14) in organic matter. Cosmic rays originate in the upper atmosphere neutron reactive nitrogen from the air producing the radioactive isotope C14. The radiocarbon was distributed evenly in the atmosphere and participates in the carbon cycle: plants assimilate it directly from the atmosphere (photosynthesis) and animals assimilate indirectly. All living organisms have the same ratio of C14 to the atmosphere. The death of any body no longer absorb C14. This is an unstable and decays over a period of 5730 years in that period is reduced by half. By measuring the C14 concentration of archaeological remains dating to be possible to know how many years have passed since his death.
Several laboratories have now adopted a more radical, the particle accelerator spectrometry (AMS), which requires smaller samples than conventional. The bill directly AMS C14 atoms ignoring its radioactivity. It reduces the minimum sample size to only 5 to 10 mg., Allowing it to display and valuable organic materials are dated. The time may increase datable by radiocarbon, theoretically, from 50,000 to 80,000 years using AMS (Link, Damon, Donahue, Jull, 1989: pp. 1 to 6).
Libby was assumed that the concentration of C14 in the atmosphere had remained unchanged over the years. Today we know that this has changed over time, largely due to changes in the Earth's magnetic field. Dendrochronology noticed this error and provided the means to correct or calibrate radiocarbon dates. Before 1000 BC C., the trees were exposed to higher concentrations of C14 from the atmosphere than they are today. Through the systematic collection of radiocarbon dates from the long series directors of pine and oak ridge, scientists have been able to compare radiocarbon dates with the growth rings in calendar years, to develop calibration curves.
The laboratories have adopted the year 1950 as its present, and all radiocarbon dates are expressed in BP (before the present). An example of radiocarbon dating would be: 3700 ± 100 BP (P 685) (Renfrew and Bahn, 1993: pp. 127 - 135).

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Cultures and civilizations arose from the need that the man had, in the everyday as intellectually.

In prehistoric man seeking survival, creating tools and weapons, or moving from place to look for other benefits. In turn had a deep sense of the sacred. In ancient man not only depends on climatic conditions to grow crops.

In the Middle Ages men began to give importance to the reasoning in questioning the theories previously imposed. With regard to the modern age, birth occurs where the spirit of the man seeking to be free. Has the idea of progress, the study becomes attractive and pleasant.

In the contemporary age underwent several revolutions and sudden changes.

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The cultures and civilizations were born a man's need to respond to social demands.

Human life evolves according to new ways of thinking that lead to the emergence of new paradigms associated with progress.

For example in the nineteenth century the rise of nationalism or technological breakthroughs in navigation.

Hence the search of every man to find his place in the world to adapt to it.

Issue

The issue that prompts us to investigate involves analyzing each of the moments of human history by analyzing causes and consequences that we can justify and understand the current ways of life of our culture.

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The period known as prehistory starts from the appearance of man, and comprises about two million years. Their study is based on the material remains found so far: pottery, stone carvings, weapons, pictures, human remains and graves for determining the periods of evolution.

So prehistory for studying the past before the advent of writing.

Prehistory and its subdivisions

* The carved stone age or Paleolithic: Australopithecus began when the first tools developed to date that Homo sapiens began to practice agriculture and animal husbandry. The usual way to obtain primitive food gathering fruit was natural, then added the fishing and hunting. They were nomadic, social organization consisted of small groups. They learned the use of fire and bone, wood, and stone were raw materials to produce tools and weapons.

40,000 years ago-the disappearance of the "Neanderthal man" and expand the "Cro Magnon" - was improved toolmaking. He thus entered the Upper Paleolithic. In this subperiod rupestre.Otras art developed manifestations of this cultural transformation are small sculptures and the rough stone or clay figurines.

Attributed to natural causes all manifestations of life and climate.

* Neolithic or polished stone age: races made their appearance today. The economy is based on herding and agriculture. Ceramic is used. Social life becomes more complicated in many small towns are organized sites with houses-rooms. They are built big stone monuments called dolmens and menhirs.

Stone Age

From hunting and gathering to agriculture and livestock. The Stone Age is the longest period of prehistoric development. It covers almost the entire existence of man, because starting with the oldest finds useful to archaeologists and ends in some areas of the world (Australia and Polynesia) just two centuries when the use of metal (milestone that marks the end of the Stone Age) was released by the Europeans.

In the mid-nineteenth century, Europeans established antique dealers with certainty that the man lived in ancient times. While a number of extinct animals.

The Stone Age is divided into two stages the Paleolithic (period of the "old stone" or "carved stone") and Neolithic (the most recent and brief "of the new stone" or "polished stone") on transition time between one and another is called Mesolithic.

Bronze Age

It covers the period of time prior to the introduction of iron and where much of the utensils and weapons were made of bronze.

It had been thought that the use of bronze had originated in the Middle East, but it was discovered that the metal was known in Thailand towards the 4500 BC First, this alloy was used for decorative elements. The need to manufacture tin was scarce in the region but was imported from England during the second millennium BC thus providing opportunities for wider use of bronze in the Middle East and so was used for tools and weapons.

The natural copper was used in various objects in the 10,000 BC In today's Serbia copper was used since 4,000 BC, although bronze was not known at that time. Towards the 3,000 B.C. began to use bronze in Greece. In China, met in 1800 B.C. precolombricas and cultures of America until 1000 AD

The Bronze Age in the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean is divided into three stages: initial, middle and last.

Initial: increasing the use of bronze and becomes common. It was the period of the Sumerian civilization and encunbramiento of Akkad to its dominance in Mesopotamia, also generated the spectacular treasures of Troy. Bavilonia reached its peak during the bronze medium. Minoan Crete and Mycenaean Greece were the great civilizations of the bronze final. This age ended in that area about 1200 BC , Date to be widespread iron technology.

Iron Age

Period when iron replaced bronze in the manufacture of tools and weapons. He saw the end of the Bronze Age (700 BC) and the expansion of the Roman Empire (27 BC-68 AD), this is the last phase of prehistory before the Roman culture and impose a new life appeared literacy. Where there came the Roman Iron Age continues eg. in Scandinavia, central Germany or in remote areas of Britain. This age began in China in 600 BC, in sub-Saharan Africa towards 500-400 BC and in South Africa in 200 AD

The Iron Works

The iron was cheaper than bronze, and where reefs that were removed were more abundant. It was wonderful and alloy needed to manufacture axes, nails, close it. Except in China in any other country came to the temperature sufficient to shape. Was heated in a furnace, separating iron from the slag, it overheated iron, into a single block and then working the metal and gave way with the hammer. The iron was adopted for tools and weapons. The bronze personal ornaments such as pins and mirrors. The gold and silver to make bracelets for warriors.

Europe

Seems to have been used first in West Asia between 2000 and 1500 BC and then spreads to Europe, South Asia and North Africa. The first culture in Europe that belonged to this age was the Hallstatt Culture (1200-600 BC) named after a 2500 site where graves were dug the 2nd. is Téne. (450-58 BC) who is called a site where metal objects were recovered. Hallstatt findings are dated between 700 and 500 BC The burials reflect wealth because their deaths are accompanied by weapons such as iron and bronze swords, axes, helmets and daggers, bronze bowls, pots and cups, glasses, ceramics, amber beads and crystal. Its inhabitants were wealthy merchants who were exploring across central Europe and came to the Baltic and the Mediterranean. From their mountain mined salt. The miners of the past centuries galleries found propped up by wooden beams and organic remains of salt. Remains of mining tools such as mallets, sticks and pickaxes, torches, which were used to illuminate the corridors, in some cases have reached 330 m. deep, bales, made from leather and wood frame that were used by miners to haul salt blocks to the mouth of the mine also produced furs.

This culture was characterized not only by long iron swords and horse trappings, but for the princely tombs under huge mounds. One of the most famous graves is that of Vix, in eastern France, female burial sixth century BC, who had a wardrobe consisting of a wagon and a bowl for mixing wine with water made of bronze Greek labor, this indicates that there were direct links between Europe and the Greek colonies of the Western Mediterranean. The people of Europe from the Iron Age are known as Celts. is believed that the Celtic aristocracy imported Mediterranean lot of prestige objects eg. wine, textiles and Etruscan bronzes. In the Iberian Peninsula highlights the Andalusian area which received Phoenician influence since the eighth century. B.C. Something similar happened in the east coast influenced by the culture of Urnfield.

In the Iberian Peninsula, cremation was the most common funeral rite. The period ends with the Carthaginian expansion and final Roman conquest.

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The recovered bodies that were in bogs, where anaerobic conditions have kept perfectly fascinating testimonies are religious and ideological system that people understand the world of the Iron Age.

In 1950 a peat extraction Tollund saw Fen (Denmark) as a human face protruding from the grave. This body, which henceforth called Tollund man was naked, only wearing a leather cap and a belt, his legs bent in a fetal position. His eyes were closed, the rope with which he had been hanged for 2000 years remaining in his neck.

Have been discovered hundreds of "Men of peatlands" in northern Europe, most graves are local extractors, for decades to centuries. Most of them seems to have died violently, sometimes hanged or strangled either stiff, others by blows to the head or stabbed, and sometimes more than one of these forms. They were probably executed for a crime, or perhaps for sacrificial rituals as they have found remains of a cereal-based porridge in the stomach of one of them showing a ritual meal, while his death may have been produced by methods of execution as a matter of sacrifice.

It is also likely that many of the victims belonged to a high social class as it has been observed that his hands were well manicured, calluses and their bodies without clothes and clean before being deposited in the bog.

Rituals were performed other deposits, mainly of metal objects in bogs and canals, so it is likely to have any special meaning to the people of this period. Votive deposits in the Téne containing 150 swords, some with sheaths decorated brooches, spearheads and other tools and weapons, both bronze and iron. Similar deposits have been recovered in the Thames, among which stands out the coat of batters.

Burials

The system of burial in the Iron Age burial was based on. The best known are those of Pazirik, in the Altai mountains, in 400 BC contain well-preserved corpses of people and horses, textiles and leather. These tombs are above ground and small piles of dirt or mounds covered with stones. Each of these covers a hole shaped tombs, which had a burial chamber formed by wooden beams on which were piled logs and rocks that filled pit.

Were placed inside one of these cameras the embalmed bodies of a man and a woman, in a coffin, constructed from a hollow log with a severed deer's skin, wool carpet wrapped around the bodies and clothes flax. Inside the burial chamber had more clothing, textiles, leather goods, wooden furniture, gold and silver ornaments and mirrors. Each of the graves were between 7 and 14 burials of horses. It has preserved some of them along with accessories such as bridles, saddles and warm clothing. Alongside these was a large wagon with a canopy decorated with appliques in the shape of swans.

The people who buried their dead in these tombs were nomads who used the horse as a saddle, had much in common with the Scythians who lived in the steppes north of the black sea, that its elite buried in rich tombs and their art highlighting the animals. The findings in these tombs frozen, Persia and China, given the similarities in the patterns of clothing materials.

Villages

Villages tended to make kernels fortified hills, as examples we can mention Maiden Castle, southern England, and Heuneburg, in southern Germany and oppida, walled towns tribal character.

A peninsula in northern Poland, located in Biskupin was one of the most fascinating towns in Europe, 700 BC where archaeological excavations have unearthed remains of a fortified settlement submerged surrounded by a fence of about 100 houses in rows with walls more than 1m. in height between them had streets paved with logs.

The population, estimated between 1000 and 1200, were farmers and shepherds. The main crops were millet, wheat, barley, rye and beans

We found animal bones indicate that the pigs had great importance in the diet.

Asia

The iron work was developed in East Asia. He first worked about 600 B.C. in China, blending similar to that of bronze. 1000 years later managed to obtain very high temperatures for melting, which began in Europe in the Middle Ages.

The Chinese were many tools and weapons-cast mold. The new iron farm implements and utensils of wood increased the productivity of land. The cuñación currency in China and in Europe began around 500 BC The walled cities and weapons suggest that warfare was endemic, a situation reflected by the completion of the Great Wall and the Terracotta Army made up of statues representing soldiers with full armor and weapons.

Africa

Metals in sub-Saharan Africa were used around 500 BC He melted a large amount in the Nile Valley Iron, came to East Africa about 200 BC and the ancestors of the Bantu spread it, along with agriculture in the south. They lived in settled communities, used pottery, cultivated plants and animals were domesticated. The Nile Valley and parts of West Africa are the only regions with evidence of copper working before the introduction of iron. Probably the knowledge of iron working in sub-Saharan Africa comes from the Phoenician colonies of the North Coast or across the Nile, but local artisans brick kilns used in Tanzania and Rwanda, from the V century BC, to produce what technically was steel, but to the east in the Rift Valley, pastoralists used 100 years later stone tools. The Iron Age in southern Africa is divided into the old iron age (c. 200 AD .- 1000 AD) and the final Iron Age (from 1000 AD to the nineteenth century.)

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Education dede that there are no men on Earth. Most human life has passed in the primitive or prehistoric period.

We can distinguish two stages in the development of that life: the hunter man (Paleolithic) and that of men farmers (Neolithic).

The hunter is nomadic, gradually became a farmer and rancher, acquired stability and form clans and tribes.

Corresponding to these life forms develop different social structure. At the time of man the hunter, the man ranked most important, and she appears on one side. At the age of the farmer's wife appears in prominent positions be provided, in addition to housework, the agricultural labor.

The basis of life of these social groups was the family, grouped as clans or tribes with a living being which are supposed descendants. These groups have culture, weapons and tools manufactured by them.

The Education of primitive peoples

Education is a natural, spontaneous, unconscious, acquired by the cohabitation of parents and children, adults and children. Education is an imitation, and learning the tribal customs, songs and dances, language that is its greatest educational tool.

* People Hunters: very lax procedures for education, discipline, war, though they had no wealth or property that may incite the attack and theft of other peoples, they were grown in certain personal qualities, particularly the physical dexterity and strength or hardness with respect pain and weather.
* Indigenous Farmers and Ranchers of the post: agricultural pursuits and livestock require order, learn weather phenomena, the mother plays an important role in the family. The war imposed on the education of children greater discipline and preparation for the use of weapons. The art becomes more schematic. Besides this spontaneous education, among primitive peoples is a form of education that is intentional initiation of youths, young people receive through her rigorous training. Children are taken from the family and village, meeting for groups and received a few weeks in solitary places, in exercises and tests to the discipline of the soul, away from the evil demons and acquisition of the male. They dance, asceticism and mortification that ecstasy causes moods and passengers, but also practice exercises like hunting games, exercises weapons. the direction of this may be entrusted to a chief, priest, or elder.

Characters Of Education Early Spontaneous

You learn by imitation, social eminently characteristic of early education is limited to the immediate present with a magical background, until the consecration or arrangement of young people have a ritual.

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Old age is called the period of history ranging from the advent of writing (3000 BC) until about the fall of Rome in the hands of the barbarians in 476 AD C.

Characterized by the emergence of great civilizations of irrigation, where farmers stopped societies depend on climatic conditions to grow crops, and by writing, in this period were significant events that cemented the history of mankind:

* Highly stratified societies, the existence of social classes.
* Powerful state political organization, characterized by the existence of a ruling class: the nobility.
* Religious Development, led by the same social class that holds political power.
* Not all life was devoted to survival, which involves the development of other modes of thought and creativity: art, philosophy and science.
* Big boom for the military.
* Clashes continued between the peoples.
* Permanent wishes to conquer foreign territories.

Major civilizations of antiquity

Egypt

Numerous groups of North African origin Semitic, Negro in the south, invaded the valley and delta of the Nile attracted to soil fertility. He appreciated the soil conditions improve agricultural techniques.

They learned to discipline the fertility of the land on which they lived.

The heterogeneous population in large communities joined with leaders to carry forward the adaptation to the geographical environment.

Political and social organization: theocracy and absolutism.

A most striking feature of Egyptian society was marked social inequality (centralized monarchy).

At the head of society Pharaoh, who was a god Sebra land and as such she was revered and feared, his power was by heredity and divine origin. I used to perform marriages within the same family or with women of high nobility. There were also the scribes (social class for the state service, accessed through expensive studies to hieroglyphic writing.

The vast majority of the population were poor peasants and artisans subjected to exploitation by the state for the support of religion and great temples.

There was slavery, recruited among prisoners of war occupied the lowest rung of the ladder.

A Life Thinking About Death

They spent much of his wealth to the cult of dead kings, because through their offerings expected from a great harvest to a larger welfare in another existence after death.

Their religion was polytheistic, they believed that the gods were present at the statues that represented and some sacred animals like the ox.

Pharaoh, considered a living god and son of the highest god, the sun god called Ra.

Each sovereign, since the beginning of his reign, began to prepare the grave in which he would be buried, one of the biggest concerns of the Egyptians was to provide a home for after death.

The royal tombs could be mastabas, the oldest and modest (with a cavity surrounded by a brick wall with a chapel for offerings), pyramids, huge stone constructions, or hypogea, underground tombs dug into the rock of the nearby mountains the Nile valley, are the most modernadisimuladas buried in the mountains to prevent the theft of the wealth that was deposited in them. Dead bodies were mummified.

Cultural Heritage of Ancient Egypt

Egyptian culture, from the early days of Menes, the unifier pharaoh, was developed over three thousand years before Christ's birth.

This town has left for posterity a rich legacy that goes from the famous pyramids and colossal sculptures of all kinds up, some even "talked" with extraordinary literature and, above all, its numbering system and extensive scientific knowledge.

To prevent thefts from the looting of graves were moved to the Valley of the Kings where tombs can be seen in the rock, like the funerary temple of Queen Hastsepsut. The pharaoh Akhenaten imposed monotheism, artistic rules and built a unique city with roads and bridges. The priests did not let those ideas flourish and her son was forced to continue with the above ideas.

The most famous work is the colossal statues of Memon, in times of Egyptian splendor these statues "spoke" really an ingenious device based on the inclination of the sun, using the condensation of moisture on a certain day of the year, that caused the effect nearly equal to speech.

The tomb walls were covered with paintings depicting scenes from everyday life with total realism and the religious world.

The Literary Legacy and the hieroglyphs

Wonderful love poems, advice for rulers, religious hymns and true stories of adventure ( "Sinuhit memories," adapted into a famous movie: Sinuhe in Egyptian.

All these works were written in hieroglyphic writing system based on ideograms.

Later pooled isolated consonants, excluding vowels. Secondly hieratic was used. Later demotic script was created.

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A land between rivers between the Tigris and Euphrates, between the plateaus of Iran and the area known as Asia Minor. The river enabled the establishment of men in the middle of an area of deserts and mountains. The men turned the swamps of where fields planted in villages and towns and stone.

The Asian Mesopotamia can be divided into two sectors:

* South: low Babylonia and loamy soils and fertile. Abundant harvests
* North: high Assyria and rugged plain rich in forests, minerals and stones.

The Mesopotamia has long been the center of the ancient world, the only important step between the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean. The rich plains of the Tigris and Euphrates estubieron always exposed to the invasions of the desert nomads and the brutal attack of the Highlanders. The history of Mesopotamia is a Succession of wars, invasions and dominations that did not last long.

By 4000 BC, a people of unknown origin, the Sumerians, the southern occupied emsopotamia.

Big builders of dams and irrigation canals, the Sumerians founded rich cities, uqe traded with the Mediterranean coast and the Indus River valley. In a very short time, the Sumerians conquered the south of Babylon. however, the Sumerian cities acted as independent principalities (city states) ruled by Prince, tried to keep searatismo, while the bloody wars fought with the neighboring cities.

While all this was happening in Sumer, in North Babylon, people arrived from nearby deserts, founding cities dominated the area. Over time, the Akkadians ruled with an iron hand to the Sumerians, establishing the first unified kingdom in the region, the first Babylon.

However, the Babylonian kingdom lasted less than one hundred years, as new invaders wiped out their power, restarting and a period where each of the cities remained independent.

By the ninth century, the Mesopotamia was a single kingdom. We are at the Assyrian empire and the capital was the city of Nineveh.

Despite the win, the inhabitants of Babylon, they decided to end the domination. It established a new empire called New Babylon. This came to conquer the Mediterranean coast, but less than one hundred years later, missing the independence of peoples.

The history of the cultures that developed in Mesopotamia, is confusing, victorious people who underwent other, successive struggles to achieve hegemony in the territory, ending up dominated by new invaders who came from other lands.

Mesopotamian society:

* THE NOBLE: The king, the priests, the scribes.
* Free Men: Merchants, artisans, peasants.
* SLAVES: Prisoners of War.

Greece

Greeks called all those people who arrived from 3000 BC C. to the lands surrounding the Aegean Sea. They belonged to the group of Indo crtense civilization that developed on the island of Crete, three villages from the north: joiosa, retching, Aeolian.

The Dorians caused serious damage to cretomicénica culture, with their iron weapons captured, all European Greece, forcing the tonnages to migrate to the Asian coasts of the peninsula of Anatolia (now Turkey) and established several colonies.

The invasions of peoples from the north led to a long period of wars and devastation. The area appeared politically divided into independent cities. The political and economic power belonged to the landowners. Below these, the people, free citizens, and at the bottom of the social scale slaves, prisoners of war.

The Greeks explained rationally the universe and its laws, creating the science and philosophy. He excelled in art.

Political action peaked with democracy, did not provide equality among all men, favored the development of human values. Education: reflected on their individual and social sense, considering it as a process of building awareness of the total personality.

Showed a marked indifference to the afterlife. The ethical concern was very deep and was designed as an ideal existence. This ideal goal looked like heroism and honor, "always being the best," becomes the rationale for the warrior nobility and underlies most late Greek ideals.

These ideals were undoubtedly a powerful factor in the intellectual and artistic progress achieved.

The ancient Greek world developed an important culture. spread in the lands around the Aegean Sea, spanning the southern Balkan Peninsula.

In this geography consists of sea, land and mountains, with limited natural resources of Greek civilization flourished.

Greeks were called to the people who were coming from the 3.00 BC the lands surrounding the Aegean Sea. Older cultural traces belong to the Minoan civilization, people began to arrive from the north: Achaean, Ionian and Aeolian. It was a slow invasion that lasted 6 ss. cretomicénica creating culture.

The arrival of the Dorians

From 1200 B.C. these people come from central Europe, who conquered Greece, forcing the Achaeans to emigrate.

These people settled in various colonies in the Asian coasts of Anatolia.

Due to various wars and invasions, Greece is divided into a multitude of towns called polis.

The colonization of the Mediterranean.

In the eighth century B.C. there was a crisis by increasing population and limited resources. The cops drove the colonization of new peoples from the shores of the Mediterranean to Gibraltar Strait.

Sparta and Athens.

Two of the cops, radiated their influence across the world

Greek.

Arts, science and philosophy.

The Greeks took the music as essential art, associated with poetry and dance. Another genre of art was the theater.

The Greeks were great mathematicians, like Thales and Pythagoras, as Miletus geographers and historians like Herodotus and Thucydides.

Also at the architecture and sculpture had a great development. One of the most important legacies was the philosophy. The most important were: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Heraclitus.

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In the s. VIII a.C. in the center of the peninsula, inhabited by Latin peoples, founded a small village called Rome in defense of the Etruscans. This was surrounded by six hills which over time were within the perimeter of Rome and the Roman people arises.

From 753 B.C. begins the story of the capital of the ancient world. It can be divided into three periods:

* The monarchy (from 753 to 509 BC)
*


* The republic (509 to 30 BC)
* The Empire (30 BC to 476 AD) in 476 d. C. Rome was conquered by the Barbarians.

Political and social aspects

Monarchical authorities were the King, The Senate and the election curiae. The King was elected by the Senate and the office was for life.

Society was divided into three classes: the patricians, commoners and slaves.

In a monarchy to a republic

The Romans had great respect for the law. The last three kings were Etruscans. The fall of the monarchy was the rejection of the patricians against the Etruscans and their reforms. In 509 BC C. patricians momentarily restrained progress of these reforms by replacing the monarchy with a republic.

The end of the Roman republic,

During the year 30 BC C. the republic was in a chaos that led to a group of soldiers began to fight among themselves.

From this struggle emerged a triumphant Augustus, who transformed the republic into an empire, assuming the title of emperor.

Rome was no longer a small village that was on the Palatine Hill, and included all European and Mediterranean lands into the rivers Rhine and Danube. This empire lasted over 4 centuries, was shot down by wars of conquest and civil strife.

During the empire, in the large property area increased and with it the work of employees. In the city, the center of Roman life was the forum. The traditional life, intensified in the suburbs. Cities increased density. The city showed various attractions such as eg. the circus.

Fall of the Empire.

In the s. III d. C., the empire began to decline sharply. The army became increasingly important over the Senate.

In the s. Barbarians V broke the boundaries and took the Western Roman Empire.

Average age

Term used to refer to a period of European history that has passed since the disintegration of the Roman Empire in the V century, until the fifteenth century. However, the above dates should not be taken as fixed landmarks: there never has been a sharp break in the cultural development of the continent. The average age was a period of cultural stagnation, located chronologically between the glory of classical antiquity and the Renaissance. Current research tends, however, to recognize this period as one of those at the European historical development, its own critical processes of development. Is usually divided into three medieval times.

Early Middle Ages

No specific event determines the end of antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages.

The culmination in the late V of a series of long-term processes, including the severe economic dislocation and the invasions and settlement of Germanic peoples into the Roman Empire, he changed the face of Europe. During the next 300 years western Europe remained a primitive culture while installed on the complex and elaborate culture of the Roman Empire, which was never lost or forgotten altogether.

Fragmentation of authority

During this period there was not really a unitary government machinery in the various political entities, although shaky confederation of tribes led to the formation of kingdoms. The political and economic development was mainly local and regular trade almost entirely disappeared, although the money economy never ceased to exist absolutely. At the culmination of a process begun during the Roman Empire, the peasants began to link the land and dependent on large landowners for protection and a rudimentary administration of justice, in what was the germ of the seigneurial regime. The main links between the warrior aristocracy were the bonds of kinship but also started to appear feudal relations. It was considered that these links (linking the land with military services and other services) have their origins in ancient Roman relationship between patron and client.

All these systems of relationship was prevented effective political consolidation.

The Church

The only universal European institution was with the Church, but even here there was a fragmentation of authority. All power within the church hierarchy was in the hands of the bishops of each region. The pope had a certain preeminence based on being the successor of Peter, first Bishop of Rome, whom Christ had given the highest ecclesiastical authority. However, the elaborate machinery of ecclesiastical government and the idea of a church headed by the pope would not be developed until past 500 years. The Church saw itself as a spiritual community of Christian believers, exiled from the kingdom of God, waiting in a hostile world the day of salvation. The most outstanding members of this community were in the monasteries, scattered all over Europe and away from the church hierarchy.

Within the Church there were trends that aspired to unify the rituals, the calendar and the monastic rules, as opposed to the disintegration and local development. Besides these administrative measures was preserved cultural tradition of the Roman Empire. In the ninth century, the coming to power of the Carolingian dynasty marked the beginning of a new European unity based on the Roman legacy, since the political power of the Emperor Charlemagne relied on administrative reforms that used materials, methods and objectives of the extinct Roman world.

Cultural life

Cultural activity during the early Middle Ages was mainly in the preservation and systematization of knowledge of the past and were copied and commented the works of classical authors. Encyclopedic works were written, as the Etymologies (623) of St. Isidore of Seville, in which its author intended to compile all the knowledge of mankind. At the heart of any scholarly activity was the Bible, all secular learning came to be regarded as a mere preparation for understanding the Holy Book.

This first stage of the Middle Ages closed in the tenth century with the second Germanic migrations and invasions led by the Vikings from the north and the Magyars of the Asiatic steppes, and the weakness of all the forces of integration and the disintegration of European expansion the Carolingian Empire. The violence and dislocation suffered that led Europe to stay uncultivated land, the population decrease and the monasteries became the only bastions of civilization.

The Middle Ages

By the mid-eleventh century Europe was in a period of evolution so far unknown. The era of the great invasions had ended and the European continent experienced the dynamic growth of a population already established. Revived urban life and regular large-scale trade and developed a company culture that were complex, dynamic and innovative. This period has become the focus of modern research and has been called the renaissance of the twelfth century.

The papal power

During the Middle Ages the Catholic Church, organized around a structured hierarchy with the pope as the undisputed top, was the most sophisticated institution of government in Western Europe. The papacy not only exerted direct control over the domain of land in the central and northern Italy but also had him all over Europe thanks to the diplomacy and the administration of justice (in this case through the extensive system of ecclesiastical courts). Besides the monastic orders grew and prospered fully involved in secular life. The ancient Benedictine monasteries were overlapped in the network of feudal alliances. The members of the new monastic orders, as the Cistercians, drained swamps and cleared forests, others, like the Franciscans, surrendered voluntarily to poverty, soon began participating in the revived urban life. The church no longer would be more like a spiritual city in exile on earth, but as the center of existence. The early medieval spirituality adopted a single character, ritual center in the sacrament of the Eucharist and in the subjective and emotional identification with human suffering believer of Christ. The growing importance of the cult of the Virgin Mary in the Church attitude unknown until now, had the same emotional character.

Intellectual aspects

Within the cultural sphere, there was an intellectual awakening new educational institutions to thrive as the cathedral and monastic schools. The first universities were founded, were offered top rankings in medicine, law and theology, areas where research was intense: recovered and translated medical writings of antiquity, many of whom had survived through the Arab scholars were collected and said, and investigated the evolution of both the civil and the canon law.

Scholasticism became popular, we studied the writings of the Church, we analyzed the theological doctrines and religious practices and discussed the problematic issues of the Christian tradition. The twelfth century, therefore, gave way to a golden age of philosophy in the West.

Artistic Innovations

The writing was no longer an exclusive activity of the clergy and the result was the flowering of a new literature, both Latin and for the first time, in local languages. These new texts were intended for a literate audience that had education and leisure reading. The love lyric, courtly romance and the new mode of historical texts expressing the new complexity of life and commitment to the secular world. In the field of painting was given unprecedented attention to the representation of extreme emotion, everyday life and the world of nature. In architecture, the Romanesque style reached its perfection with the building of countless cathedrals along the pilgrimage routes in the south of France and Spain, especially the Camino de Santiago, even when he was beginning to break through the Gothic style in following centuries became the dominant art style.

The new European unit

During the thirteenth century were summarized the achievements of the previous century. The Church became the great European institution, trade relations integrated Europe thanks especially to the activities of Italian bankers and merchants, who extended their activities in France, England, Netherlands and North Africa, as well as land Germanic empire. The trips, either for study or on account of a pilgrimage were more common and comfortable. It was also the century of the Crusades, these wars, which began in the late eleventh century, were preached by the papacy to free the Christian holy places in the Middle East that were in the hands of Muslims. Conceived as the military pilgrimages canon law, the appeals did not provide professional or social distinctions. These international expeditions were another example of European unity centered on the Church, but also influenced interest dominate the trade routes of the East. The Middle Ages ended with the major achievements of Gothic architecture, the philosophical writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas and the imaginative vision of all human life, reflected in the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri.

The low average age

If the High Middle Ages was marked by the achievement of the institutional unit and an intellectual synthesis, the late Middle Ages was marked by conflict and the dissolution of that unit. It was then that began to emerge the modern state-even if sometimes it was just a nascent national sentiment "and the struggle for hegemony between church and state became a permanent feature of European history for several centuries later. Towns and cities continued to grow in size and prosperity, and began the struggle for political autonomy. This urban conflict also became a struggle in which different social groups tried to impose their respective interests.

Early political science

One consequence of this struggle, particularly in corporate mansions of the Italian cities, was the intensification of political and social thought which focused on the secular state as such, independent of the Church.

The independence of political analysis is just one aspect of a great stream of thought arose late Middle Ages and the failure of the grand project of early medieval philosophy that sought to achieve a synthesis of all knowledge and experience both human and divine.

The new spirituality

Although this philosophical development was important, the spirituality of the late Middle Ages was the real indicator of social and cultural turbulence of the time. This spirituality was characterized by an intense search for direct experience with God, either through personal ecstasy of mystical illumination, or by personal examination of the Word of God in the Bible. In both cases, the organic church, both in its traditional role as interpreter of the doctrine in its institutional role as guardian of the sacraments was not ready to fight or ignore this phenomenon.

The entire population, both lay and clergy, men and women, literate or illiterate, they could potentially enjoy a mystical experience. Conceived of as a personal divine gift, it was completely independent of social status or level of education as it was indescribable, irrational and private. Furthermore, devotional reading of the Bible was a perception of the Church as an institution to the markedly different from previous eras in which it saw as pervasive and tied to earthly affairs. Christ and the apostles represented a radical image of simplicity and taking the life of Christ as a model for imitation, some people began to organize in apostolic communities. Sometimes worked to reform the Church from the inside to lead the apostolic purity and simplicity, while in others they simply lost interest in all existing institutions.

In many cases these movements adopted an apocalyptic or messianic stance, particularly among the most vulnerable sectors of late medieval cities, living in a very difficult situation. After the catastrophic appearance of the black plague in the 1340s, which killed a quarter of Europe's population, bands of penitents, flagellants and new messiah followers traveled throughout Europe, preparing for the arrival of the new apostolic times.

This state of spiritual upheaval and innovation lead to the Protestant Reformation, and new political identities lead to the triumph of modern national state and the continued economic expansion and trade set the stage for the revolutionary transformation of the European economy. Thus the roots of the modern age may be located in the middle of the dissolution of the medieval world, in the midst of social and cultural crisis.

[ابو فيصل الحربي]

Historical period, according to the European and Western historiographical tradition, falls between the Middle Ages and the modern era. The modern age, and conventional historiography-and the modern connotations of the term, first used by the German scholar of the late seventeenth century Cristophorus Cellarius, originally responding to a linear conception of history and optimistic and a Eurocentric vision the world and historical development. Despite being commonly accepted in Western academia as a reference point, will be a broad debate among historians throughout the twentieth century about its extent and its chronological limits, their geographic settings, its semantic scope and rationale of modernity, including its essentials.

The seventeenth century represented the apogee of the modern mentality, characterized by the absolute monarchy triumph of commercialism, the intellectual revolution and wars of religion.

The royal despotism was the result of a gradual evolution that acquired characteristics peculiar to each region.

It was especially in the legal, economic and administrative, where the monarchy worked hard, akin to reduce enacronismos separating reality of existing institutions. These circumstances were the promotion of new political ideals in a special way that reflected the desire for stability and protection from the confusion and chaos of ongoing struggles.

The order and safety were considered more important than freedom and monarchs recognized their divine right to rule, which was correlated blind obedience of their subjects.

The new economic policy, mercantilism, he supported government intervention, considering factors conducive to increasing commercial prosperity.

Global reach, broadening the basis of capitalism, to exploit the lucrative activities emphasize the power of money and competition regarded as the foundation of economic life.

From the social point of view, the salient characteristic was the ascension of the bourgeoisie, aided by its economic power and its growing alliance with the monarchy.

Other social changes were leading population growth and sustained weakening of the aristocracy.

Intellectual progress was a revolution, several factors contributed to its emergence:

* The Renaissance ideas
* New world view provided by the findings
* Revaluation of ancient mathematics.

The need for a reliable and valid method appeared as a fundamental requirement for scientific work.

The more progressive spirits braced for new methodological criteria.

The spatial and chronological limits of the modern world

The Eurocentric prism from which to conceive the modern age is the result of the assessment-Western European thought has made some basic processes characteristic of Western Christianity over a long period of time. In this sense, the geography of modernity is limited by Europe, particularly Western Europe, and the magnitude of the expansion of their civilization from the beginning of modern times.

But the conceptualization of the modern world and its spatial and chronological limits are subject to different approaches from Western European historiography itself. Traditional historiography French, meanwhile, believes that the modern age period between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, placing its beginning around the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the discovery of America in 1492 and the cultural phenomenon of the Renaissance, while which calls an end in the collapse of the old monarchy and the revolutionary process initiated in 1789 (French Revolution) in initiating the contemporaneity. In contrast, Anglo-Saxon historiography the term 'modern' refers to a longer period and mobile. Consequently, the duration of modern times has traditionally been placed behind the revival, by 1600, and the end tends to be prolonged in time to the twentieth century. The delimitation of its demise may vary with different historiographies, under self-paced history of each people: for example, in 1848, in the nations of central Europe or to Russia in 1917.

However, although Western historiography has tended to situate the modern era between the XVI and XVIII, the consideration of specific events of singular importance is significant in any way without the evaluation of the processes of change at the structural level in the evolution societies. Thus, the beginnings of the modern age can hardly be understood without dealing with the awakening of the urban world in the West since the thirteenth century, the climate of intense religious debate that foreshadows the Reformation began in the sixteenth century to the first signs of change in behavior of the economy to pre-capitalist forms or the process of forming the first modern states from the late fifteenth century. Similarly, the end of the modern age must also be flexible under the constitutive processes of bankruptcy and collapse of the ancien regime, whose transition will have a rhythm and a variable length according to different historical realities of each village, and that can dilate roughly from the late eighteenth century to the nineteenth century, and even in some cases to the twentieth century itself. Consequently, the transitions to modernity and toward the end of it diluted its limits both in the Middle Ages as in contemporary times.

The essential features of modernity

Modernity in its origin and its essence is a European phenomenon, but the emergency, extraversion and expansion of Europe will confer a global dimension through the presence and interaction with other civilizations Europeans overseas.

As essentially European phenomenon of the modern features illustrate a pattern of profound change in the configuration of the social universe, not without variations among different peoples of Europe. In the field of belief, the most eloquent of the beginning of modernity is the failure of Christian unity in Western and Central Europe, preceded by agitated hotbed of heresy and critical responses to the Roman Church in the lower age middle and culminating in the Protestant Reformation and the beginning of a long series of wars of religion since the early sixteenth century. Also, the secularization of knowledge, strengthening of science and the progress of free thought, based on the pillar of reason, will generate critical attitudes revealed religions.

These changes in the cultural atmosphere and its manifestation in technological materials will revolutionize the habits of European societies and their vision and relationship to the environment worldwide. The new inventions in navigation and in the military, to cite two examples, provided the geographical discoveries and the opening of new shipping routes to markets in the Far East and to the New World. On a broader level, the new cultural framework outlined in the Renaissance and humanism generate a stage in the development of know where the man would occupy a central place, whose projection reach its most eloquent form of expression in the spirit of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century and the shape of Europe as a paradigm of modernity.

From a socioeconomic perspective, the slow but progressive implementation of proto-forms, linked to the development of the urban world from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and the growing importance of commercial and artisanal activity in a still agrarian societies, will define the features of society capitalist. Those parallel transformacio.es eco.ómicas elapse of scaling eco.ómica activity of Europeans in other world markets, either by exercising some relacio.es to exploit their colonial dependencies or on a more equal footing in the first instance In other areas of the globe as an expression of the global emergency of European powers. Should also be noted the shifting of the axis of eco.ómica activity, and geopolitics, from the Mediterranean, which nevertheless continue to play a crucial role in the history of Europeans in their relation to overseas, into the Atlantic.

The transformacio.es eco.ómicas transcurriero. inseparable couples to certain changes in the social structure of the ancien regime. Among these, the new social groups protago.ismo very dynamic in their behavior, similar to tradicio.almente complex concept of the bourgeoisie, which draw on different strategies as both reformist revolucio.ario for social and political promotion and safeguarding their economic interests. Movements superpo.er simplify and agree not to other social phenomena that affect other sectors of the population, both agricultural and urban, a more revolucio.ario, as can be seen in the seventeenth century under the English Revolution; or tradicio.ales group strategies to slow or power. eutralizar those motions by co-opting the emerging bourgeoisie or by resorting to repressive practices. Anyway, these patterns of social transformation lead to a greater or lesser speed and with the peculiarities of each society to third bourgeois revolucio.es cycle to be initiated from the late eighteenth century and which would, in general, the dismantling the old regime.

From a political perspective, the most relevant phenomenon is the configuration of the modern state, the first nacio.ales monarchies, which are gaining ground will be diluted as the medieval idea of Christian empire along religious struggles of the century XVI. The birth of the modern state co.cretará the expression of new forms in the organization of power, as the concentration in the monarch and the co.cepción patrimonial state, the generation of a bureaucracy and the growth of the instruments of coercion, by increasing military power, or the emergence and consolidation of diplomacy, jointly developing a political theory ad hoc. Formulas that culminated in the absolutist state in the seventeenth century or the eighteenth century enlightened despotism, but can not hide the complexity of political reality in Europe and developing alternative models of government, as parliamentary forms were introduced from the seventeenth century England, and predict in practice and in their subsequent development teorizacio.es liberalism.

In internacio.al dimension, the emergence and shaping modern Europe chart a new vision and an unprecedented attitude towards the world, and from that viewpoint modernity implies the beginning of the meetings, and disagreements with other civilizacio.es throughout the globe.

The geographical discoveries and new possibilities enabled by innovacio.es techniques radically transform the vision that the world would the Europeans. A change of attitude transformacio.es conjunction with socio-economic, cultural and political will of Europeans to express their extraversion to overseas and realize at the internacio.al the emergence of Europe. In the process, Europeans come into contact with other worlds and other civilizacio.es, not always in a mood to dialogue, but with the intention of impo.er forms of civilization, or put another way, with the intention of creating other Europe, if they found the right circumstances to do so. Certainly in the case of America, New World co.virtió in the destination of the utopias of the old continent, but globally ge.eral European policy toward these areas, as will happen co. European expansion in other continents, would arise in terms of inequality in favor of European metropolises.

Finally, the emergence and progressive world hegemo.ía Europe would influence the development of internacio.ales relacio.es in the same proportion as its expansion across the globe, still far in the late eighteenth century than it would be the culmination of imperialist practices and the European hegemo.ía on the eve of WWI. The crisis of imperial and papal universalism (the medieval Christianitas) between the XIV and XVI will give way to a new European reality defined internacio.al protago.ismo of modern states, the plurality of sovereign states, and configuration 'European states system', whose birth can be dated either in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The states, specifically the great European mo.arquías the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, will be the predominant element in the relacio.es internacio.ales of the modern age and design of these will be relegated the fate of European posesio.es overseas opportunities in other markets outside pe.etración.

Change and continuity in the modern world

Much of modernist historiography continues to maintain a division phase of the evolution of this historical period, but brings nuance and observacio.es that have been breaking as they were revised traditional Western historiography. In this sense, it distinguishes a first period, adjusted to a "long sixteenth century" between mid-fifteenth century and the last decades of the sixteenth century, the birth of modern times and which begin to express with remarkable clarity the features of the new era and the dissolution of the medieval world, a period of adjustment and crisis, including the last decades of the sixteenth century and the middle decades of the second half of the seventeenth century, marked by tensio.es unequal social and economic impact different states, adjustments in the balance of power between European powers along the Thirty Years War, and major changes in the ways of organizing power in the states, and a third stage, which began in the final decades seventeenth century until the last decades of the eighteenth century to the beginning of revolucio.ario cycle, characterized by economic and demographic recovery, although in some cases endure stagnation, developing the spirit of the Enlightenment and the two co.solidación political models (the despotism or absolutism) and the English parliamentary monarchy, with other factors indicative of changes in political-ideological terms, as the American Revolution and the French Revolution, or socio-economic terms following the first manifestacio.es of industrialization in England.

But in the critical consideration of the changes and features of modernity has to be extremely cautious when considering the historical realities of the peoples and states considering their own idiosyncrasies and its own evolutionary rate, both within and beyond Europe . And it has also to consider the social implications of change and inertia of the stays, as throughout the modern age is much more that remains to what changed from the Middle Ages, if we appreciate the structure and demographic behavior, the agrarian nature of European societies, or the nature of social relacio.es within a class society. The same point could be raised to define the boundaries of the modern age and the beginning of contempora.eidad survival under the old regime, following the pattern of change and continuity in the economic, social, political and ideological and cultural, in the different villages and within national societies themselves.

[ابو فيصل الحربي]

Historical period that follows the so-called modern age, and whose proximity and extension to give it this very particular connotations because of its proximity in time. Benedetto Croce, Italian philosopher of the first half of the twentieth century, claimed that "history is always contemporary and if history is certainly central to man, no less true that it has at its core to modern man. Consequently, if the vision of the distant past is conditioned by the circumstances and mentality of modern man, so is, and further, the recent past so close to their life experience.

The term, coined from Western historiography and fully accepted as the time reference, is applied to a historical object entity in itself and, 2tanto, is not considered as a last stretch of modern history. However, the determination of its limits and its evolution are still disputed between the different national historiographies, under different conception about the meaning of contemporary or postmodern, as some scholars have called it. From French historiography, the concept of contemporary and modern history was introduced in the reform of secondary education for Victor Duruy in 1867, establishing their origins since 1789. In Anglo-Saxon historiography, where the concept of modernity is more elastic, the contemporary is more dynamic to the extent that links the past this close. Anyway, the entire Western historiography controversy persists about the nature and the semantic content of the contemporary. A concept also has been faced from different intellectual attitudes over time, as shown in the rejection of positivist history of conferring the dignity of history to the present or growing interest from the 1960s to encompass from the immediate past history, in permanent dialogue with other social sciences. From this perspective have been cropping up, especially since the eighties, studies on the history of the present, or other designations as a recent history or current world history, to refer to a chronological period who live their lives in the actors and historians .

The specificity and the limits of the contemporary world

In its origins, the controversy over the specificity and limits of the contemporary world is developed within an essentially Western and Eurocentric, but the complex and heterogeneous nature of this and the changes in the West have influenced the review of these postulates horizons broader line with the whole of it.

The closeness in historical memory, its contents because it is vague unfinished process that percussed mediate in the present and the future, the asynchrony and the peculiarities with which societies are inserted or not in contemporary settings, and its projection to the present and, therefore, its essentially dynamic and open, illustrating the specificity of this compared to other eras of the past.

Traditionally, Western European historiography, and particularly the French, he has challenged the origins of the contemporary revolutionary cycle started in 1789 (French Revolution), framing it later in the structural changes associated with the dissolution of the old regime. The assumption of these criteria, anyway, are bound by the different national historiographies their own historical uniqueness: 1808, in the case from the Spanish War of Independence, 1848, in the countries of central Europe following the revolutionary wave which took place at that juncture (1848 revolutions), or the restless revolutionary period between 1905 and 1917 in Imperial Russia that led to the Russian Revolution. The transition from one era to another is associated with two fundamental processes: the emergence of capitalist society, whose initial symptoms and first model was forged in Britain with the first Industrial Revolution and the bourgeois revolutions that will shape at the transition to a social model and to ways of organizing power different from the old regime. In Anglo-Saxon historiography, the beginnings of the contemporary fall in the twentieth century, not without differences of opinion on the basis of how you interpret the term. The British historian Geoffrey Barraclough wrote in 1964 that the modern history begins when the real problems facing the world today for the first time in a clear manner "and that" until 1945 the most salient aspect of recent history was the end of ancient world. "

The projection of contemporaneity to the present is one of its most distinctive features, but just that this hinders their proximity to internal periodization. The options put forward by many historians are proposing since the division in high and low modern era, the distinction between a long nineteenth century and twentieth century short, or differentiation between contemporary history and history proper Current or time present, the limits are subject to continuous internal discussion. Anyway, it is evident that the change of structures, always slow and below the acceleration of historical time in certain situations, is in a transition from modern to contemporary, in the case of maintaining that projection linear time, whose features are better delineated with advancing the twentieth century, and in which each company will design an itinerary with your own pace and peculiarities. Similarly, one could argue that the global and interdependent nature of the modern world has provided a better understanding of yourself and the realization of a combination of companies whose historical rhythms are different and react to what the West polyvalent defined as establishing of the contemporary.

The foundations of contemporary

From these preliminary considerations and emphasizing the phenomenon of transition in contemporary settings, from a broad, comprehensive, and the living elements of permanence of modernity with the forces and trends change, one should take into account two previous approaches: first, the trend toward the universalization of Western civilization, in code enforcement, generally, from its technological supremacy and material and the projection of its model of society as a paradigm of modernization, which has led to develop an unequal relations with other civilizations, and secondly, the presence of other civilizations, whose attitudes vary by case and the different historical moments against the tendency to standardize the West and demands of their own identity, without which consideration could hardly understand the contemporary world.

In the political field, one of the key features of contemporary illustration is the creation and expansion of the nation state and the phenomena are inherently tied to it, such as nationalism, whose birth took place on the European continent and the generalization to throughout the globe are beyond dispute. Claim and extending the right to self-wielded both democratic and Marxist approaches, the resurgence of nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe (after the revolutions of 1989 and the end of the Cold War), the role of states in international relations and decolonization highlight the vitality of the nation state. A reality that in any way, you can hide the difficulties in translating this concept not only in the world outside but in parts of old Europe, which have often been the occasion of bloody conflicts. In the same plane, should include the political-ideological models generated and raised from Europe would have a wide resonance in the world, as liberal and democratic forms, fascism or socialism, which according to different times and different realities translate social attempted with varying degrees of fidelity or with a conscious effort to search for an original adaptation. In some cases, the failure of these formulas has prompted a search for original solutions inspired by its own tradition, as seen in some examples of the Islamic world.

In the economic sphere, capitalism has become the conceptual and structural framework on which sets the current world economy. The process started in Europe, particularly Britain, and its gradual expansion, not without strong and disequilibrium from its first moments, has a global dimension. After adjustments industrial, commercial and financial after the Second World War, capitalism has generated unexpected consumption possibilities. A process made possible by advances in science and technology and the increasing economic interdependence, fostered, among other factors, the progressive concentration of wealth in the hands of a small group of states, economic entities such as multinational and international bodies like the IMF or World Bank guidelines that dictate the economic behavior of states. A system that is permanently based on an unequal relationship for the actors who have maintained a hegemonic position in the economic system and fostered a relationship of dependence, prior forms of colonization under the age of imperialism and today through the perpetuation of the imbalance between North and South. An influence that has been expressed in the very conception of theories and economic models, and which has worsened following the collapse of real socialism and the small effect of the proposals made towards a new more just international economic order.

One change rigged the development of industrial societies in Europe since the nineteenth century was the change in demographic behavior and population growth. Throughout the twentieth century, the population explosion has been one of the most important phenomena and, in fact, has become a major global problems posed to humanity towards the next millennium. Also, throughout the twentieth century has been configured and widespread mass society aiming to enjoy high and egalitarian living standards, consumption and welfare, but whose implementation has great dysfunctions whether populations with access to development or living mired in underdevelopment. Undoubtedly, the social problems that appear in each are radically different social universe, but in the case of the latter raises the frustration with the milestone of modernization and the experience regarding the same. These conditions pose a constant imbalance for those companies, causing global complex phenomena such as migration from South to North or the search for revolutionary solutions, which sometimes highlights the reluctance of the West or the weakness of the structures built from West, for example the nation state, as shown in the central African states in the late twentieth century.

The physiognomy of the contemporary world would be difficult to understand without appreciating the transcendent importance of developing science and technology, especially with regard to information and communications. Interdependence and the whole world, epitomized in the expression of the "global village" Marshall McLuhan, have been made possible by these advances. Similarly, advances in science have exceeded the limits of the Western world to show a clear focus on polycentric development of science, as it reflects the role played by Japan after World War II. A scientific development whose applications have achieved a high degree of visibility throughout the globe, although its benefits are still subject to an asymmetric distribution. Culture and its broad range of manifestations has been one of the areas which has reflected and has acquired a new language and new imagery to the contemporary. The crisis manifests itself in postmodern philosophy, science and artistic expression have highlighted the limitations on which precepts were based on Euro-Western modernity, and the need to rethink on new knowledge bases the cosmos and human nature. This process has influenced not only the very future of Western society and civilization crisis experienced during the twentieth century, but the encounter with other forms of culture and other civilizations.

Finally, the area that best illustrates the new signs of the contemporary world are the changes that have occurred in shaping today's international society. The last two centuries have shown the transition from an international company forged from the Eurocentric hegemony, based on a model of balance of power between the major European powers and imperialism culminating in the early twentieth century, international society toward a fully universalized , which paralleled the birth of the power crisis in Europe through two bloody world wars. The new international society firmly established on a universal pillars, was hatched after 1945 on the logic of bipolarity of two non-European superpowers, the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and later, at the end of the Cold War, on a polycentric reality, the contours and definition are still under discussion on the so-called 'new world order'. International society after 1945 was the result of two sets of forces: the dialectic of East and West, which was manifested on the Cold War and the North-South dialectic, whose notoriety was higher was emerging as a new reality, the Third World, whose breakthrough came with the processes of decolonization. A tension that emerges in all its complexity in the late twentieth century, showing not only the fissures between North and South in socioeconomic terms, but on a broader level, to highlight the tensions between civilizations. A new vertebrate international society, to the extent that has been institutionalized multilateralization of international relations, and more complex by virtue of the incorporation of new actors like international organizations, NGOs, multinational or international party, which exclude traditional role to the primacy of states. And ultimately, an international society as a whole expresses the interdependence and global nature of the phenomena and events in the contemporary world.

This paper has analyzed the emergence of different civilizations and cultures of the world that have evolved over time.

During the prehistoric men were nomads, but as time passed tribes were grouped into becoming sedentary.

With the emergence of barter (Neolithic) starts writing, used for accounting for its products. At the time of writing emerges the story begins, which is divided into various age marked by various events.

In conclusion we can say that various cultures and civilizations that have taken place in the history of man (as the Egyptian, Mayan, Aztec, etc.). Have left their legacies we used as a base of cultures and civilizations which are evident in the Today