For pedagogical or methodological reasons, historians tend to fragment and divide historical periods of the past into deadlines. There are traditional times that we all know (Prehistory, Antiquity, Middle Ages, Modern and Contemporary Ages), but also several sub-ages.

These deadlines are as follows. We use them to facilitate research and to make teaching and explanation more understandable. The objectives of these intervals are to organize historical events and classify those periods with similar social or political characteristics. Moreover, since historians cannot investigate the human past as a whole, they serve to divide the issue and select some passages.

But they are the epochs of history, and the milestones that mark the beginning and end of them, both conventional and arbitrary. In other words, it is not natural times, but those that have been decided between historians. The protagonists of history did not know at what time they lived. For example, painters on the cliffs of Santimamiñe did not know that they lived in the Magdalenian period of the Upper Paleolithic and the zugarramurdiarras that were burned by the Inquisition did not know that they lived in the New or Modern Age.

However, even though these milestones and deadlines are a must, they can sometimes cause problems in the understanding of history. On the one hand, because the enlightened sense of “progress” or “development” has often been considered natural. In Western thought there has been a tendency to think that history had a continuous and determined path forward. According to that, the West would be an advanced civilization, while other societies with a lower level of development would be lagging behind, which have not yet taken the path we have taken. This separation between advanced and backward societies is based on racism and has often been used to justify colonialism.

On the other hand, it must be borne in mind that these divisions were made for European history and are not universal. The classical division of historical ages was carried out by German Christoph Martin Keller at the end of the 17th century. But this division does not fit well into the past of all regions of the world. Does it make sense to talk about ancient times or medieval feudalism in Africa, America or Asia?

Finally, it must be borne in mind that, since the divides between deadlines are arbitrary, these milestones do not exactly reflect the changes of the time. Typically, historical periods and social contexts do not change from morning to night. It is absurd to think that at the end of the sixteenth century the inhabitants laid down a day in the Middle Ages and the following day they woke up to modern times. In addition, historians have tended to study relatively homogeneous historical periods. But in my humble opinion, transition times are the most interesting, because as you go from time to time you see changes, nuances and lights and shadows.

As we've seen, in some of the divisions of history it can be a grasp, but in others it's a coercive corset. Thus, historical days and periods tend to be understood in a way that is more flexible and adaptable to needs insofar as they are more conducive to historical explanation.