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Chronology (from Latin ''chronologia'', from Ancient Greek , ''chrónos'', "time"; and , ''
-logia ''-logy'' is a suffix in the English language, used with words originally adapted from Ancient Greek ending in ('). The earliest English examples were anglicizations of the French '' -logie'', which was in turn inherited from the Latin '' -logi ...
'') is the science of arranging events in their order of occurrence in time. Consider, for example, the use of a timeline or sequence of events. It is also "the determination of the actual temporal sequence of past events".Memidex/WordNet, "chronology,
memidex.com
(accessed September 25, 2010).
Chronology is a part of periodization. It is also a part of the discipline of history including
earth history The history of Earth concerns the development of planet Earth from its formation to the present day. Nearly all branches of natural science have contributed to understanding of the main events of Earth's past, characterized by constant geologi ...
, the earth sciences, and study of the
geologic time scale The geologic time scale, or geological time scale, (GTS) is a representation of time based on the rock record of Earth. It is a system of chronological dating that uses chronostratigraphy (the process of relating strata to time) and geochrono ...
.


Related fields

Chronology is the science of locating historical events in time. It relies upon
chronometry Chronometry (from Ancient Greek, Greek χρόνος ''chronos'', "time" and μέτρον ''metron'', "measure") is the science of the measurement of time, or timekeeping. Chronometry provides a standard of measurement for time, and therefore serv ...
, which is also known as timekeeping, and historiography, which examines the writing of history and the use of historical methods.
Radiocarbon dating Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon. The method was dev ...
estimates the age of formerly living things by measuring the proportion of
carbon-14 Carbon-14, C-14, or radiocarbon, is a radioactive isotope of carbon with an atomic nucleus containing 6 protons and 8 neutrons. Its presence in organic materials is the basis of the radiocarbon dating method pioneered by Willard Libby and coll ...
isotope in their carbon content.
Dendrochronology Dendrochronology (or tree-ring dating) is the scientific method of dating tree rings (also called growth rings) to the exact year they were formed. As well as dating them, this can give data for dendroclimatology, the study of climate and atmos ...
estimates the age of trees by
correlation In statistics, correlation or dependence is any statistical relationship, whether causal or not, between two random variables or bivariate data. Although in the broadest sense, "correlation" may indicate any type of association, in statistics ...
of the various growth rings in their wood to known year-by-year reference sequences in the region to reflect year-to-year climatic variation. Dendrochronology is used in turn as a calibration reference for
radiocarbon dating Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon. The method was dev ...
curves.


Calendar and era

The familiar terms ''
calendar A calendar is a system of organizing days. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months and years. A date is the designation of a single and specific day within such a system. A calendar is also a physi ...
'' and ''
era An era is a span of time defined for the purposes of chronology or historiography, as in the regnal eras in the history of a given monarchy, a calendar era used for a given calendar, or the geological eras defined for the history of Earth. Compa ...
'' (within the meaning of a coherent system of numbered calendar years) concern two complementary fundamental concepts of chronology. For example, during eight centuries the calendar belonging to the
Christian era The terms (AD) and before Christ (BC) are used to label or number years in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. The term is Medieval Latin and means 'in the year of the Lord', but is often presented using "our Lord" instead of "the Lord", ...
, which era was taken in use in the 8th century by
Bede Bede ( ; ang, Bǣda , ; 672/326 May 735), also known as Saint Bede, The Venerable Bede, and Bede the Venerable ( la, Beda Venerabilis), was an English monk at the monastery of St Peter and its companion monastery of St Paul in the Kingdom o ...
, was the Julian calendar, but after the year 1582 it was the Gregorian calendar. Dionysius Exiguus (about the year 500) was the founder of that era, which is nowadays the most widespread dating system on earth. An epoch is the date (year usually) when an era begins.


Ab Urbe condita era

''Ab Urbe condita'' is Latin for "from the founding of the City ( Rome)", traditionally set in 753 BC. It was used to identify the Roman year by a few Roman historians. Modern historians use it much more frequently than the Romans themselves did; the dominant method of identifying Roman years was to name the two consuls who held office that year. Before the advent of the modern critical edition of historical Roman works, AUC was indiscriminately added to them by earlier editors, making it appear more widely used than it actually was. It was used systematically for the first time only about the year 400, by the Iberian historian
Orosius Paulus Orosius (; born 375/385 – 420 AD), less often Paul Orosius in English, was a Roman priest, historian and theologian, and a student of Augustine of Hippo. It is possible that he was born in '' Bracara Augusta'' (now Braga, Portugal), t ...
. Pope Boniface IV, in about the year 600, seems to have been the first who made a connection between these this era and Anno Domini. (AD 1 = AUC 754.)


Astronomical era

Dionysius Exiguus' Anno Domini era (which contains only calendar years ''AD'') was extended by
Bede Bede ( ; ang, Bǣda , ; 672/326 May 735), also known as Saint Bede, The Venerable Bede, and Bede the Venerable ( la, Beda Venerabilis), was an English monk at the monastery of St Peter and its companion monastery of St Paul in the Kingdom o ...
to the complete
Christian era The terms (AD) and before Christ (BC) are used to label or number years in the Julian and Gregorian calendars. The term is Medieval Latin and means 'in the year of the Lord', but is often presented using "our Lord" instead of "the Lord", ...
(which contains, in addition all calendar years ''BC'', but no ''year zero''). Ten centuries after Bede, the French astronomers Philippe de la Hire (in the year 1702) and Jacques Cassini (in the year 1740), purely to simplify certain calculations, put the Julian Dating System (proposed in the year 1583 by
Joseph Scaliger Joseph Justus Scaliger (; 5 August 1540 – 21 January 1609) was a French Calvinist religious leader and scholar, known for expanding the notion of classical history from Greek and Ancient Roman history to include Persian, Babylonian, Jewis ...
) and with it an astronomical era into use, which contains a leap year zero, which precedes the year 1 (AD).


Prehistory

While of critical importance to the historian, methods of determining chronology are used in most disciplines of science, especially astronomy, geology, paleontology and archaeology. In the absence of written history, with its
chronicle A chronicle ( la, chronica, from Greek ''chroniká'', from , ''chrónos'' – "time") is a historical account of events arranged in chronological order, as in a timeline. Typically, equal weight is given for historically important events and lo ...
s and
king lists King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen regnant, queen, which title is also given to the queen consort, consort of a king. *In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contempora ...
, late 19th century archaeologists found that they could develop relative chronologies based on pottery techniques and styles. In the field of Egyptology, William Flinders Petrie pioneered sequence dating to penetrate pre-dynastic Neolithic times, using groups of contemporary artefacts deposited together at a single time in graves and working backwards methodically from the earliest historical phases of Egypt. This method of dating is known as seriation. Known wares discovered at strata in sometimes quite distant sites, the product of trade, helped extend the network of chronologies. Some cultures have retained the name applied to them in reference to characteristic forms, for lack of an idea of what they called themselves: "The
Beaker People The Bell Beaker culture, also known as the Bell Beaker complex or Bell Beaker phenomenon, is an archaeological culture named after the inverted-bell beaker drinking vessel used at the very beginning of the European Bronze Age. Arising from ar ...
" in northern Europe during the 3rd millennium BCE, for example. The study of the means of placing pottery and other cultural artifacts into some kind of order proceeds in two phases, classification and typology: Classification creates categories for the purposes of description, and typology seeks to identify and analyse changes that allow artifacts to be placed into sequences. Laboratory techniques developed particularly after mid-20th century helped constantly revise and refine the chronologies developed for specific cultural areas. Unrelated dating methods help reinforce a chronology, an axiom of corroborative
evidence Evidence for a proposition is what supports this proposition. It is usually understood as an indication that the supported proposition is true. What role evidence plays and how it is conceived varies from field to field. In epistemology, evidenc ...
. Ideally, archaeological materials used for dating a site should complement each other and provide a means of cross-checking. Conclusions drawn from just one unsupported technique are usually regarded as unreliable.


Synchronism

The fundamental problem of chronology is to synchronize events. By synchronizing an event it becomes possible to relate it to the current time and to compare the event to other events. Among historians, a typical need is to synchronize the reigns of kings and leaders in order to relate the history of one country or region to that of another. For example, the Chronicon of Eusebius (325 A.D.) is one of the major works of historical synchronism. This work has two sections. The first contains narrative chronicles of nine different kingdoms: Chaldean, Assyrian, Median, Lydian, Persian, Hebrew, Greek, Peloponnesian, Asian, and Roman. The second part is a long table synchronizing the events from each of the nine kingdoms in parallel columns. By comparing the parallel columns, the reader can determine which events were contemporaneous, or how many years separated two different events. To place all the events on the same time scale, Eusebius used an Anno Mundi (A.M.) era, meaning that events were dated from the supposed beginning of the world as computed from the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Pentateuch. According to the computation Eusebius used, this occurred in 5199 B.C. The Chronicon of Eusebius was widely used in the medieval world to establish the dates and times of historical events. Subsequent chronographers, such as George Syncellus (died circa 811), analyzed and elaborated on the Chronicon by comparing with other chronologies. The last great chronographer was Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540-1609) who reconstructed the lost Chronicon and synchronized all of ancient history in his two major works, ''De emendatione temporum'' (1583) and ''Thesaurus temporum'' (1606). Much of modern historical datings and chronology of the ancient world ultimately derives from these two works. Scaliger invented the concept of the
Julian Day The Julian day is the continuous count of days since the beginning of the Julian period, and is used primarily by astronomers, and in software for easily calculating elapsed days between two events (e.g. food production date and sell by date). ...
which is still used as the standard unified scale of time for both historians and astronomers. In addition to the literary methods of synchronism used by traditional chronographers such as Eusebius, Syncellus and Scaliger, it is possible to synchronize events by archaeological or astronomical means. For example, the Eclipse of Thales, described in the first book of Herodotus can potentially be used to date the Lydian War because the eclipse took place during the middle of an important battle in that war. Likewise, various eclipses and other astronomical events described in ancient records can be used to astronomically synchronize historical events. Another method to synchronize events is the use of archaeological findings, such as pottery, to do
sequence dating Sequence dating, an archaeological relative dating method, allows assemblages to be arranged in a rough serial order, which is then taken to indicate time. Sequence dating is a method of seriation developed by the Egyptologist Sir William Matthew ...
.


See also


Examples

* Parian Chronicle *
List of timelines This is a list of timelines currently on Wikipedia. Overview There are several types of timeline articles. *''Historical timelines'' show the significant historical events and developments for a specific topic, over the course of centuries or ...
– specific chronologies *
Timelines of world history The following is a list of timeline articles: Prehistory *For events dating from the formation of the universe see: Timeline of the early universe and Timeline of the universe *For events dating from the formation of the planet to the rise of m ...
– overall historical chronology


Christian chronology

* Dionysius Exiguus' Easter table * Easter * Lunar cycle *
Millennium question A millennium (plural millennia or millenniums) is a period of one thousand years, sometimes called a kiloannum (ka), or kiloyear (ky). Normally, the word is used specifically for periods of a thousand years that begin at the starting point (ini ...
*
Paschal full moon An ecclesiastical full moon is formally the 14th day of the ecclesiastical lunar month (an ecclesiastical moon) in an ecclesiastical lunar calendar. The ecclesiastical lunar calendar spans the year with lunar months of 30 and 29 days which are int ...
* Solar cycle


General

* Annals *
French revolutionary era The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are considere ...
* Historiography *
Traditional Jewish chronology Traditional Jewish chronology (aka Jewish timekeeping). Jewish tradition has long preserved a record of dates and time sequences of important historical events related to the Jewish nation, including but not limited to the dates fixed for the build ...


Fiction writing

Aspects and examples of non-chronological story-telling: * Flashback *
Flashforward A flashforward (also spelled flash-forward, and more formally known as prolepsis) is a scene that temporarily takes the narrative forward in time from the current point of the story in literature, film, television and other media. Flashforwards a ...
*
Linearity (writing) A writing system is a method of visually representing verbal communication, based on a script and a set of rules regulating its use. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writing differs in also being a reliable form ...
* Reverse chronology


Notes


References

* Hegewisch, D. H., & Marsh, J. (1837)
Introduction to historical chronology
Burlington t. C. Goodrich. * B. E. Tumanian, "Measurement of Time in Ancient and Medieval Armenia," Journal for the History of Astronomy 5, 1974, pp. 91–98. * Kazarian, K. A., "History of Chronology by B. E. Tumanian," Journal for the History of Astronomy, 4, 1973, p. 137 * Porter, T. M., "The Dynamics of Progress: Time, Method, and Measure". The American Historical Review, 1991.


Further reading


Published in the 18th–19th centuries

* Weeks, J. E. (1701). The gentleman's hour glass; or, An introduction to chronology; being a plain and compendious analysis of time. Dublin: James Hoey. * Hodgson, J., Hinton, J., & Wallis, J. (1747). An introduction to chronology:: containing an account of time; also of the most remarkable cycles, epoch's, era's, periods, and moveable feasts. To which is added, a brief account of the several methods proposed for the alteration of the style, the reforming the calendar, and fixing the true time of the celebration of Easter. London: Printed for J. Hinton, at the King's Arms in St Paul's Church-yard. * Smith, T. (1818). An introduction to chronology. New York: Samuel Wood.


Published in the 20th century

* Keller, H. R. (1934). The dictionary of dates. New York: The Macmillan company. * Poole, R. L., & Poole, A. L. (1934). Studies in chronology and history. Oxford: Clarendon Press. * Langer, W. L., & Gatzke, H. W. (1963). An encyclopedia of world history, ancient, medieval and modern, chronologically arranged. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. * Momigliano, A. "Pagan and Christian Historiography in the Fourth Century A.D." in A. Momigliano, ed., The Conflict Between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century,The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1963, pp. 79–99 * Williams, N., & Storey, R. L. (1966). Chronology of the modern world: 1763 to the present time. London: Barrie & Rockliffe. * Steinberg, S. H. (1967). Historical tables: 58 B.C.-A.D. 1965. London: Macmillan. * Freeman-Grenville, G. S. P. (1975). Chronology of world history: a calendar of principal events from 3000 BC to AD 1973. London: Collings. * Neugebauer, O. (1975). ''A History of Ancient Mathematical Astronomy'' Springer-Verlag. * Bickerman, E. J. (1980). ''The Chronology of the Ancient World''. London: Thames and Hudson. * Whitrow, G. J. (1990). Time in history views of time from prehistory to the present day. Oxford .a. Oxford Univ. Press. * Aitken, M. (1990). ''Science-Based Dating in Archaeology''. London: Thames and Hudson. * Richards, E. G. (1998). ''Mapping Time: The Calendar and History''. Oxford University Press.


Published in the 21st century

* Koselleck, R. "Time and History." The Practice of Conceptual History. Timing History, Spacing Concepts. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2002. * * *


External links


Dating the Past


from the University of Sheffield at the Internet Archive. Accessed 2008-01-04. * Open Library
Works related to chronology
* * Chattopadhyay, Subhasis.
Chronicity and Temporality: A Revisionary Hermeneutics of Time
' in '' Prabuddha Bharata or Awakened India'' 120 (10):606-609 (2015). ISSN 0032-6178 {{Authority control Earth sciences *