Measuring Time
History: KS3, topic 3.1.1
How Do Historians Measure Time?
Historians have faced the challenge of understanding the expansive past by creating different ways to study historical people, places, and civilisations. Time is one way of doing this.
'Doing' History
- Historians use three key ways to examine history:
- The passage of time
- The use of evidence
- The need for different interpretations
- Historians look at different evidence, such as stories, books, clothes, buildings, and other materials from certain periods of time.
- They try to work out how people thought and lived. Different historians may interpret the evidence in various ways. There can be multiple interpretations of the past.
Time
- Historians can divide the past into different periods by combining evidence with the time (year, decade, or century) it came from.
- The Tudor period was a famous time in England. The Tudors sat on the throne.
- Categorising different time periods makes the study of history more manageable. People may disagree about when certain periods of history started and ended.
Disagreements
- Having a general framework of different time periods helps historians identify their commonalities or differences.
- They may notice patterns across time periods, which can help them make conclusions about how the world worked in the past.
- There are often continuities between time periods.
- There was a continuity between the classical world and the medieval period.
Chronology
- Chronology is the term for putting events in order. Historians chronicle time through centuries. They use AD and BC to mark the difference between ancient and more recent history.
- AD stands for anno domini, which means 'in the year of our Lord'. 0 AD refers to the first 364 days of the Christian calendar (at 365 days it becomes the first year or 1 AD).
- BC stands for 'before Christ'. This is used to show dates before Jesus' birth. The greater the number, the further into the past it is.
Century: the maths
- To find out what century a year was in, take the first of the two digits of the year and add one.
- For example, 2021 is in the 21st century, because 20 plus 1 is 21. 1921 was in the 20th century.
- 0 was in the 1st century, because it doesn’t have two numbers at the front, and 0 plus 1 is 1.
Test yourself on Measuring Time
Which of the following is NOT a key way historians use to examine history?
What century was the year 1732 in?