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How my brain periodises history

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Periodisation, the splitting of history into neat ’n’ discrete temporal chunks, is a time-honoured matter of debate among historians. Where are the boundaries? Why are they where they are? Can periodisation even work in a global context?

Today, i will answer none of these questions, nor even attempt to seriously tackle the subject. For this is not a post about where the ages of man truly start and end. It is a post about how my brain reacts when it sees a year number and thinks “oh, yeah, that’s in… uh, that part of history”. What’s ancient? What’s mediæval? I dunno, but my subconscious sure does!

The Bronze Age(ish): c. 3500–776 BCE

A palace at Knossos, a Sumerian mosaic, an ancient Indian sculpture
Left to right: the Palace of Minos, King Ur-Pabilsag, the Dancing Girl of Mohenjo-daro

The invention of writing is as good a time to start the clock on “history” as any, so circa 3500 BCE it is. It’s probably unfair to have a giant chunk of nearly three thousand years — as long as the entire rest of history — all by itself, split into nothing else, but when was the last time you saw an exact date in the negative four-figure range?

High Antiquity: 776 BCE–363 CE

A Mayan temple, the Parthenon, an army of statues
Left to right: the Temple of the Great Jaguar, the Parthenon, the Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huang

This is the good stuff. I’ve chosen to start the clock not at the founding of Rome but at the (probably semi-mythical) date of the first Olympics, because Ancient Greece has always been cooler than Ancient Rome. (I can’t take a language where ⟨v⟩ is pronounced /w/ seriously.)

Weird amorphous transitional period: 363–622

An ancient codex, a mosaic portrait, a great arch
Left to right: the Vienna Dioscurides, Emperor Justinian, the Arch of Ctesiphon

I think most people generally have a decent idea of where the boundary between the Middle Ages and the modern day lies — somewhere around the end of the fifteenth century — but the line between antiquity and mediæval times has always been fuzzier, and i’ve never been sure where to draw it. After Julian died in 363, his successor was the last to rule over the empire undivided, the classical pagan relative tolerance of “anything but” giving way to the mediæval Christian doctrine of “nothing except”. It’s hard for me to fully accept what historians call “late antiquity” as firmly set in either era, so here it sits as its own weird little thing.

The Middle Ages: 622–1492

Several insets from manuscripts
Left to right: an Aztec tlacochcalcatl, the Bayeux Tapestry, the Baghdad House of Wisdom

The rise of Islam as a conquering force cements in stone the end of any vestiges of the classical era; where Christians start their calendar at the birth of Jesus, Muslims have their epoch at the year that Muhammad and his followers fled Mecca for Medina, which seems a useful line in the sand.

The Colonial Age: 1492–1776

Columbus in the Americas, a painting, a manuscript illustration
Left to right: Columbus arrives in the Americas, The Night Watch, Akbar’s court

If ever there was a single date that parts The World Before and The World After, a horrible axis mundi on which history turns, Columbus’ arrival in America was it. Two parts of the world which had been isolated for millennia1 were suddenly, irreversibly welded together, bringing untold riches and untold destruction. So much was gained, and so much more was lost. Entire cultures were snuffed out in the pursuit of sugar, and from their ashes new ones grew. It’s hard to imagine what world we would live in without the Santa María.

The Industrial Age: 1776–1918

People hard at work in a factory, Napoleon rallying the troops, an emperor making a proclamation
Left to right: the industrial revolution, Napoleon returns from Elba, the Meiji restoration

That’s not “1776” as in the American revolution, or even “1776” as in Adam Smith, but “1776” as in the year James Watt sold his first steam engine. At the start of this era, Manchester was a modest town of perhaps no more than fifty thousand people. By its end, it had ballooned to a heaving industrial city of seven hundred thousand. That about sums it up: for all the wealth made by colonial plunder, this was the age where humanity truly began to prosper.

The Postmodern Age: 1918–present

Hitler making an announcement, a man on the moon, the first iPhone
Left to right: Hitler declares war on the U.S., Apollo 11, everything’s computer

My natural impulse was to start our current age of history at 1945: the end of the war, the start of decolonisation, the thundering beginning of the atomic age… but, thinking about it, it’s all about what feels like history. I’m not sure me and someone from ancient Greece would have much in common to talk about — nor someone from mediæval France, or even Victorian London. But around the 1920s, a switch flips. They have cars. They have fridges. They have films, and radios, and fascists. I get the sense that a Paris cabaret girl and i share a society, a common world and ethos, in a way that people from before the war just didn’t. You could pluck her out of history and place her down in 2025 and, though she may be shocked at first, she’d adjust within the week. The interwar period is, to me, the beginning of “now”.

Unblogged July

¡ Tagged as visits, County Durham, Tyne and Wear, Northumberland, Shildon, Beamish, Tynemouth, gigology, transport ¡ Leave a comment

I’ve done some fairly interesting things this month, and had planned to write posts for each of them — but, for whatever reason, none of them provided that particular spark to me. Maybe they just didn’t seem that interesting to explain to you, the reader, or maybe i didn’t know what to say about them except the obvious.

Nonetheless, it would be a shame for these events to pass into the annals of my journal without telling you about them. So! Here’s a brief summary of my unblogged July thus far.

Stephenson’s Rocket

I toddled off to Shildon to visit Locomotion, the local branch of the national railway museum. It’s the birthday of the railways, and thus boasts a disproportionate selection of anorak arcana — alas, you can’t go in the trains, but you get a pretty good look at the inside of Queen Alexandra’s royal train car, the erstwhile Birmingham maglev, and, most proudly, Stephenson’s Rocket.

Queen Alexandra’s royal train car The Birmingham maglev
An elaborately painted coat of arms
Locomotion also provides a lot to geek out about for any heraldry nerds.
A 1910s British street scene, recreated at Beamish A printed advert for a Large Pig

Beamish1 has been newly crowned Museum of the Year, so there was no better time to check it out. I hadn’t properly explored their new fifties town yet — the chippie and the old houses are wonderful, but the record store, crammed up the stairs, across an anachronistically modern mezzanine, and down a grey corridor, leaves much to be desired. Nitpicks about balcony design aside, it’s as great as ever, and, somehow, well worth the £33(!!!!!) asking price.

Finally, just yesterday, i went off to an Elbow concert hosted in a ruined mediæval priory by the sea. Belting out “One Day Like This” in the fading dusk light with five thousand other people standing on the same hallowed ground where monks tried to figure out where baby eels came from is a top-ten human experience.

Mx Tynehorne’s link roundup, volume XLIX

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Stuff i watched recently: Oops! All thrillers! edition

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A montage of the four movies mentioned below

Last weekend i found myself with an unexpected glut of downtime, and i figured i’d put it to good use by crossing four films, all thrillers, off my “to-watch” list. I went into most of them essentially blind: for two out of the four, i had no idea what the premise even was, and for one of the remaining two i guessed incorrectly. Without further ado — here’s what i thought of each.

Eight Millimeter (1999)

What i “knew” going in: Nic Cage tracks down the creators of a child porno.

The celluloid macguffin is, blissfully(?), merely a teenage snuff film rather than a full-on porno — for the best, given they occasionally show snippets of the thing and i doubt Joel Schumacher wanted to be put on a list.

Regardless: Mr Cage is our greatest living actor, and, this being the nineties, he goes “full Cage” in a gloriously grimy thriller that sinks him into the depths of Los Angeles’ erotic underworld. Also featured is a disconcertingly young Joaquin Phoenix1 and Peter Stormare as a comically evil crossbow-wielding porno director. The third act gets pretty over-the-top, at times nearing John Wick territory. But that’s fine by me: i like over-the-top! It’s better for a film to go out with a bang than to die with a whimper.

When this came out, it was slammed by reviewers, and it still only sits at a six out of ten on all the major movie-buff websites. I hesitate to invoke the word “underrated”, so often misused, but… come on. The only assumption i can make is that it that the critics still held a grudge against Mr Schumacher over Batman and Robin, and that, four years after Showgirls, Eight Millimeter’s frank sexuality was still considered too much. Bah.2 They wouldn’t know kino if it hit them in the face. (8/10)

Frailty (2001)

What i “knew” going in: I thought it was going to be about a really, really old man.

It’s not. I’m willing to say Frailty, a directorial effort by Bill Paxton (of all people) ostensibly starring Matthew McConaughey, is good, even if it is mostly told through flashbacks (and, ergo, a child actor doing much of Mr McConaughey’s heavy lifting). But the twist veers things so sharply and so suddenly into a supernatural direction that the audience deserves a bit more time to take in the ramifications. And since for most of the film the viewer has been focussing not only on a child actor, but the wrong child actor, by the end of it i still felt i didn’t really know Mr McConaughey’s character — which is a problem when we’re talking about our alleged protagonist! (5½/10)

Misery (1990)

What i knew going in: Stephen King adaptation about a crazy fan who traps the author of her favourite book in her bed and demands he write Glup Shitto back in.

This is the only one i had a solid grasp on going in, since it’s hard to avoid learning about by osmosis. Great in concept, great in performance, great in script… but i could never quite shake off the fact that i was watching a psychological horror film from the director of The Princess Bride. (7/10)

Prisoners (2013)

What i “knew” going in: Denis Villeneuve. Jake Gyllenhaal. Hugh Jackman. I’m in.

Probably the best thing i’ve watched all year. It’s a punishing watch, but, my god, the talent on display from all cylinders is like nothing else. Behind the camera you have Denis Villeneuve, right in the middle of his transition from Québécois dramas to Hollywood blockbusters, and Roger Deakins, the legendary cinematographer who shot Fargo and No Country for Old Men.3 In front, you have a powerhouse ensemble cast of actors who could all easily carry a film by themselves. Hugh Jackman! Jake Gyllenhaal! Viola Davis! Paul Dano! David Dastmalchian!4 A masterpiece through and through — i hope we might some day get to see the original NC-17 cut, censors be damned. (10/10)

Mx Tynehorne’s link roundup, volume XLVIII

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Stuff i watched (+played) recently, May ’25

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A montage of the undermentioned films’ posters

The Naked Gun (1988)

I couldn’t possibly give a better review than a paraphrase of Roger Ebert: First, you laugh at the joke; then, you laugh at yourself for laughing at something so stupid. Brilliant stuff. (7/10)

Death of a Unicorn (2025)

I was ambivalent enough about this film that i already wrote a whole post about it to explain my feelings. A utilitarian’s worst nightmare. (5/10)

A Real Pain (2024)

Poignant and funny in equal measure. The scene that really stuck out to me was near the end, in Krasnystaw, as our two Jewish-American main characters visit their late grandmother’s old home and place stones in remembrance… only to be chided by an angry neighbour, who has no idea about the tradition, but does know that the old woman living there now is infirm and might well trip. He says this, of course, in Polish, but the two leads don’t speak it, and need his son to translate for them.

The short-term tragedy of the Holocaust, the cruel annihilation of the six million, has been well-trodden in cinema, but this film gets to the heart of the long tragedy — the hole left in European culture by the hollowing out of its Jewish communities (the angry man who doesn’t know), and, equally, the alienation of the survivors from their own roots (the two travellers who need an interpreter for their own ancestral tongue). (9/10)

Sinners (2025)

If you need any convincing at all to watch this, i have five words: Vampire musicians in 1930s Mississippi.

A rare successful original blockbuster that must be protected at all costs. It takes a while to get to the vampires, but it puts that time to good use setting up its characters so you can, like, care about them and stuff. (A lost art.) (8/10)

Companion (2025)

“Did you jailbreak your sexbot??”

Companion is better than it has any right to be. It’s a schlocky premise, but it mines every last twist and turn it can get out of it, with snappy dialogue, a galloping pace, and a magnetic cast. It might not be the best movie ever, but it’s the best movie Companion could ever be. (8/10)

Zatōichi: The Blind Swordsman (2003)

This Tarantinoesque rip-roarer of a period action film has all you could ever ask for: yakuza gangs, cross-dressing geishas, card-counting, a celebratory ending tap-dance routine, and heaps of dodgy CGI blood. When i found out the director’s name was Beat Takeshi, my first thought was “surely it’s not that Takeshi”. Reader… it was that Takeshi. The guy with the castle. We love a man of many talents. (7/10)

Oblivion (2013)

On the left, a generic sci-fi picture. On the right, a generic sci-fi picture with a Scientologist in it.

The left image is the result of asking an image-generating machine-learning model to draw the prompt “still from a science fiction movie”. It was made by a soulless, unthinking machine, and represents, roughly, the average of every science fiction film in its dataset. It is utterly generic, because that’s what happens when you average out thousands of film stills into a grey smoothie.

The right image is from the Tom Cruise movie Oblivion. Do you see the issue here?

Oblivion is a film with no identity of its own, an empty bottle of milk drifting along a back street. It’s just entertaining enough to keep you watching, and no more. The only saving grace is that — for those of you keeping track — it includes a full Tom Cruise Triathlon; he runs, he gets on his motorbike, and he swims (in a skyscraper pool, but a swim is a swim). (5/10)

A Complete Unknown (2024)

If you’re going to make a generic music biopic, the least you could do is spice it up with some fantastical musical sequences, like Rocketman and Better Man. This “effort”, starring the unavoidable Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan, has none of that, instead falling into all the usual tired biopic tropes. Mr Dylan is not a character in this — he is a vessel that spouts platitutes and occasionally sings. At least the music was good? I guess? (2½/10)

🎮️ n++ (2015)

I buy, like, one video game a year, and this is 2025’s entry, a tough-as-nails momentum platformer that’s the third in a series based on a Flash game i have fond memories of. The noughties vibes are truly immaculate, not just in the futuristic æsthetics but the trancey EDM soundtrack as well. (8/10)

Thunderbolts* (2025)

I had sworn off Marvel after all the characters i cared about had their stories wrapped up with a bow, so, though i had heard through the grapevine that this was actually quite good, i was fully prepared to put on my clown makeup and order my “Fell For It Again Award” rosette if i tricked myself into watching two hours of super-slop for nothing.

Thankfully, it was great! My understanding is that all the characters here have shown up in MCU projects in the past, but the film does a great job at getting you up to speed with what their deal is that you never feel out of the loop. The action is on point, the comedy got some good laughs out of me, and the climax, thank fuck, eschews the usual “incomprehensible CGI battle against a giant laser beam” in favour of a more introspective talk-’em-up approach. Special commendations should go to the soundtrack, by Everything Everywhere All At Once’s Son Lux. Go watch it. (7½/10)

Sometimes i translate news headlines into Ancient Greek for practice — i thought i’d post a recent one here, just because. :-)

Ὁ Κόσμος ΥΠΒʹ, σοβιετικὴ ἀστροναῦς ἣ πεντήκοντα τρία ἔτη ἐκύκλει, κατέρραξέ ποι ὑπὲρ τῆς Ἐρυθρᾶς Θαλάττης. Ἐβουλεύθη μὲν εἰς τὸν Ἕσπερον τὸ πλοῖον, εἴκοσι ταλάντων τὸν σταθμόν, πορεύεσθαι· ἐξώκειλε δὲ περὶ τὴν Γῆν.

Translation (and transliteration)

Ho Cósmos CDLXXXII, sobieticḕ astronaûs hḕ pentḗconta tría étē ecýclei, catérrhaxé poi hypèr tês Erythrâs Thaláttēs. Ebouleúthē mèn eis tòn Hésperon tò plœ̂on, eícosi talántōn tòn stathmón, poreúesthæ; exṓceile dè perì tḕn Gên.

Kosmos 482, a Soviet spacecraft which had been in orbit for fifty-three years, crashed down somewhere over the Indian Ocean. The craft, weighing twenty talents, was intended to travel to Venus, but ran aground around the Earth.

Mx Tynehorne’s link roundup, volume XLVII

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One hundred and thirty-seven

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137

My favourite number is 137. It’s an odd choice: when surveyed, the vast majority of those who have a favourite number say theirs is under twenty, let alone a hundred.1 But i have my reasons, starting with the fact that each digit alone is fascinating in its own right.

One needs no introduction, and can barely even be called a number in the traditional sense. It is both the building block from which every other number is built and the unmoving rock, the sole multiplicand that leaves any factor it touches unchanged. It is so fundamental that we barely think of it: if there is an apple in front of us on the table, we call it an apple, only invoking the numeral one if we might have been expecting two. More than that, it is τὸ Ἑν, the Monad, that from which all else flows forth; so sublime it is barely a thing, just as it is barely a number.

Three, on the other hand, is the magic number2, and it has a way of getting in our heads. The technical term is hendiatris — things just sound better in threes. Think véní, vídí, vící; wine, women, and song; or liberté, égalité, fraternité. And how many cultures around the world have some sort of threefold God, be it the Holy Trinity, the Hindu Trimurti, or Julian’s “Zeus, Haides, and Helios in one”?

Seven is where things get interesting. For once i’ll dispense with the cultural and metaphysical aspects — it’s been done — and note a curious thing about our human number sense. If there are, say, four cows in a field, we can look and instinctually know that there are four cows, without needing to consciously count. Five and six are doable, but difficult, and vary based on age and person.3 But seven is where this sense breaks down. Beyond that barrier, we lose our intuitive animal sense, and we have to actually count. Seven is the number that sets us apart from the animals; if one and three are the numbers of the Gods, then seven belongs to humanity.

So, what do you get if you smush those three digits together? By some sheer coincidence, the most famous number in physics. The number 137 is, give or take a few hundredths4, the value of the fine-structure constant, one of the universe’s fundamental, unchanging values as etched into the standard model of particles. Nobody really knows why it has the value it has; as Richard Feynman once said, “It has been a mystery ever since it was discovered more than [a hundred] years ago, and all good theoretical physicists put this number up on their wall and worry about it.” (Worry they did: Wolfgang Pauli, the first man to theorise the neutrino, spent much time deliberating with Carl Jung on how this godforsaken 137 had wormed its way into the universe’s code, and why it might have done so.)

So, that’s why 137 is my favourite number. A remarkable figure, you might say.