Author:
Tyler Stubbert
Subject:
Ancient History, World History, Social Science, Ethnic Studies
Material Type:
Lesson, Reading
Level:
Middle School, High School
Tags:
  • Bias
  • Calendars
  • Periodization
  • Social Studies Tools
  • Studying History
  • License:
    Creative Commons Attribution No Derivatives
    Language:
    English
    Media Formats:
    Downloadable docs

    Education Standards

    Tools for studying history and the biases that influence them

    Tools for studying history and the biases that influence them

    Overview

    This article discusses some of the tools used to study History such as calendars, periodization and the effect that historical bias has on how we label and record time. 

    Understanding Calendars, Periodization, and bias in the study of history

     

    Tools for Studying History, and the biases that influence them

    Understanding Calendars, Periodization, and Bias 

     

    Author: Tyler Stubbert,

    BS in Medieval Studies, MA in Teaching

     

    Calendars

            Time is a funny thing. The sun rises and sets each day, passing from one horizon to the other. The seasons come and go with changing temperatures and leaves that grow, change color and fall. We experience the passage of time in our own way and can even explain it in our own words, yet volumes of books can be written about the physics of the universe and the science of time and its relationship to everything. But how do we find a place in time? How do we refer to things that have already happened and we ourselves didn’t witness.

    Use this QR code to find out 

Description automatically generatedFigure 1: Use this QR code to find out what year it is right now based on different calendars around the world. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1034385/current-year-various-calendars/

            In the physical world we are used to the process of how to find a location. Sometimes it’s a precise location like using GPS to find a spot on Google Earth, or an address to find a friend’s house for a hangout. Sometimes it’s a relative location like meeting up with a friend at the farmers market or the mall. But as historians, it would be difficult to talk about events of the past without having some sort of frame of reference. So, humans have devised methods of counting the days, months, and years needed to refer to specific events effectively. The interesting thing is that the calendar you have on your wall at home, or your teacher has in their classroom, isn’t the only calendar that is used today or has been used throughout history.  

     

    CalendarYear as of 2022
    Assyrian6772
     Hebrew5782
    Chinese4720
    Julian2775
    Buddhist2563
    Gregorian2022
    Hindu1943
    Islamic1443
    Iranian1400
    French Revolution230

                    As you can see from the table to the left, there are quite a few calendars in existence and there are many more than just these. Some of them are thousands of years older than what many of us in the western world know. Which one matches the year most of us are familiar with? Today, even though many of these calendars are still being used in their respective parts of the world, many countries use a common reference based on the Gregorian calendar to better accommodate a global community. Let’s talk about why.

            Julian and Gregorian Calendars

                    To start this story, we go back to the Roman Empire, whose year zero was marked by the legendary founding of Rome. The calendar had 304 days divided across ten months. According to a Roman historian named Livy, King Numa Pompilious added two months to this calendar. The problem was that with a calendar that started in March, a 304 day calendar quickly began to shift away from the original start of the year. This meant that a New Year celebration would eventually pass through each season making it difficult to hold consistent festivals.

    Enter Julius Caesar in the Roman year 737. The famed Roman general became Dictator and was responsible for starting the transition from Republic to Empire. He overhauled the calendar by making it 365 days long starting on January 1st and ending December 31st. Emperor Augustus added the leap year[1] to accommodate the fact that it takes 365 ¼ days for the earth to circle the sun.

    The calendar, which became known as the Julian calendar, continued to be used in Europe until 1583. As Christianity became the dominant religion the year zero shifted to mark the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, Christianity’s central figure. Everything before the year zero was referred to as BC or Before Christ. Everything after the birth of Christ was called AD or Anno Domini, which is Latin for Year of our Lord. Pope Gregory XII (the 12th)[2] introduced a new calendar in October 1583. This new calendar, which became known as the Gregorian calendar, adjusted when and how leap years would be used. MATH ALERT: This corrected the fact that a full year isn’t exactly 365.25 days long but actually 365.2425 days long.[3] A painting of a person sitting on a chair

Description automatically generated with low confidence

    As has already been mentioned, the Gregorian Calendar is used in most places around the world so that the global community we all share has a common frame of reference. It is universal because it is directly connected to a time period when European countries engaged in Empire building by spreading all over the world, planting colonies and controlling/exploiting local peoples. These didn’t just affect local resources, but the way in which those local peoples were governed, kept records, and told time. By the time many of these countries reclaimed their own power, European methods of leadership and record keeping had replaced most of, if not all local traditions and methods. As time has marched on many people have reconnected with their own ancient past, and in turn reconnected with their ancestors’ calendars as well.  

    The Gregorian Calendar is an example of bias. Bias is defined as favoritism for or against a thing, person, or group compared with another, usually considered to be unfair. How would you define the Gregorian Calendars bias? If you said it was biased towards Europeans and Christians, you would be correct. Marking all of time as either BC or AD shows bias, specifically towards anyone of the Christian faith. In order to address this bias, many historians over the last few decades have chosen to switch to using BCE, or Before Common Era for everything before the year zero, and CE, or Common Era for everything after the year zero replacing BC and AD respectively.

     

    Islamic Calendar

            Another significant calendar currently in use around the world is used by Earth’s 1.8 billion Muslims, who practice the faith of Islam. The Islamic calendar marks the year zero as the year in which the prophet Muhammed made the first Hijra, or Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca. It is a Lunar calendar that has either 354 or 355 days. Even though countries that use this calendar use the Gregorian calendar for all things government and trade related, they use the Islamic Calendar for holidays. This means that Islamic holidays are constantly shifting from season to season. Ramadan, which is the holy month of fasting can happen at any point during the year. In this month Muslims cannot eat from dawn until sunset. When Ramadan takes place during winter months where days are relatively shorter, Muslims only have to go 8 or 9 hours without food. But when Ramadan takes place in the summer, they are in for very long, hungry days.  

     

    PeriodizationA painting of a person

Description automatically generated with low confidence

            How old are you right now? What time of life would you say you are in at this very moment? Are you in your childhood? Are you a teen? Are you an adult? What about your parents? Are they middle aged? Are your grandparents considered senior citizens? All these questions have to do with what some people call phases of life. When used to study history, this method called periodization.

            Historians use periodization to chunk the past into distinct blocks of time that can be given names to better help the study and analysis of history. First and foremost, all forms of periodization in the study of history are arbitrary. This means the names we use were chosen with little if any reason or system. It’s done simply to give descriptive concepts that give convenient terms for time periods with similar characteristics. Because periodization is arbitrary that also means that it is often biased towards the person or region that first coined the name for any period.

            Periodization was first used by a guy named Petrarch, who was an Italian author during the renaissance in Europe that saw the birth of the modern study of history. He was the first to call the Medieval era the Dark Age and placed it in context of what was then called the Ancient, Post-classical, and Modern time periods. This process of periodization was carried over into all other aspects of European time keeping and culture that came out of the renaissance and into the modern world.[4] 

            The biggest eras referred to by most historians using periodization are prehistory, ancient history, medieval history, modern history, and contemporary history. Consider this: if a European was the first to use periodization, then what part of the world may periodization as a concept have a bias towards? This has been a big problem for the study of history as a whole. The subject of World History has become a more important field of study to combat certain biases of the pasts. But it can’t escape the bias that comes with using periodization. The catch is that even though periodization comes with bias, it makes it easier to organize the study of history to look for common patterns that emerge across cultures, imperfect as it is.  

    Historical Bias

            Several points throughout this article you’ve seen the use the term “bias.” To repeat, bias is favoritism for or against a thing, person, or group compared with another, usually considered to be unfair. bias is such an ingrained part of our lives, society, and culture that it can be difficult to identify it. In a personal way, bias can be described as our personal preference. I’m particularly biased towards pepperoni pizza, chicken wings, and chocolate mochas. In terms of preferences, bias can be harmless. But when bias is used in regard to groups of people it can become dangerous, i.e. choosing one gender or one race over others.

            Historical bias is just as concerning in terms of potential dangers. As was mentioned in the previous section, because of periodization the study of history has a particular bias towards Europe. This is called Eurocentrism, or the practice of looking at the world from a European point of view. To be clear, every one of us has an innate bias due to where we are born, who our family is, where our family comes from, our general income level, our gender identity, and our sexual orientation, just to name a few. The danger comes when we use our bias to elevate one particular group of people based on those biases. Unavoidably we suppress or even oppress other people groups because they don’t fit in with the bias of the elevated group.

            The study of history, having been heavily influenced by European historians, especially during the 18th and 19th centuries, has an innate bias towards Europe, its descendants, and its history. The bias towards European history, leads to its elevation. With that elevation comes a sense of superiority which in turn creates a sense of inferiority in all things non-European. That said, even within Europe there were certain biases against groups deemed “other”, such as Jews, Roma, and non-European immigrants.

            You can see the problem here, especially as the world works towards the continued growth into a global community. To say that one group of people is superior to any other is to deny the richness of countless cultures and the experiences of their people. It is true that some cultures have experienced more success in some ways than others, but there are lessons to be learned from all peoples of the world and their histories.  

            The struggle with bias isn’t over. Every day you use a textbook paid for by your school you will naturally interact with bias. Most textbooks, especially those paid for by government funds have been written from a nationalistic perspective, meaning they want to tell a story that supports the national identity of that country. They come with stories that highlight the good that a country has done and downplays many of the bad.

    Whether it is race, gender identity, income level, sexual orientation, or any other method of defining people by a limited set of characteristics, bias is and will continue to be present. One way to limit its effects is to be able to recognize it when it happens. That also means recognizing our own bias when and where they happen. As the author Jon Green says, “thinking you lack bias is one sure sign that you not only have it, but that you aren't aware that you have it.”  

            History is a living thing. Even though events of the past have already happened, by studying it we naturally bring our ourselves and our experiences, and therefore our biases. Calendars are tools that carry bias. Periodization is a tool that carries bias.  These tools we have are imperfect, so we continuously work to improve on them. But to do that we must also use the tools we have, imperfect as they may be.

     

     

    Sources Consulted:

    https://archive.org/details/boundless-world-history/boundless-world-history/page/7/mode/2up 

    Original source: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-worldhistory/

    Public Doman images sourced from commons.wikipedia.org

     

     


    [1] A leap year adds an extra day every 4 years. In the calendar used in the US, every four years there is a February 29.

    [2] Head of the Roman Catholic Church.

    [3]I wouldn’t say Gregory cheated off Julius’ homework, but if one of my students turned in work that was almost identical with only a single detail being changed, I would have words with both students. That said, this is the nature of scientific research and revision. Somebody does something cool, and then others refine it.        

     

    [4] See! I just did the thing! Renaissance is periodized name for 14th through 16th centuries in Europe.