Lesson 01 · History
Five numbers: the map
You have islands. This lesson gives you the map they sit in — and it fits in five numbers.
The reason history feels like fog isn't missing facts. It's that facts arrive with nowhere to sit. Someone says "the Reformation" and you know it's a thing, but is it before or after Columbus? Before or after Rome fell? Without an answer to that, the fact can't connect to anything and it evaporates by Thursday.
So the first thing to own is not a period. It's a skeleton. Five dates, dividing Western history into six eras. Each of the five is a moment when the mechanism holding society together changed — which is why they're worth memorising and why "1547" isn't.
Part oneThe six eras, in one line each
Ancient world c.3000 BC – 476
Cities, writing, and empires funded by tribute or tax. Rome is the extreme case: a professional salaried army paid for by taxing a single integrated Mediterranean economy.
Medieval 476 – c.1492
No money for salaried armies, so power sits with whoever controls land and the men on it. The Church is the only institution spanning the continent.
Early modern c.1492 – 1789
Printing, cannon and oceans. Kings who can afford artillery and fleets swallow the local lords; silver and plantations pay for it.
The long 19th century 1789 – 1914
Legitimacy shifts from dynasty to "the nation". Conscription, industry, railways, ideologies — and European empires over most of the planet.
The catastrophe 1914 – 1945
All that industrial and administrative capacity aimed at Europe itself. Two world wars, revolution, depression, genocide.
Postwar and after 1945 – now
Two superpowers, neither European; nuclear weapons making direct war unusable; empires bankrupt, so decolonisation. Then in 1991 one pole is left.
The one caveat that matters. Hinges are zones, not lines. Nobody woke up in 477 feeling medieval, and the 1492 hinge is really "somewhere in 1450–1500". Say "around 1500" out loud and you sound like you know what you're talking about; say "in 1492 the medieval period ended" and you sound like a textbook.
Part twoDrill: put the island on the map
Fourteen things. Pick the era. You'll get feedback instantly, including the actual date — which is how the dates get learned, as a by-product. Don't agonise; guessing and being corrected is the point.
Part threeNow the part that actually wins conversations
Placement is table stakes. What makes you interesting is having a mechanism. Three questions — each is the "why" behind one of the hinges. Read the feedback carefully even when you're right.
Part fourSense of proportion
One last thing to carry away, because it quietly corrects most beginners' instincts. The medieval period lasted about a thousand years — longer than everything from Columbus to now put together. Rome, from its founding to 476, ran about twelve hundred years: longer than the gap between 476 and Columbus. And the ancient world before that is over half the whole span, with the fewest names in it.
Which means: when you hear "medieval", resist picturing one scene. Charlemagne (800) and the Black Death (1348) are as far apart as we are from the Spanish Armada.