Talk:Human history

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Human history has been listed as one of the History good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

Article milestones Date Process Result January 17, 2006 Good article nominee Listed August 9, 2006 Good article reassessment Delisted June 7, 2008 Good article nominee Not listed May 25, 2011 Peer review Reviewed November 19, 2023 Peer review Reviewed August 10, 2024 Good article nominee Listed A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on September 30, 2024. The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that public health measures and advances in medical science in modern human history helped raise global life expectancy from about 31 years in 1900 to over 66 years in 2000? This article was on the Article Collaboration and Improvement Drive for the week of January 15, 2006. Current status: Good article

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‹ The template below (Annual readership) is being considered for deletion. See templates for discussion to help reach a consensus. › Section sizes Section size for Human history (38 sections) Section name Byte count Prose size (words) Header Total Header Total (Top) 3,985 3,985 435 435 Prehistory 60 20,078 0 978 Human origins 6,682 6,682 250 250 Early humans 6,214 6,214 313 313 Rise of agriculture 7,122 7,122 415 415 Ancient 68 29,510 0 1,385 Cradles of civilization 10,925 10,925 251 251 Axial Age 3,055 3,055 251 251 Regional empires 13,348 13,348 670 670 Declines, falls, and resurgence 2,114 2,114 213 213 Post-classical 4,297 52,136 321 3,314 West and Central Asia 10,026 10,026 665 665 Europe 6,953 6,953 591 591 Sub-Saharan Africa 14,346 14,346 565 565 South Asia 1,522 1,522 136 136 Northeast Asia 6,442 6,442 522 522 Southeast Asia 4,365 4,365 226 226 Oceania 2,494 2,494 142 142 Americas 1,691 1,691 146 146 Early modern 5,027 31,106 387 1,858 West and Central Asia 3,219 3,219 154 154 Europe 5,494 5,494 418 418 Sub-Saharan Africa 6,796 6,796 292 292 South Asia 2,091 2,091 125 125 Northeast Asia 1,307 1,307 104 104 Southeast Asia 1,211 1,211 72 72 Oceania 1,047 1,047 59 59 Americas 4,914 4,914 247 247 Modern 73 27,778 0 1,031 Long nineteenth century 9,006 9,006 243 243 World wars 4,671 4,671 354 354 Contemporary history 14,028 14,028 434 434 Academic research 2,908 5,866 215 479 Periodization 2,958 2,958 264 264 References 18 93,857 0 7 Explanatory notes 40 40 0 0 Citations 31 31 0 0 Bibliography 93,768 93,768 7 7 Total 264,316 264,316 9,487 9,487 This article has previously been nominated to be moved. Please review the prior discussions if you are considering re-nomination. Move logs: Human history History of the world World history Discussions: RM, History of the world → Human history, No consensus, 20 May 2006, discussion RM, History of the world → Human history, Not moved, 6 November 2011, discussion RM, History of the world → Human history, Moved, 13 March 2020, discussion RM, Human history → World history, Not moved, 16 October 2022, discussion This article was selected as the article for improvement on 5 December 2022 for a period of one week.

While I have zero issues with the point of this article, the name of "Human History" is really strange to me. What other kind of history is there besides human? As far as I am aware, we have not yet discovered any other organisms that record the past in written form. Shedsunefertum17 (talk) 12:03, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Big History would be an example of a discipline that goes beyond the human realm. Apart from that, there are various branches of history that only examine certain aspects of human history and should be terminologically distinguished from human history, like History of Africa or Economic history. Phlsph7 (talk) 13:16, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The usual title one encounters for the subject of this article is "world history". I believe that was the original title.

Nihil novi (talk) 21:02, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Was going to comment the same thing, might be worth making an RM but the last one was unsuccessful. Kowal2701 (talk) 21:07, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

World history could also work as a title. One difficulty is that world history is ambiguous as it refers both to the academic discipline (discussed in the article World history (field)) and the events studied by this discipline (discussed in this article). The advantage of the title Human history is that it avoids this ambiguity. For the unsuccessful proposals 2 years ago, see Talk:Human_history/Archive_4#Requested_move_16_October_2022. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:59, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For those of us who see "history" as human-by-definition the title can be grating, but I came to accept that a lot of readers are used to using the term history more loosely, so that it can include geological, biological and paleontological discussions.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:02, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The title "Human history" begs the question: What would "Inuman history" be? Nihil novi (talk) 19:14, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

See both History and Big History. Remsense ‥ 论 19:30, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately we don’t have an article on Animal history despite there being loads of sources. See African historiography#Animal history for example Kowal2701 (talk) 19:46, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think one reason could be that the term is more vague than others, as it could equally encompass "animals in human history" or "the chronology of organisms from the first multicellular eukaryotes and tracing the descendants thereof". Both are themselves reasonably covered histories on here. Remsense ‥ 论 19:51, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Idk, practically none of our articles on animals have history sections. We have Evolution of the horse, Horses in warfare, Domestication of the horse, but no History of horses, despite sources such as these:

• Horses: History, Myth, Art (2006)
• Horses Through Time
• The Horse in Human History

But also Animal history is just the academic discipline, I listed some sources at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Animals Kowal2701 (talk) 20:05, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Natural history is the big one. – Joe (talk) 10:11, 28 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My edit was reverted with the following edit summary: it's not clear that this is an improvement; it might be helpful to explain on the talk page why each of these images needs to be changed.

1. I think a world map related to the development of agriculture in the "Rise of agriculture" section is more informative for readers than a photo of a stone pillar.

2. In the "Ancient History" section, there isn't a single photo from ancient Greece or Rome or any other part of Europe, and a photo of the Parthenon in Greece looks better than two photos of columns/pillars. I wouldn't mind if one or both of the column photos remained in the article, but at least one editor doesn't want any more pictures in this article.

3. Teotihuacan was the largest city in Mesoamerica and the picture looks better than the pictures of the columns. On the other hand, there is already one image from Mesoamerica in the "Ancient History" section, so it could be replaced with another image. What about ancient China? Or leave one photo of the column in the article?

4. Mecca is the holiest site in Islam, and a picture of Mecca looks better than a poorly visible picture of a mosque in Damascus at night.

5. The "Greater Middle East" section is quite long and only has one image, so I've included a picture of Samarkand, one of the most important cities in Central Asia. The text next to the picture is about Central Asia.

6. There is not a single image in the "Americas" section in "Early modern period", so I inserted an image from the American Revolutionary War.

7. I deleted a few images that didn't look as good as the others, or were placed too close to other images, to avoid "over-illustration" after adding a few new images.

User:Phlsph7, do you agree with at least some of the changes? -- Tobby72 (talk) 11:44, 12 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Tobby72 and thanks for the explanation. Generally, I also think that the article is already borderline overillustrated so replacing images is better than adding more images. It's probably subjective whether all of your changes are improvements, but I don't think that they make the article worse either. I suggest that you wait a little longer in case other editors want to respond before restoring your changes. Phlsph7 (talk) 16:14, 12 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I support these changes as an improvement on the present use of images. — Goszei (talk) 16:21, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It seems there is no mention of it, I think it needs to be added somewhere in a few words.

The Cambridge World History Volume 7: Production, Destruction and Connection, 1750-Present, Part 1, p. 216, bolding mine:

Colonialism, depopulation, and repopulation
Considered at a global level, the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century expansion of Europe was both demographic and geographic. Colonizers and colonized alike understood – and explicitly stated – that this process necessarily entailed the “extermination” or else the “assimilation” of indigenous peoples. Unless they were to become a labor pool, indigenous groups needed to be removed or incorporated, a spatial or a sexual solution to the phenomenon of settler-colonialism. In what some mid-twentieth century demographers called early population transfers, US policy was to remove Indians across the natural borders of the Appalachian Mountains and then (in most cases) across the Mississippi River. In comparable and contemporary displacements, Aboriginal people in the British colonies in Australia (Van Diemen’s Land, New South Wales, Queensland) were removed by colonial governors to protectorates or reserves.

Bogazicili (talk) 22:04, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe the first paragraph in Human_history#Early_modern Bogazicili (talk) 22:06, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Bogazicili and thanks for the suggestion. Regarding the early modern period, I think this is more or less covered in the subsection on the Americas. I added a corresponding wikilink. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:11, 20 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Phlsph7, thanks for adding a link but I think this is insufficient. There are still issues with the article.

• Settler colonialism is about replacing the native population
• Australia is completely ignored. Genocide in Australia was also ignored, see the topic above: Talk:Human_history#Coverage_of_genocides_and_atrocities
• The text talks about European countries but fails to mention countries like United States. After independence, these countries had settler colonial policies too. More overview WP:Secondary sources:
  • World History: The Basics, p. 116

    Finally, there is the case of what many world historians call the settler societies of the early modern period and nineteenth centuries – Canada, New Zealand, Australia and above all (in terms of ultimate size and global influence) the United States

  • The Oxford Handbook of World History. Large parts about settlers in Oceania and Australasia chapter:

    The region's value and prime relevance to world history lies in its comparative value in terms of European explorers and traders, and subsequent settler societies and their relations with, and impact upon, indigenous peoples

There is nothing about dispossession of indigenous people in Australia in this article. That's a major omission, given that it's mentioned in multiple overview WP:Secondary sources that are high quality sources in line with WP:Scholarship. Human_history#Oceania_2 section is very short, and completely omits this.

Many scholars think genocide did occur in Australia. Here's a review article on Journal of Genocide Research:

Since Curthoys' assertion in 2008 of a general reluctance to engage directly with the question of genocide in the Australian context, there is now a substantial body of Australian scholarship prepared to utilize genocide frameworks in analysing violence on the Australian frontiers, and to conclude that genocide did indeed occur

Once again, this is also in the overview secondary source: The Cambridge World History Volume 7, Genocide chapter, p. 430.

It says The United States completed its westward expansion, establishing control over the territory from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast. in this article, but completely omits dispossession of native peoples with that said expansion. On the other hand, you have excessive detail such as and the outpost of Fort Ross in present-day California in 1812. Why is a single outpost due? Bogazicili (talk) 14:01, 23 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You cite the book "World History: The Basics", which is useful for assessing weight since it contains a condensed summary of the most important developments. If you can show that it gives significantly more weight to settler colonialism and genocides then our article, I would help address the issue. However, I'm not sure that it does. The passage you cite is from the section "American Exceptionalism". This section does not really discuss your main point and focuses instead on intellectual history and the similarities and differences between America and Europe. Does the book explicitly discuss the different points about Australia that you would like to include? The book does not list "genocide" in its index and, as far as I can tell, does not explicitly discuss the topic anywhere.

I removed the details about Russia's incursions into America you mentioned. Our article is far from perfect and I'm sure there are better ways to cover some of the topics, including colonization. However, I fear that some of the points you hope to discuss fit better into child articles dedicated to more narrow topics than into this broad overview article. For example, a work on genocide studies may discuss many different examples of genocides. But this does not automatically mean that they are important enough from the perspective of world history to be discussed in a condensed overview article on human history. Phlsph7 (talk) 08:25, 24 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I understand you have concerns about the length of the article. But I am not looking for a major expansion.

I quoted from multiple overview WP:Secondary sources. World History: The Basics mentions these are settler societies. The two other sources, The Cambridge World History and The Oxford Handbook of World History, discuss these more in depth. The Cambridge World History is the most recent one, remember settler colonial studies is a more recent field.

For example, the article says: The United States completed its westward expansion, establishing control over the territory from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast.

You think adding 4 more words The United States completed its westward expansion, establishing control over the territory from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast, often dispossessing Native Americans. is WP:UNDUE? Similarly you can add few more words about the dispossession of Australian natives.

The British also colonized Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa with large numbers of British colonists emigrating to these colonies, displacing natives in places like Australia or something like that.

If I have to pick, I'd prioritize Australia or Oceania, because "European explorers and traders, and subsequent settler societies and their relations with, and impact upon, indigenous peoples." is in the chapter abstract in [1]. Chapter abstract is a very short summary, so it's a good indication of what to add. Bogazicili (talk) 10:40, 27 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You could simply paraphrase "impact upon, indigenous peoples" for Oceania and add it somewhere. Bogazicili (talk) 10:43, 27 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think something along your lines can work. The two sentences you mention are right next to each other, so modifying one is probably sufficient. I gave it a try, have a look if this works for you. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:16, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wouldn't Roman Empire be better, since Byzantine Empire was kind of the continuation? Bogazicili (talk) 14:23, 23 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The sentence refers to the period 500 to 1500 AD, and the common name for the empire during that period is "Byzantine". Khirurg (talk) 04:48, 24 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]