Talk:Human history

Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Wikimarkup says:

For technical reasons, section headings should be unique within a page (so that section links work)

In this article, the "Post-classical" and "Early modern" sections have all of the same subsection headings. While the current divisions are reasonable, the headings should be changed to follow this MOS guideline. Instead of writing "Europe" twice, it could be changed to "Medieval Europe" and "Early Modern Europe". In some cases, parentheses or colons could be used to maintain the names of regions. I would also propose combining multiple regions in a few cases—for example, "Gunpowder empires (West and South Asia)".

PS: incredible work on this article! I love rereading it. — Vigilant Cosmic Penguin 🐧 (talk | contribs) 01:40, 25 November 2025 (UTC)

Hello Vigilantcosmicpenguin and thanks for raising this issue. I'm not sure that this is technically speaking a problem. The guideline says that the section links should work and they still do. For example Human_history#Europe directs to the postclassical Europe section while Human_history#Europe_2 directs to the early modern Europe section. One difficulty for using local period names for each region is that their dates may not exactly match the dates of the corresponding world-historic period, which creates inconsistencies. This could be avoided by using a reference to the world historic period, such as adding "... in the post-classical period" and "... in the early modern period" to each subsection title. However, this would be highly redundant. I think the better solution is to keep things as they are and to deal with link problems as they arise, for example, by adding invisible anchors. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:07, 25 November 2025 (UTC)

By my reading of the MOS, I think it should be changed; however, your interpretation also makes sense. I agree that invisible anchors would be a reasonable solution. — Vigilant Cosmic Penguin 🐧 (talk | contribs) 19:59, 25 November 2025 (UTC)

pretty sure the US wasn't an empire in 1898 ~2025-43634-34 (talk) 04:26, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

I removed the image. From what I can tell, it's not based on a reliable source. It may be controversial whether the term "empire" applies to all of the depicted political entities. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:20, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

Hey Phlsph7, I hope you are doing well :) I'm not sure I agree with removing the image, see Cambridge World History vol 7.1, pg. 602: A key contributor to the growth of the American state was the acquisition of a formal empire. In 1898, the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Guam were gained as a result of the Spanish–American War over Cuban independence. --Cerebellum (talk) 10:36, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

Hi Cerebellum, it's been a while. My main concern with the image is not the US in particular. The image presents a lot of information, including what the main empires in 1898 were and where the boundaries between them lay. This information needs to be sourced and we currently have no source. Additionally, it may be controversial whether the term "empire" is appropriate for all the depicted entities. If we had a source, maybe it would shed some light on this concern. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:51, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

Fair enough, that map shows Denmark and Sweden-Norway as empires which seems questionable. I've looked around on Commons and can't find an alternative with sources. File:Colonisation 1914.png is pretty good but has some issues. Maybe someday, if some of your work ethic rubs off on me, I will make a corrected version with sources :) I do think it's helpful to have a map to show the extent of imperialism. --Cerebellum (talk) 13:19, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

An image on the topic would be nice. To address the sourcing issue, the easiest approach would be to find a map of this type in a high-quality source and reproduce it with enough changes (e.g. colors, legend, layout) to avoid a copyvio. Phlsph7 (talk) 13:43, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

This article describes 300 000 years of human history. Despite this, almost all focus is on the most recent 10 000 years, which represent only about 3% of human history.

As it is, the article does not help the reader get a good understanding of the entirety of human history, as it skims over the first 97%. Shouldn't the article try to give a balanced description the main events during the history of the human species?

This article should be tagged with the Recentism tag {{Recentism}}. ~2026-16787-9 (talk) 20:49, 8 January 2026 (UTC)

Hello and thanks for your suggestion. History is about presenting important developments, not about allocating space in proportion to the amount of time that has passed. Scholars identify more important developments in the period from 8,000 BCE to 2,000 CE than in the period from 110,000 BCE to 100,000 BCE, which is why there is no direct match in the allocated space for these periods. Evidence density from those periods is also a point to consider. If we were to follow your line of thought, our article would be almost exclusively on deep history. According to WP:PROPORTION, articles should treat "each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject." I think that's what our article is doing since high-quality sources on human history or world history follow a similar pattern. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:37, 9 January 2026 (UTC)

@Phlsph7: I respectfully disagree. That sentence essentially reads to me as "human history is the history of humans". Snowmanonahoe (talk · contribs · typos) 14:34, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

Hello Snowmanonahoe and thanks for your input. You are right that the sentence includes a definition. However, it's not a purely circular definition, as you are suggesting. The sentence serves a clear and standard function: to define the scope of the article in plain terms. According to MOS:LEADSENTENCE: "If its subject is definable, then the first sentence should give a concise definition". Phlsph7 (talk) 16:25, 19 April 2026 (UTC)

@Phlsph7: Human history as a concept should be defined, but the current sentence also contains a definition of the word history by itself, which is why it reads awkwardly. Snowmanonahoe (talk · contribs · typos) 21:07, 20 April 2026 (UTC)

I'm not 100% sure what you mean. You seem to imply that the lead sentence contains two definitions: the first one of "human history" and the second one of "history". A definition usually has the form "X is Y". The sentence only has one "is", so it's not clear where you see the second definition. Or are you saying that the current sentence only defines "history" but that it should define "human history" instead? Phlsph7 (talk) 08:03, 21 April 2026 (UTC)