Eras
The Eras Tour was a concert tour headlined by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift from March 17, 2023, to December 8, 2024, retrospectively celebrating her ten studio albums through themed performances spanning her career "eras."[1][2] Comprising 149 shows across stadiums in 21 countries and five continents, the production featured elaborate set designs, costume changes, and a three-and-a-half-hour setlist drawing from albums like Fearless, 1989, Folklore, and Midnights, attracting over 10 million attendees and generating an estimated economic impact exceeding $10 billion globally through tourism and related spending.[3][4] It achieved unprecedented commercial success, grossing $2.077 billion in ticket revenue—more than double the previous record holder—and becoming the first tour to surpass both $1 billion and $2 billion thresholds, with average ticket prices around $204 fueled by dynamic pricing and high demand.[1][5][6] The tour's scale prompted logistical challenges, including a high-profile Ticketmaster presale meltdown in November 2022 that exposed monopolistic practices in live-event ticketing, leading to U.S. Senate hearings, fan lawsuits, and calls for antitrust scrutiny, though Swift publicly criticized the system without endorsing broader regulatory overhauls.[7] An accompanying concert film released in October 2023 grossed over $260 million worldwide, further amplifying its cultural footprint despite some critiques of repetitive staging and environmental concerns over private jet usage by entourage members.[8][9]Etymology and Definition
Linguistic Origins
The term "era" derives from Late Latin aera, signifying a numeral or epoch serving as a fixed point for reckoning time.[10][11] This usage evolved from Latin aes, originally denoting brass or copper, which extended metaphorically to counters or small discs employed in arithmetic computations, akin to abacus beads.[10][11] The conceptual shift to chronology reflects the practical application of such counters in tallying years from a designated origin, emphasizing precision in historical dating over vague temporal spans.[10] In medieval Iberian chronology, aera gained prominence through the aera Hispanica, a system adopted around the 5th century CE in Spain and Portugal, commencing from what corresponds to 38 BCE in the Gregorian calendar—potentially tied to a Roman census or taxation event under Augustus that facilitated administrative record-keeping.[10] This era persisted in Visigothic and early medieval documents until the 14th century, illustrating an early institutional preference for numeral-based dating to standardize fiscal and ecclesiastical records amid fragmented political authority.[10] Linguistically, aera as a plural form underscores its roots in quantifiable units, distinguishing it from broader, less delimited terms like "age" derived from Greek aiōn.[10] Adoption into modern European languages occurred gradually; in English, "era" first appears in 1615 within William Bedwell's translation of an Arabic astronomical text, marking its integration into scholarly discourse on temporal systems.[12] By the 18th century, the term had standardized in English historiography to denote distinct epochs defined by pivotal events or innovations, as evidenced in works by Enlightenment chronologists seeking empirical frameworks for history.[12] This evolution highlights a causal progression from material artifacts of calculation to abstract markers of historical discontinuity, grounded in the need for verifiable, event-anchored timelines rather than mythic or cyclical narratives prevalent in earlier traditions.[10]Conceptual Scope and Distinctions from Periods or Ages
An era constitutes a major division of time marked by pervasive characteristics, such as prevailing ideologies, technological paradigms, or socioeconomic structures, that unify diverse events under a coherent historical narrative.[13] This scope extends beyond mere chronology to encompass causal interconnections, where foundational shifts—like the adoption of steam power and mechanized production—permeate politics, culture, and daily life, as observed from approximately 1760 to the early 20th century in the case of industrialization.[14] Unlike arbitrary time slices, eras are retrospectively identified through empirical patterns in primary sources, including economic data, artifact distributions, and contemporaneous accounts, emphasizing transformative breakpoints over continuous gradations.[15] Eras differ from periods primarily in scale and breadth: periods typically denote shorter, more specialized intervals within an era, often confined to domains like literature or governance, such as the Regency period (1811–1820) amid the broader Georgian era (1714–1830).[16] While periods may highlight incremental developments or stylistic evolutions verifiable through targeted archives—e.g., shifts in architectural motifs—eras integrate multifaceted causal chains, including demographic surges or imperial expansions, demanding cross-disciplinary evidence for delineation.[17] In contrast, "ages" frequently overlap semantically with eras but connote qualitative stages of progression or regression, as in the "Bronze Age" (c. 3300–1200 BCE), defined by metallurgical innovation's societal impacts rather than isolated events.[18] These distinctions, though not rigidly enforced in historiography, arise from practical needs for categorization: eras facilitate macro-analysis of enduring legacies, periods enable micro-focused studies, and ages invoke developmental metaphors grounded in material evidence like tool assemblages or settlement patterns.[19] Historians caution against over-precision, as boundaries remain interpretive, influenced by available records and avoiding anachronistic impositions, with empirical validation prioritizing quantifiable metrics such as trade volumes or literacy rates over subjective narratives.[20]Historical Development of the Concept
Ancient and Classical Periodization
In ancient Near Eastern civilizations, early forms of periodization emerged through king lists that segmented history into successions of rulers and cities, often distinguishing mythical antediluvian eras from historical ones. The Sumerian King List, compiled during the Ur III period around 2100–2000 BCE, records kingship descending from heaven to Eridu and passing among cities like Kish and Uruk, with pre-flood rulers assigned extraordinarily long reigns totaling over 241,000 years before a deluge, followed by post-flood dynasties with more plausible durations.[21] This structure reflects a causal view of kingship as a transferable institution disrupted by catastrophe, serving to legitimize later rulers while imposing a linear progression on time. Mesopotamian chronology further relied on eponym lists, where years were named after officials or events, enabling precise dating within regnal frameworks across Assyrian and Babylonian records.[22] Egyptian historiography formalized dynastic divisions as a primary mode of temporal organization, grouping pharaohs into sequential ruling houses based on temple annals and royal genealogies. The priest Manetho, writing in the early 3rd century BCE under Ptolemaic rule, synthesized these into 30 dynasties spanning from gods and demigods to human kings, starting with divine rulers like Ptah and ending with Persian conquerors, providing a comprehensive framework that equated eras with familial or institutional successions.[23] This system, derived from indigenous records rather than Greek influences, emphasized continuity interrupted by intermediate periods of instability, influencing later Greco-Roman understandings of cyclical yet progressive rule. Daily administration used regnal years resetting with each pharaoh's accession, underscoring a conception of time tied to sovereign authority rather than absolute calendars.[24] In archaic Greece, mythological narratives introduced qualitative periodization based on human moral and technological decline, predating empirical historiography. Hesiod, in his Works and Days composed around 700 BCE, delineates five ages of humanity: the Golden Age under Cronus, marked by perpetual spring and harmony; the Silver Age of impiety under Zeus; the warlike Bronze Age; the Heroic Age of demigods like those at Troy; and the current Iron Age of toil and injustice.[25] This schema, rooted in didactic poetry rather than annals, posits causal degradation from divine favor to strife, paralleling metallurgical metaphors for societal hardness and foreshadowing later historical stagings. By the 5th century BCE, Greek chronology adopted event-based eras for synchronization, with the Olympiad cycle—four-year intervals from the first recorded games in 776 BCE—serving as a pan-Hellenic standard retroactively applied by historians like Timaeus of Tauromenium in the 3rd century BCE.[26] Classical Greek historians advanced periodization through empire successions, framing history as sequential dominions yielding to successors. Herodotus, in his Histories (c. 430 BCE), outlines a chain of Near Eastern powers: a 500-year Assyrian hegemony over Asia, followed by Median, Lydian under Croesus, and culminating in Persian rule under Cyrus, portraying each as transient due to hubris and conquest.[27] Thucydides, chronicling the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE) in his history completed c. 400 BCE, eschewed mythical ages for analytical divisions by archonships and wars, emphasizing power dynamics and human nature as causal constants across eras, though without formal epoch names. These approaches prioritized causal explanations over rigid calendars, influencing views of history as empire cycles rather than unbroken continuity. Roman periodization built on Greek models but anchored to civic origins, establishing fixed eras for annalistic reckoning. Marcus Terentius Varro, in the 1st century BCE, computed the founding of Rome as 754/753 BCE, inaugurating the ab urbe condita (AUC) system, which counted years from this event to synchronize republican and imperial timelines.[28] Titus Livius (Livy), in his Ab Urbe Condita (c. 27–9 BCE), narrates Rome's history from legendary kings through 142 books (many lost), dividing it implicitly into regal (753–509 BCE), republican, and early imperial phases based on constitutional shifts and conquests. This framework, blending myth with consular records, causalized Rome's rise through virtus and mos maiorum, providing a template for later Western era delineations tied to state foundations. Such systems, while practical for dating, often blended empirical king lists with ideological narratives, revealing periodization's dual role in chronology and legitimation.Medieval and Enlightenment Contributions
During the medieval era, Christian theologians developed periodization schemes rooted in biblical exegesis, most notably St. Augustine of Hippo's framework of the six ages of the world, outlined in his City of God (c. 426 CE). This divided human history into stages paralleling the six days of creation, with each age spanning roughly 1,000 years: the first from Adam to Noah, the second to Abraham, the third to David, the fourth to the Babylonian exile, the fifth to Christ's birth, and the sixth encompassing the Church era leading to the apocalypse.[29] Augustine's model, drawing from earlier Jewish traditions but adapted for Christian eschatology, emphasized providential causality over empirical chronology, influencing chroniclers like Bede and Isidore of Seville in structuring annals around divine milestones rather than continuous secular eras.[30] This theological approach persisted as the dominant paradigm in medieval historiography, supplanting classical schemes like the four world empires from Daniel's prophecy, though both coexisted in works such as Otto of Freising's Chronica (1143–1146). Medieval writers applied it to universal history, calculating timelines from Creation (often dated to c. 5500 BCE via Septuagint computations) to the present, with events like the Incarnation (c. 1 CE) marking pivotal transitions; however, it lacked the linear, progressive eras of later secular models, viewing time as cyclical fulfillment of prophecy.[31] In the Enlightenment, periodization shifted toward humanistic and empirical criteria, with German scholar Christoph Cellarius formalizing the tripartite division into ancient (to c. 476 CE), medieval (c. 476–1453 CE), and modern eras in his Historia Medii Aevi (1688). Cellarius, building on Renaissance precedents like Flavio Biondo's Historiarum ab inclinatio Romanorum imperii decades (1439–1453), delimited the "middle age" as a transitional phase of barbarism and feudal fragmentation between classical antiquity's fall and the revival of learning, prioritizing political ruptures like the Western Roman Empire's collapse and the Ottoman capture of Constantinople over theological epochs.[32] This schema reflected Enlightenment rationalism's emphasis on progress from "dark" intermediacy to enlightened modernity, influencing Voltaire's critiques in Essai sur les mœurs (1756) and Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–1789), which further delineated eras by causal factors like institutional decay and cultural revival.[30] By privileging verifiable dates and source criticism—e.g., aligning the medieval terminus with 1453 CE based on Byzantine records—Cellarius's model laid groundwork for 19th-century refinements, though it imposed Eurocentric boundaries critiqued for overlooking non-Western continuities.[31]19th-20th Century Formalization
The 19th century marked a pivotal shift toward the professionalization and scientific formalization of historiography, emphasizing rigorous source criticism and systematic periodization to delineate historical eras with greater precision. Leopold von Ranke, a German historian active from the early 1800s until his death in 1886, pioneered this approach by insisting on recounting events wie es eigentlich gewesen—as they actually occurred—through exhaustive analysis of primary archival documents rather than philosophical speculation or secondary narratives.[33] His seminal 1824 work, Geschichten der romanischen und germanischen Völker von 1494 bis 1517, exemplified this method by integrating diplomatic records and state papers to trace transitions between late medieval and early modern phases, thereby refining the boundaries of eras like the Renaissance as distinct from feudal structures.[34] Ranke's establishment of the historical seminar at the University of Berlin in 1825 institutionalized training in source verification, fostering a generation of scholars who applied empirical standards to subdivide eras into quantifiable phases influenced by political, economic, and cultural causation, such as the shift from absolutism to nationalism post-1815.[35] This era also saw the widespread adoption and elaboration of the tripartite division into ancient, medieval, and modern periods, originally sketched by 17th-century scholars like Christophorus Cellarius but systematized in 19th-century national historiographies amid rising positivism and state-building. German and French historians, drawing on Enlightenment legacies, integrated quantitative data—such as trade volumes or population censuses from the 1830s onward—to justify era demarcations, viewing the medieval as a transitional "dark" interlude ending around 1450–1500 with the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the printing press's invention circa 1440.[31] In parallel, British and American scholars like Edward Gibbon's successors quantified imperial declines using metrics from Roman records, formalizing the ancient era's close at 476 CE with the deposition of Romulus Augustulus, though debates persisted over causal primacy between barbarian invasions and internal decay.[36] These efforts, supported by newly founded institutions like the Historical Association in Britain (1906, rooted in 19th-century precedents) and archival laws in Prussia from 1850, elevated era delineation from narrative convenience to evidentiary rigor, prioritizing causal chains like industrialization's role in inaugurating the modern era around 1789–1848.[37] The 20th century extended this formalization through interdisciplinary challenges to traditional political-event chronologies, notably via the Annales School, founded in 1929 by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre with the launch of Annales d'histoire économique et sociale. Rejecting Rankean focus on short-term diplomacy, they advocated "total history" integrating geography, economics, and demography to reveal longue durée structures—slow-moving cycles spanning centuries—that often superseded discrete eras.[38] Fernand Braudel's 1949 The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II operationalized this by layering temporal scales: l'histoire événementielle (events like battles), conjunctures (medium-term trends like price fluctuations from 1500–1800), and structural invariants (geoclimatic factors enduring millennia), thus formalizing eras as nested, non-linear constructs rather than abrupt ruptures.[39] This approach influenced quantitative methodologies, such as cliometrics emerging post-1950s with Nobel laureate Robert Fogel's 1964 analysis of U.S. slavery's profitability using econometric models, which tested era transitions like the Industrial Revolution's impact on labor systems from 1780–1860 via regressions on wage and output data.[40] By mid-century, global and thematic periodizations gained traction, incorporating non-Western data to critique Eurocentric boundaries; for instance, post-1945 syntheses by scholars like Arnold Toynbee in his 1934–1961 A Study of History (revised editions) proposed 21 civilizations with rise-fall cycles measured against challenge-response metrics, formalizing eras beyond linear progress narratives.[31] However, this era also witnessed formal debates on periodization's limits, as evidenced in the 1960s works of British Marxist Eric Hobsbawm, who delineated "long 19th century" (1789–1914) via capitalist accumulation rates from factory records, attributing era shifts to material dialectics rather than idealist breaks, though such frameworks faced scrutiny for overemphasizing economic determinism absent corroborative ecological or technological evidence.[41] These developments entrenched era concepts as tools for causal analysis, supported by proliferating university departments—numbering over 1,000 in Europe and North America by 1970—while underscoring the need for multi-source verification to mitigate interpretive biases inherent in selective archival access.[42]Types of Eras
Calendar and Regnal Eras
Calendar eras refer to chronological systems that number years sequentially from a fixed starting point, known as an epoch, to facilitate consistent time reckoning across extended periods.[43] These systems emerged in various civilizations to standardize dating beyond lunar or seasonal cycles, often tied to significant historical or religious events. For instance, the Anno Domini (AD) era, denoting years "in the year of the Lord," was devised in 525 by the Scythian monk Dionysius Exiguus to compute Easter dates, replacing the Diocletian era associated with a persecutor of Christians.[44] Dionysius calculated the epoch as the presumed year of Christ's incarnation, though modern scholarship places Jesus's birth between 6 and 4 BC, resulting in no year zero and a slight misalignment.[45] Adoption of the AD system spread gradually in Europe, becoming standard by the 9th century under Carolingian influence, and later globalized through Christian missionary activity and colonial expansion.[46] Other calendar eras include the Holocene Era (HE), proposed in 1993 by Cesare Emiliani, which adds 10,000 years to the AD year to align with the start of human agriculture around 10,000 BC, though it remains niche in scientific contexts.[47] Ancient examples persist regionally, such as the Japanese Imperial Year, counting from Emperor Jimmu's legendary 660 BC accession, used alongside Gregorian dates. These fixed-epoch systems contrast with cyclical calendars like the ancient Sumerian lunisolar model, which divided years into 30-day months without continuous numbering.[43] Regnal eras, by contrast, delineate time relative to a sovereign's reign rather than a singular fixed epoch, typically numbering years from the monarch's accession date and resetting upon succession. This approach, prevalent in monarchic societies, served administrative and legal purposes, such as dating edicts and records with precision tied to ruling legitimacy. In England, regnal years became standard for civil documents from the late 12th century, with the legal year commencing on the accession anniversary; for example, Henry V's first regnal year began March 21, 1413.[48] British statutes cited regnal years until the 1962 Acts of Parliament (Commencement) Act shifted to calendar dating, ending a practice that accounted for discrepancies between Julian and Gregorian calendars pre-1752.[49] In East Asia, regnal systems evolved into named eras (nengō in Japan), introduced around 645 AD during the Taika Reforms to centralize imperial authority modeled on Chinese precedents.[50] Japan formalized nengō in 701 AD, with each emperor's reign typically bearing one era name and sequential years (e.g., Heisei 1 began January 8, 1989, upon Akihito's enthronement, ending April 30, 2019). Historically, multiple nengō per reign occurred during crises, but post-1868 Meiji Restoration, single eras per reign standardized the system, reflecting political stability.[51] Ancient Egyptian and Roman chronologies similarly employed regnal dating, as in pharaonic records from Narmer's circa 3100 BC unification, underscoring the method's utility for dynastic continuity amid variable reign lengths.[52] Unlike calendar eras' permanence, regnal eras inherently fragment chronology, requiring cross-referencing with fixed systems for broader historical alignment.Historical and Cultural Eras
Historical eras represent broad divisions of recorded human history delineated by historians based on transformative shifts in political structures, economic systems, technological capabilities, and social organizations that impacted large populations.[53] These eras are identified through criteria such as the emergence of new production methods, conquests establishing empires, or widespread adoption of innovations like metallurgy or writing, which enable qualitative distinctions from preceding periods.[54] Conventional Western historiography often employs approximate boundaries tied to pivotal events, such as the fall of empires or inventions, though these can vary by region and reflect Eurocentric emphases that underrepresent non-Western developments, as noted in global frameworks like UCLA's "Big Eras" which prioritize worldwide demographic and environmental changes.[55] Key examples of historical eras include the Ancient Era (c. 3500 BCE–476 CE), marked by the invention of cuneiform writing around 3200 BCE in Mesopotamia and hieroglyphs in Egypt, leading to the formation of city-states, irrigation-based agriculture yielding surpluses of up to 10-fold harvests, and empires like the Akkadian (c. 2334–2154 BCE) that controlled territories spanning 800,000 square kilometers.[16] This era saw population growth to approximately 50 million by 1 CE, driven by agricultural intensification and trade networks extending from the Indus Valley to the Mediterranean. The Post-Classical Era (c. 500–1500 CE), following the Western Roman Empire's collapse in 476 CE amid invasions and economic contraction reducing urban populations by 90% in some areas, featured decentralized feudal systems in Europe, the expansion of Islam from 632 CE conquering territories from Spain to India by 750 CE, and parallel advancements in China under the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE) with gunpowder and printing innovations.[16] The Modern Era (c. 1500 CE–present) commenced with the Renaissance's recovery of classical texts via Ottoman transfers post-1453 and Columbus's 1492 voyage initiating transatlantic exchange, culminating in the Industrial Revolution from 1760 onward, where steam engines increased coal output from 2.7 million tons in 1700 Britain to 250 million tons by 1900, fueling GDP growth rates averaging 2% annually in leading economies.[16][56] Cultural eras, distinct yet overlapping with historical ones, are defined by dominant intellectual, artistic, and worldview paradigms shaped by technological and philosophical evolutions, often assessed through shifts in media, literature, and social values.[57] For instance, the Renaissance (c. 1400–1600 CE) emphasized humanism and empirical observation, evidenced by Leonardo da Vinci's anatomical studies dissecting over 30 cadavers and the printing press's dissemination of 20 million volumes by 1500, fostering literacy rates rising from under 10% to 20% in urban Europe.[58] The Enlightenment (c. 1685–1815) prioritized rational inquiry, with works like Newton's Principia Mathematica (1687) formalizing laws of motion observed via telescope data, influencing governance ideas that contributed to the American Revolution's 1776 declaration and France's 1789 upheaval, where Enlightenment texts circulated in 80% of Parisian libraries.[58] Later, Modernism (c. 1890–1945) rejected Victorian certainties amid industrialization's urbanization—cities like London swelling from 1 million in 1800 to 6.5 million by 1900—manifesting in artistic fragmentation, as in Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907) deconstructing form influenced by African masks and X-ray technology analogies. Postmodernism (c. 1960s–present), reacting to totalitarianism and nuclear threats post-1945, embodies relativism and irony, with deconstructionist theory questioning metanarratives and media saturation enabling global cultural hybridity, such as hip-hop's evolution from Bronx block parties in 1973 to a $15.7 billion industry by 2019.[58][59]| Era Type | Example | Approximate Dates | Defining Features |
|---|---|---|---|
| Historical | Industrial Revolution | 1760–1840 | Mechanization, factory systems, coal/steam power driving 10x productivity gains in textiles.[56] |
| Cultural | Romanticism | 1790–1850 | Emphasis on individualism and nature, as in Wordsworth's poetry responding to urban alienation from enclosure acts displacing 250,000 farmers.[58] |
Geological and Scientific Eras
Geological eras constitute the primary subdivisions within the Phanerozoic Eon of the Geologic Time Scale, a hierarchical framework established through stratigraphic correlation, fossil evidence, and radiometric dating to chronicle Earth's approximately 4.6 billion-year history.[60] This scale, formalized by bodies like the International Commission on Stratigraphy and documented by the U.S. Geological Survey, identifies eras as intervals spanning tens to hundreds of millions of years, marked by profound shifts in paleoenvironments, mass extinctions, and evolutionary radiations.[61] The Precambrian Supereon precedes these, encompassing the Hadean (4,600–4,000 million years ago, or Ma), Archean (4,000–2,500 Ma), and Proterozoic (2,500–541 Ma) eons, characterized by the formation of the planet's crust, early microbial life, and oxygenation of the atmosphere, respectively.[62] The Phanerozoic Eon, beginning with the Cambrian Explosion around 541 Ma, features three principal eras: Paleozoic (541–252 Ma), Mesozoic (252–66 Ma), and Cenozoic (66 Ma–present).[60] The Paleozoic Era saw the diversification of marine invertebrates, the emergence of vascular plants and early tetrapods, and culminated in the Permian-Triassic extinction event, which eliminated about 96% of marine species due to volcanic activity and climatic upheaval.[61] Mesozoic Era, often termed the "Age of Reptiles," witnessed the dominance of dinosaurs, the breakup of Pangaea, and angiosperm evolution, ending with the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction from an asteroid impact and volcanism, wiping out non-avian dinosaurs.[63] The Cenozoic Era, marked by mammalian radiation and ice ages, includes ongoing human evolution amid tectonic shifts like the Himalayan orogeny.[60]| Era | Duration (Ma) | Key Biological and Geological Events |
|---|---|---|
| Paleozoic | 541–252 | Cambrian Explosion; first forests; Appalachian formation; major extinction at end.[61] |
| Mesozoic | 252–66 | Dinosaur dominance; bird and mammal origins; Atlantic opening.[63] |
| Cenozoic | 66–present | Primate evolution; megafauna extinctions; current interglacial period.[60] |