Talk:Timeline of geopolitical changes (before 1500)

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Chronological order, style, and formatting[edit]

In the last few days I've undertaken, and now completed, a major overhaul of this article to address a former {{cleanup}} tag regarding the chronological order of the entries in the timeline. Previously, all of the entries were in reverse chronological order, contrary to the MOS rules established for timelines at WP:DATELIST: that is, all timelines should be presented in earliest-to-latest order, with the oldest events in the timeline listed at the top of the article page and the most recent events listed at the bottom, such that when reading the article from top to bottom, the reader follows the order of events as they occurred in history, with the oldest ones first and the youngest ones last.

The issue of chronological order may be especially confusing for this particular article because the events in this timeline span recorded history in both the BCE and CE eras, for which years and centuries are numbered in opposite orders by historiographical convention. You may notice that the numbering of years in the "Before the Common Era (BCE)" section decreases over time, with older events occurring in years with higher numbers and more recent events occurring in years with lower numbers; the opposite is true for the "Common Era (CE)" section, where more recent events occur in years with higher numbers. This is the correct way to present the entries in this timeline, by both historiographical standards and WP:DATELIST rules; no further changes are necessary regarding the chronological order. As of this writing, however, the related article Timeline of geopolitical changes (1900−present) is not in proper chronological order per WP:DATELIST. I intend to correct that soon.

Other things to consider:

  • The chronological order of months and days, when specified, is easier to miss than the order of years, decades, and centuries. Months and days must be in proper "forward" chronological order, too – even within years in the BCE era (i.e. events in the month of January should always be listed before events in the month of December when the events occur in the same numerical year, regardless of whether that year is in the BCE or CE era). This is not a huge problem, though, since dates for events in the BCE era tend to be too imprecise to include specific months and days anyway.
  • Regarding the order of entries within individual years in which some entries include specified months and/or days and other entries do not, I've tried to establish a convention by which entries with specified dates are always listed first. For example, there are three entries for the year 1608 – one on 14 May, one on 3 July, and one for which no specific month or day is mentioned. The entries for 14 May and 3 July are listed first. Because the entry that begins "The Kingdom of Portugal divides the Colony of Brazil..." does not specify a month or day on which the event occurred, it is listed last within the order for this particular year (even though the actual date of the event might very well have preceded either 14 May or 3 July 1608). My point is that it just feels wrong to list entries without specific dates before entries with specific dates. And so I've tried to make it consistent across the article that entries with specific dates are listed preferentially. If this seems silly or violates some WP:MOS rule I'm not aware of, please feel free to change it.
  • I've made the stylistic decision to change the section headings for centuries in the Common Era so that they are described by their ordinal numbers rather than the range of numbers used for their included years (e.g. "19th century" instead of "1800–1899"). I feel that this style has a couple of advantages. First, there're already a lot of numbers on this page; it may be easier on the reader to list the centuries by their ordinal names rather than their range of years (it should be apparent anyway, just from looking at the entries, which numerical range of years is covered by the section). Second, it may be helpful to present information in terms of one of the more common historiographical dating conventions in use in other WP articles; the reader may benefit from learning that the term "19th century" always refers to the range "1800–1899" (as opposed to the more intuitive "1900–1999"). This is an important thing to know for anyone interested in understanding historical timelines. I've only updated the section headings for the Common Era centuries in this way – the BCE centuries could also conceivably be described by their ordinal numbers, but I have not done so here, for no good reason. Again, this stylistic decision is a matter of personal preference. If the idea of ordinal numbers as section headings seems silly or violates a WP:MOS rule, please WP:BE BOLD and change it.
  • Many of the events listed in the timeline do not, strictly speaking, fit the criteria described in the introductory paragraph, i.e. they do not refer to a change in territorial ownership or to a name change of a country or capital city. Common examples are geographical discoveries and firsts. These are obviously important events that have tended to be quite significant for later geopolitical changes and for history as a whole, even if they do not involve any actual geopolitical change at the precise time of the discovery. In most timelines they would be welcome, but perhaps there should be some discussion as to whether they belong in this one. A related issue is "claiming" a territory versus actually exercising military or governmental control over it. Most people would probably say the latter is a must-include, but what about the former? Are the dates on which an imperial power "claims" a newly discovered territory important, even if they do not actually conquer or control that territory until many centuries later, or never?
  • I've now removed the {{cleanup}} tag regarding the WP:DATELIST issue, but another tag still remains for another major issue: this article is very long. Would it be better to break it up into smaller fragments on separate pages? Note that there is an entirely separate article, Timeline of geopolitical changes (1900−present), for just the most recent 100 years plus change, whereas this single article attempts to cover all of the events in the preceding 5,000 years. Obviously, the density of dateable events per century decreases drastically in the distant past, but still this article is much longer than its counterpart. Maybe breaking it up into two separate pages – a "Timeline of geopolitical changes (before 1000 CE)" and a "Timeline of geopolitical changes (1000–1899)", or something like that – would be easier and trimmer and cleaner and more sensible. Another reasonable dividing line might be 1500 CE, since the number of dateable geopolitical changes suddenly becomes much denser around then, and the era is also sort of a beginning of the "Modern Era", when the growth in human populations and technology allowing for rapid migrations and conquests (e.g. the Age of Discovery) began to result in more frequent geopolitical changes, such that there are perhaps enough entries in the 400-year period between 1500 and 1900 to warrant a single article just for that period.

—PJsg1011 (talk) 10:18, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Orphaned references in Timeline of geopolitical changes (before 1900)[edit]

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Timeline of geopolitical changes (before 1900)'s orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "auto":

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 18:21, 1 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed split[edit]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
The result of the discussion was to split. HappyWith (talk) 21:20, 14 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Timeline of geopolitical changes (1900−present) was recently split up, and I think this article should be split for similar reasons of length. Per PJsg1011's reasoning in § Chronological order, style, and formatting, 1500 might be a good dividing line, but if other editors have better ideas, I'm open to hear it. HappyWithWhatYouHaveToBeHappyWith (talk) 19:33, 28 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Support for the same reasons. Julio974◆ (Talk-Contribs) 18:52, 29 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Support per nom. Libcub (talk) 08:40, 31 January 2023 UTC
Support with proposed 1500 cutoff point. Mottezen (talk) 21:05, 14 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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