Monthly Archives: May 2017

Turn made

I had mentioned last month that I was going to be connecting biography pages to history. I’ve made significant progress on that and I’m over halfway done. Prehistory is now connected to as many cities as I have traced into prehistory. For Antiquity and classical and medieval history, I’ve closed the gap in quarters of 2014 through 2016.

Nations are finally connected to cities as far those have been developed. The next phase is to finish connecting nations to each other, although this will go fairly slowly because of all the areas that it will open up. I will be concentrating more on particular peoples.

Making the turn

I have slowly been connecting social mechanics to nations and peoples, not only to get an overview of the specifics and the larger groupings of nations, but also so that all nations have connections to social mechanics. As I have been constructing the knowledge base, this is also a preliminary to outlining the interconnections of nations. This particular project is now complete, for now, so I can begin the review of the connections to major groups of peoples.

The 19th Century

Today I went through the 19th century to add various links. The most noteworthy result was compiling summaries for each of the 20 year periods. Although these are incomplete and don’t have most of the major events in Europe, they are a start. They provide a sample illustration of the worldwide overview I intend for the knowledge base.
The 5-year periods don’t have much content, except that I have brought US history back into late 1890s.

Gaps

I’ve finished reviews of how the 20th century is connected to antiquity and to classical and medieval history. What both of these show the gap in my analysis of 2014 and 2015, which is something I will be addressing before long.
The absence of European peoples from some of my summaries has been a bit troubling. In the latest round of connections to the 18th century, however, Italy starts emerging about the mid century. There are actually quite a few more nations that have historical notes for this period, but it takes a little more digging to get to them: they don’t start emerging in the summaries until later.

Shifty

In the review of prehistory, I got to the point where the connections of modern history are down to the current year. I have found that in the analysis of particular weeks of current events, there are occasional references to current discoveries that pertain to prehistory, antiquity, and classical and medieval history. and I consider that it would be a useful exercise to include references to these whenever I can find them. As I have reviewed the application of other history to antiquity and classical and medieval history, these aren’t quite up to the same point, which shifts the emphasis of my connections a little.
For antiquity, I have nearly all the connections to nations and cities, and I can begin a review of the peoples of the world. However, I find that in order to make much progress with this, I should finish reviewing the history of Asiatic peoples.
Much the same is true in classical and medieval history: I need to review the history of Western Civilization as I have outlined it.
My knowledge of the content is improved, as i have worked France back into early classical times, England into Roman times, Italy and Italy into the early medieval period.
For modern history, I am working through a review of how social mechanics is applicable. This is underdeveloped enough that I will soon want to give more attention to it.
I have reviewed the history of sociology enough that This is subject to the same process of improvement through the examination of weeks of recent history. Peoples of the world are being reviewed. Nations still have a way to go in connecting to cities, but cities are fully connected to nations. Social mechanics at the general level is making good progress at connection to nations.

A Problem of Titles

This is, of course, the problem of finding a catchy, attention grabbing title for fairly routine work.
The addition of a page for May 2017 and its linkage to other history and a few other topics took up most of a day’s work.
For classical and medieval history’s review of the application of Asiatic peoples, I have the basics of Oriental people, with the next topic coming up is seeing how the regions and cities of China have been developed since I looked at this last.
Going through centuries of late medieval history has brought progress to the history of Italy, which I felt was rather badly neglected in my history of Western civilization class so long ago.
I am almost done with a review of how South American Indian peoples apply to modern history. There really isn’t much substance to this until I get more of the local history of the countries of South America.
Although the connection of months of 2016 creates plenty of links to 2017, there isn’t much substantial content to it yet.

Week’s worth

The latest progress that seems worth reporting is that I have extended the review of how peoples of the world apply to history to Latin peoples. I have separated out the application of Middle Eastern peoples to Classical and medieval times. I have extended France back into early classical times, England into early medieval times, and Italy into late medieval times and the Renaissance. I have also begun a review of how American Indian peoples apply to modern history. I note in passing that I want to add enough cities to Mexico to separate it into regions and examine the native peoples in more detail. I am pleased with the progress of the quarters of the early 2010s, although this is mostly rather remedial. For most of two years, I didn’t do regular updates of current events, so I have a large gap to fill in.

The Big Picture

Most of what I do in constructing the SKB is focused on small connections. Every once in a while, I get to step back and review the bigger picture.
History in general depends on getting an overview of peoples of the world, and I am currently going through another review of these. This isn’t really adding much, since I have done it so recently, but small bits help.
For prehistory, I still have quite a few nations to connect. Antiquity is close to having the nations all connected; then I need to connect more cities. For classical and medieval history, I have done a review of Turkish, Persian, and Egyptian history. The smaller nations are not yet as well developed. For modern history, I am going through a review of African peoples. I still don’t have much detail on the colonial era, but that will come eventually. 5-year periods of the 20th century are getting more summaries, although these tend to involve the larger Asian nations, and not yet the Western European nations that still tend to be the main drivers of world events.

Going modern

Most of the periods of modern history aren’t revealing much detail at present. For the 20th century, there is more detail in the 5 year periods. I have started putting in summaries based on the largest nations that have been separated out. These don’t always have the most important world events, but there are now enough to give something of the flavor of a 5-year period, and in future passes, these will include more.