What are the periods in history?

History can be divided into many periods in many different ways, depending on what you are interested in and on how wide or narrow a focus you apply.

For example, you could define history (and pre-history) as the stone age, the copper age, the bronze age, the iron age, and the steel age; or you could define it as ancient, middle ages, renaissance, and modern.

Or you could focus on a region, such as the Americas, and define periods as Pre-Columbian, colonial, post-colonial and modern.

Or you could focus on one country and look at periods specific to the history of that country. For England, for example, they might include the pre-Roman period, the Roman period, the Saxon period, the Plantagenet dynasty, the Tudor Period, the Stuart period, the Victorian age, or several other overlapping designations.