section_path: Historiography/Terminology and periodization
section_name: Terminology and periodization
paragraph_text: Terminology and periodization
  
  Post-classical history is a periodization used by historians employing a world history approach to history, specifically the school developed during the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Outside of world history, the term is also sometimes used to avoid erroneous pre-conceptions around the terms Middle Ages, Medieval Period, and the Dark Ages (see medievalism), though the application of the term post-classical on a global scale is also problematic, and may likewise be Eurocentric. Academic publications sometimes use the terms post-classical and late antiquity synomously to describe the history of Western Eurasia between 250 and 800 CE.
  
  The post-classical period corresponds roughly to the period from 500 CE to 1450 CE. Beginning and ending dates might vary depending on the region, with the period beginning at the end of the previous classical period: Han China (ending in 220 CE), the Western Roman Empire (in 476 CE), the Gupta Empire (in 543 CE), and the Sasanian Empire (in 651 CE).
  
  The post-classical period is one of the five or six major periods world historians use:
  
  Although post-classical is synonymous with the Middle Ages of Western Europe, the term post-classical is not necessarily a member of the traditional tripartite periodization of Western European history into classical, middle, and modern.