When the ideal future envisioned by post industrialized, Western democratic society is taken as the endpoint of history, the shape of the narrative leading to here-and-now features something like the following stages (as opposed to the 10 stages of Islamic history):
- Birth of civilization (Egypt and Mesopotamia)
- Classical age (Greece and Rome)
- The Dark Ages (rise of Christianity)
- The Rebirth: Renaissance and Reformation
- The Enlightenment (exploration and science)
- The Revolutions (democratic, industrial, technological)
- Rise of Nation-States: The Struggle for Empire
- World Wars I and II.
- The Cold War
- The Triumph of Democratic Capitalism