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):

  1. Birth of civilization (Egypt and Mesopotamia)
  2. Classical age (Greece and Rome)
  3. The Dark Ages (rise of Christianity)
  4. The Rebirth: Renaissance and Reformation
  5. The Enlightenment (exploration and science)
  6. The Revolutions (democratic, industrial, technological)
  7. Rise of Nation-States: The Struggle for Empire
  8. World Wars I and II.
  9. The Cold War
  10. The Triumph of Democratic Capitalism