Chapter four of Gilderhus discusses three basic schemata of history: cyclical, providential, and progressive. The cyclical approach theorizes that history is repetitious and moving in circles. The origin of this approach came from some of the Eastern Cultures of Greece, Egypt, Sumer, and Babylonia (p.51). The ancient peoples noticed events in nature occurring in predictable cycles. This approach was not focused as much on human events. The providential approach focuses on divine power as being the catalyst or explanation in history. The beginning of this approach appeared in the Middle Ages with the writings of St. Augustine and Joachim de Flora, and later in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with Giambattista Vico and Georg Wilhelm
