page_title: History of human rights
section_title: Early modern period and modern foundations
hierarchical_section_title: History of human rights / Early modern period and modern foundations
caption_attribution_description: English: This is a high-resolution image of the United States Declaration of Independence (article - text). This image is a version of the 1823 William Stone facsimile — Stone may well have used a wet pressing process (that removed ink from the original document onto a contact sheet for the purpose of making the engraving). Español: Versión manuscrita de la Declaración de Independencia de los Estados Unidos. Reproducción del facsímil de William Stone (1823) en el que posiblemente se utilizó un proceso de prensado en húmedo que eliminó la tinta del documento original en una hoja de contacto con el propósito de hacer el grabado.
context_page_description: While belief in the sanctity of human life has ancient precedents in many religions of the world, the foundations of modern human rights began during the era of renaissance humanism in the early modern period. The European wars of religion and the civil wars of seventeenth-century Kingdom of England gave rise to the philosophy of liberalism and belief in natural rights became a central concern of European intellectual culture during the eighteenth-century Age of Enlightenment. These ideas lay at the core of the American and French Revolutions which occurred toward the end of that century. Democratic evolution through the nineteenth century paved the way for the advent of universal suffrage in the twentieth century. Two world wars led to the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
  The post-war era saw movements arising from specific groups experiencing a shortfall in their rights, such as feminism and the civil rights of African Americans. The human rights movements of members of the Soviet bloc emerged in the 1970s along with workers' rights movements in the West.
caption: United States Declaration of Independence ratified by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776
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