What were the main features sociopolitically/culturally/etc that historians use to distinguish between the early, high and late Middle Ages?
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Probably not the exact reasons, but the easy way to think about it is Charlemagne, Crusades, and 100 years war are good bookmarks for each one respectively in western europe. Early medieval could probably better said as starting with Muslim expansion a few centuries earlier than western Europe. It’s not really an exact science or event that kicked one off.
Depending on where you were geographically the politics, technology, and general level of stability changes greatly.
In the same question, where did ancient antiquity end and classic antiquity start? Sea peoples invasions? Athenian league? Founding or Rome? It’s hard to nail it down exactly, but somewhere in there, things started to change.
Edit. Better start of Early Medieval is fall of Rome. I personally feel like that is such a grey area of western history but my personal feel isn’t really relevant so let’s say fall of Rome is a better start and Charlemagne is a prime example of what early medieval time was like.
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