(4962) The Oil Age?

Just something to muse over...

...Those who know a little about history will know that human history is chronologically subdivided by historians into ages with names which signify the level of technological attainment reached by mankind expressed by the principle material upon which their civilisation is based-  the Stone Age, The Iron Age, The Bronze Age.

Why then does this categorisation stop so early in man's history?

...And by this measure, are we not living in the Oil Age?

This age would seem to me to have begun just over a hundred years ago when we first learned to extract oil from the earth and make use of it.  While the this period generally signifies the begining of the industrial revolution, this revolution could not have taken place without oil as the basic driving force and material which engendered every other aspect of this time.

Think of all that oil does in our every day lives:

Fuels almost all internal combustion engines to date, allowing for all forms of transport,   fuels some electricty generating power stations, or at the very least, the mode of delivering the coal and gas fuel to the station, and is the principle material used to create all plastics, which are everywhere today.

In short, it is in everything, and underlying everything else, and so is the principle material upon which our entire civilisations are based, even the driver of the economy.

So should future historians refer to this last century (and a bit) as the Oil Age?

But further to this, questions worth thinking about are:

Are we at the End of the Oil Age?

What will Replace Oil as that principle material, and so what age is in prospect? 
(The age of Diversity?  The Renewables Age?... The Biological Age?)

Is it important?

What do you think?