According to Mayo Clinic, Down syndrome causes a distinct facial appearance, intellectual disability, developmental delays, and may be associated with thyroid or heart disease in a person. So calling people with this syndrome 'Mongoloid' is extremely vulgar and disrespectful to ethnic Mongolians. Likewise, how will the population react if Down Syndrome was associated with 'European' looks? If you use this term, you are automatically a xenophobic, in my opinion.
An ERA is a long period of history with distinct characteristics. For example, the roman era. A PERIOD is less distinct and defined, it simply represents a portion of time, be it a very short portion, or a very long portion. For example, my period of sadness and the jurassic period. An EON is an actual unit of time. 1 eon = 1 billion years. This is also used rhetorically to symbolize a long long time. For example, man! my new iphone took like an eon to arrive in the mail! or also more appropriately the earth is 4.5 eons old.
A generation is the parents, Grandparents, Grandparents. So your parents and their siblings are one generation while you and your siblings are another. The age of people has nothing to do with a generation in Genealogy, it is the relationship with others that determines the generation. So if you (at 20) and a 50 year person in the family share the same great-grandparents you are of the same generational structure.