Recorded history

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Part of a series on
Human history
Human Era
↑ Prehistory (Stone Age)   (Pleistocene epoch)
Holocene
Ancient
Postclassical
  • Timeline
Modern
See also
↓ Future   
Linear A etched on tablets found in Akrotiri, Santorini
Palenque Glyphs that has a total of 92 glyphs on the tablet

Recorded history or written history describes the historical events that have been recorded in a written form or other documented communication which are subsequently evaluated by historians using the historical method. For broader world history, recorded history begins with the accounts of the ancient world around the 4th millennium BC, and it coincides with the invention of writing.

For some geographic regions or cultures, written history is limited to a relatively recent period in human history because of the limited use of written records. Moreover, human cultures do not always record all of the information which is considered relevant by later historians, such as the full impact of natural disasters or the names of individuals. Recorded history for particular types of information is therefore limited based on the types of records kept. Because of this, recorded history in different contexts may refer to different periods of time depending on the topic.

The interpretation of recorded history often relies on historical method, or the set of techniques and guidelines by which historians use primary sources and other evidence to research and then to write accounts of the past. The question of what constitutes history, and whether there is an effective method for interpreting recorded history, is raised in the philosophy of history as a question of epistemology. The study of different historical methods is known as historiography, which focuses on examining how different interpreters of recorded history create different interpretations of historical evidence.

Prehistory

Further information: History of writing

writing systems.[1]
Prehistory refers to the past in an area where no written records exist, or where the writing of a culture is not understood.

historians. Protohistory may also refer to the period during which a culture or civilization
has not yet developed writing, but other cultures have noted its existence in their own writings.

More complete writing systems were preceded by

cuneiform script and the Egyptian hieroglyphs are generally considered the earliest writing systems, both emerging out of their ancestral proto-literate symbol systems from 3400 to 3200 BCE, with earliest coherent texts from about 2600 BCE
.

Historical accounts

Main article: Historiography – The history of written history

The earliest

Early Dynastic Period of Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Sumerians,[3] which emerged independently of each other from roughly 3500 BCE.[4] Earliest recorded history, which varies greatly in quality and reliability, deals with Pharaohs and their reigns, as preserved by ancient Egyptians.[5] Much of the earliest recorded history was re-discovered relatively recently due to archaeological dig sites findings.[6]
A number of different traditions have developed in different parts of the world as to how to interpret these ancient accounts.

Europe

Xanthus of Lydia and Hecataeus of Miletus
. He described their works as simple, unadorned accounts of their own and other cities and people, Greek or foreign, including popular legends.

Herodotus (484 BCE – c. 425 BCE)[7] has generally been acclaimed as the "father of history" composing his The Histories from the 450s to the 420s BCE. However, his contemporary Thucydides (c. 460 BCE – c. 400 BCE) is credited[by whom?] with having first approached history with a well-developed historical method in his work the History of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides, unlike Herodotus, regarded history as being the product of the choices and actions of human beings, and looked at cause and effect, rather than as the result of divine intervention.[7] History developed as a popular form of literature in later Greek and Roman societies in the works of Polybius, Tacitus and others.

secular approach into historical study.[8]

Annales School
introduced quantitative history, using raw data to track the lives of typical individuals, and were prominent in the establishment of cultural history.

East Asia

The

Chinese classic texts and one of the earliest narratives of China. The Spring and Autumn Annals, the official chronicle of the State of Lu covering the period from 722 to 481 BCE, is arranged on annalistic principles. It is traditionally attributed to Confucius (551–479 BCE). Zhan Guo Ce was a renowned ancient Chinese historical compilation of sporadic materials on the Warring States period
compiled between the 3rd and 1st centuries BCE.

Sima Qian (around 100 BCE) was the first in China to lay the groundwork for professional historical writing. His written work was the Records of the Grand Historian, a monumental lifelong achievement in literature. Its scope extends as far back as the 16th century BCE, and it includes many treatises on specific subjects and individual biographies of prominent people, and also explores the lives and deeds of commoners, both contemporary and those of previous eras. His work influenced every subsequent author of history in China, including the prestigious Ban family of the Eastern Han dynasty era.

South Asia

In

Dipavamsa
 (4th century CE) "Island Chronicles" is much simpler and contains less information than the Mahavamsa and was probably compiled using the Atthakatha on the Mahavamsa as well.

A companion volume, the

Culavamsa "Lesser Chronicle", compiled by Sinhala monks, covers the period from the 4th century to the British
takeover of Sri Lanka in 1815. The Culavamsa was compiled by a number of authors of different time periods.

The combined work, sometimes referred to collectively as the Mahavamsa, provides a continuous historical record of over two millennia, and is considered one of the world's longest unbroken historical accounts.[11] It is one of the few documents containing material relating to the Nāga and Yakkha peoples, indigenous inhabitants of Lanka prior to the legendary arrival of Prince Vijaya from Singha Pura of Kalinga.

The

Murugan
and the monasteries of Buddhism and Jainism.

Mauryan India by the Greek writer Megasthenes. The original book is now lost, but its fragments have survived in later Greek and Latin works. The earliest of these works are those by Diodorus Siculus, Strabo (Geographica), Pliny, and Arrian (Indica).[14][15]

West Asia

In the preface to his book, the

systematic bias in history,[17] and he is thus considered to be the "father of historiography"[18][19] or the "father of the philosophy of history".[20]

Methods of recording history

While recorded history begins with the invention of writing, over time new ways of recording history have come along with the advancement of technology. History can now be recorded through

reel-to-reel tapes. With the onset of new technologies, there are now digital recordings, which may be recorded to compact disks.[21] Nevertheless, historical record and interpretation often relies heavily on written records, partially because it dominates the extant historical materials, and partially because historians are used to communicating and researching in that medium.[22]

Historical method

The historical method comprises the techniques and guidelines by which historians use primary sources and other evidence to research and then to write history. Primary sources are first-hand evidence of history (usually written, but sometimes captured in other mediums) made at the time of an event by a present person. Historians think of those sources as the closest to the origin of the information or idea under study.[23][24] These types of sources can provide researchers with, as Dalton and Charnigo put it, "direct, unmediated information about the object of study."[25]

Historians use other types of sources to understand history as well. Secondary sources are written accounts of history based upon the evidence from primary sources. These are sources which, usually, are accounts, works, or research that analyse, assimilate, evaluate, interpret, and/or synthesize primary sources. Tertiary sources are compilations based upon primary and secondary sources and often tell a more generalized account built on the more specific research found in the first two types of sources.[23][26][27]

See also

References

Citations

  1. ^ Shotwell, James Thomson. An Introduction to the History of History. Records of civilization, sources and studies. New York: Columbia University Press, 1922.
  2. ^ Smail, Daniel Lord. On Deep History and the Brain. An Ahmanson foundation book in the humanities. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.
  3. ^ "The Cuneiform Writing System in Ancient Mesopotamia: Emergence and Evolution". EDSITEment. Retrieved 16 December 2013.
  4. ^ Kott, Ruth E. "The origins of writing". The University of Chicago Magazine. Retrieved 16 December 2013.
  5. ISBN 978-1566566544
    .
  6. ISBN 978-0534642365
    .
  7. ^
    ISBN 0-88133-834-6
    .
  8. Oxford University
    .
  9. ^ Tosh, The Pursuit of History, 90.
  10. ^ Oldenberg 1879.
  11. ISBN 9788126135608
    .
  12. ^ Kamil Zvelebil 1992, p. 51.
  13. ISBN 90-04-09365-6
    .
  14. ISBN 9788131711200
    .
  15. ISBN 9781400866328
    .
  16. ISBN 0-691-01754-9
    .
  17. ^ H. Mowlana (2001). "Information in the Arab World", Cooperation South Journal 1.
  18. ISBN 1-85065-356-9
    .
  19. ISBN 978-983-9541-53-3
    .
  20. ^ Dr. S. W. Akhtar (1997). "The Islamic Concept of Knowledge", Al-Tawhid: A Quarterly Journal of Islamic Thought & Culture 12 (3).
  21. ^ Colin Webb; Kevin Bradley (1997). "Preserving Oral History Recordings". National Library of Australia. Archived from the original on 19 June 2008. Retrieved 16 December 2013.
  22. ^ Tosh, The Pursuit of History 58-59
  23. ^ a b Cleary, Laura. "Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Sources". University of Maryland Libraries. Archived from the original on 3 July 2013. Retrieved 10 July 2013.
  24. ^ "Library Guides: Primary, secondary and tertiary sources" Archived 12 February 2005 at the Wayback Machine
  25. ^ Dalton, Margaret Steig; Charnigo, Laurie (September 2004). "Historians and Their Information Sources". College & Research Libraries: 416 n.3., citing U.S. Dept. of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics (2003), Occupational Outlook Handbook; Lorenz, Chris (2001). "History: Theories and Methods". In Neil J. Smelser; Paul B. Bates (eds.). International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Vol. 10. Amsterdam: Elsevier. p. 6871.
  26. ^ "Glossary, Using Information Resources". Archived from the original on 28 August 2008. ("Tertiary Source" is defined as "reference material that synthesizes work already reported in primary or secondary sources")
  27. ^ "Library Guides: Primary, secondary and tertiary sources". Archived from the original on 12 February 2005.

Sources

Works cited
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Recorded_history&oldid=1219094815"