Recorded history

Recorded History

	Email		Print
	Bookmark		Link

Recorded history

Recorded history (sometimes called record history) can be defined as human history that has been written down or recorded by the use of language

Language

A language is a form of symbol communication in which elements are combined to represents something other than themselves. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon....
, whereas history

HIStory

HIStory: Past, Present and Future, Book I is a double album by Michael Jackson, released on June 20, 1995, and is Jackson's ninth. The first disc, named "HIStory Begins" consists of a selection of Jackson's greatest hits from the singer's past fifteen years, while the second, named "HIStory Continues" features new songs, with the...
is a more general term referring to any information

Information

Information as a Conveyed concept has a diversity of meanings, from everyday usage to technical settings. Generally speaking, the concept of information is closely related to notions of constraint, communication, control system, data, form, instruction, knowledge, Meaning , stimulation, pattern, perception, and knowledge representation....
about the past. It starts in the 4th millennium BC, with the invention of writing

Writing

Writing is the representation of language in a textual Media through the use of a set of signs or symbols . It is distinguished from illustration, such as cave drawing and painting, and the recording of language via a non-textual medium such as Magnetic tape sound recording....
.

Discussion

Ask a question about 'Recorded history'

Start a new discussion about 'Recorded history'

Answer questions from other users

Full Discussion Forum

Encyclopedia

Recorded history (sometimes called record history) can be defined as human history that has been written down or recorded by the use of language

Language

HIStory

Information

Writing

Prehistory

Prehistory is a term often used to describe the period before Recorded history. Paul Tournal originally coined the term Pr?-historique in describing the finds he had made in the caves of southern France....
.

Archaeology is the excavation and study of artifacts in an effort to interpret and reconstruct past human behavior. In the study of ancient history, archaeologists excavate the ruins of ancient cities looking for clues as to how the people of the time period lived.

Perhaps most of what is known of the ancient world comes from the accounts of antiquity's own historians. Although it is important to take into account the bias of each ancient author, their accounts, are the basis for our understanding of the ancient past. Some of the more notable ancient writers include: Sima Qian

Sima Qian

Sima Qian was a Prefect of the Grand Scribes of the Han Dynasty. He is regarded as the father of Chinese historiography because of his highly praised work, Records of the Grand Historian , an overview of the history of China covering more than two thousand years from the Yellow Emperor to Emperor Wu of Han China ....
, Herodotus

Herodotus

Herodotus of Halicarnassus was a Greeks historian who lived in the 5th century BC and is regarded as the "Father of History" in Western culture....
, Manetho

Manetho

Manetho was an Egyptian historian and priest from Sebennytos who lived during the Ptolemaic dynasty, ca. 3rd century BC. Manetho wrote the Aegyptiaca ....
, Chanakya

Chanakya

Chanakya was an adviser and a prime minister to the first Maurya Empire Emperor Chandragupta Maurya , and architect of his rise to power. Kautilya and Vishnugupta, the names by which the ancient Indian political treatise called the Arthasastra identifies its author, are traditionally identified with Chanakya....
, Sun Tzu

Sun Tzu

Sun Tzu , also called Sun Wu , is traditionally believed to be the author of The Art of War, sometimes called the Sun Tzu, an influential ancient China book on military strategy considered to be a prime example of Taoism strategy....
, Josephus

Josephus

Josephus , also known as Yosef Ben Matityahu and, after he became a Roman citizenship, as Titus Flavius Josephus, was a first-century Jewish historian and apologist of priestly and royal ancestry who survived and recorded the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70....
, Thucydides

Thucydides

Thucydides was a Greeks history and author of the History of the Peloponnesian War, which recounts the 5th century B.C. war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 B.C....
, Tacitus

Tacitus

Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a Roman Senate and a historian of the Roman Empire. The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals and the Histories —examine the reigns of the Roman Emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and those that reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors....
, Livy

Livy

Titus Livius , known as Livy in English language, was a Ancient Rome historian who wrote a monumental history of Rome, Ab Urbe Condita, from its founding through the reign of Augustus in Livy's own time....
, Polybius

Polybius

Polybius was a Greek historian of the Hellenistic Period noted for his book called The Histories covering in detail the period of 220–146 BC....
, Sallust

Sallust

For the philosopher, see Sallustius; for other uses, see Sallust .Gaius Sallustius Crispus, generally known simply as Sallust, , a Roman Republic historian, belonged to a well-known plebeian family, and was born at Amiternum in the country of the Sabines....
, Suetonius

Suetonius

Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, commonly known as Suetonius , was an equestrian and a historian during the Roman Empire. His most important surviving work is a set of biographies on the battles of twelve successive Roman rulers, from Julius Caesar until Domitian, entitled On the Life of the Caesars....
. In pre-modern societies, epic poetry, mythography, collections of legends, and religious texts were often treated as sources of historical information, and so one may see references to such writers as Homer

Homer

Homer is traditionally held to be the author of the ancient Greek language epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey, as well as of the Homeric Hymns....
, Vyasa

Vyasa

Vyasa is a central and revered figure in the majority of Hinduism traditions. He is also sometimes called Veda Vyasa , or Krishna Dvaipayana ....
, Valmiki

Valmiki

Valmiki is celebrated as the poet harbinger in Sanskrit literature. He is the author of the epic, Ramayana, based on the attribution in the text of the epic itself....
and to such works as the Biblical book of Exodus

Exodus

Exodus is the second book of the Jewish Torah and of the Christian Old Testament. It tells how Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt and through the wilderness to the Mountain of God Sinai....
as historical sources; however, the authors of these texts were not concerned with determining what happened in the past, but were instead concerned with creating a cultural narrative based upon or supplementing history, and so their testimony should be used with caution.

Primary source

Primary source

Primary source is a term used in a number of disciplines. In historiography, a primary source is a document, recording or other source of information that was created at the time being studied, by an authoritative source, usually one with direct personal knowledge of the events being described....
s are firsthand written evidence of history made at the time of the event by someone who was present. They have been described as those sources closest to the origin of the information or idea under study. These types of sources have been said to provide researchers with "direct, unmediated information about the object of study." Secondary source

Secondary source

In library and information science, historiography and other areas of scholarship, a secondary source is a document or recording that relates or discusses information originally presented elsewhere....
s are written accounts of history based upon the evidence from primary sources. These are sources which, usually, are accounts, works, or research that analyze, assimilate, evaluate, interpret, and/or synthesize primary sources. Tertiary source

Tertiary source

The term tertiary source is a relative term. What is considered tertiary depends on what is considered primary and secondary. A tertiary source may thus be understood as a selection, distillation, summary or compilation of primary sources, secondary sources, or both....
s are compilations based upon primary and secondary sources. These are sources which, on average, do not fall into the above two levels.

Recorded history

External links

See also