Recorded history

Recorded history, also called written history, is about events that people have written down. Historians study these written records to learn about the past. For the whole world, recorded history starts with the ancient world around the 4th millennium BCE, when people first began to write.

In some places, written history only goes back a short time because they did not always keep written records. Even when records exist, they might not include everything that later historians think is important.

Historians use special ways to study these written records, called the historical method. They look at primary sources and other evidence to research and write about what happened in the past. The philosophy of history asks questions about what history really is and how we can understand it properly. The study of how different people interpret history is called historiography.

Prehistory

Further information: History of writing

Prehistory is the time before people started writing things down. It ends when writing began.

Protohistory is the time after prehistory but before real history. It starts when people learned to read and write, but ends before historians wrote about events. Sometimes, protohistory means when a culture or civilization had not yet made its own writing, but others wrote about them.

Before true writing, there were signs and symbols called proto-writing. Examples include the Jiahu symbols (around 6600 BCE), Vinča signs (around 5300 BCE), early Indus script (around 3500 BCE) and Nsibidi script (before 500 CE). People do not always agree on when prehistory ended and history began, or when proto-writing became real writing.

The first true writing systems appeared around the same time as the Bronze Age in the late Neolithic during the late 4th millennium BCE. The Sumerian cuneiform script and Egyptian hieroglyphs are thought to be the earliest writing systems. They developed from earlier symbols between 3400 and 3200 BCE, with the earliest clear writings dating to about 2600 BCE.

Historical accounts

Main article: Historiography – The history of written history

The earliest records of history come from ancient places like Early Dynastic Period of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Sumerians, starting around 3500 BCE. These early stories were about leaders and events, and many were found again through digs in the earth. Different cultures had their own ways of sharing these old stories.

In Europe, early writers like Herodotus and Thucydides wrote about their times. Herodotus is called the "father of history" for his detailed stories, while Thucydides looked more at why things happened. Later, historians in Europe used careful methods to study the past, especially from the 17th century onward.

In East Asia, important books include the Zuo Zhuan, Book of Documents, and Spring and Autumn Annals. Sima Qian wrote the Records of the Grand Historian, a big book about many years of Chinese history. It told stories of both well-known and everyday people.

In South Asia, the Mahavamsa is an old book from Sri Lanka that tells the island's history over many years. It was written by Buddhist monks and brought together older stories. Other books, like the Dipavamsa and Culavamsa, also help us learn about the past of the area.

In West Asia, Ibn Khaldun wrote the Muqaddimah, where he talked about good ways to study history and avoid mistakes. His work helped people learn better ways to understand the past.

Methods of recording history

Recorded history began when people started writing things down. Now we have many ways to keep track of the past. We can use photography to take pictures, audio recordings to capture sounds, and video recordings to save moving images. Today, Internet archives save copies of websites to show how the Internet has changed over time. People also save oral history — stories told by word of mouth — by recording them. In the past, this was done using analogue recording like cassettes and reel-to-reel tapes. Now, we can use digital recordings saved on compact disks.

Even with all these new tools, written records are still very important for understanding history. This is because there are more written records, and historians are used to studying and sharing information this way.

Historical method

The historical method is how historians study and write about the past. They use primary sources, which are first-hand accounts or evidence from when an event happened. These sources give the most direct information about what happened.

Historians also use secondary sources, written by people who were not there when events happened. These sources explain the primary sources. Finally, tertiary sources are collections of information based on both primary and secondary sources, giving a general overview of a topic.