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getsandom t1_iv42lmz wrote

You can basically equate history to recorded history, is generally considered that pre-history ended when we invented writing and started recording things, so at the earliest 3600 BCE. Also one could say history "started" multiple times since writing was invented independently at least in 5 different places, Sumer(Iraq), Egypt, India, China and Yucatán(Mexico), at different times.

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Delvog t1_iv4tb0n wrote

A common definition of "history" is "the time when writing has existed", but in some ways that's not a very practical definition. Writing started out as something that wasn't used as much as it would be later. It was scattered & spotty, with wide chronological & geographical gaps between one example and another, and the subjects were generally limited to either laws/decrees/treaties or mythology/prayers... maybe sometimes, at best, if we're lucky, letters from one city's king or ambassador to that of another city. That's not really a good source of a lot of information about things that actually happened back then.

Some (I have no idea how many) historians & archeologists prefer a definition based more on practicality than on an arbitrary technicality: "history" by this kind of definition begins when writing is common enough to be used for more subjects, which are more historically informative to us, including writing about history itself along with various other subjects like philosophy, science, politics, art, music, linguistics, open & deliberate fiction, and foreign (to the author) cultures. When writing takes on that kind of life of its own and starts giving us something we could seriously call a historical "record" instead of just scattered hits & misses, it's called the beginning of "historiography", which gives us what some historians call the "historiographic" age/era/period, starting several centuries after the Iron Age did (400s BCE in Greece, 100s/200s BCE in Rome). In Greek history, this is also generally called the "Classical" Greek era.

  1. Stone Ages (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic)
  2. Bronze Age
  3. Iron Age
  4. Historiographic Age/Era/Period

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography#Antiquity

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Dareelbomb259 t1_iv46oq9 wrote

I won't give a specific timeline, but I would imagine it was around the time that humans started recording things, bet it in caves or by other means. That's kind of the premise of "prehistoric" is before history was recorded.

Not trying to be a smartass or offer useless comments (though this could easily be one of those), just trying to add some perspective is all.

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