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History already means recorded. Anything before records exist is called prehistoric.
by bluesnowmonkey 9y ago
History already means recorded. Anything before records exist is called prehistoric.
- cc439 9y agoThe problem with that definition is that "prehistoric" is a lot more recent than people realize in the Americas.
- hnaccy 9y agoInterestingly the Klamath people have an oral history of the eruption of Mount Mazama and formation of Crater Lake over 7000 years ago.
- cc439 9y agoThat's incredibly interesting. Does it line up with the geographical record?
- cucuuc 9y agoJust a few days ago there was a village in Canada discovered thanks to oral tradition. It has been dated thousands of years older than the pyramids
- bfred_it 9y agoI wouldn't trust that one bit. Have you ever played telephone? 7000 years is a lot of generations, it's likely completely inaccurate.
- hueving 9y agoNo, "prehistoric" is the time period before written records. If we only started paying attention to hurricanes in the gulf 200 years ago, that doesn't mean 1805 was prehistoric.
- cucuuc 9y agoS/he didn't make this up. History is the study of the past trough written records. The word has been since overloaded to be the study of the past. Which is fine, except that leaves no reason for the word pre-history
- thaumasiotes 9y agoYou're partly right. However, it's very common, even when people want to draw exactly the distinction you're talking about, that they'll just use "history" to refer to a period for which there are any records. That's a pretty different concept from the period for which there are records of the strength of hurricanes.