What does prehistory mean?

Definitions for prehistory
priˈhɪs tə ri, -ˈhɪs tripre·his·to·ry

This dictionary definitions page includes all the possible meanings, example usage and translations of the word prehistory.

Princeton's WordNet

  1. prehistory, prehistoric culturenoun

    the time during the development of human culture before the appearance of the written word

Wiktionary

  1. prehistorynoun

    The history of human culture prior to written records

Wikipedia

  1. Prehistory

    Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins c. 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of symbols, marks, and images appears very early among humans, but the earliest known writing systems appeared c. 5000 years ago. It took thousands of years for writing systems to be widely adopted, with writing spreading to almost all cultures by the 19th century. The end of prehistory therefore came at very different times in different places, and the term is less often used in discussing societies where prehistory ended relatively recently. In the early Bronze Age, Sumer in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley Civilisation, and ancient Egypt were the first civilizations to develop their own scripts and to keep historical records, with their neighbors following. Most other civilizations reached the end of prehistory during the following Iron Age. The three-age division of prehistory into Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age remains in use for much of Eurasia and North Africa, but is not generally used in those parts of the world where the working of hard metals arrived abruptly from contact with Eurasian cultures, such as Oceania, Australasia, much of Sub-Saharan Africa, and parts of the Americas. With some exceptions in pre-Columbian civilizations in the Americas, these areas did not develop complex writing systems before the arrival of Eurasians, so their prehistory reaches into relatively recent periods; for example, 1788 is usually taken as the end of the prehistory of Australia. The period when a culture is written about by others, but has not developed its own writing system is often known as the protohistory of the culture. By definition, there are no written records from human prehistory, which we can only know from material archaeological and anthropological evidence: prehistoric materials and human remains. These were at first understood by the collection of folklore and by analogy with pre-literate societies observed in modern times. The key step to understanding prehistoric evidence is dating, and reliable dating techniques have developed steadily since the nineteenth century. Further evidence has come from the reconstruction of ancient spoken languages. More recent techniques include forensic chemical analysis to reveal the use and provenance of materials, and genetic analysis of bones to determine kinship and physical characteristics of prehistoric peoples.

ChatGPT

  1. prehistory

    Prehistory is a term used to describe the period of time before written records or the invention of writing systems. This period includes the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age, and is characterized by the development of early human behaviors, societies, cultures and technologies. It varies geographically, ending when human societies began to keep written records of their activities and events.

Wikidata

  1. Prehistory

    Prehistory is the span of time before recorded history or the invention of writing systems. Prehistory can refer to the period of human existence before the availability of those written records with which recorded history begins. More broadly, it refers to all the time preceding human existence and the invention of writing. Archaeologist Paul Tournal originally coined the term anté-historique in describing the finds he had made in the caves of southern France. Thus, the term came into use in France in the 1830s to describe the time before writing, and the word "prehistoric" was later introduced into English by archaeologist Daniel Wilson in 1851. The term "prehistory" can refer to the vast span of time since the beginning of the Universe, but more often it refers to the period since life appeared on Earth, or even more specifically to the time since human-like beings appeared. In dividing up human prehistory, prehistorians typically use the three-age system, whereas scholars of pre-human time periods typically use the well defined geologic record and its internationally defined stratum base within the geologic time scale. The three-age system is the periodization of human prehistory into three consecutive time periods, named for their respective predominant tool-making technologies: the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age. Another division of history and prehistory can be made between those written events that can be precisely dated by use of a continuous calendar dating from current and those that can't. The loss of continuity of calendar date most often occurs when a civilization falls and the language and calendar fall into disuse. The current civilization therefore loses the ability to precisely date events written through primary sources to events dated to current calendar dating.

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Numerology

  1. Chaldean Numerology

    The numerical value of prehistory in Chaldean Numerology is: 2

  2. Pythagorean Numerology

    The numerical value of prehistory in Pythagorean Numerology is: 9

Examples of prehistory in a Sentence

  1. Barbara Ehrenreich:

    In sci-fi convention, life-forms that hadn't developed space travel were mere prehistory -- horse-shoe crabs of the cosmic scene -- and something of the humiliation of being stuck on a provincial planet in a galactic backwater has stayed with me ever since.

  2. Katharina Rebay-Salisbury:

    Bringing up babies in prehistory was not an easy task, we are interested in researching cultural practices of mothering, which had profound implications for the survival of babies. It is fascinating to be able to see, for the first time, which foods these vessels contained.

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"prehistory." Definitions.net. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Mar. 2024. <https://www.definitions.net/definition/prehistory>.

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