Concept

Prehistory

Overview

Prehistory, sometimes referred to as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the first known use of 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. 5,200 years ago. The adoption of writing across the globe has been a slow process, so that the end of prehistory occurred at different times in different places, and the term is less often used in discussing societies where prehistory ended relatively recently. 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.

Human prehistory differs from history not only in terms of its chronology but also in the way it deals with the activities of archaeological cultures rather than named nations or individuals. Restricted to material processes, remains, and artefacts rather than written records, prehistory is anonymous. Because of this, reference terms that prehistorians use, such as "Neanderthal" or "Iron Age", are modern labels with definitions sometimes subject to debate. In most cases however, and in particular as one goes back further in time, these assigned labels are the only way of distinguishing groups of prehistoric peoples and conveying information about them in the present.

By definition, there are no written records from human prehistory, which can only be known 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.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.

Then came another age, a period of self-realization in which one felt rich and powerful, and it was then that one experienced the need to discover whence one originated and how one developed. The history-writing which then continues to register the present events throws also its backward glance to the past, it gathers traditions and legends, it interprets what survived from olden times into customs and uses, and…
Sigmund Freud, Leonardo da Vinci
Close in meaning to Prehistory; the term itself is not named.
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A typical instance is the history of one of the first discoveries made in Europe of the remains of a prehistoric man. It was in 1856, in German territory, that there was discovered, in a grotto or cave in the Neander valley, near Duesseldorf, a very remarkable skull, though only, of course, the bones of the cranium and not the facial…
Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
Close in meaning to Prehistory; the term itself is not named.
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Let us call this period the PRE-MORAL period of mankind; the imperative, "Know thyself!" was then still unknown.--In the last ten thousand years, on the other hand, on certain large portions of the earth, one has gradually got so far, that one no longer lets the consequences of an action, but its origin, decide with regard to its worth: a great achievement as a whole, an important refinement of vision and of…
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
Close in meaning to Prehistory; the term itself is not named.
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Related ideas

Place in the tradition

Part of History of philosophy in Poland.

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