History (derived from Ancient Greek ἱστορία (historía) 'inquiry; knowledge acquired by investigation')

[1]
is the systematic study and documentation of the human past.[2][3]
The period of events before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory.[4] "History" is
an umbrella term comprising past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization,
presentation, and interpretation of these events. Historians seek knowledge of the past
using historical sources such as written documents, oral accounts, art and material artifacts, and
ecological markers.[5] History is incomplete and still has debatable mysteries.
History is an academic discipline which uses a narrative to describe, examine, question, and analyze
past events, and investigate their patterns of cause and effect.[6][7] Historians debate which narrative
best explains an event, as well as the significance of different causes and effects. Historians debate
the nature of history as an end in itself, and its usefulness in giving perspective on the problems of
the present.[6][8][9][10]
Stories common to a particular culture, but not supported by external sources (such as the tales
surrounding King Arthur), are usually classified as cultural heritage or legends.[11][12] History differs
from myth in that it is supported by verifiable evidence. However, ancient cultural influences have
helped create variant interpretations of the nature of history, which have evolved over the centuries
and continue to change today. The modern study of history is wide-ranging, and includes the study
of specific regions and certain topical or thematic elements of historical investigation. History is
taught as a part of primary and secondary education, and the academic study of history is a major
discipline in universities.
Herodotus, a 5th-century BC Greek historian, is often considered the "father of history", as one of
the first historians in the Western tradition,[13] though he has been criticized as the "father of lies".[14]
[15]
Along with his contemporary Thucydides, he helped form the foundations for the modern study of
past events and societies.[16] Their works continue to be read today, and the gap between the culture-
focused Herodotus and the military-focused Thucydides remains a point of contention or approach in
modern historical writing. In East Asia, a state chronicle, the Spring and Autumn Annals, was
reputed to date from as early as 722 BC, though only 2nd-century BC texts have survived.

Etymology

History by Frederick Dielman (1896)

The word history comes from historía (Ancient Greek: ἱστορία, romanized: historíā, lit. 'inquiry,
knowledge from inquiry, or judge'[17]). It was in that sense that Aristotle used the word in his History of
Animals.[18] The ancestor word ἵστωρ is attested early on in Homeric Hymns, Heraclitus,
the Athenian ephebes' oath, and in Boeotic inscriptions (in a legal sense, either "judge" or "witness",
or similar). The Greek word was borrowed into Classical Latin as historia, meaning "investigation,
inquiry, research, account, description, written account of past events, writing of history, historical
narrative, recorded knowledge of past events, story, narrative". History was borrowed from Latin
(possibly via Old Irish or Old Welsh) into Old English as stær ("history, narrative, story"), but this
word fell out of use in the late Old English period.[19] Meanwhile, as Latin became Old
French (and Anglo-Norman), historia developed into forms such as istorie, estoire, and historie, with
new developments in the meaning: "account of the events of a person's life (beginning of the 12th
century), chronicle, account of events as relevant to a group of people or people in general (1155),
dramatic or pictorial representation of historical events (c. 1240), body of knowledge relative to
human evolution, science (c. 1265), narrative of real or imaginary events, story (c. 1462)".[19]
It was from Anglo-Norman that history was brought into Middle English, and it has persisted. It
appears in the 13th-century Ancrene Wisse, but seems to have become a common word in the late
14th century, with an early attestation appearing in John Gower's Confessio Amantis of the 1390s
(VI.1383): "I finde in a bok compiled | To this matiere an old histoire, | The which comth nou to mi
memoire". In Middle English, the meaning of history was "story" in general. The restriction to the
meaning "the branch of knowledge that deals with past events; the formal record or study of past
events, esp. human affairs" arose in the mid-15th century.[19] With the Renaissance, older senses of
the word were revived, and it was in the Greek sense that Francis Bacon used the term in the late
16th century, when he wrote about natural history. For him, historia was "the knowledge of objects
determined by space and time", that sort of knowledge provided by memory (while science was
provided by reason, and poetry was provided by fantasy).[20]
In an expression of the linguistic synthetic vs. analytic/isolating dichotomy, English like Chinese (史
vs. 诌) now designates separate words for human history and storytelling in general. In
modern German, French, and most Germanic and Romance languages, which are solidly synthetic
and highly inflected, the same word is still used to mean both "history" and "story". Historian in the
sense of a "researcher of history" is attested from 1531. In all European languages, the
substantive history is still used to mean both "what happened with men", and "the scholarly study of
the happened", the latter sense sometimes distinguished with a capital letter, or the
word historiography.[18][further explanation needed] The adjective historical is attested from 1661, and historic from
1669.[21]

Description

The title page to The Historians' History of the World

Historians write in the context of their own time, and with due regard to the current dominant ideas of
how to interpret the past, and sometimes write to provide lessons for their own society. In the words
of Benedetto Croce, "All history is contemporary history". History is facilitated by the formation of a
"true discourse of past" through the production of narrative and analysis of past events relating to the
human race.[22] The modern discipline of history is dedicated to the institutional production of this
discourse.
All events that are remembered and preserved in some authentic form constitute the historical
record.[23] The task of historical discourse is to identify the sources which can most usefully contribute
to the production of accurate accounts of past. Therefore, the constitution of the historian's archive is
a result of circumscribing a more general archive by invalidating the usage of certain texts and
documents (by falsifying their claims to represent the "true past"). Part of the historian's role is to
skillfully and objectively use the many sources from the past, most often found in the archives. The
process of creating a narrative inevitably generates debate, as historians remember or emphasize
different events of the past.[24]
The study of history has sometimes been classified as part of the humanities, other times part of
the social sciences.[25] It can be seen as a bridge between those two broad areas, incorporating
methodologies from both. Some historians strongly support one or the other classification.[26] In the
20th century the Annales school revolutionized the study of history, by using such outside disciplines
as economics, sociology, and geography in the study of global history.[27]
Traditionally, historians have recorded events of the past, either in writing or by passing on an oral
tradition, and attempted to answer historical questions through the study of written documents and
oral accounts. From the beginning, historians have used such sources as monuments, inscriptions,
and pictures. In general, the sources of historical knowledge can be separated into three categories:
what is written, what is said, and what is physically preserved, and historians often consult all three.
[28]
But writing is the marker that separates history from what comes before.
Archaeology is especially helpful in unearthing buried sites and objects, which contribute to the study
of history. Archeological finds rarely stand alone, with narrative sources complementing its
discoveries. Archeology's methodologies and approaches are independent from the field of history.
"Historical archaeology" is a specific branch of archeology which often contrasts its conclusions
against those of contemporary textual sources. For example, Mark Leone, the excavator and
interpreter of historical Annapolis, Maryland, US, has sought to understand the contradiction
between textual documents idealizing "liberty" and the material record, demonstrating the
possession of slaves and the inequalities of wealth made apparent by the study of the total historical
environment.
There are varieties of ways in which history can be organized, including chronologically, culturally,
territorially, and thematically. These divisions are not mutually exclusive, and significant intersections
are present. It is possible for historians to concern themselves with both the very specific and the
very general, though the trend has been toward specialization. The area called Big History resists
this specialization, and searches for universal patterns or trends. History has often been studied with
some practical or theoretical aim, but may be studied out of simple intellectual curiosity.