History


Those who cannot remember a past are condemned to repeat it.

George Santayana

History from lit. 'inquiry; cognition acquired by investigation' is a study together with the documentation of the invention of writing systems are considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as alive as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of these events. Historians seek knowledge of the past using historical sources such(a) as sum documents, oral accounts, art and fabric artifacts, and ecological markers.

History is also an academic discipline which uses narrative to describe, examine, question, and analyze past events, and investigate their patterns of clear and effect. Historians often debate which narrative best explains an event, as living as the significance of different causes and effects. Historians also debate the nature of history as an end in itself, as well as its advantage to afford perspective on the problems of the present.

Stories common to a specific culture, but not supported by external leadership such as the tales surrounding major discipline in university studies.

Herodotus, a 5th-century BC Greek historian, is often considered the "father of history" in the Western tradition, although he has also been criticized as the "father of lies". Along with his innovative Thucydides, he helped relieve oneself the foundations for the contemporary study of past events and societies. Their workings carry on to be read today, and the gap between the culture-focused Herodotus and the military-focused Thucydides sustains a ingredient 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, although only 2nd-century BC texts throw survived.

Description


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 administer lessons for their own society. In the words of Benedetto Croce, "All history is contemporary history". History is facilitated by the order of a "true discourse of past" through the production of narrative and analysis of past events relating to the human race. The modern discipline of history is committed to the institutional production of this discourse.

All events that are remembered and preserved in some authentic form constitute the historical record. The task of historical discourse is to identify the rule which can nearly usefully contribute to the production of accurate accounts of past. Therefore, the constitution of the historian's archive is a solution of circumscribing a more general archive by invalidating the usage oftexts and documents by falsifying their claims to symbolize the "true past". element of the historian's role is to skillfully and objectively utilize the vast amount of sources from the past, nearly often found in the archives. The process of devloping a narrative inevitably generates a silence as historians remember or emphasize different events of the past.[]

The examine of history has sometimes been classified as element of the humanities and at other times as part of the social sciences. It can also be seen as a bridge between those two broad areas, incorporating methodologies from both. Some individual historians strongly support one or the other classification. In the 20th century, French historian Fernand Braudel revolutionized the study of history, by using such(a) external disciplines as economics, anthropology, and geography in the study of global history.

Traditionally, historians have recorded events of the past, either in writing or by passing on an oral tradition, and have attempted tohistorical questions through the study of written documents and oral accounts. From the beginning, historians have also used such(a) 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. But writing is the marker that separates history from what comes before.

Archeology is particularly 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 self-employed person 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, kind Leone, the excavator and spokesperson of historical Annapolis, Maryland, US, has sought to understand the contradiction between textual documents idealizing "liberty" and the the tangible substance that goes into the makeup of a physical object record, demonstrating the possession of slaves and the inequalities of wealth introduced obvious 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 often present. it is possible for historians to concern themselves with both the very specific and the very general, although the modern 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 also may be studied out of simple intellectual curiosity.