History Definition: We explain what history is, how it is divided, its functions and characteristics. Also, its auxiliary sciences and what prehistory is.
What is history?
History is the study of humanity’s past based on the critical examination of records, documents, material remains, photographs, films, books and any other form of support that sheds light on past events in various regions and cultures.
However, history can mean three different things:
- A discipline that studies humanity’s past and orders it in a chronological succession, allowing for its understanding, contextualization and critical review. Sometimes it is framed within the social sciences and other times within the humanities.
- The past itself, understood as the subject of study by historians.
- The time period that began with the invention of writing in Antiquity and continues to the present. It is a concept that marks a difference with the so-called prehistory, that is, the history before writing. Today, this separation is often criticized, since prehistoric societies are also part of the history of humanity.
History is one of the oldest disciplines created by humanity, and perhaps one of the most specialized. A historical approach can be made to practically any subject: other sciences and disciplines, art, a nation, the most remote past of the human species (called “deep history”) or the universe (called “big history”). There is also the history of the historical discipline (sometimes called historiography). You must read about Renaissance once!
People who study history are known as historians, and those who are responsible for telling the official history of a town or institution or recording current events for posterity are known as chroniclers. In general, the Greek Herodotus of the 5th century BC is recognized as the first historian or the “father of history” of Western civilization.
Auxiliary sciences of history: There are some auxiliary sciences that collaborate or serve as support for the interpretation of documentary sources. For example: archaeology (studies the material remains of societies of the past), paleography (studies ancient written documents), epigraphy (studies inscriptions on stone or other supports), numismatics (studies coins and medals) and genealogy (studies family relationships).
KEY POINTS
- History is the study of humanity’s past carried out by specialists called historians.
- It is based on the analysis of sources, which can be written documents, images, oral accounts or material remains.
- It consists of investigating, reconstructing, ordering and narrating the events of the past and the processes of social, political and cultural change.
- It is based on auxiliary disciplines, such as archaeology and paleography, and contributes to thinking about the problems of the present from a historical perspective.
Characteristics of history
In general terms, history as a discipline is characterized by the following:
- It is dedicated to the study of the past, based on the different types of records that remain from it or that were prepared by other historians. Therefore, historical knowledge is cumulative, that is, what is studied by a historian serves as a source for future historians, but at the same time it is never complete, because it promotes different interpretations.
- History is often divided into specializations dedicated to the study of a specific topic, period or region, so there are many ways of doing history. There is also the term “historiography”, which sometimes refers to the historical discipline itself and sometimes refers to the study of the way in which history is written, that is, a kind of meta-history.
- History draws on many other disciplines in search of sources and instruments, such as archaeology or paleography, and at the same time serves as an auxiliary discipline so that other scientific and thought activities can study the origins and development of their fields of study. For example: history of medicine, history of science, history of literature.
- Since the 19th century, the teaching of national history has been an essential part of the educational model in all countries, as a method of forming national identity.
purpose of history
The study of the past fulfills different functions that can range from the accumulation of knowledge to the understanding of the present.
One of the greatest benefits of history is that only by studying how events in the past occurred can we understand the configuration of current reality. That is why the past (remote or recent) is often the starting point for studying a topic that has to do with the present. Maybe you should definitely read about Marxism once!
Importance of history
The study of history allows us to know what life was like tens, hundreds and thousands of years ago in different regions of the world. This means knowing what the ways of life, beliefs, concerns, discoveries and dangers were that those who lived in a world radically different from the current one faced.
It also allows us to know the processes that gave rise to the institutions and practices that govern today, such as the State, cities, laws, democracy, the republic or capitalism. In addition, it helps to identify different social and cultural trajectories, distant in space and time, which contribute to thinking about and respecting diversity in today’s world.
History and prehistory
The differentiation between history and prehistory is conventional and today many scholars consider it unnecessary. Prehistory is part of human history, but it was traditionally perceived as the primordial and ancestral period.
What characterizes prehistory is that it is the period before the invention of writing, so it did not leave written documents that can be studied by historians. From the invention of writing, which is closely related to the emergence of cities and states, it is considered that history itself began.
However, the lack of writing did not imply the nonexistence of narratives about the past, but because these were transmitted from generation to generation orally, they did not survive in testimonies that historians can reconstruct. In any case, in some cases, images survive (especially painted or engraved in caves and rocks) that allow us to infer messages produced by prehistoric societies, to which are added archaeological studies that consist of the analysis of material remains (such as artifacts and buildings) to recognize practices and beliefs of prehistory.
Periods of History
Part of the work of historians is to organize and classify history, which is often done by periodizing it, or dividing it into consecutive periods, the beginning and end of which are marked by certain important dates and events.
The traditional periodization of so-called universal history is organized according to European parameters, even though the processes and dates differ in other continents and cultures. However, today it is recognized that there is no single, universal periodization, but the division of prehistory and history into large periods is usually maintained with the caveat that the model must always be adapted to the particularities of each region and culture.
History in its traditional sense begins with the invention of writing and the appearance of the first states and continues to the present. It is conventionally divided into several ages, which are:
Ancient Age or Antiquity:
It was the period of emergence of the first ancient civilizations, generally in the form of a monarchy, an empire or a series of city-states. It is subdivided into:
- Ancient East: It began in 3300 BC with the first state societies of the Near East and the Nile Valley, and included the Mesopotamian cultures (Sumeria, Akkadia, Babylon, Assyria), Ancient Egypt, the Mediterranean Levant (Phoenicia and the peoples of the southern Levant, such as the Hebrews or the Philistines), the kingdoms of Anatolia and Syria (such as the Hittites and Mitanni), and further east the civilization of the Indus Valley, Vedic India and the ancient Chinese dynasties. Other regions where early civilizations developed at different dates were the Mediterranean (the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations) and the Mesoamerican and Andean areas in America.
- Classical Antiquity: This period spanned the 8th century BC to the 2nd century AD (although some historians extend it to the 5th century AD). It covered the rise and expansion of the city-states of Ancient Greece, which engaged in military conflicts with the Persian Empire, and the Roman Republic, which disputed control of the Mediterranean with the Carthaginians and became an empire. The maximum expansion of the Roman Empire took place in the 2nd century AD and it subsequently entered into a process of decline.
- Late Antiquity: This period included the period of decline of the Roman Empire from the 3rd century AD, its division into two halves (eastern and western) and its dissolution in the face of migrations and invasions of Germanic populations from northern Europe. In addition, it was the time of the expansion of Christianity and the rise of Islam. Its end is usually marked in the 8th century, when the Muslim conquests reached the Iberian Peninsula, the Vikings began their attacks on Europe and Charlemagne founded the Carolingian Empire. Some historians avoid the term Late Antiquity and simply mark the transition from Classical Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages in the 5th century AD.
Middle Ages or Medieval Age:
It was the period of Christianization of all Europe and the development of a new mode of production, feudalism, after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The nobility and the clergy were the dominant social classes and the Church exercised strict control over culture and politics. It is usually subdivided into two stages:
- Early Middle Ages: It extended from the 5th to the 10th century. It was called the “dark age” in the Renaissance, as it was a period in which urban life suffered a significant decline, there was a strong ruralization of society, and art and thought were subjected to religious dogma. Today, historians reject the term “dark age,” although it was long used to describe the period due to its scarcity of written documents.
- Late Middle Ages: This lasted from the 11th to the 15th century. It was a period of resurgence of cities, the result of increased commercial activity and the rise of a new social class, the bourgeoisie. Feudalism became established, the Crusades took place as a result of the confrontation between Islam and the Catholic Church, and towards the end the so-called Ancien Régime was formed: a society organized into centralized or absolutist monarchies. Some historians call the period between the 11th and 13th centuries the High Middle Ages.
Modern Age:
- This was a period of great changes worldwide that began in the 15th century, with the fall of Constantinople and the Eastern Roman Empire and the subsequent European discovery of America. In Europe, the Renaissance took place under the influence of a new and powerful philosophy, humanism, which replaced faith in God with human reason, and laid the foundations for a scientific revolution that changed humanity forever.
- This age was the age of discovery, in which the great European empires explored the world. Thus began a period of conquest, colonization and imperialism. At the end of this period, the Enlightenment and liberalism emerged, which contributed to the fall of the Ancien Régime and the political rise of the bourgeoisie.
Contemporary Age:
This is the period that began with the French Revolution in 1789 and continues to this day. It was an age of scientific, technological, social, political and cultural revolutions, which transformed the world in a much more radical and accelerated way than the rest of history. It also witnessed the most devastating wars. In the 20th century, science and technology demonstrated their negative side, such as the launching of two atomic bombs, and also their positive side, such as advances in medicine and the arrival of humans on the Moon. The end of the 20th century and the first decades of the 21st century saw the consolidation of democratic regimes in various parts of the world and the strengthening of capitalism on a global level, which in turn included major economic crises.
Division of prehistory
Prehistory was the oldest period in the history of human beings, corresponding to the times in which there was no writing. It comprises two large stages with their respective subdivisions:
Stone Age:
It was the period that began with the development of the first tools, made of stone, wood or bone, and ended with the discovery of the use of the first metals. It was the longest age, subdivided into three periods:
- Paleolithic Period: Its name means “ancient stone” and it covers from 2.5 million years ago to approximately 10,000 BC. It witnessed the emergence of the first human groups capable of making and using stone tools, who discovered fire and survived by hunting, fishing and gathering.
- Mesolithic Period: Also known as Epipaleolithic or Protoneolithic, it is considered a period of transition from nomadic to sedentary life, coinciding with the end of the last ice age. It is considered to have covered from 12,000 BC to 8500 BC in the Near East, but in Europe and other regions its start and end dates were later.
- Neolithic Period: It was the last period of the Stone Age, which began according to the regions between 8500 and 4000 BC. C., and in which the so-called Neolithic revolution took place, with the development of agriculture. This technique revolutionized the human way of life with the domestication of plant and animal species, and the consolidation of sedentary lifestyle.
Metal Age:
It was the period in which the use of metals for the manufacture of tools and weapons began and became widespread. It is normally divided into three ages, according to the predominant type of metal:
- Copper Age or Chalcolithic: It began between 5500 or 4500 BC and 3000 BC, when copper was discovered and used in its native state, first by hammering and cold beating until the possibility of melting it was discovered. The use of ceramics also expanded and the first alloys were produced.
- Bronze Age: It began around 3000 BC in the Near East and culminated in 1200 BC.C., so it was rather a part of history in this region (that is, characteristic of civilizations that developed writing). However, in most of Europe it was a prehistoric period, as it spread to societies that did not have writing. It was characterized by bronze metallurgy, a much more versatile and resistant metal than copper and stone, which was used both to make weapons and tools and to make statues and decorative objects.
- Iron Age: This was the last period of the Metal Age, in which humanity developed iron metallurgy, a metal that is more resistant and durable than bronze but at the same time very abundant. It is dated approximately between 1200 BC and 550 BC, although this varies according to the region. Like the Bronze Age, in some areas it is considered a prehistoric age and in others a historical age.
