Prehistory

If I told you the term “prehistory” had only been around since the 1830s, would that seem strange?

It’s true. If you’re like me, this comes as a big surprise, but it really shouldn’t. Before the 19th century, historians had to rely on a variety of sources to learn about the ancient world—limited written records, sparse archaeological artifacts, and “oral traditions”, the least trustworthy method imaginable to determine how humans lived before writing.

Clearly, these sources were often incomplete or inaccurate.

By the turn of the 19th century, the Rosetta Stone, with three different scripts from the ancient world (Greek, Demotic, and Egyptian hieroglyphs), played a major role in advancing the study of history. This allowed scholars to decipher the Egyptian hieroglyphs for the first time, which opened up a whole new world of historical knowledge.

If it wasn’t written down, it’s not history. This distinction is important, since it implies that history only goes back about 5000 years, but h…