Prehistory

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The time span of human activity before written records were created encompasses cultural, social, and technological advancements
2. The era marking human history prior to recorded writings includes significant developments in culture, society, and technology
3. The era in which human events happened without any preserved written documents

Etymology: The word was first recorded in 1836, in the Foreign Quarterly Review, and it was built on a model that already existed. English had "prehistoric" and borrowed its pattern from French "préhistorique," so "prehistory" appeared as a back-formation-style twin of an adjective that was already in use. Its parts are simple: the Latin prefix "prae-," meaning "before," attached to "history." That "history" carries an older Greek past. It descends from "historia," which came into Latin from Greek "historia," meaning inquiry or knowing by investigation. The Greek noun comes from "histōr," a witness or one who knows, which traces back to a root meaning "to see" or "to know." So the word began as a notion about firsthand knowing rather than about recorded events, and the sense of an account of the past came later. Writing about humans before written records is what the compound captures. The prefix does the work: it marks the period before the written documents that "history" depends on.

Synonyms: ancient history, before written records