History
History is the study of past events. People know what happened in the past by looking at things from the past including sources (like books, newspapers, scripts and letters), buildings and different types of artifacts (like pottery, tools, coins and human or animal remains.) Libraries, archives, and museums collect and keep these things for people to study history. A person who studies history is called a historian. A person who studies pre-history and history through things left behind by ancient cultures is called an archaeologist. A person who studies mankind and society is called an anthropologist. The study of the sources and methods used to study and write history is called historiography.
People can learn about the past by talking to people who remember things that happened at some point in the past. This is called oral history. For example, when people who had been slaves and American Civil War survivors got old, some historians recorded them talking about their lives, so that history would not be lost.
In old times people in different parts of the world kept separate histories because they did not meet each other very often. Some groups of people never met each other. The rulers of Medieval Europe, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome and Ancient China each thought that they ruled the only important parts of the world and that other parts were “barbarian”. But they were still connected, even if they didn’t realize it.
The term “historically” is used to say that something has been a certain way during most of its history. For example, a historically female university is a university which has had a student body that was mostly or entirely female for most of its history.
Types of history
- History of the universe, a.k.a. Cosmological history or the Chronology of the universe
- History of Earth, a.k.a. Geological history
- History of life
- History of humans
Timeline of human history
- Pre-history
- Ancient history
- Sumer
- Ancient Egypt
- Babylonia
- Ancient Armenia
- Ancient Greece
- Ancient India
- Ancient China and Japan, Korea, Mongolia
- Ancient Southeast Asia - Cambodia - Thailand - Indonesia
- Ancient North America - Iroquois, Mohawk, Huron, Haida, Lenape, Mohican, Cree, Sioux, Inuit, Dene
- Ancient Central America - Aztecs, Maya, Olmecs, Toltecs, Teotihuacan, Mixtecs
- Ancient South America - Inca, Chimu, Tihuanacu, Huari
- Ancient Africa
- Ancient Australia
- Roman Empire
- Christian Rome - Justinian to the rise of Byzantium
- Chinese Dynasties
- Byzantine Empire
- Early Islamic Caliphate - Muhammad to The Crusades
- Early Middle Ages - end of European Dark Ages to rise of Roman Catholic Church
- High Middle Ages and the Crusades - conflict with Islam, Cathars, pagan tribes in Lithuania, etc.
- Late Middle Ages - 13th century to 15th century
- Late Islamic Caliphate - to fall of Muslim Spain
- Mongol Empire
- Renaissance - 15th century renewal of science etc., based on texts from Ancient Greece and Roman Empire that were preserved by Muslims and captured by Christians
- European colonization of the Americas - 15th century impact on America
- Spanish Empire
- British Empire
- Baroque era - mid 16th century to mid-late 18th century
- Conflict of Ottoman Empire with Austria-Hungary
- Rise of the Qing Dynasty in China
- Enlightenment - mid 17th century to late 18th century
- 19th century
- British Empire
- 20th century
- History of Australia since colonizing Australia
- History of the United States
- Modern History and origins of modern world power structure
- World War I
- World War II
- United Nations ascendance - how it became so central.
- Chinese Revolution, Partition of India, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO)
- US-Soviet Cold War including Korean War, Vietnam War, Soviet-Afghan War
- Recent conflicts in the Muslim World - Arab-Israeli Wars, US invasion of Afghanistan, US invasion of Iraq
- Recent conflicts in West Africa - Uganda, Chad, Rwanda, Congo, Liberia, Ivory Coast, and so on
Current events, modern economic history, modern social history and modern intellectual history take very different views of the way history has affected the way that we think today.
- Russian invasion of Ukraine
- Israel–Hamas war
- Red Sea Crisis
Written for younger readers
History, in simpler words
This version comes from Wikijunior, a set of books written for children aged 8 to 11. It is shorter and uses plainer language than the article above.
From Wikijunior: Transport
The first known transportation was walking, humans began walking upright two million years ago with the emergence of Homo Erectus (meaning upright man). Their predecessors, the Australopithecus did not walk upright as habitually. Bipedal specializations are found in Australopithecus fossils from 4.2-3.9 million years ago, although Sahelanthropus may have walked on two legs as early as seven million years ago.
7000BCE earliest known shoes although likely to have been in use much earlier.
6000BCE dugout canoes invented.
Oxen are thought to have first been harnessed and put to work around 4000 BC.
Horses were domesticated around 3500BCE.
The wheel was invented originally for pottery, as the potters wheel was invented in 4200 BCE. It was the axle and wheel invented in 3500 BCE that revolutionised transportation.
3000 BCE - Austronesians construct catamarans and outriggers. In the Mediterranean, galleys were developed about 3000 BCE.
The wheel and axle combined with domesticated oxen originally and later domesticated horses led to carts being mentioned in literature as early as 2000BCE. Chariots were used in the Indus Valley civilisation in 1900 BCE. Chariots were in use in warfare in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. The latter also developed carriages (or coaches) and wagons for civilian transport. In the 7th to 8th Century use of the horse collar was widespread across Europe. Ancient transport in antiquity lasted largely unchanged for centuries until the modern era following the Industrial Revolution.
The first public transportation predated mechanisation with horse-drawn omnibuses travelling bus routes in Paris in 1662. In 1783 the first manned flight was made in a hot-air balloon by the Montgolfier brothers, also in France.
Where this page comes from
The article above is adapted from “History” on Simple English Wikipedia, by its contributors. We removed reference markers, navigation boxes and tables, expanded measurement templates into readable numbers, and kept the prose otherwise intact. The simpler version is adapted from Wikijunior on Wikibooks.
Both sources are published under CC BY-SA 4.0, so this page is published under the same licence. You may share and adapt it, including commercially, as long as you credit the original and keep the same licence.
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