Talk: Prehistory
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i read somewhere some people talking about a 'jade age'. is that stone age? i dunno.
This seems like a very strange definition to me -- is the statement "the dinosaurs were prehistoric animals" false?
No, it's valid, makes sense, and is an accepted term. Although it's strictly limited to the period before we have written sources, not before we learned to write (we could have written in sand for millions of years - but it's in our prehistory...). The period after is called "recorded history".
- definition modified to try to explain the usage.
Can anybody improve the "surviving records" bit, i.e., explain why a cave painting is not a surviving record?
- IMHO it pretty much boils down to "pre-writing" = "prehistoric", "post-writing" = "posthistoric"
Removed:
The sheer scale of prehistory is surprising. From three to 150 human civilizations equal in duration to our own could have been lost in this period.
since surprising is just a POV, while 3-150 human civilizations is meaningless speculation 195.149.37.57 16:05 Feb 22, 2003 (UTC)
I removed the external link to an obscure Delphi forum that has 10 visitors in 3 days. The posts there are mostly URL links to pseudoanthropological theories. --Menchi 08:12 24 Jun 2003 (UTC)
The following sentence is too long and doesn't make much sense to me. This could be divided into two or more sentences.
"If however, human prehistory is defined, as presumably it should be, as the pre-literate history of Homo sapiens sapiens then at least the matter can be resolved in principle, and the recent pace of progress in understanding the evolution of Homo sapiens suggests the answer will not be long in coming."
why homo erectus as beginning of prehistory??
--Yak 20:38, Feb 25, 2004 (UTC)
