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.^[1]

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 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.^[2]

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.