recorded history
Documented human events
Recorded history is the period of human past documented in written records, as opposed to prehistory known only through archaeology and oral tradition.
The phrase often marks the boundary of what we can know with certainty: the largest earthquake in recorded history, for the first time in recorded history.
It emphasizes that something is unprecedented or extreme within the span of human documentation.
- dawn of timeThe absolute beginning
- time immemorialBeyond memory's reach
- civilizationAdvanced organized human society
- manuscriptsHandwritten or typed originals
- ancient textsHistorical written documents
museums · epigraphy · dead languages · historiography · collective memory · codices · scrolls · archaeology · numismatics · libraries · archives · tablets · stone inscriptions · heritage · anthropology · digitization · classical antiquity · books
recorded historyprehistory
Era before writing
oral tradition · archaeological record · deep time · legend · folk memory
recorded historymythology
Body of traditional tales
fiction · legend · myth · fairy tale · fabrication
recorded, history, record, records, recording, recordings, recorder, recorders, recordable