Move

edit

This article should either be moved to Recorded history (which currently redirects to Ancient history or merged into Ancient history.--Confuzion 01:06, 22 April 2006 (UTC)Reply

Agreed. I'll do that, thank you. Ben Tibbetts 16:16, 22 April 2006 (UTC)Reply

Roman Numerals

edit

I changed IV to 4 in regards to certain persons' inabilities to read roman numerals. Was there any specific reason it was IV to begin with? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 65.185.170.172 (talk) 19:06, 15 March 2007 (UTC).Reply

List of languages is useless

edit

I am not sure why there is a list of languages attached to this article. This article is not about languages and an undifferentiated list like this imparts no information.

To confuse matters further, the list contains entries such as Devanāgarī which developed in the last 1000 years, and "Aztec" (which links to the Nahuatl language!) who developed their so-called writing system even later. In fact, all the Mesoamerican writing systems were rather late entries, the earliest being dated to something like 600 BC.

So, I have decided to be bold and delete the list. MapMaster (talk) 01:20, 27 February 2008 (UTC)Reply

Indian Historians

edit

None of the Indian writers listed are historians. Kalidasa, for instance, was a great poet and dramatist, but no one in his right mind would describe him as an historian. Vātsyāyana is the author of the Kama Sutra. Vyasa was the collector of the Vedas, and Valmiki the author of the Ramayana. If these writers are historians, then so are Sophocles, Homer, Hesiod, Euripides, and Apollodorus. To assert that these two writers are historians is in effect to assert the historical truth of Hindu mythology, and would be analogous to listing Moses as a great biologist on the strength of the opening verses of Genesis. This strikes me as a bit of Hindutva POV.

An argument could maybe be made for Chanakya, but he is really a political scientist, not a historian. The same can be said of Sun Tzu. On the other hand, Sima Qian and Herodotus should be given equal billing as the founders of the historical tradition in East Asia and Europe, respectively. Manetho is only an "important" historian in that his "history" of Egypt is all we had for centuries (until the decipherments of hieroglyphic and cuneiform).—Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.112.139.140 (talk) 12:25, 9 March 2009 (UTC)Reply

Annoying Redirects

edit

I find it kind of annoying that searching "Human History" redirects to this article (Recorded History), while searching "Human history" (notice the lower case 'h' on "history") redirects to History of the World. Since the History of the World article is much more comprehensive than "Recorded History" (this article) I think it makes more sense that both "Human History" and "Human history" redirect to "History of the World". Two virtually identical article titles should not redirect to different articles, it's highly annoying, at least in my opinion. LiamSP (talk) 03:14, 28 December 2010 (UTC)Reply

{{disambig}}?--J. D. Redding 04:31, 28 December 2010 (UTC)Reply

BTW, Human history and Human History should redirect here. --J. D. Redding 13:28, 30 May 2011 (UTC)Reply

Clarifying classification of sources (primary/secondary/etc.)

edit

Last paragraph that starts with the words "Primary sources..." needs to be clarified. As it stands now, it's not clear what kind of classification this is, and how and in what specific areas the sources are classified this way. cherkash (talk) 00:13, 25 January 2011 (UTC)Reply

Did you read Primary sources? --J. D. Redding 13:27, 30 May 2011 (UTC)Reply

some people believe those scriptures as truth

edit

This is in regards to the second paragraph of the "recorded history" section lumping the biblical book of Exodus with works such as Homers (which almost all regard as fiction). I realize this will not be resolved here. Just wanted to make a note that the idea of Bible as fiction is disputed by many, including myself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.184.1.76 (talk) 03:33, 21 September 2011 (UTC)Reply

And some people believe that powdered unicorn horn is an aphrodisiac. Basket Feudalist 11:54, 16 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
And some people believe highly (more highly than anything humans have come up with) specified complexity of information in nature arose by non-intelligent forces. And some people believe that massive amounts of time is a magical ingredient to make poorly/non-evidenced massive, accumulative miracles of luck occur. Gott wisst (talk) 10:53, 8 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
I think the general consensus here (maybe?) is that whatever different groups of people believe, it is our jobs as a neutral source of information to discuss these beliefs with equal weight. Nevertheless, I'm going to say that the "scientific" views on history are more well-accepted and established and thus should be used here. And although it appears as though some sort of debate might explode here, I should hope that we all realize the pointlessness of such a discussion. InvaderCito (talk) 02:53, 18 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
I concede there is a unified-ish, cohesiv-ish collection of views widely held by the majority of the community widely called "the scientific community" (albeit many members of that community are sometimes significantly irrational in their thinking - as are many in general) regarding history. I also realize the pointlessness of such a debate, since Wikipedia is largely (participation-dependantly) democratic in deciding its contents, and it is(/should be) widely understood that it is simply an attempted platform for the presentation of neutrality-attempting/broadly-concensussed (the two are quite different - and its (more?) often the latter that is presented here on Wikipedia) information (which prefferably/always should have cited sources). If it actually happens to present the truth, or parts thereof, it is an utter coincidence, not an intended outcome.
However, I was calling out an individual for making a post which seemed to me to be arrogant, non-self-aware, and ill-considered - and since it was not a serious reply to a serious comment, it was totally non-productive - it was purely (potentially) inflamatory. Considering this, I suppose I should have done the world a favour and removed the trolling in question, instead of possibly feeding it - although I don't know whether purely inflamatory comments are considered to be "vandalism" or suchlike under current WP policy...
Cheers. Gottistgut (talk) 08:56, 2 June 2013 (UTC)Reply
Well, I was unable to find anything here that would necessarily classify such purely (potentially) inflamatory posts as vandalism. Gottistgut (talk) 09:38, 2 June 2013 (UTC)Reply

Biased? Yes

edit

"Although valuable, these accounts can be biased..." This is self-evident. All truth claims are biased - including every single historical account ever. Perhaps what is meant is that there is a conflict of interest that hindered them from recording history absolutely accurately? Or that somehow the bias of these writings is simply significantly incorrect? Or that some particular modern historians disagree with some things they say? Or something else? Gott wisst (talk) 10:53, 8 May 2013 (UTC)Reply

The section is question has now been improved, thanks to the user Sadads. Gottistgut (talk) 09:52, 2 June 2013 (UTC)Reply
edit

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Recorded history. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 20:06, 18 September 2017 (UTC)Reply

edit

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 2 external links on Recorded history. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

  • If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
  • If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 02:12, 25 January 2018 (UTC)Reply

Contradiction

edit

How can the Zuo Zhuan be the earliest narrative history in the world if it is believed to have been written in the 4th century BC, as stated on its Wikipedia page? The Greek historians were writing since at least the 5th century. (67.243.135.180 (talk) 21:47, 16 February 2018 (UTC))Reply

Difference between recorded history and history generally

edit

It is unclear from the article how recorded history differs from history generally, as history "is the past as it is described in written documents". Can this be clarified please? Or should this article perhaps be merged into History? Nurg (talk) 02:33, 23 June 2019 (UTC)Reply