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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
prehistory
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ From the earliest observable stage of prehistory, the tendency had always been toward differentiation.
▪ Genes also hint at its prehistory.
▪ The prehistory of that good, however, remains clouded to us in obscurity.
▪ The museum's permanent exhibition is basically an educational trot through London's history from prehistory to the present day.
▪ This is the very last incident of prehistory in the Bible.
▪ We can ascertain that deer has been eaten by man since prehistory.
▪ What must the car dealer have made of this client, a man from prehistory come to buy an automobile?
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
prehistory

1869, perhaps a back-formation from prehistoric. Related: Prehistorian.

Wiktionary
prehistory

n. 1 The history of human culture prior to written records. 2 The history of the events that led up to something (e.g. a crisis, a reconciliation, etc).

WordNet
prehistory

n. the time during the development of human culture before the appearance of the written word [syn: prehistoric culture]

Wikipedia
Prehistory

Prehistory means literally "before history", from the Latin word for "before," , and Greek . Human prehistory is the period from the time that behaviorally and anatomically modern humans first appear until the appearance of recorded history following the invention of writing systems. Since both the time of settlement of modern humans and the evolution of human civilisations differ from region to region, prehistory starts and ends at different moments in time, depending on the region concerned.

Sumer in Mesopotamia, the Indus valley civilisation and ancient Egypt were the first civilisations to develop their own scripts, and to keep historical records; this took place already during the early Bronze Age. Neighbouring civilisations were the first to follow. Most other civilisations reached the end of prehistory during the Iron Age.

The beginning of written materials (and so the beginning of local "historic times") varies; in many cultures, especially outside Eurasia, it follows conquest by a culture with writing, and often the earliest written sources on pre-literate cultures come from their literate neighbours. The period when a culture is written about by others, but has not developed its own writing is often known as the protohistory of the culture.

By definition, there are no written records from human prehistory, so dating of prehistoric materials is crucial. Clear techniques for dating were not well-developed until the 19th century.

This article is concerned with human prehistory as defined here above. There are separate articles for the overall history of the Earth and the history of life before humans.

Prehistory (album)

Prehistory is the debut studio album by American experimental rock band Circle X. It was recorded in 1981 but was not released until 1983, jointly through record labels Index and Enigma.

Prehistory (disambiguation)

Prehistory is the time before human recorded history.

Prehistory or Prehistoric may also refer to:

  • Prehistory (album), Circle X album
  • Prehistoric (TV series), program broadcast on the Discovery Channel

Usage examples of "prehistory".

Cases filled with arrowheads and stone tools, scraps of pottery and basketry stood under placards describing the prehistory of the county.

And it would be no more accurate to imagine that general grammar became philology, natural history biology, and the analysis of wealth political economy, because all these modes of knowledge corrected their methods, came closer to their objects, rationalized their concepts, selected better models of formalization - in short, because they freed themselves from their prehistories through a sort of auto-analysis achieved by reason itself.

Chapter Eleven, findings which suggest that the great Andean city of Tiahuanaco flourished during the last Ice Age in the deep, dark, moonless midnight of prehistory.

This is necessary not only to provide order to what otherwise would be a series of unrelated archeological site and artifact descriptions, but also to determine which of those reports and descriptions are relevant to the prehistory during this time period.

Northern archeologist who knew little about the prehistory of this region, I was fascinated to learn of a series of remarkable discoveries made in the past decade that changed the interpretation of Austronesian prehistory.

Daffodil, nodding, had said her husband had named the horse because he was interested in prehistory, and she was going to call her next horse Cordilleran Ice, the sheet that had covered the Rockies.

Daffodil, nodding, had said her husband had named the horse because he was interested in prehistory, and she was going, to call her next horse Cordilleran Ice, the sheet that had covered the Rockies.

As soon as my leave started in the summer of 1990 I began my synthesis of the late Pleistocene and early Holocene prehistory of eastern Beringia.

Egyptian prehistory, or that account for the very serious problems of apparent non-continuity between the Predynastic and the Dynastic Periods.

In every one of the mythological systems that in the long course of history and prehistory have been propagated in the various zones and quarters of this earth, these two fundamental realizations -- of the inevitability of individual death and the endurance of the social order -- have been combined symbolically and constitute the nuclear structuring force of the rites and, thereby, the society.

Stars, as on the night when she had ridden, five years after the destruction of her home and family, through the Nemedian forest called Darkwooda deserted, haunted place said to be the last remnant of a far vaster forest that had flourished during cycles of prehistory antedating even Acheron.

I’m not talking about the special witches of our Christian lore, with their childish attributes, but the old tribe of devil’s creatures thai came out of prehistory, regular full-blooded sea witches.

Within a few centuries, in one of the swiftest colonizing advances of recent prehistory, Bantu farmers had swept all the way to Natal, on the east coast of what is now South Africa.

With their benign weather—brought under control eons before—the notion of shelter and buildings, if it had ever existed, had long since disappeared from the racial memory of the blackbodies, lost in prehistory.

I have relied heavily on the book the expedition produced, The Pitcairn Islands: Biogeograpky, Ecology and Prehistory, edited by Tim Benton and Tom Spencer, for in­formation about Henderson Island.