Talk:Recorded history

This article was selected as the article for improvement on 15 April 2013 for a period of one week.

This article was selected as the article for improvement on 16 December 2013 for a period of one week.

Move

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

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

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

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

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.)

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

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

"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]

External links modified

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External links modified (January 2018)

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Contradiction

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

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]