Prehistory

Prehistory is the period before recorded history, that is, before the development of writing systems. Therefore, prehistory ends at different times in different regions, depending on when writing developed in that region. Much of what we know about prehistory comes from the study of archaeology.

See also prehistoric (fiction).
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Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global
Otherlands: A Journey Through Earth's Extinct Worlds
Lost Worlds: How Humans Tried, Failed, Succeeded, and Built Our World
Ancestors: A History of Britain in Seven Burials
Hunted (The Deadlands #1)
The Lost World of the Dinosaurs: Uncovering the Secrets of the Prehistoric Age
First Steps: How Upright Walking Made Us Human
The Language Puzzle: Piecing Together the Six-Million-Year Story of How Words Evolved
The Naked Neanderthal: A New Understanding of the Human Creature
Big Meg: The Story of the Largest and Most Mysterious Predator that Ever Lived
Stone Lands: A Journey of Darkness and Light Through Britain’s Ancient Places
Buried: An Alternative History of the First Millennium in Britain
How Religion Evolved: And Why It Endures
The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins
Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas
The Clan of the Cave Bear (Earth's Children, #1)
After the Ice: A Global Human History, 20,000-5000 BC
Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art
The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
The Valley of Horses (Earth's Children, #2)
The Mammoth Hunters (Earth's Children, #3)
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
The Shelters of Stone (Earth's Children, #5)
The Plains of Passage (Earth's Children, #4)
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art
The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World
The Inheritors
Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past

Mary Renault
The finished shape of our fate, the line drawn round it. It is the task the gods allot us, and the share of glory they allow; the limits we must not pass; and our appointed end. Moira is all these.
Mary Renault, The King Must Die

Contrary to popular belief, history does not repeat itself. The story of our planet was not predetermined, there was no air of inevitability to it, and the story of life does not speak to us of a linear progression from primitive to sophisticate. Instead, its shape has been carved out by the accumulation and loss of information, genetic and cultural, creating the illusion of relentless progress.
Clive Finlayson, The Humans Who Went Extinct: Why Neanderthals Died Out and We Survived

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