Seven Recs and a Request

[annafugazzi]

So, before anything else, here's a note from one of my kids:

Hi, my name is J. I am doing a project about the History of History and I have some questions for you:

1. What comes to mind when I ask you what are the different kinds of history?
   
2. What are some huge historical events that changed how we think of history? Or that changed what we think of

Comments

[angelbabe_cj]

Another historian/history student here.

1. There are lots of different types of history and as many different types of people studying them. You might study the history of a specific society (eg. the Byzantines or the Romans), a specific group or aspect within society (eg. women, children, clothing, minority groups). On the other hand history can also be studied from different points of view, or in a particular way. By this I mean marxist history, feminist history, structuralist history and so on.

2. There are many different events which have changed how we think of history, and also what we think of as history. As well as revolutions and major advances in technology I also think that earlier events like the discovery of new parts of the world (such as the discovery of Australia) completely changed how people looked at the world and thus history. I also think that one of the more important changes was the deciphering of the Rosetta Stone, which opened up a lot more history to us because we had a basis for understanding older languages.
I think that what we think of as history is regularly changed and redefined by different people. Something which is unimportant to history according to one person can be vital to another.

3. It's very hard to say when history started. The earliest history I have studied was about 9000BC/BCE, the Mesopotamian civilisation. I believe this is probably the earliest civilisation for which we have writing we can understand. But we know of cave paintings and so on which are older than that.

When people started recording things specifically for later generations I'm not sure. I know we have some things like that dating back to the Ancient Egyptians, but certainly the Ancient Greeks were learning history of a sort as we do today. Although about very different things. Passing on stories by word of mouth though, I doubt there's been a time when people didn't do that (once they could communicate).

Anna, thanks for the recs. :) Hope my answers for J aren't too confusing. They certainly made me think.

[annafugazzi]

Thank you thank you thank you! This was great. My little guy was very happy :) :)

Welcome re. recs!