prehistory

prehistory means the time before written records in any area of the world; the events and conditions of those times.

Why “prehistory” is a great word

The vast span of human existence before the advent of written records, or the discipline devoted to its reconstruction. From the prefix pre- ("before") + history, modeled after the earlier French term préhistorique; first attested in English in 1836 in the Foreign Quarterly Review. Unlike "posthistory" (which speculates about an end to narrative) or "protohistory" (a twilight of external records), prehistory is the profound silence before the first word. It is the soot-blackened handprint on a paleolithic cave wall, the careful arrangement of ochre around a burial, the obsidian blade held up to catch firelight—all that remains when there is no one left to tell the story.

Etymology

From pre- (“before”) + history, first attested in the Foreign Quarterly Review in 1836, after the model of prehistoric, from French préhistorique.

noun

The time before written records in any area of the world; the events and conditions of those times.““We don’t find evidence for that sort of thing anywhere in prehistory.””
The study of those times.
Any past time (even recent) treated as such a distant, unknowable era.“I was a town boy through and through. The country belonged to a vague pre-history.”
The history leading up to some event, condition, etc.“Psychologists... are mostly bad historians, inventing—as Freud has done—their pre-history to suit their theories.”

Words closest in meaning

By meaning, not spelling — each word's AI semantic fingerprint, nearest first.

antediluvian 86% match — Belonging or pertaining to, or existing in, the time prior to the great flood described in Genesis, or (by extension) to a great or destructive flood or deluge described in other mythologies. vs prehistory →
history 86% match — The aggregate of past events, both unrecorded and recorded. vs prehistory →
antiquity 85% match — Ancient times; faraway history; former ages. vs prehistory →
chronicle 84% match — A written account of events and when they happened, ordered by time. vs prehistory →
archaeolinguistics 84% match — The study of the distant human past using archaeological and linguistic evidence together to reconstruct aspects of past cultures. vs prehistory →
pseudohistory 84% match — False history. vs prehistory →
antebellum 83% match — Of the time period prior to a war. vs prehistory →
epoch 83% match — A particular period of history, or of a person's life, especially one considered noteworthy or remarkable. vs prehistory →