Prehistory

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Prehistory is the time before people started recording the things that happened in the lives. Nobody was writing down what was happening. No one really knows for sure what people in prehistoric times were doing. There are no records (or "history") which can be looked at, read, or studied.


Archaeologists study objects from prehistory to try to understand what was happening. They and anthropologists try to make sense of what people where doing and why they were doing these things.


After people started to record events, by using symbols (pictographs) and writing, it was much easier to tell what was happening. These records can tell us the names of leaders (such as Kings and Queens), important events like floods and wars, and the things people were doing in their daily lives.


The time when prehistory changed to history is different in different places, depending on when people started to write things down and whether this information has been kept or found. Mesopotamia, China, and Ancient Egypt are places where things were recorded from an early date and these records can be looked at or read.