Cologne (Köln), Germany

Prehistory and early history

Ur- und Frühgeschichte

Master's
Table of contents

Prehistory and early history at University of Cologne

Language: GermanStudies in German
Qualification: Master
Kind of studies: full-time studies
University website: www.Uni-Koeln.de

Definitions and quotes

History
History (from Greek ἱστορία, historia, meaning "inquiry, knowledge acquired by investigation") is the study of the past as it is described in written documents. Events occurring before written record are considered prehistory. It is an umbrella term that relates to past events as well as the memory, discovery, collection, organization, presentation, and interpretation of information about these events. Scholars who write about history are called historians.
Prehistory
Human prehistory is the period between the use of the first stone tools c. 3.3 million years ago and the invention of writing systems. The earliest writing systems appeared c. 5,300 years ago, but writing was not used in some human cultures until the 19th century or even later. The end of prehistory therefore came at very different dates in different places, and the term is less often used in discussing societies where prehistory ended relatively recently.
History
No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.
Thomas Carlyle, Heroes and Hero Worship, "The Hero as Divinity"
History
Every decade or so, the world is tested by a crisis so grave that it breaks the mould: one so horrific and inhumane that the response of politicians to it becomes emblematic of their generation —their moral leadership or cowardice, their resolution or incompetence. It is how history judges us.
Jo Cox, Don’t leave Syria to become a graveyard — this generation’s responsibility to the world (13 October 2015)
Prehistory
The destruction of the natural world is not the result of global capitalism, industrialisation, 'Western civilisation' or any flaw in human institutions. It is a consequence of the evolutionary success of an exceptionally rapacious primate. Throughout all of history and prehistory, human advance has coincided with ecological devastation.
John Gray (philosopher) Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002) The Human: Disseminated Primatemaia (p. 7)
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