History: The Why and What of It All.

Our journey begins around 50,000 years ago and will terminate at the end of Alexander's reign with the rising of the Roman Empire. Recent discoveries suggest that humaniods and possibly human civilizations may be much older than that; however, the evidence is new and inconclusive. Bishop Usher, around the turn of the century, calulated the age of the human race to be about 6,000 years old based, primarily upon the Hebrew scriptures chronology. Discoveries in Shanidar, Iraq, Uganda, Africa, and the "Bear Cult" of central Europe push the dates back to at least 45,000 BCE, or 47,000 years ago. [ANEO2.001] Our Judeo-Christican background tells us that we began with Adam, moved forward to the time of Noah, where we restarted, built a great peoples and tower and were dispursed. By this calculation we are around 6000 years old. In archaeological time, we do not know. We do know there are humanoid remains and suggestions of human type habitation possibly as far back in time as 100,000 BC. We also know there was a cultural explosion around 6000 BC which centered on the ANE with developing cultures which generally track the areas to which the Hebrew scriptures attribute the dispersal of nations by the sons of Noah and the tower of Bable story. 

History is the written record of a civilization. By definition, absent written records, there is no history as such. The time before written records are pre-history or pre-historic. There is an intermediate time, when the writings are primarily business type records, which is referred to as proto-history. While most civilizations story commences in pre-historic times, there history begans somewhat later. Until that time, their story is based upon oral traditions. When a civilizations writing graduates from record keeping to incorporation of these oral traditions, is usually the time that "history" begins. The earliest writings telling the stories of a people found to date are in Sumer. Consequently, history begins at Sumer. 

History, in the broadest sense of the word serves two purposes. One, it is the story of who and what we are. Second, by learning the lessons of the past, we are able to minimize the mistakes of the future. For example, in structuring our Constitution, the founding fathers considered and were, at least generally, if not intimately aware of the writings we now call Classics, many read in the original Greek or Latin, as well as the rise of fall of the Greeks, the Romans and the medieval systems which developed after the fall of the Roman Empire, leading to the monarchies of their day.