Historical Accounts
Recorded history begins with the accounts of the ancient world by antiquity's own historians. The earliest chronologies date back to Mesopotamia (Sumer) and ancient Egypt (Early Dynastic). Some of the more notable ancient historians include: Josephus Flavius, Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, Manetho (Greek historiography), Zuo Qiuming, Sima Qian (Chinese historiography), Livy, Sallust, Plutarch, Tacitus, Suetonius (Roman historiography). Although valuable, these accounts have significant limitations because many of them are written in a historical tradition not focused on documenting events, but instead focused on the political or ideological repercussions of the stories in history.
In pre-modern societies, epic poetry, mythography, collections of legends, and religious texts were often treated as sources of historical information, and so one may see references to such writers as Homer, Vyasa, Valmiki and to such works as the biblical Book of Exodus as historical sources.
Read more about this topic: Recorded History
Famous quotes containing the words historical and/or accounts:
“Nature never rhymes her children, nor makes two men alike. When we see a great man, we fancy a resemblance to some historical person, and predict the sequel of his character and fortune, a result which he is sure to disappoint. None will ever solve the problem of his character according to our prejudice, but only in his high unprecedented way.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)