What is history?

Essay by mimieyesHigh School, 12th grade December 2003

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What is history?

Does history have to be recorded to consider as history? Or could it be anything that happened in the past, regardless if it is recorded or not?

History should only be the one that was recorded, and verified either by language or images that seek to explain the ways in which people have changed over time. Those that were not verified or recorded are considered as legends and novels instead of history, because those works or fairy tales cannot to be proven to be true or it might contained too many unproven details or personal feelings attached to it. Moreover, most of the people can agree with the framework of the meaning of history such as place, date, and who. Historical disagreement usually occurs by causation or motivation. Questions such as why did the history happened that way is often disagree upon by the people. Although history itself is a fact, but it is still written and observed by the historians.

Thus, it still contains some personal views of those particular historians who wrote it because how a person understands the past is partially determined by one's background, upbringing, biases, and prejudices. A great example such as the Bible, there are parts of the bible that have been proven true already, and people use it as a guide on

everything. Not to mentions about moral lessons, but the date and year is base on the birth of the Christ, and all the places and locations are proven to be correct, but it does not mean the entire bible are true. Do women really come from men's ribs? Of course not, so sometimes what people believe is true might night be true, so do all the things that were written from the past too.

How about...