Prehistory

Prehistory (meaning "before history," from the Latin word for "before," præ) is the span of time before recorded history or the invention of writing systems. Prehistory can refer to the period of human existence before the availability of those written records with which recorded history begins. More broadly, it refers to all the time preceding human existence and the invention of writing. Archaeologist Paul Tournal originally coined the term anté-historique in describing the finds he had made in the caves of southern France. Thus, the term came into use in France in the 1830s to describe the time before writing, and the word "prehistoric" was later introduced into English by archaeologist Daniel Wilson in 1851.