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:
“What are your historical Facts; still more your biographical? Wilt thou know a Man ... by stringing-together beadrolls of what thou namest Facts?”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)
“No common-place is ever effectually got rid of, except by essentially emptying one’s self of it into a book; for once trapped in a book, then the book can be put into the fire, and all will be well. But they are not always put into the fire; and this accounts for the vast majority of miserable books over those of positive merit.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)