Talk:Prehistory

Prehistory of the United States

You would think that Prehistory of the United States would talk about the pre-Columbian era of human settlement because writing (AFAIK) did not exist within present-day US territory. However, it instead talks about geological time, with just a few sentences about when the first migrants entered the continent but nothing past that. That "prehistory" is a completely different topic than the "prehistory" in this article. Does this strike anyone as strange? —Lights and freedom (talk ~ contribs) 05:50, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Yep, prehistory is human history prior to writing. The Prehistory of the United States appears to be about 'geological history'. Iskandar323 (talk) 10:31, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

@Iskandar323 Right now, it only focuses on the United States. If it were about all of North America, it would have to be edited to include info about Canada, Mexico, and Central America. —Lights and freedom (talk ~ contribs) 23:46, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Right, but creatures in the Jurassic period ignored modern nation-state boundaries, so yeah, while it should be expanded, trends apparent from paleontological digs in the USA will also apply to the rest of the continent. Iskandar323 (talk) 06:41, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

WP:Engvar

It's been pointed out that the article uses mixed Am/Br English. There has been no previous discussion that i can see, & this 2004 version had a "characterised", so it should be Br Eng. I'll adjust accordly, for what I can see. Johnbod (talk) 00:36, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

This edit in late 2018 not only Americanised the language, but converted from BC/AD, which the article had been since 2001, to BCE. Needless to say, his edit summary mentioned neither of these. Fortunately this editor has not edited since last September. This should be reversed too. Johnbod (talk) 01:11, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

POV

The Death of Prehistory (2013) by Peter Schmidt and Stephen Mworozowski needs to be incorporated into this article. I'm not going to add a POV tag though because the article doesn't attempt a broad and traditional interpretation of prehistory, although it does link to articles like Prehistory of Australia which do. Kowal2701 (talk) 14:47, 26 April 2025 (UTC)

Sure, but we should be careful to note that this appears to be mostly a North American phenomenon – all but one of the authors of that volume were affiliated with an American university, even though many of the chapters concern perspectives from other parts of the world. As chapter 3 of that book (the one by the lone non-American) describes, the term is understood quite differently in the Eurasian archaeological tradition, where it is not particularly problematic or in decline.

I don't think your recent edit quite reflects this. [T]he concept of prehistory hasn't been completely discarded implies that it the concept of prehistory has largely been discarded, but in my experience of European and Middle Eastern archaeology this is not at all true. I think it would be more accurate (also considering that the source you cite is only about African history) to write something along the lines of 'prehistory' being considered a problematic term when applied in settler-colonial contexts and/or to regions without a deep history of literacy, and deprecated by some scholarly traditions for that reason. – Joe (talk) 07:14, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

Agreed, that would be much better. I’ve also commented at Talk:Prehistory of Australia#Prehistory? and was about to do an RM if you can take a look? Kowal2701 (talk) 07:19, 28 April 2025 (UTC)