British Prehistory half-way through the Century: Presidential Address

Abstract

Prehistory, in Great Britain, is usually taken to denote the whole story of human activity in our country before its invasion, or before the invasion of any given part of it, by the Romans in the 1st century A.D.; it may also denote the totality of research upon, and interpretation of that story. The adjective Prehistoric was first popularized in the 19th century by Sir John Lubbock, the first Lord Avebury, and it and its cognate substantive Prehistory have been found so convenient, that we take their use for granted. Yet to a strictly logical mind they are tiresome and problematic words. Since what is Prehistoric must precede in time what is Historic, Prehistory should precede History; and History, to Lubbock, was evidently History in its restricted sense of the story of human activity known to us from written documents. But History can mean more than that: even the original Ancient Greek word historía did not mean history only in Lubbock's sense—the word for that was syngraphé—but rather, anything found out by enquiry. Thus to-day in the 20th century, when the range covered by documentary history has been enormously extended, both in time and space, by archaeology and anthropology in all their branches, we can speak also, as Elliot Smith did in his book of twenty years ago, of Human History as covering all the human story—all of What Happened in History, as Professor Childe's book called it in 1942—without restriction. In other words, History in the broad sense includes Prehistory, which must yet precede History in the narrow sense. We, as prehistorians, are of course quite used to this; and we seldom notice the patient smile on the face of the logician.