A regular recording of historical events arose in the early times, partly due to vanity and the desire to convey to the descendants the great deeds of the ancient rulers. The deeds of the lords - real or fictional - formed the basis of the first annals that open up the path to knowledge of the Ancient World. Historical events and news could be interpreted truthfully or intentionally, but we, as distant descendants, are interested in any crumbs of information that are in ancient chronicles.
First records
The most ancient information about the life of our ancestors is contained in the records of the ancient Greeks and Egyptian priests. Rock inscriptions, scraps of parchment and oral retelling laid the foundation for the study of the past of mankind.
Later, with the development of writing, regular recording of historical events became more familiar - attempts were made to study the history of past centuries and give them an assessment. So the first annals appeared. Mention of the first historical chronicles dates back to the distant times of the first civilizations of India, Mesopotamia, China and Egypt.
Various sources
Many testimonies of the events of the ancient world are contained in the Bible and the Talmud. For example, the mention of the ancient king Naboo-kudurri-uzur is found in Akkadian chronicles. What kind of king was he and in what period of time did his rule exist? An answer was needed to this question. The regular recording of historical events did not provide complete information, and the contradictory and confusing interpretations of historical eras from ancient historians were completely confusing. It took the efforts of generations of historians and researchers to identify the ancient king of Mesopotamia with the biblical Nebuchadnezzar and establish the years of his reign.
The bold assumptions of historians were later confirmed by archaeological excavations, and the principles of modern dating based on the analysis of radioactive isotopes of carbon have significantly narrowed the time frame and specify the era of prosperity of a particular dynasty.
All-Russian annals
In the heyday of Kievan Rus, the events of the ancient state began to be timed. The most ancient chronicle vault is the Nestorov Chronicle, created in Kiev in the second half of the 12th century. Nestor collected all the information and legends about the formation of Russia and gave them completeness and structurality.
Later manuscripts are dated to the 14-15th centuries. The Vladimir Arch, the Radziwill Chronicle, the vaults of Lavrentievsky and Ipatievsky origin have survived to our days. At the end of the 16th century, an all-Russian annals vault was created - the so-called Nikon annals, which incorporated all the sources known at that time and created its own personal annals vault.
Timeline and Periodization
Fragmentary information was not ordered and presented with significant distortions. The mention of that other ruler was often met several times, and it was rather difficult to identify them with real historical events. The names of historical eras and events with details of times and periods were developed much later. Their diversity and use is studied by a special department of science - historical chronology.
The various stages of historical knowledge of the world arose due to the human need for systematization and ordering of various events of past times. There was a need for periodization - the allocation of the various stages of history and understanding of their content. Such historical periods should be based on some similar characteristics that allow different events to fall into one channel. For example, the period of the Ancient kingdoms is characterized by the flourishing of the slave system and so on.
Calendar and historical readings
The simplest principle of counting times and eras is the calendar method. Different eras were tied to historical time, with the help of which the countdown itself was conducted. Later sources divided the historical period into two huge eras - before the birth of Christ and from the birth of Christ.
Historical readings have been known since deep times. Then time was counted by the time of the existence of a particular ruling dynasty. Even in modern times, this method is quite popular - scientists, for example, distinguish the era of the Tudor rule in England or report on a particular historical event in China, dating it to the era of the Tang Dynasty. You can see that both regular recording of historical events is quite convenient - classification by calendar allows you to accurately set the time frame of a particular event. A reference to historical classification reveals the features of a past period.
Regular recording of historical events is currently being carried out taking into account all available media. We will leave many testimonies from our own lives. Perhaps our descendants will be able to understand the abundance of facts of our modern life and give them a worthy assessment.