Discover
In studying the political, administrative, legislative, and dynastic records of extinct civilizations, modern historians must bring to bear all the evidence at their disposal; and such evidence may vary sharply from one locality and period to another. Historiography in the modern sense—the analytical ordering and interpretation of past institutions and events—is an invention of ancient Greece, and even there it only gradually eschewed the fabulous. In many early societies (e.g., Mesopotamia, Egypt), chronographic records were either annalistic or legendary in kind and sometimes apologistic or propagandistic in purport; and in others (e.g., India) a cyclical world view prevailed, and a ...(100 of 12223 words)