Since there was writing, the mankind had an opportunity to fix and impart knowledge of the events which took place in the past to future generations. Important aspect of similar knowledge is their completeness, reliability and objective treatment. In the questions concerning the past history is engaged in researches.
Now the term "history" describes set more than thirty scientific disciplines which are logically marked out in one direction. However, often about stories speak as about one science. These disciplines are directed to studying the wide list of the questions connected with a set of aspects of existence and development of humanity, human activity, the relations, social and public states in the past. Sometimes history is also characterized as the science establishing the reasons of events. The word "history" came from the Ancient Greek term ἱστορία, directly meaning "research" and often translated as "recognition", "investigation". In a classical antiquity history called process of identification of reliability of the facts and establishment of the validity of events and also any sets of knowledge received as a result of the made researches and experiments. Later, with emergence and development of the Ancient Roman historiography, the initial sense of the word was transformed and began to designate narrations about the events which took place in the past.
The founder of history as sciences Herodotus is considered. However it is impossible to recognize its research in many respects based on religious doctrines as scientific. Thucydides who is Herodotus's contemporary laid the foundation for use of scientific methods in the history, explaining the causes of the events described by it with interaction of people and societies. Even there is no finally developed opinion on the place taken by history as field of knowledge now. Many researchers carry it to the humanities, others - to public. In spite of the fact that history has the methodology in a general sense consisting of various approaches and the principles of work with sources of information and the facts, a part of scientists do not recognize history as the issued science at all. It is promoted also by existence of a large amount of highly specialized historical disciplines (from anthropology to ethnography) which accurately are defined by the tasks and methods.