The modern person quite often perceives a modern scientific picture of the world as something self-evident. But the science in modern understanding existed not always. For example, the science history appeared gradually, with development of critical judgment of the taking place events.
Instruction
1. Even ethnographers find elements of historical knowledge in the most primitive cultures. However history as science began to be formed with the advent of ancient civilizations. Ancient Greece became one of the centers of the historical description of the Ancient world. Herodotus became the author of the first historical work in this state. However his work strongly differed from modern historical works. He did not use critical approach, did not criticize sources, and just stated events according to words and records of eyewitnesses even if they sometimes had fantastic character. Some Greek authors passed to use of archival documents. Creation of the uniform chronology based on holding the Olympic Games became important achievement of the Greek historiography.
2. Greece was not the only state of the Ancient world where the historiography was formed. The Roman authors, for example Pliny the Elder, were based on the Greek samples. Other Roman authors (Svetony and Plutarch) laid the foundation of autobiographies. There were also other centers of writing of history, for example China. One of the first Chinese historians Sima Qian created work on which also modern historians in studying Ancient China rely.
3. Despite the considerable literary heritage of antiquity, formation of history as sciences it fell on the period of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Early medieval chronicles as well as ancient books, carried more descriptive, but not analytical character, and quite often represented compilations of earlier chronicles without analysis of reality of the events described in them.
4. In the period of the Renaissance the critical historical thought began to develop. There was an understanding that not all data of ancient sources should be taken on trust that there are fakes. The sample of early criticism of sources can be considered Lorenzo della Valla's work devoted to a so-called Konstantinovy gift. According to this document, widely known in the Middle Ages, the Roman emperor Constantine the Great donated lands to the Pope Sylvester. Konstantinov a gift formed a basis for long-term fight of church for temporal power. Dell Vall by means of the philological and actual analysis could prove that the document belongs to much later period, than Constantine the Great's government and that the fake was made in the ideological purposes. Socineniye della Valla became a basis for the critical historiography arising in the 15th century.
5. Formation of history as sciences entered the final stage in the age of Enlightenment. The criticism and realism of philosophers of Education promoted formation of historical methods. However science history took truly modern form only in the 19th century. From now on the concept of a historical source was finally issued, the circle of sources extended - except written monuments, historians began to attract archaeological materials more and more actively. Also history was helped by development of linguistics. In the 19th century the gradual interpretation of earlier inaccessible classic languages - Sumer and Ancient Egyptian began. History from literary creativity became science with the system of methods and proofs.