History of Ethiopia and the Horn Chapter 1

The Nature and Uses of History The term history derived from the Greek word Istoria, meaning “inquiry” or “an account of one’s inquiries.” The first use of the term is attributed to one of the ancient Greek historians, Herodotus (c. 484–425 B.C.E.) who is often held to be the “father of history.” In ordinary usage, history means all the things that have happened in the human past. The past signifies events, which have taken place and the facts which are kept in writing. More specifically, the distinction is between what actually happened in the past or that part which exists independently of the historian and still awaits to be recorded and the accounts of the past provided by historians, that is, ‘history’.