Don’t get hysterical — it’s just history

September 24th, 2008 at 07:00am Barry Wood

In what he called a move to help tame Illinois’ budget, the governor designated several state parks and historic sites for closure. Technically, the latter should be called “historical sites,” but just think what changing all those signs would cost.

“Historical” is a much broader term, basically meaning anything having to do with history. There are historical documents, historical novels, historical artifacts and so on.

“Historic” should be reserved for things “of lasting significance or importance.” Everything that has happened is history, but very few of those events are historic.

So what in the world could “prehistory” be? That’s stuff that happened before records of it were kept. Human prehistory is what archaeologists dig into. Trying to figure out what happened before human beings appeared is the task of geologists, cosmologists — and theologians.

Entry Filed under: perplexing pairs