«Look, facing the past, plunges us into the mystery of human existence", - said Karl Jaspers.And indeed, there was a need to explore the past, obviously, in times like these, where dare to look only archeology.It is known that chronicles Chronicle were among the first written records of the Chinese, Egyptian, Babylonian and other ancient civilizations.But with the advent of such records began to be felt a lack chronicle approach and the search of the meaning of events and communication between the individual facts born methods of studying history.
However, no theorizing can not do without structures and categories that are not historical facts.So there is a problem of the relationship between the event and the category that summarizes the facts.The first known system of categories, which had both historical and philosophical significance, come from mythological stories about the genesis of the world.They divided the time on mythological (sacred) and historical (profane), because the time for them has been synonymous with "corruption."However, the methods of studying the history of this era were unknown because mythological thinking excludes the concept of transition from one society to another and did not recognize either society or the individual.In addition, the myth, telling, explaining neglected because the revelation and explanation - they are different in nature phenomenon.
Closer to our understanding and interpretation of history begins in the epic, where the mythological story of the shell revealed certain people, such as the Bible or the "Iliad."Thus, even before any scientific methods of studying history, there was a historical consciousness.This awareness of time, changes that occur to people, nations and the world.It was characteristic of Egyptian, Jewish, Chinese and ancient historians.No wonder almost simultaneously lived such outstanding personalities, which descendants were called "fathers of history" - Herodotus and Thucydides in Greece and Sima Qian in China.They laid the foundation for the interpretation of human behavior in the context of the time, and tried to make some sense of the events.
this teaching also belongs the honor of creating different types of historiography.Thucydides created the scientific and pragmatic method, careful selection of facts and credible evidence, and Herodotus - a historical retrospective and an explanation, the ability to understand and articulate the profound essence of what is a historical process.It is believed the famous thinker, the course of world history, the meaning of which he tried to trace.We can say that, barely born, the ancient historians began to draw the field of interaction between different peoples and cultures - Greeks and barbarians, the barbarians and the Han (Chinese).In this field, being a constant struggle for power and influence.But not only the opposition determines the course of events.
Methods of studying the history of that used by the ancient and the ancient writers, led them to the conclusion that for certain facts hidden underground, anonymous and incomprehensible to us the forces that people normally treated as random.Historians have described them in two ways.
On the one hand, the causes of events are rooted in human nature, the thirst for power, or certain socio-psychological interests.Many Greek and Roman scholars link the causes of success and failure to the internal unity of the demos or contradictions, policy, people and states.On the other hand, in the course of history interfere with more powerful forces - fate, destiny.In the era of Alexander the Great and the Roman Empire finally began to dominate the theory of universal history.A good representative of this type of thinking was Polybius.In his work he tried to not only summarize and analyze what has been determined the fate of this or that state, but also to link political theory and facts.
Thus, we can conclude that the first methodology of historical scholarship has appeared in ancient times, the first time it was suggested that history, like any science, is to open the regular patterns inherent in the course of human affairs in time.However
ancient historians believed that the progress of these cases is formed according to certain, but not very well known or understood our laws.This process could be understood as a regression, degradation or cyclic circulation.Hesiod gave one of the first in Europe periodization of qualitative changes between the five "ages" due to the fall of morality.Polybius, however, thought that the story develops in a range of successive changes of various political regimes - democracy, oligarchy and tyranny.But almost all the ancient historians and philosophers were convinced that they live in terrible period of decline, in anticipation of catastrophic change.
