prehistoric

The word "prehistoric" means "before written history." It usually refers to the long span of time before humans began keeping written records. In that sense, it covers early human life before the first written civilizations, including the time of stone tools, cave art, and small communities that left no written documents behind.

At the same time, people also use "prehistoric" in a broader way when talking about animals, plants, and worlds from ages before recorded human history. That is why the word often appears beside dinosaurs, mammoths, or ancient forests. Scientists and archaeologists study these times through fossils, bones, tools, pottery, cave paintings, and other physical evidence.

You will often see "prehistoric" used to describe animals, people, objects, or places from that distant past: a prehistoric mammoth, a prehistoric tool, a prehistoric cave painting. The word does not simply mean "primitive" or "out-of-date." Its main idea is that something belongs to a time before writing. So when you see a dinosaur skeleton in a museum or a picture of an early stone axe, you are looking at a piece of a world that came before written records and has to be understood through the clues it left behind.