History is facilitated by the formation of a 'true discourse of
past' through the production of narrative and analysis of past
events relating to the human race. Since historians are simultan-
eously observers of and participants in the historical process,
the historical works they produce are always written from the per-
spective of the present and with due concern for possible lessons
for the future: in the words of Benedetto Croce, "All history is
contemporary history".
All events that are remembered and preserved in some form (that
cannot be invalidated as unhistorical or that otherwise remain
amenable to historical discourse) constitute the historical record.
Events that had supposedly occurred before the advent of written
communication are therefore dubbed "pre-history". The self-assigned
task of historical discourse is to identify the sources which can
contribute to the production of truthful accounts of past. Thus the
constitution of the historian's archive is a result of circumscri-
bing a more general archive by invalidating the usage of certain
texts and documents (by falsifying their claims to represent the
'true past'). Some historians study universal history.

-- From an old encyclopedia
