In 2019, Routledge publishes a volume entitled, "Time and History in Prehistory". Two essays bookend this work. The introductory essay is titled, "Is there Pre-history", and is written by the editors, all archaeologists. The concluding essay is by an emeritus professor of history, Penelope Corfield, the author of "Time and the Shape of History" (2007).
These bookends work together, casting a net onto our use of the words, "history", "prehistory" and "primeval".
Little do these authors realize that, in their net, thrashes a fish of untold value. The fish is the first singularity. The first singularity is a hypothesis addressing the transition between the Lebenswelt that we evolved in and our current Lebenswelt. The first singularity divides timelessness and time. Everlasting cycles give way to history.
The birth of history is not immediate. The first singularity marks the potentiation of unconstrained complexity. The term "prehistory" should apply to the period between the adoption of speech-alone talk and the invention of writing.
What do we call our living world before speech-alone talk?
The historian, Penelope Corfield, inscribes a beautiful label: "primeval". The Lebenswelt that we evolved in, including the world of hand-speech talk, is primeval. Hand-speech talk favors constrained complexity. Constrained complexity implies an unarticulated holistic perspective, each giving according to "his" abilities, each receiving according to "his" needs. This perspective is intercalated in a matrix of home. Home is wherever we are.
These archaeologists and historian wonder, "Is there pre-history?"
These comments examine their answer using the tool of the category-based nested and the hypothesis of the first singularity.