Quora : history / palaeontology

Q

What is the relationship between history and paleontology?
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-relationship-between-history-and-paleontology/answer/Hans-Georg-Lundahl-1

Hans-Georg Lundahl

just now

The most basic difference is method.

Palaeontology deals with no longer alive life forms (or life forms thought to be no longer alive) through the remains - plant material or animal tissue nearly preserved to totally permineralised - of life forms no longer thought to be alive.

History deals with the past as observed by human observers through the texts (including oral texts later written down) that these did leave or are thought to have left.

Ideologically, there is another difference of what time it belongs to, since palaeontological creatures are often thought to have died out earlier than last ten thousand years, and human writings and traditions reach back less than 10 000 years for writings and less than ten thousand years for reliable traditions. This difference, unlike the former, is of course contested by Young Earth Creationists.