What is history? Why study history? History, or simply history, refers to the systematic recording, interpretation and study of past events and behaviors of human society. History can provide modern people with an understanding of the past as a reference for future actions. Together with ethics, philosophy and art, it is an important achievement of human spiritual civilization. The second meaning of history is to record and study past events, which is also called "historiography" or "historiography" for short. Subjects belonging to or closely related to history include chronology, compilation, genealogy, ancient philology, econometric history, archaeology, sociology and journalism. Look at history. People who record and study history are called historians, or simply "historians". In ancient China, they were called historians. Books that record history are called historical books, such as Historical Records and Hanshu, which can be roughly divided into two categories: official revision and folk publication. "History" in a broad sense can refer to all the events that happened in the past, not necessarily related to human society. In philosophy, history in this sense is called historical ontology, such as the history of the universe, the history of the earth, the history of birds and so on. The narrow sense of history must be based on written records, that is, the history after the appearance of words is considered history, and the history before that is called prehistory. History related to human society can also be called human history or social history, while past events divorced from human society are called natural history. Generally speaking, history only studies the former, that is, social history. China is the country with the most complete history in the world, and its record of history is not only long, but also accurate and detailed. The history of China has been more than 5,000 years since the legendary Yellow Emperor. Historical records are accurate from the first year of the Western Zhou Dynasty (84 1 year ago) to the year of, and from the year of Luyin (722 years ago) to the month and day. China's historical records (historical books) are also divided into different genres, such as chronological style, biographical style and chronological style. Contrary to the fact that history does not occupy the mainstream position in western civilization, China listed "history" as one of the four basic disciplines (Jing, Shi, Zi and Ji). Quesnay said: "History is a subject that China people study with unprecedented enthusiasm. No country has written its chronicle so carefully, and no country has kept its history books so carefully. " In primitive society, human beings recorded history by knotting knots and oral communication, such as ancient legends in China, such as "The Yellow Emperor fought against Chiyou", "Goddess mended the sky" and "Dayu controlled the water". After the emergence of the country, there began to be "witches" in charge of sacrifices. They also undertook the work of recording current events, drafting official documents and taking charge of documents, which can be said to be the earliest historians. Only then did independent historians appear, specializing in recording historical events. During this period, the world's earliest history book "Shangshu" appeared in China, which was a compilation of political documents of past dynasties and had no specific historical genre. Since the first year of the Western Zhou Dynasty (84 1 year ago), China has had a chronicle recorded annually, and since then, there has been a continuous historical record, which can be found almost every year. This is also extremely rare in the world. Historians in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, such as Confucius (edited the Spring and Autumn Period) and Zuo Qiuming (wrote Zuo Zhuan), paid attention to human social activities, thus making history basically unaffected by theology and religion. Sima Qian was a famous writer and historian in the Western Han Dynasty. He wrote Historical Records, which created a genre of biographical history books. The scale of historical records was unprecedented in the world at that time. Later, the Eastern Han Dynasty edited Han Shu, which continued to develop the style of Historical Records, and was the first biographical dynastic history in China. These two historical works laid the foundation of China's classical historiography. Historians of later generations compiled the history of various dynasties into books by using the genres of Historical Records and Hanshu, and formed Twenty-four History. In addition to the dynastic history, there are general histories in China during the Tang and Song Dynasties, such as Du You's General Code at the end of the Tang Dynasty and Sima Guang's Learning from the Same Resources in the Song Dynasty. Among them, Zi Tong Zhi Jian is a chronicle of 1362 years, which is a wonderful work in the history of Chinese historiography. We study history in order to inherit the traditional culture of the Chinese nation, carry forward the spirit of the Chinese nation, learn from the past and plan ahead.