Prehistory (or pre-history) is the time before people began to write. The word comes from the Ancient Greek words προ (pre = "before") and ιστορία (historia = "history"). Paul Tournal first used the French word Préhistorique. He found things made by humans more than ten thousand years ago in some caves in France. The word was first used in France around 1830 to talk about the time before writing. Daniel Wilson used it in English in 1851.