prehistory vs time period

prehistory and time period both are nouns.

Word	Noun	Adjective	Verb	Adverb
prehistory	Yes	No	No	No
time period	Yes	No	No	No

As nouns, time period is a hypernym of prehistory; that is, time period is a word with a broader meaning than prehistory:

prehistory: the time during the development of human culture before the appearance of the written word
time period: an amount of time

Other hypernyms of prehistory include period, period of time.

prehistory (noun)	time period (noun)
the time during the development of human culture before the appearance of the written word	an amount of time