Why a class is written as rdfs:Class and a property is written as rdf:Property

Question

There are numerous examples of this.

Among the many, we can consider this one.

The above one says,

• rdfs:Class declares a resource as a class for other resources.
• rdf:Property – the class of properties.

Now, my question is, why is a class considered to be defined in RDF schema and property is considered to be simple RDF.

Answer 1

The reason is purely historic. The RDF model was defined before RDF Schema came along, and it already contained a vocabulary term for the notion of a property, so rdf:Property is part of the RDF namespace.

The notion of explicit classes was first introduced in RDF Schema, however, so it became rdfs:Class.