Yes, that’s correct that version 2 of Simple History requires at least PHP version 5.3. Your version (5.2.17) is over 4 years old and is an unsupported branch of PHP (http://php.net/eol.php).
There is however an older version of Simple History that you could try to install instead. It should work fine with older versions of PHP. Download it here:
https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/simple-history.1.3.11.zip
FYI thank you, This notice from Simple History helped me find out I was on an outdated version of PhP. I would not have known it by looking at my “stats” area in the iPage Cpanel. it said I was on Php 5.4, but when I went into the real PhP config area, it said I was on Php 5.2. Updating PhP to 5.4 fixed the issue. I’m happy to have Simple History working again too.
