The past is complicated and often difficult to comprehend, making reconstructing history a challenging task. When trying to piece together the past, there are numerous issues that can arise for historians, mostly catered toward sources - anything historians use to gain information on the past. Among these issues, the most prominent include reliability of said sources, bias, and lack of information. These problems only serve to complicate the process of reconstructing the past accurately.
Sources can be split into two categories: Primary and Secondary. The former are sources originating from the period they contain information on; such as diary entries, official records and photographs. Secondary sources are created after the period they contain information on; such as textbooks, essays and critiques/reviews. Source reliability becomes a concern when it becomes difficult to categorise a source. For example, paintings or older artefacts can be easily mislabelled without the use of expensive technology like carbon-dating or time-consuming tasks such as comparing items with other sources.
Bias is defined as a ‘tendency or inclination that prevents unprejudiced consideration of a question’ (Bias, dictionary.com). Many historical sources originate from the experiences, opinions, inventions and records of a person. Due to this, it becomes impossible to find truly unbiased sources, as human nature interferes with the way something is perceived. This means that historians have to be careful when finding and using their sources and when writing up their own reconstruction of history. One of the ways to circumvent this issue is to...
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... points have proved how challenging of a process reconstructing the past can be.
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What more is the point of learning and understanding human history than obtaining the knowledge and structure between what is right and what is wrong? We continuously believe that we as humans have the ability and intellect to learn from the lessons taught in our past in order to enrich our future. In comparison to the time frame that is human history the one hundred year period of time we discussed in the second halve of this semester is nothing but a slight blimp on the map that we have traversed. Yet, throughout our recent readings we can easily assimilate into the idea that although time may pass, and that we may attempt to learn from our history it is simply in human nature to repeat the mistakes that we have
Butler, Chris. "The Flow of History." Welcome -. N.p., 1 Jan. 2007. Web. 19 May 2014. .
The study of past events have been a common practice of mankind since the verbal telling of stories by our ancestors. William Cronon, in his article “Why the Past Matters,” asserts that the remembrance of the past “keeps us in place.” Our individual memories and experiences shape how we act in our daily lives. In addition to influencing us at an individual level, our collective history binds us together as a society. Without knowing where we have been or what we have experienced, it is nearly impossible to judge progress or know which courses of action to pursue. The goal of the historian is to analyze and explain past events, of which they rarely have firsthand memory of, and apply the gained knowledge to make connections with current and future events.
It’s truly fascinating how there are so many different approaches to history, how so many different types of minds and schools of thought can come together to study the events of the world’s past. There are so many ways to approach what happened in our past, and the groups of historians previously mentioned are only a fraction of the actual number of different ways of researching and thinking that exists as it pertains to the study of history. History is in some ways, always a mystery, and all historians, regardless of schooling, training or biases, seek to accomplish one goal: to understand what occurred before us and why, and to use that knowledge to learn how the world was shaped into the world we live in today.
Robert Morgan claims that history is not just made up of a few heros and villians.“It is natural and perhaps necessary for historians and story-tellers to view the dramatic shifts of history through
Amarna Letters, c.1390, j. Breasted, date of translation is unknown, The Zenith of Egyptian power and the region of Amenhotep III, Tushratta, N.P
An event is made historically significant by the impact it has on people, environments, and actions following it. Documentation of such an event is also a part of its historical significance- for instance, millions of simple actions have occurred in the past which we do not recall, because no one saw their effects and thought it important to record them. Even if, however, an event had an impact one deemed significant enough to record, their account of the event is plagued by bias. Each time an individual makes note of any particular occurrence, it is from their own point of view, and their own sense of interpretation. This consistent bias created a challenge in conducting this investigation, as one must look at various accounts of the same
Wilkinson, Toby A. H.. The rise and fall of ancient Egypt. New York: Random House, 2010. Print.
As stated in the beginning, this book describes significantly well what history exactly is, and throughout describes the historian method whilst demonstrating citation tools, guidelines, and interpretation/evaluation of particular sources; be it primary, secondary, or tertiary. Importantly, the pocket guide
John Lewis Gaddis, in his book, The Landscape of History, generates a strong argument for the historical method by bringing together the multiple standpoints in viewing history and the sciences. The issue of objective truth in history is addressed throughout Gaddis’s work. In general, historians learn to select the various events that they believe to be valid. Historians must face the fact that there is an “accurate” interpretation of the past ceases to exist because interpretation itself is based on the experience of the historian, in which people cannot observe directly (Gaddis 10). Historians can only view the past in a limited perspective, which generates subjectivity and bias, and claiming a piece of history to be “objective” is simplistic. Seeing the world in a multidimensiona...
“Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.” This famous quote from Edmund Burke is one that many of us are familiar with. In spite of this, many people disregard history, branding it as unimportant or irrelevant to modern-day situations. However, history is actually a quite important subject with a myriad of lessons to be learned for anybody to apply now and in the future. Additionally, history gives us much needed information about our past, keeping us from forgetting why our nations became the way they are. It allows us to draw parallels between modern events and past events to collect our best judgment and gives us the important knowledge of the origin of our modern world, giving extra credibility
Thesis statement: In this research, I will investigate the basic concepts of the Egyptian mythology and its gods.
History is a story told over time. It is a way of recreating the past so it can be studied in the present and re-interpreted for future generations. Since humans are the sole beneficiaries of history, it is important for us to know what the purpose of history is and how historians include their own perspective concerning historical events. The purpose and perspective of history is vital in order for individuals to realise how it would be almost impossible for us to live out our lives effectively if we had no knowledge of the past. Also, in order to gain a sound knowledge of the past, we have to understand the political, social and cultural aspects of the times we are studying.
The distinctions between primary and secondary sources can be ambiguous. The syllable is. An individual document may be a primary source in one. context and a secondary source in another. Time is a defining element.