The Creation of History

Today's lecture/discussion is designed to have the students understand the process of the creation of history for evidence.  Without understanding how history is written dooms the students to thinking of history as just names and dates and people and interpretations.

We review the "silent remains" of fossils, artifacts, and ruins and how secondary sources written by archeologists utilizing this evidence are important to historians of even recent history.  The physical remains give three-dimensional examples of the life of the people of the era that can not be replicated.  Each of these silent remains are, like all evidence subject to the bias and expertise of the researcher, but are essential as the historian investigates an era.

I add "noisy remains" under which I list oral traditions, linguistics, and the students added music as other non-written sources that societies leave behind.  All of the silent and noisy remains are what are used exclusively to write prehistory.

To this, the adds primary sources.  The students have already explored clothing labels as sources, and asked who, what, when, where and why of Bernal Diaz's The Conquest of New Spain to understand that there is bias in all sources and it is the historian's job to understand that bias.  Secondary source as necessary background are also added into the mix.  All of the evidence is gathered and then must be pushed through the "filter" that is the bias of the historian.  That new history book now becomes a secondary source for those historians wishing to pursue related topics.

If the students can understand that all sources, primary or secondary, have a bias, and that all history is written with a "point of view", then they are well armed for future history classes.  You can say anything about history if you have the evidence to support it.