Sources of History

SOURCES OF HISTORY

Historians need evidences to be able to reconstruct the historical past, whether on recent events or on the remote past. They call them sources of information.

Those tests or traces that the past has left us, can be classified into four groups:

-Written documents

-Oral history

-Material remains

-Audio-visual documents

1- Written documents have always been an important source for the study of the past. But some documents could be difficult to understand, o incomplete, so they need special study.

It is important to keep in mind that documents written at the same time of the events to investigate are called historical documents. For example, a letter written by José Artigas.

Those documents that were prepared after the historical events are called historiographic documents.

2- But when we do not have written documents to reconstruct the past, either because they have disappeared or the events were prior to the invention of writing, the historian can use other sources, like oral history, such as poems, stories that pass from generation to generation. They are not written on any paper but may contain valuable information, although time can also deform them.

3 - The material remains are all those elements that were used by people and that give us a testimony of his activity. For example, objects such as those found in excavations, like arrowheads, tools, ceramics, buildings (houses, temples, fortifications), and of course human remains themselves can be of great help.

4- Fortunately, in the last 150 years, historian get the chance to use audio-visual sources, such as photographs, audio recordings, movies, internet, among many others that modern technology gives us at our fingertips .

It is also common to classify the sources of History as Primary and Secondary. Look at the following scheme:

(Link in Spanish)