Sources of History — What, Where, How and When?

• What is history and why we study it.
• Different sources historians use — written, archaeological, oral.
• What archaeology is; how excavations reveal the past.
• Dating the past — BCE/CE, carbon dating.
• How historians interpret sources; limitations.

What is history?

• History = the study of the past — what happened, when, where, why, and how.
• Helps us understand:
  • How present society, customs, and institutions developed.
  • How people in the past lived, thought, struggled.
  • Mistakes and achievements of the past.

Sources of history

Historians piece together the past from sources:

Written sources

Archaeological sources

Archaeology = scientific study of the past through excavation of sites.

• Excavation: carefully digging layer by layer (deeper = older).
• Artefacts: objects made and used by humans, found at sites.

Oral sources

• Songs, folk tales, myths, legends passed down orally.
• Preserve memory of events — but may be changed over time.
• Valuable for communities that did not use writing (many tribal communities).

Dating the past

BCE and CE

• BCE = Before Common Era (same as BC — Before Christ).
• CE = Common Era (same as AD — Anno Domini).
• Year counts backward for BCE: 500 BCE is earlier than 200 BCE.
• Example: Ashoka ruled ~268–232 BCE; Buddha lived ~563–483 BCE.

Carbon dating

• All living things absorb Carbon-14 (a radioactive isotope) from the atmosphere.
• When they die, Carbon-14 decays at a known rate.
• Scientists measure remaining Carbon-14 → calculate when the organism died.
• Useful for: bones, wood, seeds, charcoal — up to ~50,000 years ago.
• Not useful for: stone, metal (no Carbon-14 absorbed).

Other methods

• Stratigraphy: deeper layers = older (like layers of a cake; bottom layer baked first).
• Thermoluminescence: dates when pottery was last fired.
• Dendrochronology: tree ring counting for wooden artefacts.

How historians interpret sources

• Primary sources: created at the time of the event (an inscription by Ashoka, a coin from 200 BCE).
• Secondary sources: written later by historians analysing primary sources.

Problems with sources:

• Most written records were created by rulers and elites — poor, women, low-caste people rarely wrote their own history.
• Bias: a court chronicle praises the king; we need to look for other sources to check.
• Gaps: many events were never written down; many manuscripts have been lost.
• Language barriers: ancient texts in Sanskrit, Pali, Prakrit, Persian — need translation.

Historians ask:

• Who created this source? Why?
• What might they have left out or exaggerated?
• Does it agree with other sources?

• What are inscriptions? Give one famous example and what it tells us.
• What is archaeology? How does excavation work?
• Explain the terms BCE and CE with examples.
• What is Carbon dating? What can and cannot be dated using it?
• Why might a court chronicle be a biased source?

Open the Practice tab for graded questions on Sources of History.