Sources and the questions historians ask

Start with a question for Gavin: when two people tell the same story two different ways, how would you decide which one to believe?

Today: History is built from evidence; a primary source was made at the time by someone who took part or saw, and a secondary source was made later from other sources; historians ask every source who made it, when, how that person knew, and why; Herodotus, writing about 430 BC, called the book an Inquiry and told readers where each story came from.

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About 40 minutes to teach

Teach the idea

Read this together:The Man Who Asked Questions

263 words

Herodotus grew up in Halicarnassus, a Greek city on the coast of what is now Turkey. When he was a small child, the king of Persia led a huge army into Greece and was beaten. By the time Herodotus was grown, people were still telling stories about that war, and the stories did not agree.

So Herodotus set out to find out for himself. He traveled widely: up the Nile as far as Elephantine, to Babylonia, to the shores of the Black Sea. Wherever he went, he asked questions. In Egypt he talked with priests, and where he could not read the writing, he listened to an interpreter. He looked at temples and monuments with his own eyes.

He could not check everything. Many of the people he wanted to know about had died long before he was born. Some stories came to him secondhand or worse. So Herodotus told his readers where a story came from. Again and again he writes that the Persians say one thing and the Phoenicians another, or that he heard a story but does not believe it. In one place he put his rule plainly: "I however am bound to report that which is reported, though I am not bound altogether to believe it".

That rule did not keep him from mistakes. Some of what he wrote is wrong, and later historians have pointed out his mistakes. But because he names his sources, a reader can weigh each story for himself.

He called his book an Inquiry. In Greek the word was historia. We still use it.

History is what we can know about the human past from evidence. Most of that evidence is written: letters, laws, records, and the books of earlier historians.
Historians sort that evidence into two kinds. A primary source was made at the time, by someone who took part in the events or saw them. A secondary source was made later, by someone who studied other sources. The same book can be both. Herodotus is a primary source for what Greeks thought around 430 BC, but for battles fought before Herodotus was born, the book passes on what others told its writer.
To weigh any source, historians ask four questions: Who made it? When? How did that person know? Why was it made? The answers tell how far to trust it, and for what.
"The Man Who Asked Questions" shows Herodotus doing just that: traveling, asking, and telling readers where each story came from. The Greek word for the book was historia, which meant inquiry, and it is where our word history comes from.

Gavin reads:Herodotus, The Histories, book 1, opening lines and chapter 5

189 words

Herodotus, The Histories, book 1, opening lines and chapter 5, written about 430 BC, translated by G. C. Macaulay.

This is the Showing forth of the Inquiry of Herodotus of Halicarnassos, to the end that … neither the deeds of men may be forgotten by lapse of time, nor the works … great and marvellous, which have been produced some by Hellenes and some by Barbarians, may lose their renown; and especially that the causes may be remembered for which these waged war with one another. … These are the tales told by the Persians and the Phenicians severally: and concerning these things I am not going to say that they happened thus or thus, … but when I have pointed to the man who first within my own knowledge began to commit wrong against the Hellenes, I shall go forward further with the story, giving an account of the cities of men, small as well as great: for those which in old times were great have for the most part become small, while those that were in my own time great used in former times to be small

Do it together

1. Have Gavin write the four questions at the top of a sheet of paper: Who made it? When? How did that person know? Why was it made? Keep the paper out for the rest of the lesson.
2. Go back to the part of "The Man Who Asked Questions" where Herodotus listens to an interpreter in Egypt. Ask Gavin what could go wrong when a story comes through an interpreter, and what Herodotus did with a story that could not be checked.
3. Ask Gavin to name two things from everyday life that tell about the same day, such as a diary entry written that night and a report written a month later by someone who was not there. Have Gavin sort each one as a primary or a secondary source and say why.

Activity

Together: Gavin reads the source aloud to you. Showing forth means presenting, the Hellenes are the Greeks, Barbarians was the Greek word for anyone who did not speak Greek, and severally means each in turn. The … marks where note numbers and a few words were left out. Just before chapter 5, Herodotus tells old Persian and Phoenician tales about how the quarrel between Greeks and Asians began. Then talk through three questions. First: what reason does Herodotus give for writing? Listen for: so great deeds would not be forgotten, and above all so the causes of the war would be remembered. Second: what does Herodotus decide to do with the Persian and Phoenician tales? Listen for: Herodotus will not say which is true, and moves on to what Herodotus knows firsthand. Third: is this a primary or a secondary source? Listen for: it depends on the question; it is primary for what a Greek of about 430 BC thought, but secondhand for wars fought before Herodotus was born. Last, Gavin writes the four questions at the top of a page (who made it, when, how did that person know, why) and answers each one for this source. On your own this unit: Gavin reads two texts, both free online from Project Gutenberg: the opening of Thucydides' history (book 1, chapters 1 to 23, in Richard Crawley's translation), where Thucydides weighs what can be known about Greece's distant past, and The Rosetta Stone, a short booklet by E. A. Wallis Budge that the British Museum printed in 1913, which tells how the stone was found and how it was read; about two hours of reading. Then Gavin writes an essay of two to three pages answering: Herodotus, Bede, Frere, Schliemann, and Thucydides each claimed to know something about the past. Choose three of them. How did each one know what was claimed, and where could each one go wrong? Make a claim about which kind of evidence deserves the most trust, and quote at least three of the unit's sources to back it. Look for a clear claim in the first paragraph, a quotation from each of three sources, a real weakness named for each (such as Bede's date for Caesar or Herodotus' interpreter at the pyramid), and a fair answer to the strongest point on the other side.

Tip If Gavin mixes up primary and secondary, ask one question: was the person who made it there at the time? Then remind Gavin that the same book can be both, depending on what you want to know from it.

On paper

Worksheet

Sources and the Questions Historians Ask

6 problems

The worksheet, as it prints

World History I · Worksheet