How Do We Know? The Detective Work of History

Imagine archaeologists in 3025 dig up your bedroom. They find a phone, some trainers, a half-eaten cereal bar, and a poster on the wall. They have no idea who you are. Could they piece together your life? What might they get wrong? This is almost exactly the challenge historians face every day. They were not there. They cannot ask questions. All they have are the clues people left behind — sometimes deliberately, sometimes by accident.

**What historians actually do** A historian is not simply someone who memorises facts. Historians ask questions, gather evidence, and build arguments. Their core question is always: 'What happened, why did it happen, and how do we know?' That last part — how do we know — is the heart of historical method. **Sources: the raw material of history** A historical source is any piece of evidence that tells us about the past. Sources fall into two main categories. A primary source comes from the time being studied. It was created by someone who was there, or produced at the time. Examples include letters, diaries, official documents, photographs, coins, buildings, oral testimony recorded at the time, and artefacts such as tools or clothing. A secondary source is created after the events by someone who was not there. It is usually based on primary sources. Examples include history textbooks, documentaries, and scholarly articles written by historians. Neither type is automatically better. A primary source gives first-hand closeness to events. A secondary source can offer wider perspective and careful analysis. **Provenance: where did this come from?** Provenance means the origin and background of a source. When historians examine provenance, they ask: Who created this? When? Where? Why? For what audience? A medieval king's proclamation, for example, was written to justify his own power — that purpose shapes what it says and what it leaves out. **Reliability and utility** Reliability refers to how accurately a source reflects what actually happened. A source can be unreliable because the author was biased, had limited knowledge, or was trying to persuade an audience rather than record the truth. Utility means how useful a source is for answering a specific question. A source can be unreliable yet still useful — a piece of wartime propaganda might not tell you facts about a battle, but it tells you exactly what one government wanted its citizens to believe. Historians from many cultures have expanded our understanding of this. Scholars of African, Asian, and Indigenous histories have argued that oral traditions — stories passed carefully from generation to generation by word of mouth — are legitimate primary sources, not inferior alternatives to written documents. This has changed how the discipline operates worldwide. **Cross-referencing** A single source is rarely enough. Historians compare multiple sources to look for agreement and contradiction. Where several independent sources point to the same conclusion, confidence grows. Where they conflict, the historian must explain why.