Skill 1 · ages 10-12
What is a source?
Everything people from the past left behind is a trace: a letter, an axe, a photo, a building. You learn to tell primary and secondary sources apart.
DraftNot yet reviewed by a historian or history teacher.Why
None of us was there in 1302 or in prehistory. What we know about the past comes from traces that survived. A historian is therefore a bit of a detective.
If you know what kind of trace you have in front of you, you also know which questions you can ask, and which you cannot.
Understand it
A source is anything that can tell us something about the past. It can be a text (a letter, a law, a chronicle), an image (a painting, a photo, a map), an object (a coin, an axe, bones, a building) or data (a list, a census).
A primary source comes from the time itself, made by someone who was there or close by. A secondary source was made later, about that time, based on other sources: a textbook, a documentary, a historian's article.
Careful: primary does not automatically mean reliable, and secondary does not automatically mean bad. And it depends on your question: a novel from 1838 about 1302 is secondary for 1302, but primary for how people thought in 1838.
Ask first: does this come from the time itself (primary) or was it made later (secondary), and is it text, image, object or data?
See it on a source
In our own words: the cave held bones and skulls of at least two adults, together with stone tools and animal bones.
Is this text, image, object or data?Show
An object: human remains and tools.
Primary or secondary?Show
Primary: the bones come from the people themselves. The researchers' report of 1886, by contrast, is a later interpretation.
What can this source not tell?Show
What they were called, which language they spoke or what they thought. Bones are silent about that.
Pitfalls
Not like this: Only written texts are real sources.
Like this: Objects, images, buildings and bones are sources too. For prehistory they are even the only ones.
Not like this: A primary source always tells the truth.
Like this: Even someone who was there can exaggerate, be mistaken or keep quiet about something. You always ask questions.
Not like this: A museum piece is secondary because the museum explained it.
Like this: The object itself stays primary. The label next to it is the secondary explanation.
Do it
Choose a level. Five right in a row and you can do this.
At the table
Which trace of your life would a historian find in a hundred years, and what would they misunderstand from it?