Lesson 4
Words to Know
Understanding the following words will help you read this lesson:
TERMS & NAMES
primary source
secondary source
oral history
How Historians
Study the Past
Build on What You Know You may know where your parents or ancestors came from and some of the stories about them. Relatives and their stories help people understand their family history. Now learn what historians use to help them understand the past.
Understanding the Past
ESSENTIAL QUESTION What questions do historians ask to help them understand the past?
People investigate their family history to find out about their ancestors. In the process, however, they also find out about themselves. We study world history for the same reasons.
Why Study History? What has already happened to a person, a family, or a
society affects what will occur today and in the future. But history is much more than simply recounting and studying past events. Examining a historical event also involves studying a society’s culture, religion, politics, and economics.
When historians examine past events, they try to find patterns. They look for causes and effects that explain how and why events happened. They also try to understand why some ideas and traditions last and why others die out. Just as important, historians attempt to see the past through the eyes of the people who lived it. By doing so, historians gain greater insight into human nature and answer important historical questions.

Asking Historical Questions As historians study the past, they ask themselves questions like those below. These questions help historians compare different societies and draw conclusions about the past.
• How have groups or societies interacted, and what have been the results?
• How have leaders governed societies?
• How have belief systems developed and changed?
• How have societies dealt with differences among their people?
• How have societies tried to protect people’s security?
• How are societies similar and different?

Why do we study history?
The Historian’s Tools
ESSENTIAL QUESTION What methods do historians use to help them answer questions about what happened in the past? When you hang up a picture, you use a hammer to pound in the nail. Historians also use tools to do their job. These tools include primary sources, secondary sources, and oral history.

Primary Sources A primary source is something written or created by a person who witnessed a historical event. You will learn about an ancient primary source on the next page. Primary sources include letters, diaries, eyewitness articles, videotapes, speeches, and photographs. Artifacts, such as the human-made tools, are also primary sources.

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How Knowledge of the Past Changes
ESSENTIAL QUESTION What steps do historians take as they answer historical questions?
Detectives use fingerprints and other evidence to solve crimes. Historians act as detectives too. They use evidence from primary, secondary, and oral sources.
Fact or Fiction? Historical evidence isn’t always as simple as a bloodstain at a crime
scene. Historians sometimes have more information than they can use when they try to answer a question. They must sort through all of the information and choose what’s most important and most trustworthy as evidence. In addition, sometimes what historians thought was true turns out to be false. For instance, one historian proved that the so-called mummy’s
curse was false. According to legend, the curse would kill anyone who entered the tomb of an ancient Egyptian ruler. Many people believed the curse had caused the death of English archaeologist Lord Carnarvon. He died suddenly in 1923, shortly after entering the tomb
of ancient Egyptian ruler “King Tut.” People believe that the other archaeologists who had entered the tomb between 1923 and 1926 would also die as a result of the curse. However, a historian later examined the archaeologists’ death records. Their average age at death was
70 years. The evidence did not support the existence of the mummy’s curse.

Drawing Conclusions The mummy’s curse was easy to disprove. But not all historical questions are so easily answered. Sometimes different historians arrive at different conclusions based on the same facts.
Answer the following questions

2. What is the difference between primary and secondary sources?