How are historians able to tell what is true and what isn't?

Question

Surely we find many account, sometimes from different sources, about a certain event, but that doesn't make it necessarily true. Some archeology makes sense to confirm things, but how is it that other things are confirmed? There are writings about dragons and many other things, but that doesn't make them true. So how does a historian --know-- that an account he reads is true of history?

Answer 1

There is a related science called "historiography" which is the comparison of multiple source materials from a period and the winnowing of the result to determine a version of events that is close to true.
It is a fact that no history can be completely accurate. Hegel, the philosopher, discussed this at length, determining that to accurately describe event, the results must occur in all cases from the given described antecedents. In other words, if you were able to accurately record the events of five minutes ago, you would already know what you are about to read below.
That, of course, is not possible in the real world. So history is not a "hard science" but rather is the struggle towards greater understanding.
So far as the comment above about "inaccurate histories" ... well, there are charlatans and fakirs in every profession and history is no exception. Good history, written by qualified historians, can come closer to "truth", but no history can be completely "accurate" by the Hegelian definition.
Historians labor to determine the truth by comparison and reason. The more effort they put into this struggle, the better (one hopes) the result.

Answer 2

No one knows beyond the shadow of any doubt what happened, but the more sources we have that tell the same story, the more likely it is that it happened that way. For example, for years historians believed that Ramses the Great had won a great battle in the Middle East. It was trumpeted as such all over Egypt. The problem is, the ancient Egyptians never wrote anything bad about their country--it was as if they believed that putting a good spin on things made it so. But recently, Egyptologists excavated the tomb of a general in that battle which told a very different story. Apparently, it was a draw, at best, and more likely a great defeat for Ramses. The more evidence they find, and the more reliable the source, the more historians can figure out.

Another source is the type of pottery, jewelry, coins, etc. they can find on a site. If they believe a site is dated to 500 B.C., then they find a coin from 450, they know they're wrong. And they have other items they know the date of that they can compare to what they find on site. If there is pottery which is of the same style as they have found in other places that they know the date of, they can date the new find based on that.

Answer 3

No one can all they can do is look at the primary sources, which can be books items of clothing are anything from the period and then look at secondary sources which are sources that were not around at the time but give details of what happened at a time before. If you wish to find primary sources for say the American civil war. you can go to one of the many sites devoted to the subject and look through historical documents the same goes for any time that interests you. Basically look at books poems and in museums at items from the period you want and they will answer your question. So the answer in a nutshell is that historians can never be certain that what they think is true after all until the 9120's no one knew there was a Missing Egyptian Dynasty deliberately wiped from history Because the Pharaoh introduced a religion based on there been one god not the many that the Egyptians be lived before and After.

Answer 4

Grendle's answer is by far the best one here, but I'd like to follow up on a point he made. He stated that history is not a hard science, but that is not necessarily true (but if Grendle reads this he's probably going to disagree, and I don't blame him - this is only for further enlightenment!). Historical understanding, a topic that Grendle touched on, hasn't always been the same. Ninety nine percent of historians today would side with Grendle in saying that history isn't a hard science with rules that, if stuck to, would reveal "what really happened". There were people, important people, who did believe this though. The 19th century German historian Leopold von Ranke disagreed with Hegel's notion of philosophical history. Ranke thought that it left out the altogether too important human agent in history. Ranke also believed that diplomatic notes never lied (because diplomats wouldn't have any reason to lie in a private note). How does all of this tie into your question? Well, history is in the past and you can't bring it back. We can only piece together a mosaic of events in the present and then project it back through time. Because of this (and Ranke would probably disagree, Grendle would probably agree, and Hegel would be drunk), you can never tell what really happened in the end. It's a hermeneutic circle of primary material and what you ask of the primary material. You can only learn what you know to ask. If you do not know to ask something of a primary source you can never know what it has to say. A historian's job isn't to discover "what happened", but to make the past speak. It cannot speak for itself.

Answer 5

Historical writings have to be cross referenced with each other and also with archaeology.

One of the most fundamental things history students are taught to look for is "bias" - ie if you read an account of the Viking sacking of the Monastery at Jarrow that was written by one of the surviving monks then it ain't gonna paint the Vikings in a good light as they totally destroyed the place and murdered most of the monks! If you were trying to research something about the Vikings you would have to take this source it for what it was and cross reference it with other, hopefully less biased sources, probably from the later scandinavian periods. If you found something in both the sources that agreed - ie "The Vikings wore long beards and long hair" - and archaeologists had found grooming articles like combs etc on a Viking settlement, then you could be reasonably sure that was accurate.

But then again the monk might say things like "The Vikings ate babies and drank their blood" and you'd have to take that as probably not true as it was written by someone who was biased AGAINST the Vikings and wanted to paint them in as bad a light as possible! If however you found references in other texts - perhaps later Scandinavian ones - about baby sacrifice or an archaeologist unearthed ritual evidence of this well you could infer that it might have happened.

Its just like being a detective really.

As for modern day "history" well sadly so many people get their history from Hollywood - its like watching that load of shite "Braveheart" and trying to infer thats an accurate depcition of medieval relations between England/Scotland. Its not. Its biased and rubbishy and should be taken as such.

Sadly many people are not intelligent enough to do this.

Answer 6

History is often as interpretive a pursuit as any art. Ideally, there is an extended web of corroborating documents. When not, I think they use best guess/educated guess method.

I catch lots of errors in any history about events I have firsthand knowledge of. For example, every animation history I have read is rife with wrong animator and studio and directorial attributions. Just typos? Well, factually there are plenty of errors. How do I know legit textbook history isn't as full of factual errors? This leads me to my "make it up as they go along" reading of most historians' work.