How do you objectively distinguish truthful history from fabricated history when all involved are long dead?

Question

Considering topics like "revisionist history" and "history is written by the victors" and biased religious texts as recorded histories, etc.

What the empirical criteria for discerning whether a given account is true or false?

Answer 1

Bravo! You have just hit on THE QUESTION that plagues/plagued every historian who has ever written.

You have to go on the best available evidence -- and as you note, sometimes that is lacking. But new advances in technology and fields such as anthropology and archeology are helping to provide insight into past events.
And as to religious accounts being biased, they are. But so are most secular histories as well.

I wish I had a better answer for your question. Sometimes you have to go with your gut.

Answer 2

In this way, historians are often like juries.

They are presented with a variety of evidence. Most of what they have is probably hearsay of one kind or another, and thus somewhat questionable, as you yourself note. Still, when you have a number of accounts that agree in details, but not TOO much so that you don't suspect them of agreeing on something beforehand, you can be fairly sure of some of what's said.

The best accounts are probably autobioraphies. Not because they're true (they probably are LESS prone to be true), but because they reflect what a person of the time WANTED people to think. Which can be a pretty important indicator of the nature of society itself.

Some of the worst are obviously manufactured ones. Some of the Roman Emperors, for example, had four or five sanctioned images and all likenesses were ruthlessly eliminated. As such, we may likely never know if some of those people even looked vaguely like how they are represented (but see above not on autobiographies).

Perhaps one of the historians best friends is the archaeologist. These guys provide the hard material evidence... and they're getting better at coming up with the stuff all the time. Some archaeologists spend their careers looking through ancient garbage piles and learning quite a bit about cultures by what they threw away. Likewise, the near-universiality of art and preference for certain styles can sometimes provide a lot of good information on which culture was where and when. If you have enough really good milestones like these, it can help you determine which of your witness accounts are more reliable than others.

Herodotus, for example, though he is legendary as one of the first really historians, is also fairly legendary for not feeling particularly bound to actual facts. His histories were probably as successful as they were at least in part because they were so sensational... and since very few people travelled more than a few miles from their birth town, few would know the difference.

So, in summary, while bias is probably inevitable, there are ways to tell more slanted accounts from less slanted ones, and both of those from total fabrication. These ways aren't completely perfect, however, which is why it doesn't take much study of history at all to find any number of events that common people think are 'settled' but historians know as anything but!

Answer 3

All history is written with a bias -- a good historian will be aware of their own biases -- but still will be writing with an agenda -- so there is no such thing as "pure truth" -- there are no absolutes in history -- just accounts.

The best way to find out how close to truthful a historical account of something is would be to find primary documents -- that would be items written, collected or created by people who were there -- diaries, reports or journals, artifacts, photos etc. Census rolls or church records are primary documents, newspapers (understanding the bias in that kind of publication) are too.

Even with primary sources you need to read for the bias or agenda -- why was the document created, who was it created for -- was there an expected outcome or was the author trying to prove, gain or argue something? If you can find out who the author is knowing their connection to or role in the happenings or subject can be a good indicator of bias and expectations.

For example: two people take a photo of poor street kids in a third world country -- one puts it in a pamphlet that asks for assistance to help these kids -- you can imagine the text -- the kids are victims and need help
THe other puts it in a document aimed at asking the government of that country to get rid of this problem because the kids are scaring away tourists -- that text would be far different than the first one -- the kids would be vermin and the request would be to get rid of them.

Same photo -- different text -- bias of the writer and intended audience makes all the difference.

Answer 4

When different sources, be it biased or not, right after the event or a several hundred years after the event recorded the same events; that is truthful history. But if it only appears in one source, then it is perceived with caution and sometimes dismissed as fabricated history.

Answer 5

That's a very good question. I am not a hundred percent sure about the answer, but I believe in most cases historians look at multiple accounts of an incident from different perspectives and independant sources and try to garner the truth form all the sources.

Answer 6

Protestants have a tendency to brush aside both historic previous and scripture, that's the in undemanding words way the institution of their unauthorized artifical custom, which exists in open defiance of the obviously reported will of Christ on the problem of His followers - "That all of them may nicely be ONE" - can probably be justified. different more beneficial fundamentalist communities also fabricate absurd historic activities - "Constantine depending the Catholic Church", case in point. in spite of the undeniable fact that the real Christian Church has no reason to fabricate some thing, because that's completely supported by ability of both historic previous and scripture (the Bible is its own e book in spite of everything, compiled by ability of its own bishops from its own writings for its own use).

Answer 7

Whatever the majority of people believed is considered Truthful history. Just like the history books say 9-11 was planned by terrorists when it was really planned by the US government. But people wont believe that. But there are some people that dont even believe a plane hit the pentagon...some believe it was a missle...

www.freedomunderground.org/memoryhole/pentagon.php

Answer 8

the interpretation of historic events is called it's historicity. truth about the past present or future comes from looking at results and physical evidence---and the courage to say 'right now we don't know' if that happens to be the case.

Answer 9

Just because something is untrue doesn't change the fact that some valuable bit of wisdom can be gleaned from it.

Answer 10

I WAS TAUGHT TO FIND THREE DIFFERENT SOURCES AND SOMETIMES READ ABOUT THE SAME EVENT IN A DIFFERENT LANGUAGE THUS THE DIFFERENCE TENDS TO SHOW.