VI. Short answer questions:
1. How can we decipher the past?
Answers
Answer:
It depends on how far back in the past we want to decipher.
I’m a modern historian by training and inclination, so I don’t have any training in what ancient historians do, although I’ll try my best to compare and contrast courtesy of insights from friends.
In modern history, the key question is always why. To take an example of an event we all know happened, let’s look at 9/11. Planes crash into buildings, buildings fall down, large numbers of people die, all hell breaks loose. The modern historian looks at that and says why. In any given event, there can be a lot of different whys being asked, too. “Why did Osama bin Laden plan 9/11?” is a very different question to “Why didn’t anyone stop the hijackers?”, and entirely different again to “Why did 9/11 lead to the invasion of Iraq?” And that’s only three of a myriad of questions we can legitimately ask (there are even people who might ask “Why do people think 9/11 was an inside job?”, to which another group of people would respond “Why do some people not think that?”).
So, having worked out what question we’re going to ask, we need to try to find an answer. In the case of 9/11, one place to start is the official government report on the events - it’s pretty turgid reading in places and only presents the bland facts, but it’s a start. In relation to two of my first three questions, speaking with government officials and former officials may well be an option as well, since the majority of them are still alive and kicking. The question of why 9/11 was planned, though, isn’t exactly one which can be answered by interviewing bin Laden himself since he’d dead and was probably not going to be forthcoming with answers anyway. We keep on digging, though, and eventually are likely to come up with an answer which seems to be consistent with the facts.
But wait! There are other people digging through the available information as well, and they’re coming up with other answers! I might have concluded that 9/11 was planned and executed due to American support for Israel, but someone else might conclude that that’s so much rubbish, and that it was planned because bin Laden was pathologically insane, or because of corruption in Saudi Arabia, or some other reason. We’re analysing the same facts, so assuming we’re not deliberately ignoring things which don’t fit with our preconceived ideas (a friend refers to such unethical practices as “doing a David Irving”), how can we have different answers? The reason is that very few events in history have just the one cause. The Soviet Union didn’t collapse for only one reason, and people have been arguing about the origins of both World Wars pretty much from the moment the Archduke was shot in Sarajevo. What matters is the strength of the argument.
Similar processes are afoot in ancient history as well. The difficulty the ancient historian faces, at least sometimes, is that records are less complete and the memories of the average citizen haven’t usually been preserved. Archives in the UK are full of personal reminiscences about living through the Blitz, for example, but I’m not aware of any extant accounts by a “regular Roman” about going to the Circus Maximus.
That said, the ancient historian is just as capable of asking why (or, in some cases, what and how are still viable questions to ask) about a given event. “Why did the Roman Empire collapse?”, for example, is an question with a lot of different answers. The evidence, broadly speaking, is out there to be analysed, and a conclusion or several conclusions can be drawn.
Answer:
The different ways to find out about the past are the following:
(i) Manuscripts. These were the hand-written matters. They were usually written on palm leaf or the bark of the birch tree. While many of these manuscripts got destroyed, many have survived in temples and monasteries. These books dealt with all kinds of subjects such as religious beliefs and practices, the lives of kings, medicines, and science. These manuscripts also included epics, poems, plays.
(ii) Inscriptions are writings on relatively hard surfaces such as stone or metal. Sometimes, kings got their orders inscribed in order to make common people aware of them. Some inscriptions kept records of victories in battle.
(iii) Archaeological excavations or evidence. Archaeology means the study of cultures of the past and of periods of history by examining the remains of buildings and objects found in the earth. Archaeologists explore and dig earth to find tools, weapons, pots, pans, ornaments, and coins. These things provide us valuable information about the past.
Hope it helps :)