LESSON NO.
2 (3 hours) Title: Understanding Sources
What is a Source
The first kind of sources relies or remains, offer the researchers a clue about the past simply by
virtue of their existence. The wooden columns found at the date of a prehistoric settlement
testify for example to the existence of people and tell to historians something about their culture.
The pegs or dowels they used to fasten building materials further enlighten scholars about their
technical skills and artistic capacities. By comparing their articrafts with those with other places
historians can further learn something of their commercial or intellectual relations.
In contrast the testimonies are the oral or written reports that describe an event, weather
simple or complex such as the record of property exchange. The author of such testimonies can
provide the historians information about what happened, how and what the circumstances the
event occurred and why it occurred.
The primary responsibilities of the historians to distinguish for readers carefully between
information that comes literally out of the source itself.
Primary Sources
Primary sources are materials produced by people or groups directly involved in the event
or topic being studied.
Formally, there are eight examples of these primary sources:
1. Photographs that may reflect social conditions of historical realities and everyday life.
2. Old sketches and drawings that may indicate the conditions of life of societies in the past.
3. Old maps that may reveal how space and geography were used to emphasize trade routes,
structural build-up, etc.
4. Cartoons for political expression or propaganda
5. Material evidence of the prehistoric past like cave drawings, old syllabaries and ancient
writings.
6. Statistical tables, graphs and charts
7. Oral history or recordings by electronic means of accounts of eyewitnesses or participants;
the recordings are then transcribed and used for research.
8. Published and unpublished primary documents, eyewitness accounts and other written
sources.
Four Main Categories of Primary Sources
[Link] sources
2. Images
3. Artifacts
4. Oral testimony
“My first day was a scary one. There was a patient whose earlobes were so long... he had no
nose, only two holes on his face, and no fingers, only the palm of his hands...the other
patients were in different stages of leprosy.
Documented Oral Testimony of Sr. Maria Luisa Montenegro, SPC 1940
Secondary Sources
Gottschalk simply defines secondary sources as the testimony of anyone who is not an
eyewitness – that is of one who was not present at the event of which he tells. These are books,
articles, scholarly journals, biography, thesis, dissertations, almanacs, dictionaries and
transcriptions that had interpreted primary sources or had used them to discuss certain subjects
of history.
Source of Typologies
Their evolution and complementarity Written source are usually categorized according to a
tripartite scheme as narrative or literally as diplomatic/juridical or as a social document. Sources
are traditionally classified as narrative or literally includes chronicles or tracts presented in
narrative form written in order to impact particular message.
What is Historical Criticism?
In order for a source to be used as evidence in history, basic matters about its form and content
must be settled.
There are two ways on how to examine historical resources in order for the scholastic writers and
historians to validate the authenticity of the sources that they have collected to be used as the
reference of the historical account that they are going to publish. These are:
Internal Criticism
Ø The problem of credibility
Ø It looks within the data itself to try to determine the truth- facts and the reasonable
interpretation.
Ø It includes looking at the apparent or possible motives of the person providing the data.
Ø It indicates the accuracy, trustworthiness and veracity of the materials to which historical data
will be based.
Tests of Credibility
1. Identification of the author
Ø to determine his reliability; mental processes, personal attitudes
2. Determination of the approximate date
Ø handwriting, signature, seal
3. Ability to tell the truth
Ø nearness to the event, competence of witness, degree of attention
4. Willingness to tell the truth
Ø to determine if the author consciously or unconsciously tells falsehood
1. Corroboration
Ø historical facts –particulars which rest upon the independent testimony of two or more reliable
witnesses
External Criticism
Ø The problem of authenticity
Ø It applies experimental science to certify the authenticity of the material that holds the data in
which historical information will be based.
Ø It entails such physical and technical test as dating of paper where a document is written on.
Ø It involves knowledge of when certain things existed or it supports the claim whether it is
possible or impossible to exist.
Ø It evaluates the authenticity and genuineness of data.
Test of Authenticity
1. Determine the date of the document to see whether they are anachronistic;
Ø Is the document outdated? For example, the document tells about the event during 1950’s and
it was written by the use of pencil. Take note that pencil did not exist.
2. Determine the author;
Ø handwriting, signature, seal
3. Anachronistic style
Ø idiom-phrase, expression, for example, the author in his document, mention the word
petmalu, take note again, this word was only used during 1920s
Ø ortography, punctuation
4. Anachronistic reference to events
Ø too early, too late, too remote
5. Provenance or custody
Ø determine its genuineness
6. Semantics- determining the meaning of a text or word;
7. Hermeneutics- determining ambiguities.
The Impact of Communication and Information Technology on the Production of Sources
The availability of the sources general, very much determined by technology that is by the
conditions under which is given culture received and collected information. In the first
information was transmitted by people who walked or ran with the news as the rate probably
never exceeding six miles per hour. The second phase of information was transported using pack
animals. This phase began about [Link] central Asia about 10000B.C.E. in the
Mediterranean area and sometimes during sixteenth century among the Incas in Peru.
Three categories of information were transported in this period each of which required slightly
different technology of literacy. The First included secret correspondence of various kind of
diplomatic military which had to be written in code. The second general correspondence which
in time was taken by the newspaper.