The human record of people and their relationships. All the knowledge and values shared by a society. You just studied 44 terms!

Studying history enables us to develop better understanding of the world in which we live. Building knowledge and understanding of historical events and trends, especially over the past century, enables us to develop a much greater appreciation for current events today.

Surplus crops made it possible to trade for scarce items. Technology, such as boats and carts, made it possible for the Indus valley civilization to build one of the most advanced trade networks of their time.

Explanation: Civilization is known to be a society which consist of culture, government, technology and industries that are greatly advanced.

What makes historians unique? Historians write, as accurately as possible, stories of past people, places, and events. Historians want to discover, study, and interpret new findings. Historians use the historic method to draw conclusions of history and how it affects us.

There are two main types of historical sources: primary sources and secondary sources.

Thus, one difficult position historians can find themselves in is wanting to add their own perspective or bias to the writing as their opinions, ideas, expectations, and preconceptions can influence the work of the historian and lead to non-objective writings.

The major challenges to historical research revolve around the problems of sources, knowledge, explanation, objectivity, choice of subject, and the peculiar problems of contemporary history. Sources The problem of sources is a serious challenge to the historian in the task of reconstructing the past.

As the historian draws his conclusions and generalizations on the basis of these documents and facts it is essential to check up the authenticity of the documents and facts. It is the duty of the historian to doubt every statement until it has been critically tested.

Recency/Currency: Has the situation described by the evidence changed? Has the evidence been superseded by more recent findings? Authenticity: Is the source what it appears to be or is it a fraud or forgery? Identification: Is the source’s origin (author) clearly identified?

History is a dynamic, not a definitive discipline. An important part of the historical method is its continuing internal dialectic. Historical understanding grows by a process in which historians subject to criticism the ways in which the present-mindedness of their predecessors caused them to distort the past.

Historical research relies on a wide variety of sources, both primary & secondary including unpublished material. Found in public records & legal documents, minutes of meetings, corporate records, recordings, letters, diaries, journals, drawings.

The first key points historians want to check about a source is whether the source is based on accurate knowledge and understanding. To do this, they might check whether the author was there at the time, whether the author was involved in the event, whether the author understood the overall context.

Literary and Archaeological records are the two main categories that give evidences of Ancient Indian History. The literary source includes literature of Vedic, Sanskrit, Pali, Prakrit, and other literature along with other foreign accounts.

A historiographical essay is an essay which analyzes the way a single historical topic or issue is treated by a number of authors. Whereas book reviews usually deal with full-length books, historiographical essays are more flexible and often discuss articles as well as books.

Perspective is the ‘point of view’ from which the creator of a source described historical events. Every person sees and understands events differently depending on their age, gender, social position, beliefs and values. Even modern historians have their own perspectives which can influence how they interpret the past.