| Title | Author | Created | Published | Tags | | ------ | ---------- | ------------------ | ------------------ | -------------------------------------------------- | | Unit 1 | Jon Marien | September 12, 2025 | September 12, 2025 | [[#classes\|#classes]], [[#HIST11474\|#HIST11474]] | # Unit 1 - **How Historians Know the Past**: Historians rely on different types of sources to learn about history and figure out what actually happened. - **Primary vs. Secondary Sources**: - **Primary sources** are objects or documents created during the period being studied—like letters, books, buildings, swords, paintings, clothes, tools, or tax records from the Middle Ages. - **Secondary sources** are created after the fact, such as textbooks, books by modern historians, and documentaries about historical events. - Sometimes, a source can be primary for one topic and secondary for another—like a monk's book about an earlier era is secondary for that era but primary for the monk's own time. - **Primacy of Primary Sources**: Only primary sources are truly evidence for what happened in the past; secondary sources are interpretations or opinions based on those primary materials. - **Historiography and Research**: - When historians conduct original research, they might discover new primary sources or come up with new interpretations. - Their work undergoes **peer review** by other experts before publication, ensuring academic quality. - Over time, a field gathers many different historians’ research, building up a body of knowledge called **historiography** (the history of how history is studied and written). - Historiography evolves as new discoveries and perspectives reshape our understanding. --- # Differences Between Primary & Secondary Sources - **Question Introduced:** The video starts by asking how we truly know what happened in the past, since we see history in books, movies, video games, and museums—but asks, what do historians actually use for evidence? - **Primary Sources:** These are anything created by humans during the period being studied. Examples include artifacts, original writings, letters, journals, photographs, buildings, bones, and paintings from that time. For Shakespeare, his plays, sonnets, and letters are primary sources. - **Secondary Sources:** These are created after the time being studied. They include textbooks, documentaries, and books by historians. Secondary sources summarize, interpret, or comment on what happened, often based on primary sources. - **Key Difference:** Primary sources are considered the real evidence about the past; secondary sources are interpretations or opinions based on primary sources—even if written by experts. - **Historians’ Process:** When doing original research, historians always start with primary sources to get as close as possible to the actual evidence. Studying others’ interpretations (secondary sources) is called historiography, which is useful but separate from investigating history itself. --- # Lecture 1 - **Definition and Timeframe**: The Middle Ages, or medieval era, spans roughly 1,000 years from about 500 to 1500 CE. It follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ends with the beginning of the Renaissance and the Age of Exploration. - **Geography**: While traditionally focused on Europe, modern historians recognize the Middle Ages as including North Africa, the Middle East, and regions connected by trade and culture to Europe. - **Major Periods Within the Middle Ages**: - **Early Middle Ages (c. 500–1000)**: Transition from the Roman world to new kingdoms and cultures. - **High Middle Ages (c. 1000–1350)**: Growth of cities, increased trade, cultural achievements, and the period where typical “medieval” imagery comes from. - **Late Middle Ages (c. 1350–1500)**: Times of crisis like the Black Death, major wars, but also intellectual and cultural changes leading to the Renaissance. - **Cultural and Social Changes**: The era saw the feudal system, rise and clashes of different religions (notably during the Crusades), advancements in art and trade, and significant challenges like plagues and wars. - **Importance**: The Middle Ages weren’t just “dark ages”—the period included considerable cultural and intellectual achievements as well as hardships, laying groundwork for the modern world. ---