6 Outstanding Methods of studying historical issues

The historical issues and events are studied in various ways. The methods used in studying historical issues provide us with information necessary to understand what actually happened then. In this post, we shall focus on the 6 major methods and shall also discuss the strengths and weakness of each.

Archaeology

• The study of ancient remains like bones and tools, dug out from the ground, tell historians about remnants of human or animal existence.
• This study aims at finding out how the ancient people lived, their time of existence and the activities they carried out.
• Archaeologists are people who dig up and study the remains of the early man. The digging up of these remains is called excavation.
• The details are in most cases are illustrated by scientific drawn diagrams and classified depending on the depth of the ground.
• The classification is called stratigraphy.

Limitations of archaeology in studying historical issues

• Depends on material culture, so fails to cover political or social history of people.
• People who left the remains cannot be identified.

Oral Traditions

• This is a method of learning about the past through the word of mouth.
• History is passed down from one generation to another by word of mouth.
• It is the oldest source of History.
• It is also the primary source of written history. Oral history was always passes over through songs, proverbs, poems, hymns, legends, myths and tales by elders of the given society.
• These stories may now be written by people like chiefs, administrators, missionaries and any other people interested in documenting them.

Limitations of Oral traditions in studying historical issues

• Traditional historical stories are only found among centralized societies, how about those that are not centralized, how will their stories be known?
• Negatives are often omitted as do emphasize on achievements.
• There are problems of dating

Written records:

• These are historical events written down in books and other documents by observers and travellers.
• This is documented history after it has been collected from various sources.
• It is in form of diaries, books, journals, newspapers, magazines and other written records.
• It should be noted that written history is more accurate than oral sources since it is not easy to change.
• There is cultural and political bias, especially when writers have a different background.

Anthropology

• This is the study of the present and existing social organizations, cultural values and how they are inter-related in order to explain the past.
• It involves the study of a social life of ethnic groups to find out about ideas, beliefs, structure and social organization of ancestors.

Linguistics

• This is the study of languages (sounds, structure, grammar, their formation and relationship between different groups).
• It particularly looks at relationships of various language groups in order to establish:

a) How and when a language spoken in an area came into being.
b) When the languages merged or separated from each other.

Photographic/ Visual Sources

• These are historical drawings and paintings (pictures).
• They include pre-historic art of various kinds; the drawings and paintings depicting various kinds of life the earliest people led.