Unit 2: History Sourcing Practice

True or False: Secondary sources are never reliable because they happened after the event occurred.

• True

• False

Answer explanation

Secondary sources can be amazing! Professional historians and archeologists are able to spend time exploring and explaining the past for us.

True or False: Primary sources are always reliable.

• True

• False

Answer explanation

Primary sources are extremely valuable for a lot of different reasons. When thinking about their reliability, some of the things you need to consider are who made the document and why they made it. You also need to determine how well the source answers the question you are investigating.

True or False: Every old document is a primary source.

• True

• False

Answer explanation

Many of the documents we study were created hundreds of years after the event they describe. These documents are old, but the people who produced them did not witness the event, so these are not primary sources about the event.

We studied the author of the document and determined that she is reliable.

What does the word reliable mean in the sentence above?

• trustworthy

• biased

• smart

• talented

True or False: If five documents all say that something happened, we can believe that it happened.

• True

• False

Answer explanation

If all of the documents are reliable we can feel pretty good about what they say. If many or all of the documents are unreliable, we cannot trust what they say without more evidence.

Professor Anderson teaches Roman history at Cambridge University, one of the top universities in the world. He wrote an article about Roman gladiators and published it in the Journal of Roman Studies, a peer-reviewed journal, in 2014.

Is Professor Anderson's article a reliable source about Roman gladiators? Explain.

• Yes, it is reliable. Professor Anderson is an expert in Roman history at one of the top universities in the world. Other experts had to approve his article before it could be published.

• Yes, it is reliable. Professors should always be believed.

• No, it is not reliable. Professor Anderson wrote his article thousands of years after Roman gladiators lived, so he cannot know what really happened.

• No, it is not reliable. He might be smart, but even I can do some research and write an essay about Roman gladiators.

True or False: Good history can be written using both primary and secondary sources.

• True

• False

Answer explanation

A lot of recent historians have done great work that other historians can build on. Primary and secondary sources can both be very valuable!

Plutarch was a Greek and Roman historian who lived from 46 CE to 119 CE. He wrote a book about Alexander the Great who lived from 356 to 323 BCE.

Is Plutarch's book a primary source about Alexander the Great? Explain.

• No, it is not. Plutarch lived hundreds of years after Alexander the Great.

• No, it is not. He wrote about both Greeks and Romans, not just Greeks.

• Yes, it is. His book is very old, and Alexander lived a long time ago.

• Yes, it is. He and Alexander were both Greek.

Which of the following is NOT a reason primary sources are considered to be valuable to historians?

• They are written by people who witnessed an event.

• They can provide insight into what people thought and felt about an event they lived through.

• They are never biased.

• Without a primary source about an event, historians are missing an "important piece of the puzzle" about the event.

Answer explanation

Primary sources can be works of persuasion like propaganda, so historians need to be careful in determining the purpose of the documents they study.

True or False: Even if a document was made hundreds of years after an event, it can still be a reliable source.

• True

• False

Answer explanation

Documents created after an event are secondary sources. Secondary sources can be very reliable. Not everyone has time to study the past. Professional historians do, and often produce great explanations about the past that are very valuable to modern students of history.