Historian
is a descriptive title that can be used to describe anyone who has acquired
knowledge about any one or several topics. Historians can range from the
untrained amateur sleuth to the academically trained expert in any given area
or field of study. They are generally the people you ask when you want to check
your facts about the past or when you want to get the story behind an event,
person, place or subject. The definitive idea of who is a historian is far less
important than is understanding how to tell the difference between a history based on facts and someone who simply seems to know a lot about a topic. A true
historian studies and interprets the past by examining primary and secondary
sources in an effort to find historical truth.[1] A
true historian will use academically accepted methodologies that will help them
present their findings in a manner that is as unbiased as humanly possible. A true historian can provide evidence as well as interpretation.
Historians are teachers, researchers, writers and explorers. They are the people who tell the story of us, them and everything in between. In fact the role of the historian is one of the oldest and most respected roles performed within the human society. Historians were the original storytellers and their craft predate archaeologists and anthropologists by more than two thousand years. Sorry Indiana Jones, Historians were discovering and preserving the past long before your bull whip and fedora were even invented.[2]
Historians are teachers, researchers, writers and explorers. They are the people who tell the story of us, them and everything in between. In fact the role of the historian is one of the oldest and most respected roles performed within the human society. Historians were the original storytellers and their craft predate archaeologists and anthropologists by more than two thousand years. Sorry Indiana Jones, Historians were discovering and preserving the past long before your bull whip and fedora were even invented.[2]
[1] "Methodology
History," Maintained by the University of Massachusetts Amherst,
April 1, 2014, https://www.umass.edu/wsp/history/.
[2] The Greek
historian Herodotus wrote his histories around 425 b.c. Archeology and
anthropology became an offshoot practice for the later historians of the 17th
and 18th century. Herodotus.
"The History of Herodotus," Internet Classics Archive maintained
by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Translated by George
Rawlinson, 1994 - 2009, http://classics.mit.edu/Herodotus/history.html.
