How Do We Get History?
How can a person living today write the story of a person or event of an earlier time? The answer is: by learning what men did or said at that time.
Articles were left behind men who could not write anything themselves. Weapons and tools, tablets, statues, and other products of their labor have been preserved through the centuries, and give us some idea of the way they lived and worked. Such things we may call material remains or relics. In the picture on page 10 you see how they are sometimes discovered. From very ancient times, too, traditions have come down to us--stories passed on by word of mouth from father to son, from minstrel to listener, from priest to disciple, fro one generation to another.
When we reach a stage where people can read and write, many more records are left than before. From such people we may get letters, diaries, copies of laws or other legal records, the messages of presidents and kings, and now, photographs, all of which help us to visualize the life of past days. All these we call written records. To some extent already, and much more in the future, we may have people's actual voices recorded by photograph records and talking films.(216 words)
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