Methodologies essays

Methodologies essays In order to fully understand and synthesize the current state of any culture, one must first seek to understand their past. It is the central tenet of history. We must gain an intellectual grasp of what has already been in order to understand what is and what is to come. However, this is not easy (or even possible) in all situations. The African continent before the 1500s, for instance, has few recorded documents. Therefore, historians must find other ways to understand the lives and values of the various regions of Africa before that time in order to fully understand the roots of Africa and its people as a whole. And while this is certainly no easy task, there are indeed various ways of doing so. To get a cross section of some of these methods, it may be beneficial to look at three in particular; oral tradition, secondary sources, and physical geology. Using these three methodologies as our guideline, we can further understand how history is gathered and garnered not only w ithout the help of written documents in early Africa, but throughout the world. Oral tradition is, at first glance, perhaps the methodology of the three that has the least scientific backing. After all, oral tradition is essential campfire stories that have been passed down from generation to generation, potentially getting organically changed and distorted with each retelling. However, as one may find, oral tradition is just as important to some societies as written works are to others. Everything vital to the proper workings of a society is transmitted by means of written documents in societies with writing and by means of tradition in oral societies. Far from being merely entertainment or folklore, tradition is vested with the essential mission of social reproduction. So we see that a cultures oral tradition may serve for it as a bridge from generation to generation, and therefore we, as historians, may ...