For example I was watching a documentary about Japanese warlords and it said that one of them died from liver cancer. How could they know that?
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Paleopathology, which is the study of disease in ancient populations, is a huge multi-discipline field. It takes aspects of, human osteology, social anthropology, epidemiology, etc, and more.
The short of it is that diseases leave plenty of traces before it kills someone. Social traces in the way they may have acted (lead poisoning in ancient Greek populations being a good example), changes to bones and internal organs (which could then effect bone growth), any signs of traumatic injury, and on and on. Paleopathologists use many methods to figure out likely cause of death.
I don’t know the specific warlord youre talking about, and am unsure if liver cancer leaves a mark on bones, but I would think that in the above case there was some writing/patient history that would have went along with the diagnosis
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