How can hundreds and even thousands of years of history, which includes entire civilizations, discoveries and characters, so confidently be explained? Not all of it could have happened the way it’s being taught to modern society, right?
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Keep in mind that the further back we go, the less detail we *tend* to know and that there are often all kinds of gaps in our knowledge.
– Many cultures started keeping written records fairly early on. Although these aren’t always 100% accurate, historians can look at how different records compare to each other and try to figure out what is true. Even before there were written records, pretty much every culture had an oral tradition of some sort that got passed on (and sometimes written down eventually).
– Even if there is no written record (or there are contradictory records), there is physical evidence that can be used to help figure it out. If you find a lot of skeletons in one area that are all from the same time and most show signs of injuries, maybe there was a battle nearby. A trained archaeologist can look at a skeleton and often tell the person’s age and sex – sometimes they can also recognize ethnic groups, diet, and what types of physical work they did when they were alive.
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