For example when wars happened hundreds of years ago , how do we know certain events happened when written documents could have been destroyed or people keeping records could have been killed.
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More documents survive than you’d expect. People kept detailed records for many reasons.
Even hundreds of years ago, governments and bankers and other organizations had to keep track of things. Not to mention regular people keeping journals and etc.
Historians spend their entire careers piecing together what occurred based on documents and other physical evidence.
There’s often still disagreement about exactly why or how something occurred, and there are different schools of historical thought with different interpretations and focuses.
And of course there are people who try to rewrite history for their own benefit.
And often we don’t always know everything. There are big questions. For example, how exactly ancient battles were fought is often a bit unclear.
But the simple answer is: people left records and other evidence, and we have professionals who devote their careers to figuring it all out.
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