Examples of PRIMARY SOURCES from history

For everyone who wants study history There is an essential value that are the sources, being through them that historians can discover history, study it and carry out projects on them. There are different kinds of sources, but the most difficult to achieve are the primaries, being the reason why in this lesson of a TEACHER we are going to talk about the examples of primary sources.

Before defining the primary sources we must talk about the historical sources In general, these being the raw material of the story, that is, where the information is obtained necessary to study this social science and without which it would be impossible to carry out historical analysis and studies.

The information of the sources can be obtained in many possible ways, this being the reason why the forms of the sources are very diverse, being able to be both written, oral, physical or even electronic, since the arrival of new technologies has brought with it an enormous amount of progress in historical sources.

History is one of the most special sciences, since it must seek the most reliable information possible, so it must be fully verified, and that is the reason why the sources are so relevant.

We must bear in mind that not all sources are the same, existing until three different types depending on the origin of these. The kinds of historical sources are as follows:

• Primary: The sources that count facts in a contemporary way, being sources made at the time.
• High schools: Sources that have been created from the events narrated in the primary sources.
• Tertiary: A new type of source emerged in recent years, being guides that serve to access secondary sources.

To continue with this lesson on the primary source examples, we need to explain what are these types of sources, in order to better understand the examples that we are going to use in a later.

The primary sources are those that narrate the events that happen in contemporary times to the narrator. That is, those that we could call first-hand because they have been published at the same time as the events they speak of or very shortly after these events.

In a science that seeks the most certain possible facts, the primary sources are one of the most respected since not having been modified by any person makes it objective reflexes of the stages of history, without the bias that other authors could add as happens in secondary sources.

Although they are more reliable sources than secondary ones, it should be taken into account that authors can also be subjectiveSince an interview on the Civil War in which the interviewee participates on one side is not the same as another in which the one who speaks is from the opposite side.

The principal problem one of the primary sources is that in the cases of ancient or medieval history many of them are in trouble, either because of their disappearance or because the passage of time has made them to be in a critical state of preservation, making their maintenance more and more complicated. That is why in recent years it has opted for restoration and conservation from these sources, although on many occasions it has been impossible to fix the situation. On the other hand, there is also the problem that many historians do not look favorably on the restoration, since they consider that this may end the original value of the pieces.

To conclude the lesson we must talk about the main examples of primary sources, explaining each of the classes and analyzing different concrete examples of each of them so that the explanation is simpler and easier to understand. Some of the best examples are as follows:

• Books: Books are a primary source when they are written in a contemporary time to the information they carry. A book that would be a primary source is, for example, an electoral census, or the original manuscript of "The Prince" by Machiavelli, while a secondary source would be a book analyzing the census data or an analysis of the book of Machiavelli.
• Text: Primary sources can also be another kind of written text that are not books specifically, being examples the letters or the manuscripts. Examples of these could be the letter from Cisneros before he died or the memoirs of Julio Cesar.
• Human remains: Remains of human deposits or rest of buildings created by human beings, being sources that are more focused on the so-called anthropology, but which also serve to make hypotheses about story. Examples would be the sites of cave paintings or large monuments such as the Egyptian pyramids.
• Oral: In this section we can include both the recordings of interviews of people who tell of the events suffered and for example the recordings of rallies of political leaders such Hitler or Stalin.
• Audiovisual: The appearance of new technologies has brought with them this type of primary sources, being all those that through videos or photos they show contemporary events. An example would be the photos taken during the great wars in which photography already existed. Another example of this kind of source would be the films of the time, such as the films made by the Nazis in the Second World War