“UNDERSTANDING HISTORY”

In partial fulfillment of the course

GE-PHILIPPINE HISTORY (Readings in Philippine History)

Submitted to: Mr. Syrel J. Aguilar

Instructor

Submitted by: Raul R. Gonzales

BSCRIM-II

Date Submitted:
Introduction

As the twenty first century has drawn to a close and we move into an expanding new era, the
complex meanings, intrinsic qualities, purposes, and value of history require serious attention.
For the diverse and rich social foundations of life, whether language, material culture, national
identity, or the organization of work and politics, are the palpable inheritance of a resilient
human past, and if humanity is to plot a realizable future, we need to understand through history
how it has achieved its present. The usefulness of history, therefore, is not only that it constantly
offers new ways of viewing and understanding the grip of the past: it is also a means of
generating the confidence about, and absorption of, critical knowledge, to produce a changing
consciousness. In bringing the potential of human action to the center of investigation, the
dynamics of historical understanding can contribute actively to the shaping of our future, always
emphasizing that it can be one of possibilities and alternatives. History, then, is a form of inquiry
which is never prescriptive or rigidly predictive about the impact of systems or of events.

There are obstacles that make it so we do not have a crystal clear, uninterrupted view of the
past. Firstly, we have to remember that everyone – not just us, but also people throughout
history – is shaped by their upbringing and the societies and times they live in, and we need to
be careful not to stick our own labels and values onto past periods. Secondly, our view of the
past is made up from the total of things that somehow happened to survive the test of time,
which is due to coincidences and decisions made by people before our time. So, we only get a
fragmentary, distorted view; it is like trying to complete a puzzle with a lot of oddly shaped and
missing pieces.

To fill in the context of the past we wish to study involves carefully questioning a whole bunch of
sources – not just written ones – and avoiding pitfalls as much as possible. The closely
connected field of archaeology offers a priceless helping hand in achieving this, so these
sources will be discussed here, too.
 WHAT IS HISTORY?

“The English word „history‟ is derived from the Greek word istoria meaning inquiry, research,
exploration or information. In a broad sense history is a systematic account of the origin and
development of humankind, a record of the unique events and movements in its life. It is an
attempt to recapture however imperfectly, that which is, in a sense, lost forever” (Sreedharan 1).

History is the study of the past – specifically the people, societies, events and problems of the
past – as well as our attempts to understand them. It is a pursuit common to all human societies
(Thompson, March 2020).

History provides us with a sense of identity. By understanding where we have come from, we
can better understand who we are. History provides a sense of context for our lives and our
existence. It helps us understand the way things are and how we might approach the future
(Llewellyn, March 2020).

History teaches us what it means to be human, highlighting the great achievements and
disastrous errors of the human race. History also teaches us through example, offering hints
about how we can better organize and manage our societies for the benefit of all (Thompson,
2020)

WHAT IS THE IMPORTANCE OF STUDYING HISTORY?

In the past history has been justified for reasons we would no longer accept. For instance, one
of the reasons history holds its place in current education is because earlier leaders believed
that a knowledge of certain historical facts helped distinguish the educated from the
uneducated; the person who could reel off the date of the Norman conquest of England (1066)
or the name of the person who came up with the theory of evolution at about the same time that
Darwin did (Wallace) was deemed superior—a better candidate for law school or even a
business promotion. Knowledge of historical facts has been used as a screening device in many
societies, from China to the United States, and the habit is still with us to some extent.
Unfortunately, this use can encourage mindless memorization—a real but not very appealing
aspect of the discipline. History should be studied because it is essential to individuals and to
society, and because it harbors beauty. There are many ways to discuss the real functions of
the subject—as there are many different historical talents and many different paths to historical
meaning. All definitions of history's utility, however, rely on two fundamental facts (Stearns
1998).

History Helps Us Understand People and Societies

In the first place, history offers a storehouse of information about how people and societies
behave. Understanding the operations of people and societies is difficult, though a number of
disciplines make the attempt. An exclusive reliance on current data would needlessly handicap
our efforts. How can we evaluate war if the nation is at peace—unless we use historical
materials? How can we understand genius, the influence of technological innovation, or the role
that beliefs play in shaping family life, if we don't use what we know about experiences in the
past? Some social scientists attempt to formulate laws or theories about human behavior. But
even these recourses depend on historical information, except for in limited, often artificial cases
in which experiments can be devised to determine how people act. Major aspects of a society's
operation, like mass elections, missionary activities, or military alliances, cannot be set up as
precise experiments. Consequently, history must serve, however imperfectly, as our laboratory,
and data from the past must serve as our most vital evidence in the unavoidable quest to figure
out why our complex species behaves as it does in societal settings. This, fundamentally, is why
we cannot stay away from history: it offers the only extensive evidential base for the
contemplation and analysis of how societies function, and people need to have some sense of
how societies function simply to run their own lives.

History Helps Us Understand Change and How the Society We Live in Came to Be

The second reason history is inescapable as a subject of serious study follows closely on the
first. The past causes the present, and so the future. Any time we try to know why something
happened—whether a shift in political party dominance in the American Congress, a major
change in the teenage suicide rate, or a war in the Balkans or the Middle East—we have to look
for factors that took shape earlier. Sometimes fairly recent history will suffice to explain a major
development, but often we need to look further back to identify the causes of change. Only
through studying history can we grasp how things change; only through history can we begin to
comprehend the factors that cause change; and only through history can we understand what
elements of an institution or a society persist despite change.

The Importance of History in Our Own Lives

These two fundamental reasons for studying history underlie more specific and quite diverse
uses of history in our own lives. History well told is beautiful. Many of the historians who most
appeal to the general reading public know the importance of dramatic and skillful writing—as
well as of accuracy. Biography and military history appeal in part because of the tales they
contain. History as art and entertainment serves a real purpose, on aesthetic grounds but also
on the level of human understanding. Stories well done are stories that reveal how people and
societies have actually functioned, and they prompt thoughts about the human experience in
other times and places. The same aesthetic and humanistic goals inspire people to immerse
themselves in efforts to reconstruct quite remote pasts, far removed from immediate, present-
day utility. Exploring what historians sometimes call the "pastness of the past"—the ways
people in distant ages constructed their lives—involves a sense of beauty and excitement, and
ultimately another perspective on human life and society.

History Contributes to Moral Understanding

History also provides a terrain for moral contemplation. Studying the stories of individuals and
situations in the past allows a student of history to test his or her own moral sense, to hone it
against some of the real complexities individuals have faced in difficult settings. People who
have weathered adversity not just in some work of fiction, but in real, historical circumstances
can provide inspiration. "History teaching by example" is one phrase that describes this use of a
study of the past—a study not only of certifiable heroes, the great men and women of history
who successfully worked through moral dilemmas, but also of more ordinary people who
provide lessons in courage, diligence, or constructive protest.

History Provides Identity

History also helps provide identity, and this is unquestionably one of the reasons all modern
nations encourage its teaching in some form. Historical data include evidence about how
families, groups, institutions and whole countries were formed and about how they have evolved
while retaining cohesion. For many Americans, studying the history of one's own family is the
most obvious use of history, for it provides facts about genealogy and (at a slightly more
complex level) a basis for understanding how the family has interacted with larger historical
change. Family identity is established and confirmed. Many institutions, businesses,
communities, and social units, such as ethnic groups in the United States, use history for similar
identity purposes. Merely defining the group in the present pales against the possibility of
forming an identity based on a rich past. And of course nations use identity history as well—and
sometimes abuse it. Histories that tell the national story, emphasizing distinctive features of the
national experience, are meant to drive home an understanding of national values and a
commitment to national loyalty.

Studying History Is Essential for Good Citizenship

A study of history is essential for good citizenship. This is the most common justification for the
place of history in school curricula. Sometimes advocates of citizenship history hope merely to
promote national identity and loyalty through a history spiced by vivid stories and lessons in
individual success and morality. But the importance of history for citizenship goes beyond this
narrow goal and can even challenge it at some points.

History that lays the foundation for genuine citizenship returns, in one sense, to the essential
uses of the study of the past. History provides data about the emergence of national institutions,
problems, and values—it's the only significant storehouse of such data available. It offers
evidence also about how nations have interacted with other societies, providing international
and comparative perspectives essential for responsible citizenship. Further, studying history
helps us understand how recent, current, and prospective changes that affect the lives of
citizens are emerging or may emerge and what causes are involved. More important, studying
history encourages habits of mind that are vital for responsible public behavior, whether as a
national or community leader, an informed voter, a petitioner, or a simple observer.

What Skills Does a Student of History Develop?

What does a well-trained student of history, schooled to work on past materials and on case
studies in social change, learn how to do? The list is manageable, but it contains several
overlapping categories.

The Ability to Assess Evidence.

The study of history builds experience in dealing with and assessing various kinds of evidence
—the sorts of evidence historians use in shaping the most accurate pictures of the past that
they can. Learning how to interpret the statements of past political leaders—one kind of
evidence—helps form the capacity to distinguish between the objective and the self-serving
among statements made by present-day political leaders. Learning how to combine different
kinds of evidence—public statements, private records, numerical data, visual materials—
develops the ability to make coherent arguments based on a variety of data. This skill can also
be applied to information encountered in everyday life.

The Ability to Assess Conflicting Interpretations.

Learning history means gaining some skill in sorting through diverse, often conflicting
interpretations. Understanding how societies work—the central goal of historical study—is
inherently imprecise, and the same certainly holds true for understanding what is going on in the
present day. Learning how to identify and evaluate conflicting interpretations is an essential
citizenship skill for which history, as an often-contested laboratory of human experience,
provides training. This is one area in which the full benefits of historical study sometimes clash
with the narrower uses of the past to construct identity. Experience in examining past situations
provides a constructively critical sense that can be applied to partisan claims about the glories
of national or group identity. The study of history in no sense undermines loyalty or commitment,
but it does teach the need for assessing arguments, and it provides opportunities to engage in
debate and achieve perspective.

Experience in Assessing Past Examples of Change. Experience in assessing past examples of

change is vital to understanding change in society today—it's an essential skill in what we are
regularly told is our "ever-changing world." Analysis of change means developing some capacity
for determining the magnitude and significance of change, for some changes are more
fundamental than others. Comparing particular changes to relevant examples from the past
helps students of history develop this capacity. The ability to identify the continuities that always
accompany even the most dramatic changes also comes from studying history, as does the skill
to determine probable causes of change. Learning history helps one figure out, for example, if
one main factor—such as a technological innovation or some deliberate new policy—accounts
for a change or whether, as is more commonly the case, a number of factors combine to
generate the actual change that occurs.

Historical study, in sum, is crucial to the promotion of that elusive creature, the well-informed
citizen. It provides basic factual information about the background of our political institutions and
about the values and problems that affect our social well-being. It also contributes to our
capacity to use evidence, assess interpretations, and analyze change and continuities. No one
can ever quite deal with the present as the historian deals with the past—we lack the
perspective for this feat; but we can move in this direction by applying historical habits of mind,
and we will function as better citizens in the process.

History Is Useful in the World of Work

History is useful for work. Its study helps create good businesspeople, professionals, and
political leaders. The number of explicit professional jobs for historians is considerable, but most
people who study history do not become professional historians. Professional historians teach
at various levels, work in museums and media centers, do historical research for businesses or
public agencies, or participate in the growing number of historical consultancies. These
categories are important—indeed vital—to keep the basic enterprise of history going, but most
people who study history use their training for broader professional purposes. Students of
history find their experience directly relevant to jobs in a variety of careers as well as to further
study in fields like law and public administration. Employers often deliberately seek students
with the kinds of capacities historical study promotes. The reasons are not hard to identify:
students of history acquire, by studying different phases of the past and different societies in the
past, a broad perspective that gives them the range and flexibility required in many work
situations. They develop research skills, the ability to find and evaluate sources of information,
and the means to identify and evaluate diverse interpretations. Work in history also improves
basic writing and speaking skills and is directly relevant to many of the analytical requirements
in the public and private sectors, where the capacity to identify, assess, and explain trends is
essential. Historical study is unquestionably an asset for a variety of work and professional
situations, even though it does not, for most students, lead as directly to a particular job slot, as
do some technical fields. But history particularly prepares students for the long haul in their
careers, its qualities helping adaptation and advancement beyond entry-level employment.
There is no denying that in our society many people who are drawn to historical study worry
about relevance. In our changing economy, there is concern about job futures in most fields.
Historical training is not, however, an indulgence; it applies directly to many careers and can
clearly help us in our working lives.

Why study history?

The answer is because we virtually must, to gain access to the laboratory of human experience.
When we study it reasonably well, and so acquire some usable habits of mind, as well as some
basic data about the forces that affect our own lives, we emerge with relevant skills and an
enhanced capacity for informed citizenship, critical thinking, and simple awareness. The uses of
history are varied. Studying history can help us develop some literally "salable" skills, but its
study must not be pinned down to the narrowest utilitarianism. Some history—that confined to
personal recollections about changes and continuities in the immediate environment—is
essential to function beyond childhood. Some history depends on personal taste, where one
finds beauty, the joy of discovery, or intellectual challenge. Between the inescapable minimum
and the pleasure of deep commitment comes the history that, through cumulative skill in
interpreting the unfolding human record, provides a real grasp of how the world works.

SOURCE OF HISTORY

UNRAVELLING THE SOURCES

“We only get a fragmentary, distorted view; it is like trying to complete a puzzle with a lot of
oddly shaped & missing pieces”.

Primary and Secondary Sources

Historical sources can be divided into two main categories: Primary and Secondary. Both are
vital to History Day students as they interpret their topics within the appropriate historical
context. Thorough examination of available primary and secondary sources allows students to
construct their own analysis related to the impact and significance of their topics in history.

PRIMARY SOURCES

Primary sources contain “firsthand” knowledge of events and people and are essential to a good
research project. Think of a primary source as an eyewitness account created by a participant in
(or contemporary of) an event in history. Letters, diaries, speeches, interviews, periodical
literature and newspapers from the time are all examples of primary sources. In addition, books
written by the person whom one is studying or books written by people who took part in the
event that one is studying may also be primary sources. Primary sources allow students the
opportunity to analyze and interpret what they read, see, or hear.

However cool actual sources from times gone by may be, we cannot simply assume that
everything they tell us (or everything we think they tell us) is true, or that we are automatically
able to interpret their contents and context correctly. They were made by people, from within
their own contexts. Keeping a critical eye and asking questions is thus the way to go, and it is a
good idea to cross-examine different sources on the same topic to see whether any kind of
consensus rolls out (Retrieved 1, 2014).

Some general questions you should ask of any type of source are:

 What type of source is it?

 What does its form tell us?
 Is it a neatly engraved inscription, an undecorated, heavily used bit of earthenware, or a
roughly scribbled letter on cheap paper?
 Who created the source?
 How did they gather the necessary information?
 Were they an eyewitness, or did they rely on researching other sources or on the stories
of people who had witnessed the event?
 Could they be biased? With which goal was the source created?
 Did the creator want to tell a truthful story or, for instance, influence others through
propaganda?
 How reliable does that make it?
 What is the context in which the source was created?
To understand a source it helps to know something about the society and immediate context in
which it was made. A Christian source written while Christianity was still a persecuted religion
differs from one after Christianity was made the official religion. Compare it with other sources
from the same period/that concern the same subject to help you assess how reliable the source
may be and help you interpret it’s content.

What is the content of the source and how do we interpret it? What does it tell us and what does
it not tell us? What are its limitations? What sorts of questions could this source answer?

Different sources bring different benefits and pitfalls with them, though; these will be discussed
in more detail below.

Written sources

Some examples of primary written sources are contemporary letters, eyewitness accounts,
official documents, political declarations and decrees, administrative texts, and histories and
biographies written in the period that is to be studied.

The unmatched level of detail presented by written sources in general is an obvious goldmine to
the greedy historian. Moreover, reading a written source tends to tell you something about the
author and the context in which they are writing just as well as the topic they concern
themselves with.

The detail in some written sources can lead to unexpected discoveries, such as the astonishing
fact that the Phoenicians already sailed around Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) in open
boats as early as 600 BCE. Herodotus, the ‘father of history’, writes in his Histories – a work
recounting the events of the Greco-Persian Wars (499-479 BCE) – that

“On their return, they declared - I for my part do not believe them, but perhaps others may - that
in sailing round Libya [Africa] they had the sun upon their right hand. In this way was the extent
of Libya first discovered. (Hdt. IV. 42).”

South of the equator, the sun would indeed have been on the sailors' right-hand side while
sailing westward around the Cape – a detail the sailors could not have known if they had not
actually witnessed it, so it appears to be true.

Pitfalls – transmission; reliability, bias & intentions; contemporaneity

The first hurdle with written sources is their transmission; materials such as papyrus,
parchment, and paper do not have infinite lifespans, so the sources we have in front of us right
now have usually been copied, reviewed, edited, even translated, at some point in time, and
may include mistakes or deliberate changes. This puts a thin barrier between us and the original
text.

Secondly, authors may not be reliable, may have been biased, or may have had certain
intentions that jeopardise the source's objectivity. Forgery is unfortunately also not entirely
outside the realm of possibilities, as the Donatio Constantini (the Donation of Constantine)
makes painfully clear. Asking the following questions can help canvass these issues:

Who created the source and what was his or her background?

People are undeniably connected with their backgrounds – upbringing, family, the times they
lived in, and so forth, and we have to examine the source from within this framework.

What do we know of the context in which the source was created?

The prevailing values, schools of thought, religion, the political situation, possible censure, as
well as whether the source was perhaps commissioned by someone or not, all have an impact
on the contents of a source. Comparing a source to other (types of) sources from the same
period or concerning the same topic can help determine its reliability and help you form a picture
of what may have actually happened.

Did the creator have a specific goal or a specific audience?

A personal letter with the goal of declaring the author’s love to his recipient yields a different
kind of information than a piece of propaganda written in order to strengthen a ruler’s position.
Of course, the goal may not be quite as easy to spot as that.

Thirdly, it is important to check whether the author was actually around for the events they are
writing about. Questions to ask are:

 Was the author a contemporary and/or an eyewitness?

 If no: where did they get their information and how reliable was that information? It could
have come from documents, eyewitnesses, or other sources available to them.
 If yes: did they personally witness the event they are describing? How accurate is their
memory? Being alive at the same time as Empress Wu from Song China, for instance,
does not automatically mean you were in a position to see which clothes she wore on a
specific Monday morning.

Epigraphy
Epigraphy refers to the study of inscriptions engraved upon various surfaces such as stone,
metal, wood, clay tablets, or even wax, which may vary hugely in length from mere abbreviated
words and administrative tablets to depicting entire official decrees.

Benefits – typically durable; visible

Usually, inscriptions tend to be pretty durable because of the nature of the materials that were
used, although whether or not the inscription has been exposed to the elements makes a bit of
a difference. They were often intended to be publically visible, catching the eye like a big neon
sign, their content shared with as many people as possible.

Pitfalls – audience; creators; intentions

This often public nature does not mean inscriptions should just be mindlessly accepted to reflect
the exact truth, though; they had authors or commissioners who had certain purposes.
Sometimes inscriptions even turn out to be forged, or have been moved and are no longer in
their original locations. Things to keep in mind are:

 Who created or commissioned the inscription?

Is this, for instance, a lonely mother who had an elaborate, glorifying, and soppy inscription
engraved on the headstone of her young son’s grave, for passers-by to see, or is it a ruler’s
proclamation which subtly connects himself with a divine power?

 What is the goal of the inscription?

Perhaps it was created to inform, to record, to glorify, or to influence public opinion.

 Can it be dated (by things like the context, monument, or the language), and does
the date match the content of the inscription?

Settlements, buildings, & monuments

Benefits – made to last; indicate structure of societies

The daily lives of people become visible through the remains of their houses and the buildings
they made use of, such as courts of law, bakeries, or schools. Monuments, also not unusually
flashing inscriptions at its audience, can reveal the messages their normally powerful creators
cried out to the world through their architecture and imagery. As such, they can be used to
reconstruct the structure of societies.

Pitfalls – not always well-preserved; inferring meaning; propaganda of course, the actual
durability varies immensely, and sometimes not much more than the groundwork’s remain. We
must thus ask:

How do we accurately reconstruct the remains (physically or on paper)?

Archaeologists have become quite adept at 'reading' the pieces that are left; comparing the
remains with others that may be more fully preserved or with primary sources describing the
structure; and rebuilding what is essentially a hugely complex 3D puzzle, either on paper or by
actually restoring the remains in question. Bits and pieces may have been carted off, destroyed,
moved around, fallen over, and so forth, so it is important to keep in mind that the puzzle
process may require some guesswork and may result in mistakes being made.

What is the function of the structure? How do we interpret what it may tell us about a
culture?

The site of Palenque – an important Maya city situated in present-day Mexico – for instance, is
home to a group of temples that fit within a context of both propaganda and symbolism. The
Temples of the Cross, Foliated Cross, and Sun, dedicated in 692 CE, were commissioned by
king Kan Balam. Their sculptures and reliefs illustrate the king’s connection with the gods: he is
depicted as a guardian of fertility, maize, and rain.

Kan Balam moreover legitimised his rule by depicting his genealogy as well as a scene in which
he receives his power from his ancestors. More practically, these temples were important
ceremonial centres too. At this site, the political is thus visibly linked with the ritual context –
something that fits well within the broader Mayan cultural context – and, as a source, it must be
interpreted within this framework.

Artifacts

Benefits – daily lives; use; society & culture

Pitfalls – inferring meaning; inferring clues about society

Artifacts are man-made things of archaeological interest, often from a cultural context.
Examples are pottery, utensils, tools and jewelry, which can alert us to daily lives, style and
culture; art – including statues – which can be both public and private and reflects the society in
some way; and coins, which are more political - often standardized, they proclaim a visible
message that tends to serve as propaganda to bolster a ruler’s image. We should ask of each
artifact:

What was its use or purpose? What might it tell us about the society’s structure and
culture?

An example lies within the 15th- and 16th-century CE Korean Buncheong wares – practically
used ceramics that were blue-green with a white slip, typically decorated with combinations of
geometric and natural shapes such as peonies, birds and fish, enhanced with dots. They are
interesting not just because of their homely context and the light they shed on daily lives but
also because they were produced by potteries that were not controlled by the state – in contrast
to other types of Korean pottery. This means that Buncheong wares show a lot of regional
flavour and out-of-the-box variation, as well as showing the preferences of the people who
ordered the wares. This helps us colour in the lives and homes of ordinary Koreans living at that
time.

Bones

Benefits – morphology; health & related clues; filling in blanks; genetic evidence
Studying bones yields clues regarding health, gender, age, size, diet, etc. Retrieval of ancient
DNA – though not exactly a walk in the park – is also possible. The context in which bones are
found as well as the point in time they came from help to fill information regarding their
societies. This is already valuable in support of historical sources, as, for instance, mass graves
of victims of the black death support the image created by the written record, but for the
prehistoric side of things, bones are truly indispensable in helping us fill in the blanks.

For places such as Australia, we have no written sources until westerners came brutally barging
in in 1788 CE. Here, bones can alert us to the prehistoric human presence in specific areas. For
instance, through tracing bones found at sites such as Malakunanja 2 in Australia’s Northern
Territory, dated to around 53,000 years old, and the famous Lake Mungo burials in southern
Australia dated to around 41,000 years old, we can fill in Australia’s initial colonisation.

Pitfalls – dating; interpretation context

Dating bones is not always a straightforward matter, though. Things to keep in mind are:

 Is the dating scientifically and/or archaeologically accurate?

 Could there be contamination, could sediments have shifted or could the bones have
been moved?
 How should the context in which the bones were found be interpreted? What does the
context tell you about the bones themselves?

SECONDARY SOURCES

In contrast, a secondary source is something that was not created first-hand by someone who
participated in the historical era. Secondary sources are usually created by historians based on
the historian's interpretation of primary sources. Since they are usually created long after the
event occurred, secondary sources are influenced by the passing of time, offering a different
vantage point than someone who participated in the event or directly influenced the issue.

Secondary sources help students place their topics—and their primary source research—in
historical context. Similar to primary sources, secondary sources vary in form and may include
articles, books, and interviews with experts, for example. Secondary sources remove the
student from the interpretation of history while presenting the author’s personal analysis and
opinions.
Using a variety of secondary sources provides students with multiple perspectives, exposing
them to a variety of opinions and interpretations.

However, this would be a tad naïve; the people writing the secondary material are just as bound
to their own contexts as the ancients they are studying. Again, then, we must be wary of
possible bias and goals, as well as of the accuracy – it is all too easy to draw conclusions that
support your hypothesis. Even if a secondary source may appear reliable in that it shows you
which sources they have used and seems to draw logical conclusions from them, it is still
possible that the author has hand-picked exactly those sources that support their story, rather
than presenting the full picture (which may contradict or add more nuance to their story). To
prevent being misled, it is important to always study more than one secondary source. Compare
different books and articles on the subject you are researching, and, after assessing each
source's reliability, strengths and weaknesses, try to get as complete a view as possible of the
topic.

When was the source published?

Times change. A textbook written in the 1960s CE may not have had access to all the
information we have right now and may be coloured by the time’s prevailing ideas about how to
approach the study of history.

What is the scope of the source?

Social histories paint a different picture than military ones, so be sure to choose sources that
correspond with the questions you yourself want to answer.

Which sources has the author used and how critical has he or she been?

It is important the author has documented his or her use of sources, so you can examine them
yourself if need be. Keep an eye out for selective use of sources; an author should not simply
choose the sources that fit their hypothesis but should take the full range of primary information
into account.

Source Classification

Sometimes it is difficult to determine whether a source is primary or secondary—even historians

sometimes disagree and there is not always one right answer. Students should use
bibliographic annotations to explain why a particular source is categorized as primary or
secondary if it is likely to be controversial.

What happens when a source includes both primary and secondary information? In addition to
an author’s interpretation of history, secondary sources may contain primary information such
as photographs, speech transcripts, or images of documents. Students may choose to use
secondary sources as “road maps” to museums, libraries, or archives to locate the same
primary sources that the author used. Or, they may opt to classify a book that contains
important original photographs and documents as primary rather than secondary if they used
the source to gain access to the primary sources rather than focusing on the author’s
interpretive content. In this case, students should explain their source classification in their
annotation.

WHAT ARE SOME UNHISTORICAL DATA IN PHILIPPINE HISTORY

Part of unhistorical data

The first date that usually comes to mind when we are asked about the Philippines of very long
ago is March 16, 1521. According to our memorization-oriented Social Studies teachers and a
popular Cebuano singer-comedian, it was on that date that "Magellan discovered the
Philippines”. This was later declared to be wrong, not only in the profound way due to the point-
of-view question of the Philippines not needing to be discovered by any floundering explorer
fleet, but also wrong in the empirical sense: Pigafetta failed to register their fleet's passage
across what we now know as the International Dateline before reaching our shores. Had not the
chronicler committed this error of omission, or had this error been realized much earlier, we
would have been told to memorize March 17 as the date of that "discovery>"Counting the years
from March 17, 1521, we come up with a total of 472 years, or roughly half a millennium. We
have also come to know about a period called pre-Spanish era, with its barangays and datus,
and the maharlikas and the alipin, etcetera, etcetera. But we have no idea how long that period
really was. The earliest record we have traced so far is an entry not exactly in Philippine annals
but in Chinese history

Specifically, according to scholar Austin Craig, there is an entry on Chinese interaction with our
ancestors in our archipelago, in the written accounts of the Chou Dynasty (722 BC) and also in
the annals of the Han Dynasty (206 BC).From the earlier one of the two dates, we can compute
by simple arithmetic that we have had no less than 2,715 years being spanned by all presently-
known historical records of our people, or roughly three centuries. The half-millennium that has
passed since we were "discovered" and conquered by foreign powers (Spanish, American,
Japanese) is, therefore, roughly only one-sixth of the entire period covered by the annals. If we
are to imagine the period of our written records to cover 12 hours, it appears that we had
already ten hours of recorded life before the only two hours since we were "discovered" by
Magellan. This realization should flow into another: we know next to nothing about the lives of
our fore parents in those two millennia and a half.

Our ignorance about our past is caused at least partly by the fact that the Spanish
conquistadores deliberately destroyed our culture held by our fore parents at the time of the
conquest. Physical manifestations of this culture were regarded as voodoo and the "work of the
devil" and forcibly destroyed as a requisite to our subjugation by the Sword and the Cross. The
purveyors of the spoken historical records, our rich oral traditions, were persecuted, even killed,
by the spanish friar and soldier. Up to this time, we have far from recovered from the loss of our
indigenous historical "libraries. “For example, it is so very gradually coming back to us that our
ancestors were favorite trading partners of our fellow Asians, including Arabs, because of our
well-known honesty and zeal as a people. Our fore parents' honesty was so well known far and
wide that the barter system operated upon the "honor system" where our trading partners would
demand neither receipts nor detailed accounting of the transactions because they trusted the
Filipino (although we were not called by that name then).Present-day Filipinos may find it
difficult to reconcile this honorable image of our ancestors with the not-so-comfortable self-
image we are forming of ourselves

Not only were we well-known to be honest, we or rather our ancestors here, were very peaceful
and orderly. The people's rights were respected along the lines of ancient tribal or communal
laws. Villagers communicated in general assemblies at the village square or in chats around
their own neighborhoods. Tradition was a powerful force that commanded the conduct of
behavior of the community and also of those vested with public authority. For sudden
necessities for community action, like the need to defend the village or to prepare for storms or
to rescue some community members from harm or peril, instant mobilization was affected by the
long and loud hooting sound of the tambuli, the bugle carved out of carabao horn. Elements of
Democracy There were, in fact, elements of democracy, or proto-democracy, to be enjoyed by
the villagers. Nationalist Renato Constantino says in The Philippines: A Past Revisited:" The
village chief was the administrative leader of the community; he was not an absolute ruler. First,
the scope of his authority was limited by a traditional body of customs and procedures. Second,
although his position had become hereditary, it was originally attained by the exhibition of
greater prowess and valor, traits useful to the community's survival ... Since the original basis
for leadership was his superior personal attributes, he could be replaced if, for some reason
weakened. This was a possibility especially in larger communities where there were several
kinship groups, each with its own chief."For his part, Dr. Jaime Veneracion, chairman of the
University of the Philippines Department of History, says we should dispel the wide
misunderstanding of the word "maharlika" which does not connote nobilityor royalty. The word
means vassal, Veneracion says, adding that many young Filipinos of today tend to degrade the
meaning of the word "timawa" to mean idle, when the word actually refers to "free man."We still
have to study a lot about the past, especially about the thousands upon thousands of years that
our ancestors lived in peace and harmony among themselves and with their neighbors. we
actually need the knowledge to keep us from amplifying the insults heaped upon our race.
222We had, at the arrival of the Spaniards an indigenous sense of history, but scarce regard for
thepast as history. Unlike the French histoire (which derives from the Greek word for “inquiry”
whose Indo-European root, wid, had given Gothic witan(German wissen, English wit) or
“knowledge” and Sanskrit Veda or “knowledge par excellence, mystical knowledge”); or unlike
even the German Geschichte (fromgeschehen “to happen,” as in a story of history, which are
the meanings of the substantive), our word for “history” in Tagalog does not refer to knowledge,
to the search for information or to what happened in the past as such. Kasaysayan comes from
saysay which means both “to relate in detail, to explain,” and “value, worth, significance.” In one
sense, therefore, kasaysayan is “story” (like German Geschichteor anotherTagalog term,
salaysay, which is probably simply an extended form ofsaysay). But kasaysayan is also
“explanation,” “significance,” or “relevance” (may saysay “significant, relevant;” walang saysay
or walang kasaysayan, meaning “irrelevant; senseless”). What was then important to us was
the story and its significance, in so far as this could be explained and made relevant to a
particular group. Now, apart from the lack of reference to inquiry (the methodological aspect
which, up to the end of the Spanish regime, washardly heeded), that is exactly what history is all
about, knowledge being actually meaning rendered understandable and relevant to a group of
people. From their kasaysayan, however, our ancestors derived a different sense of history.
For our ancestors had a sense of the eternal recurrence of natural and human phenomena: day
and night, the seasons, seed and plant, the cycle of life and death, the passing

Not only were we well-known to be honest, we or rather our ancestors here, were very peaceful
and orderly. The people's rights were respected along the lines of ancient tribal or communal
laws. Villagers communicated in general assemblies at the village square or in chats around
their own neighborhoods.Tradition was a powerful force that commanded the conduct of
behavior of the community and also of those vested with public authority.For sudden necessities
for community action, like the need to defend the village or to prepare for storms or to rescue
some community members from harm or peril, instant mobilization was affected by the long and
loud hooting sound of the tambuli, the bugle carved out of carabao horn.Elements of
DemocracyThere were, in fact, elements of democracy, or proto-democracy, to be enjoyed by
the villagers.Nationalist Renato Constantino says in The Philippines: A Past Revisited:"The
village chief was the administrative leader of the community; he was not an absolute ruler. First,
the scope of his authority was limited by a traditional body of customs and procedures. Second,
although his position had become hereditary, it was originally attained by the exhibition of
greater prowess and valor, traits useful to the community's survival ... Since the original basis
for leadership was his superior personal attributes, he could be replaced if, for some reason
weakened. This was a possibility especially in larger communities where there were several
kinship groups, each with its own chief." For his part, Dr. Jaime Veneracion, chairman of the
University of the Philippines Department of History, says we should dispel the wide
misunderstanding of the word "maharlika" which does not connote nobilityor royalty. The word
means vassal, Veneration says, adding that many young Filipinos of today tend to degrade the
meaning of the word "timawa" to mean idle, when the word actually refers to "free man." We still
have to study a lot about the past, especially about the thousands upon thousands of years that
our ancestors lived in peace and harmony among themselves and with their neighbors. we
actually need the knowledge to keep us from amplifying the insults heaped upon our race.
222We had, at the arrival of the Spaniards an indigenous sense of history, but scarce regard for
thepast as history. Unlike the French histoire (which derives from the Greek word for “inquiry”
whose Indo-European root, wid, had given Gothic witan(German wissen, English wit) or
“knowledge” and Sanskrit Veda or “knowledge par excellence, mystical knowledge”); or unlike
even the German Geschichte (from geschehen “to happen,” as in a story of history, which are
the meanings of the substantive), our word for “history” in Tagalog does not refer to knowledge,
to the search for information or to what happened in the past as such. Kasaysayan comes from
saysay which means both “to relate in detail, to explain,” and “value, worth, significance.” In one
sense, therefore, kasaysayan is “story” (like German Geschichteor anotherTagalog term,
salaysay, which is probably simply an extended form of saysay). But kasaysayan is also
“explanation,” “significance,” or “relevance” (may saysay “significant, relevant;” walang saysay
or walang kasaysayan, meaning “irrelevant; senseless”). What was then important to us was
the story and its significance, in so far as this could be explained and made relevant to a
particular group. Now, apart from the lack of reference to inquiry (the methodological aspect
which, up to the end of the Spanish regime, washardly heeded), that is exactly what history is all
about, knowledge being actually meaning rendered understandable and relevant to a group of
people. From their kasaysayan, however, our ancestors derived a different sense of history.
For our ancestors had a sense of the eternal recurrence of natural and human phenomena: day
and night, the seasons, seed and plant, the cycle of life and death, the passing

Observation

Self Evaluation. Minimum of 300 words.

Conclusion

Based on Observation. Minimum of 100 words.

Recommendation

Based on Conclusion. Minimum of 100 words

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Evaluating a sourceAccessed 13 Apr 2017.

How to analyze a primary sourceAccessed 13 Apr 2017.

Bowler, J.M. e.a. "New ages for human occupation and climatic change at Lake Mungo,
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Henke, W. and Tattersall, I. (eds.). Handbook of Paleoanthropology Vol. III. Springer, 2015.

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Pitcher, L. Writing Ancient History. I.B.Tauris, 2010.

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https://vdocuments.mx/part-of-unhistorical-data-discussion.html

Bases of study