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1. Historical knowledge and historical sources

History implies two levels of perception: in a wide sense, history as individual

memory, family life, letters, personal documents, or in a strength one, history as a science, an

institutionalized strong speech, based on indirect sources, like historical documents, official

texts, material proofs of the events.

Historical knowledge is a special one, from the effects to the causation. It starts from

events, trying to find causes, motivations, the manifestation rules. While the exact sciences

use an explicative knowledge pattern, it seems history knowledge is based on a more

comprehensive pattern. That means that historian has a special relationship with people of the

 past, both on intellectual and sensitive levels.

History defines itself through the study of its sources (written or unwritten ones).

These are also studied by the so called „auxiliary sciences of history”. There are major and

minor auxiliary sciences. Some of the major auxiliary sciences are geography, linguistics,

ethnography, sociology. The minor auxiliary sciences (paleography, epigraphy, chronology,

numismatics, heraldry, genealogy) facilitates to gather and to interpret historical sources.

(Adina Berciu- Draghicescu, 2002.)

So, historical sources are very different and interpreting them implies specific methods. To

exemplify we enumerate: archeological sources like artifacts (ceramics, religious objects,

finery, art objects), human habitat structures (houses, hearths, stoves), religious buildings

(sanctuaries, temples), funeral buildings (necropolis, tumulus), genealogy sources (written

registrations of births, deaths, marriages), numismatic sources (coins), archive sources

(official documents, diaries, memoirs).

Modern and contemporary history developed some new research areas. Especially after The

Second World War, historical sources became extremely diverse. At traditional private or 

official document collections they added video and audio registrations, newspapers and

magazines, documentaries, memoirs, diaries, pictures and oral sources, television or even the

internet. (Robert Stradling, 2001, p. 207; Zoe Petre, 2002, p. 203-210.) As historians

underline, the diversity of historical sources legitimate only the interpretations based on a real

historiographic experience. (Alexandru Zub, 2006, p. 43).

Speaking about sources, historians classify them into primary and secondary ones. A

 primary source is original material that has not been interpreted by another person. Examples

of primary sources are government documents, letters, memoirs, original research, and

editorials. A secondary source is made up of information collected from numerous primary

sources that is interpreted by the collector. Examples of secondary sources include histories

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(such as a history of the Constitution), magazine articles, critical analyses. A secondary

source may offer information that is more analytical and comprehensive than that found in a

 primary source.

In practice the difference between primary and secondary sources depends upon how

close the writer was to the events described, whether or not the account was produced at the

time or later and the motives of the writer.

These considerations determine historical research difficulty and much more specificity

in using historical sources interpretation in the classroom to develop critical thinking.