HIST 21 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Sanjay Subrahmanyan, Major Religious Groups, Zoroaster
Document Summary
History is an account of the past. We rely on evidence to construct accounts of the past. We must question the reliability of each piece of evidence (reasonable skepticism) Any single piece of evidence is insu cient to build a plausible account. Writing did not exist in much of the world and even in areas where writing did exist, the general population did not know how to write. Source criticisms are necessary for two reasons: Things are not dated, so we need to nd a sense of the time period and where it comes from. Unknown how the roman empire began bc lack of records, so they fall back on stories (two young brothers raised by she-wolf - remus and romulus) Romans wrote frequently in latin, sometimes in greek. Emperor of constantine, roman prince who struggled to gain power decided that he would abandon polytheism and decided to accept christianity (monotheistic)
