Almost the entire history of mankind can be studied thanks to various historical sources that have come down to us. The surviving ruins of ancient majestic architectural structures, the painted walls of the caves, various letters and parchments - all this is the material by which we can study the history of human development even deeper. All these ancient monuments represent various types of historical sources, from which history is studied. Due to the extreme diversity of historical materials, they were logically divided and classified.
The following types of historical
sources are distinguished
: material, oral, ethnographic, linguistic, written. The latest look is digital.
Real types of historical sources are studied mainly by archeology. The main material of study is tools, various weapons, coins, household utensils, clothing, and structures.
Oral - these include legends, traditions, legends, tales. All that is transmitted by peoples from generation to generation.
Ethnographic sources include sources that give an idea of the life of nationalities, their origin, development.
Linguistic sources allow us to understand and trace the processes and changes that have taken place in the languages of the peoples of the world, their transformations, and mergers. Like the previous version, they are focused on a specific territory.
Written sources on history are studied by such industry disciplines as source study, paleography, epigraphy, diplomacy, heraldry, sphragistics and others.
Ancient written sources are usually divided into several types:
1. Historical annals and chronicles - usually they describe the main events in the life of a people or state.
2. Diplomas and documents - various business papers.
3. Sources of legislation - this includes various laws, decrees of heads of state, changes in laws.
4. Diplomatic documents - signatures and agreements between states, foreign policy statements, conventions, notes and so on.
5. Memoirs, autobiographies, diaries, letters, according to which you can study the personal subjective perception of a contemporary of a particular era.
6. Art and graphic. They reflect the era in specific artistic images captured in monuments of architecture, as well as painting, applied art or sculpture.
There are also other types of historical sources. One of the most interesting is their division into intentional and unintentional. Intentional includes everything that was created and written with the expectation that the materials will be studied in the future by descendants. The advantages are the chronologization of events in such sources. Everything that was not intended to be studied in the future refers to unintentional. This type includes
business correspondence.Thus, the classification of historical sources makes it possible to more fruitfully and constructively begin to study history based on materials from the past.