I started questioning this today. For example today, with the implementation of the cell phone we can get photo and video evidence of what happens. But, with all the media sometimes pushing agendas actual facts could seem different from what they really are. you could as a Ukrainian and a Russian about crimea and both would have different opinions. Lets imagine that the an alien comes to earth and ask a Chinese about what happened in the Sino-Japanese war and he tells them his point of view and the alien then rights it off as fact. even today reading articles i can read for example on the death count of a conflict
Casualties of the Great Human Pets war:
| kingdom of cats | kingdom of dogs |
|---|---|
| 1100 casualties (cat sources) | 2100 casualties (cat sources) |
| 1500 casualties (dog sources) | 1120 casualties (dog sources) |
Im genuinely curious if historians have a way to know if for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Saule this happened and how genuinely believable are the sources
The knights marched southward into Samogitia, raiding and plundering local settlements. The locals had only a few days to gather troops for defense. On the knights' northward return, however, they encountered a determined group of Samogitians at a river crossing. Unwilling to risk losing their horses in the swampland, the Holsteiners refused to fight on foot, forcing the knights to camp for the night.[4] The next morning, on the day of Saint Maurice, the main pagan forces, possibly led by Duke Vykintas, arrived at the camp. The Lithuanian light cavalry flung javelins at short range, which were highly effective against the unwieldy Livonian heavy cavalry. The swampy terrain was advantageous for lightly armed pagans. The slaughter of the Christian troops, including Volkwin, sowed the seeds of confusion in the Livonian ranks. The lightly armed native forces under the command of the Brothers soon fled from the battle. Those crusaders and knights who tried to flee to Riga were allegedly killed by the Semigallians.
many stories today are over exaggerated by the media today. Couldn't in the past people over exaggerated battles, didn't one empires view point have more weight than the others? Couldn't a government write something off just to push an agenda, or exaggerate a battle to inspire the people?
with all the history thats in our reach, how do historians actually know what happened, and know what could be made up or exaggerated? more importantly, what tools do historians use to gather actual factual information about an event?
Disclaimer: Im really curious and not trying to be a new member of /r/conspiracy
Historians take into account who is writing a given document, what biases that person might have had, and to what extent what they write is influenced by fear of the reaction of authorities. Whenever possible, they compare documents to those of other contemporary writers from other backgrounds. A lot of scholarship has been written on the biases of ancient historians. Nothing is taken at face value.