(Had to repost, because I forgot to phrase my title like a question)
Sorry if this has been asked before, but I had a question regarding the reliability of historical accounts/texts. I recently read some posts online and on reddit, that state that we can't really rely on a fair amount of information regarding historical events, because the event/person/culture/etc was painted in a bad light by those who survived and had a vendetta (not sure if this is the right word in this context). How can we be sure that what we're reading or discovering is the "real deal"? I may be answering my own question here, but is it based on the narrator ("this person told the truth before"), cross referenced with other accounts, or just kind of taken on "good faith", until we find something that doesn't "agree" with it? Is it some sort of combination, or is there another factor, and I'm completely missing the mark?
Again, I apologize if this has been asked before. I'm on break at work and time is limited; my responses may be slow. Thank you in advance for your guidance and insight!
This, honestly, is one of the weirder things about history as a subject, mainly because we do it just a little bit differently than the people out there in STEM. See, those people have it easy. They get to deal with things-that-are-not-humans. 1+1=2 except in very very rare edge cases. Two hydrogen and one oxygen makes water. c is 299,792,458 metres per second. That sort of thing. But in this department, we don't.
History deals with humans. History is created by humans, written by humans, written for humans, studied by humans, interpreted by humans, read by humans.
The inherent problem here is that the human is a stupid, selfish, blinkered creature with entirely too many prejudices, preconceptions, and biases, and a very sharply limited point of view. Bias is baked in. Leave your thoughts of 'objectivity' at the door. No such thing in this business.
Fortunately, there is such a thing as the historical method, the same way as there is a scientific method. Specifically, what you're looking for is source criticism. The threads I'll link next post will cover that. Before that, here's some more for you to consider:
The stuff about source criticism and how historians use sources, that's next post because I'm out of tags here.