United States History Student Edition

History and Modern Values Historians avoid using modern ideas to evaluate a historical event. For example, a scholar of women’s history may want to apply modern ideas to women’s rights in historical settings. Ideas have changed over time. Drawing conclusions about women’s attitudes in the 1700s using modern ideas would be a mistake. Evaluations of history should be based on the evidence, not on today’s understanding of rights and society. 2. Analyzing How can historians, looking at the same reliable evidence, give different historical interpretations of an event? Explain. Analyzing Information GUIDING QUESTION What types of skills are needed to analyze information? As historians do, you can use social studies skills to help you understand and use information. You use some of those skills to gather information. You use other skills to analyze the information or to generate new information. 7 CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING 1. Explaining What is continuity?

In addition, historians have different values and different points of view. As a result, historians often arrive at different interpretations of historical figures and events. For example, some historians see George Washington as a relatively unskilled military leader who won very few actual battles. Others, however, see him as an important leader who was able to keep an army in the field against great odds. Which conclusion is correct? There is evidence to support either position. However, it is the job of the historian to evaluate the primary sources and explain why an interpretation can be argued or dismissed. The discussion among historians also continues because historians find new evidence that leads them to question earlier interpretations. Sometimes historians take a new look at existing evidence and see things others may have missed or ignored. As they do so, they may correct an earlier historian’s mistake or explain events differently. Another reason for differing interpretations is that the questions that historians ask reflect the issues of the times in which they live. As a result, different times can raise new questions about the past. For all these reasons, there is never a final, complete version of history. There will always be new questions to ask of the past, and historians will always ask these questions.

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The people of the American Southwest carved cities into the sides of cliffs. Because the evidence is not clear, historians disagree on what exactly caused them to leave their homes at some point.

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Historian’s Toolkit HT19