Reconstructing the Past: A Flawed Journey

History is basically a smashed vase that will never look new again. The actual past

is gone forever, so all we have left are jagged shards, which are our primary and secondary sources.

Historians try to glue these pieces back together to see the full picture, but it is impossible

to get it perfect. Pieces are always missing, and the glue is actually just the

historian's own bias and interpretation. That is why the story changes over time.

You are never studying the past itself, you are just studying a messy, incomplete reconstruction

of what someone thinks happened.