Sources of History
Senior 1 · History and Citizenship
Sources of History
Lesson 1 of 5
20 min
Before any definitions, study this timeline. It covers more than 5,000 years, from the first kings of Egypt to the year you are sitting in this class. The pink box at the right-hand end of the top line is enlarged underneath, because the last 180 years would otherwise be squashed into a few millimetres.
Use the timeline to answer these questions in your notebook before you read on.
You have just done what historians do: you used evidence to put events in order and asked how they are connected. History is not a list of dates to memorise. It is an argument about the past, built on evidence and open to checking.
Definition
History: the study of past human activities, based on evidence, which explains what happened, when, why, and with what results. The word also means the past itself. Example: the history of the Rwanda Kingdom.
Definition
Historian: a person who studies the past by collecting, checking and interpreting evidence. Example: the Rwandan scholar Alexis Kagame (1912–1981) and the Belgian scholar Jan Vansina (1929–2017) both studied Rwanda's oral traditions.
Definition
Prehistory: the long period before people kept written records. Knowledge of it comes mainly from archaeology. Example: the Stone Age is part of prehistory.
Most of the world, including Rwanda, now uses a calendar that counts years from a starting point fixed about 1,500 years ago by a monk called Dionysius Exiguus. Years after the starting point are CE (Common Era), also written AD. Years before it are BCE (Before the Common Era), also written BC. BCE years count backwards: 3100 BCE is earlier than 2560 BCE.
| Unit or term | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Decade | 10 years | the 1960s: 1960 to 1969 |
| Century | 100 years | the 19th century: 1801 to 1900 |
| Millennium | 1,000 years | the 3rd millennium BCE: 3000 to 2001 BCE |
| c. (circa) | "about": the exact year is not known | the Great Pyramid, c. 2560 BCE |
| Chronology | events arranged in the order they happened | the list of Rwanda's kings, in order |
Definition
Timeline: a line drawn to scale on which events are marked in chronological order, so that the distance between two events shows the time between them. Example: Figure 1.
Definition
BCE and CE: Before the Common Era and Common Era, the labels for years before and after year 1. They mean the same as BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini, Latin for "in the year of the Lord"). Example: Egypt was united c. 3100 BCE; Rwanda became independent in 1962 CE.
Worked example 1: how long ago was the Great Pyramid built?
Question: The Great Pyramid was finished c. 2560 BCE. How many years ago is that, counting to 2026?
Worked example 2: which century?
Question: In which century did the first European reach Rwanda's royal court (1894)? In which century did Rwanda become independent (1962)?
Warning
Two common mistakes. First, reading BCE dates the wrong way: 500 BCE is later than 3100 BCE, not earlier. Second, calling the 1900s "the 19th century". The 1900s are the 20th century, just as the first hundred years (1 to 100 CE) were the 1st century.
Before the calendar you use today reached Rwanda with missionaries and colonial officials in the early 20th century, Rwandans did not number their years. They placed events in time in two main ways.
Historians use both methods. When an elder says she was born "in the year of Ruzagayura", a historian can convert that to 1943 or 1944, because written colonial records date the famine. Where no written record exists, reigns can only be turned into dates by estimating how long each reign or generation lasted. You will see in lesson 3 why that produces different dates for Rwanda's early kings.
Tip
Memory hook: BCE is a countdown, CE is a count-up. Think of a rocket launch: 3, 2, 1, lift-off, and then the numbers climb again.
History Skills: "AD and BC Explained (as well as CE and BCE)". Watch for why there is no year 0 and how centuries are numbered.
Think, pair, share: An old man says he was born "in the reign of Musinga, two years after the Europeans' big war began". What exact year might he mean? What else would you want to know before you wrote that year in a history book? (Hint: the First World War began in 1914, and Yuhi V Musinga reigned from 1896 to 1931.)
Practice
Sources and credits
