HISTORY O LEVEL(FORM ONE) NOTES – SOURCES AND IMPORTANCE OF HISTORY

1. History enables us to understand how man has been working on his environment.
2. History helps us to understand the past and the present, that help us to predict the future.
3. It helps us to understand the relationship between people in different periods.
4. It helps us to understand technological transformation in human life e.g from stone age to iron age.
5. It helps us to get knowledge on society.
6. It helps us in making investigation on different problems.
7. History helps us to understand our origin.

• Oral tradition
• Historical sites
• Written records/ documents
• Archives
• Museums
• Archeology
• Audio – Visual record , e.g : C assets,Cd’s,TV Programs etc.
• Anthropology
• Linguistics

1. Through culture practices like art, music, religion, riddles, songs, proverbs, superstition, poems and stories.
2. Narration of past events.

1. It preserves historical information of society.
2. It collects and pass historical information between generations in the society.
3. It helps researchers in data collection.

1. It preserves and reveal historical information which are not recorded.
2. Both illiterate and literate people can obtain historical information.
3. Within oral tradition there are warnings and teachings.
4. It is the easiest and the cheapest method of obtaining information.
5. It is more live source, since it involves physical interaction.

1. It needs much attention and power of memory.
2. False information can be given by a story – teller.
3. Narration of past events are centered to those people of status i.e kings, Queens, chief. White talking little about common society.
4. There is language problems when narrators use vernacular language.
5. It is difficult to distinguish what is real and what is imaginary information.
6. Translation is very difficult because some languages are no longer in existence.

1. They comprise man’s physical development, tools that were made and used from time to time.
2. In these areas we find/see past human products and animal bones.

lake Rudolf (Turkana), Lake Naivasha, Njoro, Olongesailie, Lake Magadi, Lamu, Mombasa and Mt. Kenya. In kenya.


MAP OF EAST AFRICA SHOWING IMPORTANT HISTORICAL SITES.

1. Preserve historical information for the coming generations.
2. They are useful sources of information and to reconstruct history.
3. They are the symbols of social cultural heritage to the society concern past human tools, rock, paints etc.

1. They helps for practical historical learning

2. Used to reveal past settlement patterns, levels of technology, economic development of political or
   ganization-reached by the past societies.
3. Act as centers of tourism.
4. They help in transforming theoretical teaching of history to practical historical leaning.
5. It acts as the resource centers to researchers.
6. It provides employment opportunities: eg guiders.

1. It brings confusion to interpret the remains found in historical sites
2. Many of the historical sites are found on remote areas hence difficult for many people to visit them.

• This is the study of the material remains of man’s past through scientific methods.
• The one specializes in archaeology is called ARCHAEOLOGIST.
• Archaeology involve excavations (digging) of the remains of man’s past historical sites and interpretation.
• The famous archaeologist in East Africa was Dr, Louis Leaky with his wife Mary Leakey.
• Archaeology involves the use of carbon 14 dating to determine plants and animal remains.

1. Gives important information about man through different stages.
2. It is a useful method of revealing soil covered historical remains.
3. It arouse curiosity of searching past man historical information

1. It helps to know when and how people lived in a certain place.
2. Past objects tells us about the life and culture of past people.
3. It helps us to know and reveal the technology, pastoral,agricultural and commercial activities of the past man.
4. Through excavation we get knowledge of artifacts e.g pottery, building etc.
5. It reveal the religious beliefs of the past man.
6. We can compliment other sources of information through archaeology. eg. history.
7. We can know the past relationship between different people such as trading activities, Migration, Marriage, Birth, death and political relation.

• It consumes time because of excavation.
• It can not reveal the past people’s language.
• It can not give out reasons for historical events such as wars.
• It needs full experts and advanced technology.
• Poorly interpreted remains can bring false information.

1. Easy to identify ideas and literacy level of the past man.
2. It is easy to identify the exact date of historical event.
3. It used to store historical information.
4. Easy to get historical information from different places and different people.

1. It may lead false information, if Author is biased.
2. Illiterate people can not get historical information.
3. It is not easy to get information of the society whose information are not documented.
4. It is difficult to get remote information from archives.
5. It is non renewable once disrupted either by wind or other external force.

• These are places or buildings where information and objects are preserved.
• It involves all terms which shows culture, political economic and technological development from the past to present.
• Objects can be Early coins, clothes, minerals cowries, religious and ceremonial symbols.
• Museums can be national, Regional, Districts and village.

1. Preserve historical documents and objects.
2. Shows concrete remains of objects.
3. It is the place for tourist and study tour.
4. It is the center for cultural and national identity.

1. It preserve objects which are used as teaching aids.
2. Museums preserve culture and national Identity.
3. It used by researchers (source of information).
4. It acts as tourist center.
5. People learn about technological development.
6. Enable learners to arouse creativity

• These includes books,letters,maps, magazines,journal, newspaper,minutes of meetings and conferences
• Written records can be found in libraries ,schools,colleges,universities,internet cafes,offices etc.

• It is easy to get information.
• Easy to make references.
• It is helpful in doing researches.
• They can be kept for a long time.

1. It can give false information if they are biased by the author.
2. It is difficult to read everything from written records.
3. They are subject to be badly written.
4. Illiterate people can not get information.

1. It helps to get information from various sources.
2. Enable to discover links between different people
3. It help to determine dates of historical event e.g “Aluta Continua” (period of struggle for independence in Mozambique).

1. It consume time and finance learning a particular language.
2. Through translation one can commit some important work.
3. The present language may be corrupted.

• Day – is a duration of twenty four hours (24hrs)
• A week – is a duration of seven days (7 days)
• Month – is a duration of four weeks (4 weeks)
• A year – is a duration of twelve months (12 months)
• A decade- is a duration of ten years (10 yrs)
• A century – is a duration of of one hundred years (100 yrs)
• A millennium – is a duration of thousand years (1000 yrs)
• A generation – is the average differences on ages between a child and his/her parent.
• Age – is a period based on man’s economic activities and the type of tools used e.g stone age, iron age, Industrial age, Science and Technology age, ect.
• A period – is determined by one continuous event lasting for a number of year.

• Year ZERO –present the year when Jesus Christ was born.
• It is known as Anno Domino

1. Recalling events : – here important events are recalled/remembered e.g drought, farming, floods, birth, eruption of diseases etc.
2. By studying languages: – some names help people to remember dates of some events. E.g word “Karafuu”- started when cloves were introduced in Zanzibar.
3. Carbon 14 – Is scientific method of determining dates. It used in the finding dates for remains of animals or plants which died beyond 5000 years ago.

• Carbon 14 is a gas found in carbon-dioxide which exist in the atmosphere.
• It absorbed by plant or other living organisms. When died carbon 14 that has already observed starts to decay at a fixed rate from the time of death.

1. Orders of events: Ways of showing order of events, periods and ages, among them are: –

• Time graph
• Time chart
• Time line
• Family tree

1. Example of time chart

(d) Family tree