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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jester47" data-source="post: 1157045" data-attributes="member: 2238">To chime in with Wombat (I have almost the same credintials, except I studied the Edwards a century later.) I would like to point out that in historical study, documentation about a people is worth somthing but not what many people think it is worth.  That is to study a people, person or event beyond what others have accounted about he/she/them/it you have to look at the records left by that person or people.  So we want to study the romans.  We really can't be sure of how an event unfolded, but we can get a good idea depending on archeological evidence, and written record.  But History is really not about names and dates.  Thats record keeping.  (and why so many highshool coaches seem to be attracted to teaching history)  True historical understanding somes when you look at what a people did.  So to understand our romans, we don't look at what others wrote about the romans, we look at what the romans wrote about others.  In this we can get a good idea about what romans or (in the case of Julius Caesar) a particular roman felt was important.  So then through studying many documents written by romans, we get a good idea of how the romans who wrote thought and what they thought was important.  so we know the nazis were totalitarian, led by a man some of them thought was wonderful and who others secretly questioned the sanity of.  We know that they wanted land.  We know they did not like the jews and certain other peoples (I think the estimated number of non-jews killed in the holocaust was somthing like 12 million.  Not sure though.  However I was surprised to find that it was more than 6.)  We know that not all Germans were nazis.  We know the political/economic conditions that were prevalant when the Nazi's came to power, we know how they came to power.  We know what they said, and we know what they did, and we know where these diverge.  So, yes we do know jack about what happened.  Can we state what happened to every individual with 99% accuracy?  No.  We are even lucky to get 50% on major figures.  Can we state what really happened on a larger scale with 99% accuracy?  Again no.  But here we can get the general idea.  I would put it best at being 60% sure about what happened.  This number drops as time goes on and the record decays.  Aaron.</blockquote>

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