History · Unit 18
How We Know History
Sources, evidence and thinking like a historian
Every other unit in this subject tells you what happened. This one asks how anybody knows, and the answer is less certain and considerably more interesting than the confident tone of most history writing suggests.
It covers primary and secondary sources, how archaeology recovers what no one wrote down, chronology and dating, and bias - not as a flaw to be filtered out, but as information about the person who left the source.
This unit breaks down into 20 short steps and 120 questions, starting at difficulty 1 and building to 3. Below you can see exactly what it covers, how the path is structured, and worked examples with explanations.
- Steps
- 20
- Questions
- 120
- Difficulty
- 1-3
What this unit covers
- Archaeology
- Bias and Interpretation
- Historians at Work
- Primary and Secondary Sources
- Time and Chronology
Where this fits
Worth doing early rather than last. It changes how you read every other unit in the subject, so taking it first and again at the end is a reasonable plan.
Where people slip
A biased source is not a useless one. A piece of propaganda is poor evidence for what happened and excellent evidence for what its author wanted believed.
How the unit is structured
How We Know History runs as 20 short steps that unlock in order. 15 are practice rounds and 5 are challenge rounds that pull together everything before them. Questions start at difficulty 1 and climb to 3 as you progress.
Challenge rounds
Example questions
30 real questions from this unit, with the answer and the reason behind it, grouped by what they practise. There are 120 in the unit altogether.
Archaeology
- Fact or fibLevel 1
1. Archaeology is the study of the past using objects and remains found in the ground.
Answer: True
Archaeologists learn about the past from physical remains such as tools, bones and buildings.
- Multiple choiceLevel 1
2. What is archaeology?
- Studying the past by digging up and examining physical remainscorrect
- Studying the weather in ancient times
- Writing stories about imaginary kingdoms
- Drawing maps of modern cities
Archaeology is the study of the past by digging up and examining physical remains that people left behind.
- Build the sentenceLevel 2
3. Build the sentence that describes what archaeologists do.
Answer: Archaeologists dig up objects from the past
Archaeologists dig up objects from the past to learn how people once lived.
- Fill the blankLevel 2
4. Archaeologists know that deeper ____ of soil usually hold older objects.
- layerscorrect
- colours
- rivers
- maps
Because soil builds up over time, deeper layers are normally older, an idea used in stratigraphy.
- Guess the numberLevel 2
5. In which year did archaeologist Howard Carter discover the tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun?
Answer: 1922 CE
Howard Carter found Tutankhamun's nearly intact tomb in 1922, one of the most famous archaeological discoveries.
- Match the pairsLevel 2
6. Match each archaeology word to its meaning.
Answer: Excavation = Carefully digging a site; Artefact = An object made by people; Stratigraphy = Studying layers of soil; Carbon dating = Finding the age of remains
Excavation is careful digging, an artefact is a made object, stratigraphy studies soil layers, and carbon dating finds the age of remains.
Bias and Interpretation
- Fact or fibLevel 1
7. You should always believe a single source completely without checking any others.
Answer: False
Good historians check more than one source, because a single source may be incomplete or biased.
- Build the sentenceLevel 2
8. Build the sentence that describes a biased source.
Answer: A biased source only shows one side
A biased source only shows one side of a story instead of a balanced view.
- Choose all that applyLevel 2
9. Which questions help a historian judge whether a source is reliable? Choose all that apply.
- Who made this source?correct
- Why was it made?correct
- What is my favourite colour?
- Does other evidence agree with it?correct
Asking who made a source, why they made it, and whether other evidence agrees all help judge reliability.
- Fill the blankLevel 2
10. To check whether a claim is reliable, historians compare more than one ____.
- sourcecorrect
- colour
- decade
- tool
Comparing several sources helps historians see whether the evidence agrees, making conclusions more reliable.
- Multiple choiceLevel 2
11. What does it mean when a historical source is biased?
- It shows only one side or a slanted point of viewcorrect
- It is always completely true and fair
- It is very old and made of stone
- It has no words in it at all
A biased source shows only one side or a slanted view instead of a fair, balanced account.
- Match the pairsLevel 3
12. Match each historical thinking concept to its meaning.
Answer: Causation = Why an event happened; Consequence = The results that followed; Continuity = What stayed the same over time; Change = What became different over time
Causation, consequence, continuity, and change are second-order concepts historians use to analyse the past.
Historians at Work
- Fill the blankLevel 2
13. When historians explain what evidence means, they are making an ____.
- interpretationcorrect
- invention
- excuse
- empire
An interpretation is a historian's explanation of what the evidence shows.
- Match the pairsLevel 2
14. Match each history word to its meaning.
Answer: Historian = Studies and writes about the past; Interpretation = An explanation of what evidence means; Evidence = Information from sources; Chronology = The order of events in time
A historian studies the past, an interpretation explains evidence, evidence is information from sources, and chronology is the order of events in time.
- Build the sentenceLevel 3
15. Build a sentence that explains counterfactual history.
Answer: counterfactual history asks what might have happened instead
Counterfactual history asks what might have happened instead, testing how much a particular cause really mattered.
- Choose all that applyLevel 3
16. Historians can reach different conclusions about the same past. Which of these help explain that? Select all that apply.
- They ask different questions of the evidencecorrect
- New evidence emerges over timecorrect
- They emphasise different sourcescorrect
- The past physically changes
Different questions, new evidence, and different emphasis on sources all produce differing interpretations, but the past itself does not change.
- Fact or fibLevel 3
17. Whig history judges the past mainly as a story of steady progress toward the present.
Answer: True
Whig history, criticised by Herbert Butterfield, reads the past as an inevitable march of progress toward the writer's own age.
- Multiple choiceLevel 3
18. Two historians study the same records but disagree about why an empire fell. What is the best explanation for this?
- They may weigh the same evidence differently and reach different interpretationscorrect
- One of them must be lying on purpose
- History has no real answers, so evidence does not matter
- Only the older historian can ever be correct
Historians can weigh the same evidence differently and emphasise different causes, leading to different but reasonable interpretations.
Primary and Secondary Sources
- Fill the blankLevel 1
19. A source created later, such as a modern textbook or documentary, is called a ____ source.
- secondarycorrect
- primary
- ancient
- spoken
Sources made after the events, using primary sources, are called secondary sources.
- Multiple choiceLevel 1
20. What is a primary source?
- A source made at the time of an event by someone who was therecorrect
- A modern book written long after the event
- A made-up story with no real facts
- A guess about what might happen in the future
A primary source is made at the time of an event by someone who was there, such as a diary, letter or photograph.
- Choose all that applyLevel 2
21. Which of these are primary sources? Choose all that apply.
- A photograph taken during the eventcorrect
- A personal diary from the periodcorrect
- A coin minted at the timecorrect
- A textbook written 100 years later
Photographs, diaries and coins made at the time are primary sources, but a textbook written a century later is secondary.
- Odd one outLevel 2
22. Which of these is NOT a primary source?
- A modern school textbookcorrect
- A diary written at the time
- A coin made during the period
- An old tool dug up from the past
A modern textbook is written long after the events, so it is a secondary source, not a primary one.
- Guess the numberLevel 3
23. In which year were the fake 'Hitler Diaries' published and then exposed?
Answer: 1983 CE
The German magazine Stern published the diaries in 1983, but forensic tests within weeks showed the paper and ink were modern forgeries.
- Match the pairsLevel 3
24. Match each famous forgery to the clue that helped expose it.
Answer: Piltdown Man = Human skull joined to an ape jaw; Hitler Diaries = Paper and ink made after the war; Vinland Map = Modern titanium pigment in the ink; Donation of Constantine = Latin too modern for its claimed date
Each forgery fell to close analysis: of bones, of materials, of ink, or, for the Donation of Constantine, of the Latin itself.
Time and Chronology
- Fill the blankLevel 1
25. A period of ten years is called a ____.
- decadecorrect
- century
- era
- age
Ten years make up a decade.
- Multiple choiceLevel 1
26. What does BCE stand for when we write dates?
- Before Common Eracorrect
- Between Century Events
- Basic Calendar Era
- British Common Era
BCE stands for Before Common Era, counting the years before the traditional start of the modern calendar.
- Guess the numberLevel 2
27. The Roman leader Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BCE. Enter that year as a negative number.
Answer: -44 BCE
Years BCE are written as negative numbers on a timeline, so 44 BCE is -44.
- Put in orderLevel 2
28. Put these periods of history in order from earliest to latest.
Answer: The Stone Age -> Ancient Egypt -> The Roman Empire -> The Middle Ages
The Stone Age came first, then Ancient Egypt, then the Roman Empire, and then the Middle Ages.
- Sequence recallLevel 2
29. Remember this order of history periods, then repeat it from earliest to latest.
Answer: Ancient -> Medieval -> Early Modern -> Modern
Historians often order periods as Ancient, Medieval, Early Modern and then Modern.
- Sort into groupsLevel 2
30. Sort each year into BCE (before the Common Era) or CE (Common Era).
Answer: The year 500 BCE = BCE; The year 44 BCE = BCE; The year 1066 CE = CE; The year 2000 CE = CE
BCE years come before the traditional calendar start, while CE years come after it.
Where these questions come from. Each unit starts as a plan of the concepts it should cover and the difficulty it should span. Questions are written against that plan with AI assistance, then checked by a validator that rejects anything without a single defensible answer, an explanation, or plausible wrong options. How we write questions sets out the whole process, and corrections are fixed in the bank and reach the site and the app the same day.
How you practise
This unit mixes 17 different question formats, so you are recalling and applying rather than recognising the same layout every time.
- Build the sentence
- Choose all that apply
- Fact or fib
- Fill the blank
- Guess the number
- Listen and choose
- Match the pairs
- Multiple choice
- Odd one out
- Picture question
- Put in order
- Sequence recall
- Sort into groups
- Spell it
- Tap the pairs
- True or false
- Type the answer
Practise How We Know History
120 questions across 20 steps. Start with step one and crawl at your own pace.
Play this unitRead about How We Know History
Explainers from our blog on what this unit covers. Each one ends with real questions from the bank.
- How Historians Read Primary Sources CarefullyLetters, laws, photographs and objects can bring you close to the past, but they never speak for themselves. Historians ask who created a source, why it was made and what it leaves out.July 26, 2026 · 5 min read
- A Beginner's Guide to Learning HistoryHistory can feel like a blur of names and dates. Treat it as a story of people and choices, and it turns into one of the most fascinating subjects there is.January 29, 2026 · 6 min read
More units in History
- Prehistory and Early HumansFrom the Stone Age to the first farmers
- The First CivilizationsCities, writing and the first states
- Ancient EgyptPharaohs, pyramids and the Nile
- Ancient GreeceCity-states, democracy and ideas
- Ancient RomeRepublic, empire and legions
- Ancient China and IndiaDynasties, inventions and empires of Asia
- The Ancient AmericasMaya, Aztec and Inca civilizations
- The Middle AgesCastles, knights and medieval life