When, in ancient times, a Hellenic writer named Herodotus began composing his famous book on bloody Greek wars, in which he described the customs and traditions of the countries surrounding him and their inhabitants, even in his wildest dreams he could not imagine that the descendants would give him a big name for his father great and incredibly interesting science - history. As one of the most ancient and famous disciplines, it has its own subject, methods, sources for studying history.
What discipline is called history
What is a story? This is a fascinating science that studies the past as a single individual, as well as the entire human society. Studying the various sources available to her, this discipline tries to establish the real sequence of those or other events that happened in the distant or near past, as well as to diversify the reasons for their appearance and consequences.
Having arisen, like many other sciences, in Ancient Greece, initially the history studied the life of outstanding personalities, as well as crowned families, rulers and wars. However, over time, the subject and method of studying history have changed and expanded. More precisely, over the years, history has begun to study the past not only of individuals who have distinguished themselves in anything, but of entire nations, various sciences, buildings, religions, and much more.
The main methods of studying history as a science
The method of researching history is a way of studying historical processes through a diverse analysis of facts, as well as acquiring new information based on these very facts.
There are two huge categories into which the methods of studying history are divided. These are specific methods, as well as general methods for most humanities.
Specific Methods of Studying History
Three types of history methodology fall into this category:
- General scientific methods.
- Private scientific methods.
- Methods borrowed from other sciences.
General scientific methods are of the following types:
- Theoretical, which include the famous deduction, induction, synthesis and analysis, hypothesis structure, modeling, generalization, inversion, abstraction, analogy and a system-structural approach.
- Practical methods of studying history: experiment, observation, measurement, comparison, description. Often this type of method is also called empirical.
Private scientific historical methods of studying history:
- Chronological method - historical data are presented in their chronological sequence, from the past to the present.
- A retrospective method is the study of historical facts with the help of a gradual penetration into the past to discover the causes of the event.
- The concrete historical method is fixing all events and facts.
- Comparative-historical - the event is investigated in the context of similar incidents that occurred earlier or later. This method of research makes it possible to more deeply study an event from different angles.
- Historical and genetic - the study of the appearance and development of a specific event.
- Historical and typological - the classification of events or objects according to their type, attribute.
In addition to the above, quite often scientists use other methods for studying history, borrowed from other related and not very sciences, for example, from statistics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, archeology and others.
General methods of research and study of history
For most humanitarian disciplines and history in particular, common methods are:
- The logical method - considers the phenomena under study at the peak of their development, since during this period their form becomes the most mature, and this gives the keys to understanding the previous stages of historical development.
- The historical method - with its help, processes and certain historical phenomena are reproduced in chronological development, taking into account unique features, patterns and details. Watching them, you can track certain patterns.
Historical sources
When studying history, scientists have to work with objects or phenomena that they most often cannot see with their own eyes, since they took place many years, centuries or even millennia ago. 
Between the study of historians and the fact that actually happened in the past is an intermediate link - this is a historical source. Research and classification of sources for the study of history is the science of source study.
Types of historical sources
There are various types of classifications of historical sources. The most popular is the classification by species. According to it, 7 groups of sources are distinguished:
- Oral (folk tales, songs, rites).
- Written (annals, books, diaries, newspapers, magazines and others).
- Material (the remains of weapons on the battlefield, ancient burial sites, preserved items of clothing, everyday life and so on).
- Ethnographic (materials related to the culture of a particular ethnic group, most often they are provided by ethnography).
- Linguistic (names of cities, rivers, localities, food, concepts and more).
- Sound documents.
- Photo film documents.
The last two types of sources of historical research have become available to historians relatively recently, but thanks to them it has become much easier to conduct research. Although, thanks to the achievements of modern technology, it has become very easy to fake photographs, videos and audio recordings, so it will be difficult for historians of the near future to use these historical sources.
The science of history, like the history of mankind itself, interacts with a whole range of other disciplines, often using them as sources of information, as well as using their methods, principles and achievements. In turn, history also helps other disciplines. Therefore, there are a number of historical sciences that focus their attention on the subject of a particular discipline. Such, for example, as the history of philosophy, politics, culture, literature, music and many others. In this regard, correctly selected methods and sources of studying history are very important, because the fact of objective reality depends on their choice and use, which affects not only the “brainchild of Herodotus”, but also all other sciences related to it.
