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Engaging in historical inquiry, in order to develop an understanding of the broad picture of the past, is a cyclical process that begins with the asking of guiding historical questions. These questions are investigated by locating and analyzing traces of the past - historical sources. It is vital to recognize that these records and relics, primary and secondary historical sources, are:







• leftover remains and traces from the past, and that we do not have access to every single record or relic from the past;
• products of very different times and contexts from today, and we must make every effort to try to understand the people, places and times that produced these sources; and
• not always developed to serve as intentional evidence of the past, but they can still be analyzed in an attempt to draw credible and worthwhile inferences and claims about the past to help answer historical questions (Lee, 2005, p. 58).







The systematic and sophisticated process of analyzing these historical sources in the light of guiding questions results in historical evidence. This historical evidence, which at times can often be complex and contradictory, is then used to construct credible claims/narratives about the past, or in other word, historical interpretations, that seek to provide answers to the guiding historical questions. These interpretations often open up new avenues for the development of further historical questions and mysteries to be explored.

Lamentably, the teaching and learning of history as an officially sanctioned, neatly packaged chronicle of facts, people, and events, too often continues to be the experience of current students.

Teaching students to engage in the doing of history, Levstik (1996) suggests, involves a "shift from an emphasis on a 'story well told' (or, the story as told in the textbook), to an emphasis on 'sources well scrutinized'....[Where students] pose questions, collect and analyze sources, struggle with issues of significance, and ultimately build their own historical interpretations" (p. 394). While Barton (1998) contends that it is important to see a student's abilities to comprehend history and think historically as "a set of skills educators can nurture, not an ability whose development they must wait for or whose absence they must lament" (p. 80), Bain (2000) correctly acknowledges that it is the teacher who, after reading the literature, is the one left to "design activities that engage student in using such thinking in the classroom" (p. 334).

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  • They had music (flute)
    
    
    • bone of a bear, from Croatia
    • Neandertal also cared for the sick and aged
      
      
      • The individual Erik Trinkhaus is describing is from Shanidar,
        
        and appears as Creb, "the Clan's Mog-ur,
        
        or magician," the "most revered holy man of all of
        
        the clans," in Jean Auel's The Clan of the Cave Bear
        
        series
      • "There is no doubt that they were a social group that
        
        did take care of their members." (Iraq)