ABSTRACT
History is, among other things, an argument based on sources and evidence that support that argument. Historians are not free to tell a story or make up an argument without supporting evidence. Evidence includes primary and secondary written sources (mainly documents) and nonwritten sources-maps, artifacts, images, quantitative data, and genetic evidence. The evidence of the sources is the raw material of history and the historian’s most valuable tool. Historians should not argue or narrate beyond what the evidence demonstrates is the truth. History is nonfiction, not fiction. It is imaginative, but not imagined.
