CAN+THE+PAST+BE+RECOVERED?

__**CAN THE PAST EVER BE COMPLETELY AND FULLY RECOVERED?**__
===Can we ever know precisely what it was like to live in a previous historical era? Why or why not? Can we ever hope to recover a full and complete picture of any historical period? What does historical contingency have to do with it? What could prevent us from recovering the past? What can we realistically hope to accomplish in trying to recover the past? MAXIMUM OF 10 COMMENTS. NO DUPLICATIONS. Short observations and comments are OK.===

1.**One** can never know what it was like to live in a previous historical era because **direct experience is lacking and recovered artifacts** **represent** only part of what **actually** happened. **One** can**not** hope to recover a full and complete picture **of the past** because most of the **critical** evidence **has disappeared.** Historical **contingency** does not **allow a complete reconstruction of** the past because **every historical event** **is** unique.(jti)

2. Archaeologist**s must** **often dig at a number** of sites to find the physical evidence they need to paint **a reasonably accurate** picture of what life was like thousands of years ago. With **physical** evidence **in hand** they can then make inferences **about** daily life **in the past**. (Wco)

3. Archaeologist**s** **can** never know exactly what happened in the past. There **are** many **complex** factors that go into **determining** events**, and** archaeologist**s** can only **recreate a few of them** **to arrive at a general** picture of what **might have taken place in the past.** (jst)

4. Archaeologists **cannot** recreate the past **completely**, nor **can** anyone, because no one can recreate **the past** unless they have **actually** lived and experienced **the smallest** details **of the past.** To this day, only a small portion of history **has been reconstructed, although a general view of the past has emerged.** (kcm)

5. **Archaeologists cannot** recreate or even **understand** the past **fully** because they have **access to** only a small **fraction** of the evidence **of the past,** **most of which** has been lost to time. **Due to** this lack of **physical** evidence**,** archaeologists **can only rarely** be completely sure **that their inferences** **about the past** are correct. (mwa)

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