What are the types of historical documents?

Historical materials are divided into four categories, which are considered to be more comprehensive and reasonable traditional historical materials classification.

The first category is books and newspapers: including historical records, historical works, document compilation and group members outside the history department.

The second category is documents: including government documents, group documents and private documents.

The third category is physical objects: including production tools, means of subsistence and relics of historical events.

The fourth category is word of mouth: including memoirs, investigation records, mass legends and literary works.

The importance of historical documents

1. Thoughts or academic works: reflecting people's thoughts, concepts and academic development at that time. For example, people's thoughts in the Warring States period can be seen from Mencius, and ancient medicine and human body in China can be learned from Huangdi Neijing. Confucian classics in the Qing Dynasty reflected the political and social thoughts and problems of the people in the Qing Dynasty.

2. Literary works: Although the contents of literary works are fictional, they can often reflect people's lives, thoughts and concepts at that time, and contribute to the study of cultural history, ideological history and social life history. For example, we can see people's thoughts and life in the Six Dynasties from Shi Shuo Xin Yu, people's thoughts and life in the Yuan Dynasty from Yuan Zaju, and people's culture and life in the late Ming Dynasty from Jin Ping Mei.

Refer to the above? Baidu encyclopedia-historical materials