Historical thinking is the process of looking at the past and using artifacts to understand why certain groups of people in certain places lived the way they did. Why did they do the things they did? When we look at events in a timeline fashion rather than single events in time, we can get a better idea of why inventions and progress was made in the sequence it was. Historical thinking is more than looking at events individually, it is looking at events and understanding why those events took place based on what happened beforehand.

Artifacts are vital when it comes to understanding the past. By looking at objects that were used and created centuries ago, we can get a first hand understanding of how people lived and survived in different areas of the world. We can compare the similarities and differences among artifacts and get a better understanding of the hardships our ancestors had to adapt to and overcome in order to survive and prosper in different areas of the world.