Last night I walked in to a conversation between two of my office mates. I usually pay loose attention to what they talk about and sometimes even join the conversations, especially if it gives me an excuse to take a break from working on physics homework (or simulations, or theory work, or any kind of tedious calculation). In any case, one of the post-docs remarked to on of the graduate students that it's amazing how much we think we can know about history from the barest of samples. We see a court document or an official state (or Church) summons, or the surviving remnant of a letter between friends, and then try to convince ourselves that we know what life was like during that era.