The first comment naively tries to inject some context, but damn the second comment goes straight to outdated chauvinist bullshit. Mainstream history academia in the last fifty years has been all about trying to rediscover the usefulness and accuracy of oral histories, because it turns out not nearly as much gets lost as the white explorer with a gun assumed got lost.

Plus, like half the history we have before the advent of mass literacy was essentially oral history. You think fucking Tacitus personally witnessed any of the things he wrote about?