Submission #8: How reliable is memory when used to recount historical events?

I thought about this question because I was flipping through TV channels and one channel was showing the 1997 film, Titanic. So I started watching it; it had just started; it was on the scene where old Rose started telling her story of her time on the Titanic and everyone was gathered around listening intently. The Titanic is “James Cameron's epic, action-packed romance set against the ill-fated maiden voyage of the R.M.S. Titanic; the pride and joy of the White Star Line and, at the time, the largest moving object ever built. She was the most luxurious liner of her era - the "ship of dreams" - which ultimately carried over 1,500 people to their death in the ice cold waters of the North Atlantic in the early hours of April 15, 1912.” Watching the scene, I started wondering how Rose remembered all this stuff about the Titanic- I realize that for plot progression sake she needed to know enough to build an entire movie on but in reality, she was very old and it would have been impossible for her to remember in such great detail what happened to her when she was 17. Because of her old age and other possible factors, her memory must have been blurred or altered. If this was the case, then why would all the researchers take her words for truth; especially if they didn't have any other information to cross check with? Finally i came to the conclusion question- ‘How reliable memory when used to recount historical events?’ especially in the case of elderly eyewitnesses. Similarly, for example, if a person- they don't necessarily have to be old- recounts a historical event incorrectly, and if the researches don't have any other research of facts to compare to- they will probably take the eyewitness’ information for fact. This can lead to serious problems because if he eyewitness said something wrong, history will, in essence, be wrong. If a small part of history is recorded incorrectly, then it will just keep building and building and our historical foundation will be based on false information. A bit of a slippery slope, I realize, but it is very possible.

I found an example of this in an article written by the guardian about Boa Sr. she was the last person fluent in the Bo language in Andaman, this loss broke a link with a 65,000 year old culture. (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/feb/04/ancient-language-extinct-speaker-dies). It says in the article that Boa was not able to communicate with anyone in Bo most likely because there was no one left that spoke that same language. Because of this distance from her language for years, she must have lost the knowledge of how to say some words, grammar etc. This could be a problem for history because if researches were to come to her in her later years and ask her translate her language, she might not be able to do so effectively or even correctly. This is problematic because there is also no way for those researches to cross check Boa’s information with another person who speaks Bo because there isn't anyone left. This could change history because wrong information could be written down as fact.