Final answer:
Historians analyze various factors that led to historical events, including environmental conditions, actions of elites, societal forces, and individual choices.
Step-by-step explanation:
In understanding historical events, historians analyze various factors that led to or caused them. These factors can include environmental conditions, patterns of migration and settlement, actions of elites, societal forces, and individual choices. For example, in the fourteenth century, unusual climatic changes led to competition for resources and desperate attempts to mitigate the resulting damage and despair.
Historians also study bias and its impact on historical interpretations. In the 1960s and 1970s, historians began to question the traditional focus on elites and sought out new sources that highlight the lives of ordinary people, driven by a bias in favor of counterculture and politics of the era.
Overall, understanding causation is crucial to uncovering the reasons behind historical events and revealing the forces that shape history.