The aim of this essay is to familiarize the reader with the very anthropological (ethnological) approach to the past. It will be done not by presenting or formulating any theoretical program, but by looking at how it is practiced, taking the intriguing group of Slovincians as a case study. A pretext for my anthropologically informed reading of history is given by a question: “why Slovincians do not want to talk?”, which emerges to be the most important one during my fieldwork on their contemporary life. The elaborated research strategy and its outcomes makes it possible to outline the difference between the anthropological and historical ways of studying the past.