Learn Dutch: Door de genealogie weten we nu veel over het verleden. - Through genealogy, we now know a lot about the past.

They are related but serve different roles. Het verleden is a noun meaning "the past", as seen in this sentence. Geleden is a time word meaning "ago" that always comes right after a duration, like in twee jaar geleden (two years ago). You study het verleden, but things happened days or years geleden.

Why is the word order weten we instead of we weten?

Because the sentence starts with the phrase Door de genealogie (Through genealogy). In Dutch, whenever you start a main sentence with something other than the subject, the verb and subject swap places. This rule is called inversion. Therefore, the verb weten must come just before the subject we.

Can the word door mean both "through" and "by"?

Yes! The preposition door translates to "through" in a physical sense (like walking through a forest), but it is also widely used to mean "by means of" or "due to". In this sentence, it means that we know a lot about the past by means of genealogy.

Do you always use over with weten to say you know "about" something?