I find it amazing that the books and manuscripts are still around hundreds if not a thousand years later meanwhile the dye medium of my data CDs from the mid 90s is probably rotten.
Lots of books and manuscripts from that period aren't around any more. A monestry in the middle of the desert is going to be hot and dry, which is great for preserving books.
"Never been sacked" is important as well. Often books can get burned and destroyed during political upheaval, either intentionally (burn the books) or accidentially (the building with the books goes on fire).
When the Spanish conquered what is now Mexico, they destroyed all the Mayan books. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_codices#Background
> "We found a large number of books in these characters and, as they contained nothing in which were not to be seen as superstition and lies of the devil, we burned them all, which they (the Maya) regretted to an amazing degree, and which caused them much affliction."
> Mari holds the key to much of our knowledge of this era. The site of Babylon has physically sunk over the years so that now the palace and archives of Hammurabi are below the water table and, presumably, reduced to mud
> As in the case of Ebla, the vast archive of thousands of documents from eighteenth-century [BC] Mari is preserved because the palace burned down. [...] Because of this, it is possible to read, in some of the letters baked and buried in the conflagration, about Hammurabi's relations with Mari in happier times.
Our documents from that period come from conquering kings who, in their zeal to raze enemy cities, forever preserved those cities' records. Literature wasn't as much of a presence then as it is now (tablets run to accounting and correspondence), but it (and history) existed; cf the epic of Gilgamesh.
It is so utterly disappointing that the voodoo of Catholicism felt the need to destroy the Mayan books as voodoo. My voodoo is better than yours, but just in case.
Yeah, but CDs were never made to last very long. The key with digital information is that it's easy to duplicate and copy, so the preservation strategy in the digital age is data redundancy.
Prompted a thought: bits are always either there or not, ultimately, correct? (meaning you can either recover it, or never can) Whereas with printed or written text, you can recover partial data - a partial single letter for example - and conclude what it was. With the potential of written text also being generally far more restricted in possibilities (given you know, eg the language and time frame), than what's on a data disc.
rmc|12 years ago
"Never been sacked" is important as well. Often books can get burned and destroyed during political upheaval, either intentionally (burn the books) or accidentially (the building with the books goes on fire).
When the Spanish conquered what is now Mexico, they destroyed all the Mayan books. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_codices#Background > "We found a large number of books in these characters and, as they contained nothing in which were not to be seen as superstition and lies of the devil, we burned them all, which they (the Maya) regretted to an amazing degree, and which caused them much affliction."
thaumasiotes|12 years ago
> Mari holds the key to much of our knowledge of this era. The site of Babylon has physically sunk over the years so that now the palace and archives of Hammurabi are below the water table and, presumably, reduced to mud
> As in the case of Ebla, the vast archive of thousands of documents from eighteenth-century [BC] Mari is preserved because the palace burned down. [...] Because of this, it is possible to read, in some of the letters baked and buried in the conflagration, about Hammurabi's relations with Mari in happier times.
Our documents from that period come from conquering kings who, in their zeal to raze enemy cities, forever preserved those cities' records. Literature wasn't as much of a presence then as it is now (tablets run to accounting and correspondence), but it (and history) existed; cf the epic of Gilgamesh.
happyscrappy|12 years ago
ekianjo|12 years ago
pandesmos|12 years ago
The preservation strategy in every age has been data redundancy, but it's much easier to duplicate and copy digital information.
Glad we had all those monks copying the copies of copies so we still have all that ancient philosophy. =)
colechristensen|12 years ago
adventured|12 years ago