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Ancient Roman graffiti is seen as being valuable enough that significant time and resource has been spent on studying it. The anthropological value of it seems
by AmericanChopper 6y ago
Ancient Roman graffiti is seen as being valuable enough that significant time and resource has been spent on studying it. The anthropological value of it seems obvious to me. Perhaps low effort thought-leadership or social media drivel has little contemporary value, but it could be a fantastic historical resource. The selection bias of history that was chosen to be preserved (and the people who were doing the choosing) puts a rather firm set of constraints on our ability to understand the past.
- estaseuropano 6y agoAbsolutely agree. At the same time, this roman graffiti is valuable because there's not that much of it and not much other records of the time. We have more from Rome than most other times and places in history, but overall no much. There are probably more words of Linkedin 'thought leaders' publisher per hour than all the the text that has reached us from Rome. I would still argue that we live in a time where many things are needlessly preserved (not to mention the privacy implications...).