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There's not much evidence that the loss of the Library of Alexandria constituted much loss to human knowledge. This idea seems to come from Carl Sagan's Cosmos.
by monadic8 6y ago
There's not much evidence that the loss of the Library of Alexandria constituted much loss to human knowledge. This idea seems to come from Carl Sagan's Cosmos. While there a lot of good things to say about him he's not much of a historian.
- mixmastamyk 6y agoMaybe that facts such as the rough circumference of the earth were lost for a thousand years had something to do with it? Or is that false?
- orblivion 6y agoI'm going to ask my parents about this to see if they learned this idea in school. They didn't grow up in an English speaking country, and I don't think they're big fans of Sagan.
- dwheeler 6y agoI think it is almost certain that a vast amount of human knowledge was lost. The policy of the city of Alexandria was to copy every book that went through it, and give the copy back. As a result, they ended up with a spectacularly large collection of original materials. The amount of ancient literature that is no longer available is vast. History, literature, you name it, so much has been lost. The odds are very good that at least a significant portion of that were in the Alexandrian library.