4 ms·

I read someware that in 2000 years the books we managed to save from the middle ages and up to about 1850 will still be around but anything printed after that w

by progre 6y ago

I read someware that in 2000 years the books we managed to save from the middle ages and up to about 1850 will still be around but anything printed after that will be gone because the paper of the modern age is to fragile to last.

shadowgovt 6y ago
The cultures that dominated North and South America prior to the arrival of European explorers and the mass plague that accompanied them were absolutely vast, and we are only now starting to piece together the size and scale of some of those empires. There are several reasons for the gap in understanding of their scale, but one is that the well-settled communities (with some exceptions primarily centered in South America) often used primarily wooden construction, as wood was extremely plentiful in the New World. When the European plagues led to 90%-plus die-offs in these cultures, the survivors couldn't maintain the scale of cities they'd built, and since wood rots relatively quickly, their permanent settlements were all but eradicated by the time any subsequent waves of European exploration arrived to write down what they saw in languages Europeans could read. Modern archaeology techniques, by analyzing land cultivation and the few remnants a wooden building leaves of foundation, are starting to comprehend the scale of the cities built by the original settlers of North and South America. https://www.history.com/news/native-american-cahokia-chaco-canyon https://www.history.com/news/native-american-cahokia-chaco-c...
- shakezula 6y ago
  They were also about as complex and technologically advanced as their Old World counterparts. I'm consistently impressed by how well South American cultures understood the cosmos, plumbing, irrigation, materials, etc... South American civilizations would have been a source of new information, and no doubt a bunch of knowledge was lost. We only have a few books left from thousands of years of civilizations. It makes me incredibly sad to think about the history we lost. It would be like if we only had one or two books to understand all of Roman history. Absolutely blows my mind how fragile everything we've built is.

by progre 6y ago

shadowgovt 6y ago

The cultures that dominated North and South America prior to the arrival of European explorers and the mass plague that accompanied them were absolutely vast, and we are only now starting to piece together the size and scale of some of those empires. There are several reasons for the gap in understanding of their scale, but one is that the well-settled communities (with some exceptions primarily centered in South America) often used primarily wooden construction, as wood was extremely plentiful in the New World. When the European plagues led to 90%-plus die-offs in these cultures, the survivors couldn't maintain the scale of cities they'd built, and since wood rots relatively quickly, their permanent settlements were all but eradicated by the time any subsequent waves of European exploration arrived to write down what they saw in languages Europeans could read. Modern archaeology techniques, by analyzing land cultivation and the few remnants a wooden building leaves of foundation, are starting to comprehend the scale of the cities built by the original settlers of North and South America. https://www.history.com/news/native-american-cahokia-chaco-canyon https://www.history.com/news/native-american-cahokia-chaco-c...

shakezula 6y ago
They were also about as complex and technologically advanced as their Old World counterparts. I'm consistently impressed by how well South American cultures understood the cosmos, plumbing, irrigation, materials, etc... South American civilizations would have been a source of new information, and no doubt a bunch of knowledge was lost. We only have a few books left from thousands of years of civilizations. It makes me incredibly sad to think about the history we lost. It would be like if we only had one or two books to understand all of Roman history. Absolutely blows my mind how fragile everything we've built is.