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I'm surprised at how such information could be lost over generations. Yet, I recall having to read Shakespeare and barely being able to glean meaning from the p

I'm surprised at how such information could be lost over generations. Yet, I recall having to read Shakespeare and barely being able to glean meaning from the passages despite them being written in English. If you go even farther back to the works of Chaucer, the text is essentially indecipherable for any layperson without a teacher. And that is a span of only about 600 years. I must admit that even reading the Federalist papers is a little difficult and those are only a little more than 200 years old. It gives me a newfound appreciation for how much language changes and the challenges of conveying information across generations.

retrac 4y ago
Our civilization has not collapsed since Shakespeare. Ancient Egypt's did c. 1200 BC and never exactly recovered in terms of literacy though remnants remained into early Roman times. Then it was conquered by the Greeks. Mesopotamia was even more completely buried and forgotten. A few names in the Bible, nothing more of the history survived until rediscovered in modern times. Around 400 BC, Xenophon returning from his campaign against the Persians, marched past the ruins of a great city. He was impressed with the size of it. The walls on stone foundations 20 ft tall! They're still there today, more or less. Perhaps the Medes had built it, according to the locals. Not much was known of the Medes, to the Greeks. It may have been quite ancient. Xenophon did not know that it was Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, last of the great Mesopotamian empires. It had been destroyed some 200 years before in the final war between Babylon and Assyria. The Mesopotamian cultural-political system sort of fell apart after. The languages of administration and history stopped being used. Written records ceased. The Persians came to rule the area. Only two hundred years and already forgotten.

retrac 4y ago

Our civilization has not collapsed since Shakespeare. Ancient Egypt's did c. 1200 BC and never exactly recovered in terms of literacy though remnants remained into early Roman times. Then it was conquered by the Greeks. Mesopotamia was even more completely buried and forgotten. A few names in the Bible, nothing more of the history survived until rediscovered in modern times. Around 400 BC, Xenophon returning from his campaign against the Persians, marched past the ruins of a great city. He was impressed with the size of it. The walls on stone foundations 20 ft tall! They're still there today, more or less. Perhaps the Medes had built it, according to the locals. Not much was known of the Medes, to the Greeks. It may have been quite ancient. Xenophon did not know that it was Nineveh, the capital of Assyria, last of the great Mesopotamian empires. It had been destroyed some 200 years before in the final war between Babylon and Assyria. The Mesopotamian cultural-political system sort of fell apart after. The languages of administration and history stopped being used. Written records ceased. The Persians came to rule the area. Only two hundred years and already forgotten.