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What we know about UR is largely due to the large number of clay tablets with writing on them. Those tablets are very durable and while they are degraded by now

What we know about UR is largely due to the large number of clay tablets with writing on them. Those tablets are very durable and while they are degraded by now, many can still be read. Our own writing is mainly recorded on paper that is much, much less durable than clay tablets. More recently most of our writing isn’t even on paper but is stored electronically. It would not take much of a break in our civilization’s continuity for the paper documents to degrade. We have lost several of Shakespeare’s works even though civilization has been continuous since his time and that was only 500 years ago. Our electronic writing might blink out in a matter of hours.

enchantments 4y ago
The clay tablets we have from the bronze age themselves seem only preserved by chance. They are found in store rooms in layers of cities that suffered widespread destruction, accidentally firing the clay records. So what we have is kind of sporadic, some letters from one king to another here, a bunch of apparently unremarkable palace economy bookkeeping there, then we tie it together with what we learn from archeology (and most exciting in recent times, from genetics). We also have a lot of stone stelas. But they certainly didn't leave us a well preserved big picture. I imagine future people would see the same story for us: A big stone inscription here, some documents accidentally printed on very high quality stock stored in an accidentally optimal place there, etc. Another fun glimpse: It has been speculated, based on evidence in the Uluburun shipwreck, that some bronze age societies used a wooden book-like object with wax or clay faces as an easily erasable notepad. Whoever owned that may have thought about it the same way we think about electronic records blinking out. Or maybe they didn't think about the future at all.
- wl 4y ago
  Most clay tablets pulled out of the ground are unfired. The act of removing unfired tablets that have been in the ground for so long kicks off some decay, so it used to be common to fire excavated tablets to preserve them. There's modern conservation techniques that remove the need to fire tablets, but those techniques post-date the lawful flow of material culture to western museums, so pretty much everything you'll see is fired. While fires in antiquity might have inadvertantly helped preserve some tablets that might not have otherwise survived, this is hardly the most common case. The talk of fires preserving tablets is mostly used to illustrate the stark difference in durability between records recorded on clay and records recorded on vellum or papyrus.
loxs 4y ago
This fascination with "being remembered" is strange. We shouldn't optimize for being remembered (or being easy to reconstruct archaeologically). We should try to not vanish. If we do vanish, why do we care about being remembered?
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  We will all die, and this time will pass - this is completely inevitable. There is no way to not vanish, the closest you can come is being remembered. Our civilization may well continue and prosper for a thousand years more, but unless we care about being remembered, they will have no idea what Pink Floyd, or Harry Potter, or A Hundred Years of Solitude, or an iPhone, or Linux, or anything else you consider important of our time were/was. Just like we have almost no idea about the pop culture or songs of people living in, say, the area of Berlin in the year 1022 was.
  - jackcosgrove 4y ago
    > Just like we have almost no idea about the pop culture or songs of people living in, say, the area of Berlin in the year 1022 was. We can listen to the music of Hildegard of Bingen, who lived a little after that time in another part of Germany. It's not folk music, sure, but that's still pretty cool.
    - johnofthesea 4y ago
      > 1022 This seems to be like end of Ottonian Renaissance. So maybe someone like Hermann of Reichenau?
  - loxs 4y ago
    And so what?
    - tsimionescu 4y ago
      It's OK to say "being remembered doesn't matter", I was only pointing out that the alternatives are "being remembered" or "being forgotten" - and both are fine. There is no third option, though, "not vanishing".

enchantments 4y ago

The clay tablets we have from the bronze age themselves seem only preserved by chance. They are found in store rooms in layers of cities that suffered widespread destruction, accidentally firing the clay records. So what we have is kind of sporadic, some letters from one king to another here, a bunch of apparently unremarkable palace economy bookkeeping there, then we tie it together with what we learn from archeology (and most exciting in recent times, from genetics). We also have a lot of stone stelas. But they certainly didn't leave us a well preserved big picture. I imagine future people would see the same story for us: A big stone inscription here, some documents accidentally printed on very high quality stock stored in an accidentally optimal place there, etc. Another fun glimpse: It has been speculated, based on evidence in the Uluburun shipwreck, that some bronze age societies used a wooden book-like object with wax or clay faces as an easily erasable notepad. Whoever owned that may have thought about it the same way we think about electronic records blinking out. Or maybe they didn't think about the future at all.

wl 4y ago
Most clay tablets pulled out of the ground are unfired. The act of removing unfired tablets that have been in the ground for so long kicks off some decay, so it used to be common to fire excavated tablets to preserve them. There's modern conservation techniques that remove the need to fire tablets, but those techniques post-date the lawful flow of material culture to western museums, so pretty much everything you'll see is fired. While fires in antiquity might have inadvertantly helped preserve some tablets that might not have otherwise survived, this is hardly the most common case. The talk of fires preserving tablets is mostly used to illustrate the stark difference in durability between records recorded on clay and records recorded on vellum or papyrus.

loxs 4y ago

This fascination with "being remembered" is strange. We shouldn't optimize for being remembered (or being easy to reconstruct archaeologically). We should try to not vanish. If we do vanish, why do we care about being remembered?

tsimionescu 4y ago
We will all die, and this time will pass - this is completely inevitable. There is no way to not vanish, the closest you can come is being remembered. Our civilization may well continue and prosper for a thousand years more, but unless we care about being remembered, they will have no idea what Pink Floyd, or Harry Potter, or A Hundred Years of Solitude, or an iPhone, or Linux, or anything else you consider important of our time were/was. Just like we have almost no idea about the pop culture or songs of people living in, say, the area of Berlin in the year 1022 was.
- jackcosgrove 4y ago
  > Just like we have almost no idea about the pop culture or songs of people living in, say, the area of Berlin in the year 1022 was. We can listen to the music of Hildegard of Bingen, who lived a little after that time in another part of Germany. It's not folk music, sure, but that's still pretty cool.
  - johnofthesea 4y ago
    > 1022 This seems to be like end of Ottonian Renaissance. So maybe someone like Hermann of Reichenau?
- loxs 4y ago
  And so what?
  - tsimionescu 4y ago
    It's OK to say "being remembered doesn't matter", I was only pointing out that the alternatives are "being remembered" or "being forgotten" - and both are fine. There is no third option, though, "not vanishing".