Food for thought....

[Lucky13]

Here's a thought, imagine if they'd been wrong the whole time....and one day (in the near future) stumble across what was once kept inside Alexandrias ancient library, that those back then managed to hide it all before it was destroyed, THAT would be some interesting reading!

Source: Interweb

 

[pgeno71]

That would truly be awesome. An incredible loss of information when it went up in flames.

 

[Capt. Vick]

That would be amazing, but would largely be academic. Any information that could have kept the ionian awakening going would, I imagine, be of a more historical importance now then practical. Valuable information, no doubt, but it's practical use and likely ability to influence technology (only) has passed. On the basis of history alone though it would be a gold mine. So many unknown works lost to history, not to count the ones we only have fragments of or that were only referenced in other classical works. So sad, so very very sad.

 

[pbehn]

Did no one read or understand what was in the library?

 

[GrauGeist]

Considering that ALL ships entering the harbor were inspected by a special detachment, who's orders were to seize any and all literature (to be transcribed and returned to the owner) including ship's logs and maps, there must have been languages, personal accounts, recorded events and so much more from all points of the (then) known world, lost to modern history.
It's loss was on a level of tragic that simply cannot be described.

 

[vikingBerserker]

Something I could have set in and read for a lifetime. This was truly tragic.

 

[Gnomey]

Just an unfathomable amount of knowledge lost.

 

[pbehn]

Just an unfathomable amount of knowledge lost.

I thought it was a lot of information but not knowledge. If you burn Newtons books you don't eliminate the knowledge in them because the people who read and understood it have the knowledge.

 

[GrauGeist]

The library was accessible to anyone and contained everything from ship's logs and diaries to scientific papers and metallurgical formulas and everything in between.
Plays, historical accounts, songs, astronomical calculations, star charts, maps, architectural values and so on.

It would be like losing the internet today - a thousand years from now, some of the content may survive because some of the net's content was copied for whatever reason and over time, the copied content will fall by the wayside because of war, natural disaster or personal indifference (person dies, next if kin tosses material in trash, etc.) until tiny fragments remain.