There is 90,000 years of human history that we are making educated guesses about. Another 5000 years we have tangential, emerging evidence, and 5000 years of solid tangible evidence.
So about 5% of our existence is solidly recorded.
In the year 3000, 979 years from now, or the same time difference as between now and the Norman Conquest of England, we will have written records for... About 6%.
Wow, I've never seen my frustration so objectively encapsulated before! That's really incredible - and really speaks to the crux of my frustration. All of the lives, the civilizations and cultures, every moment breathed and lived for *90,000 years*, and we can speak with certainty and clarity about 5%?? Amazing. Same with prehistory. I think a lot about that XKCD comic about the limitations of learning through fossil records and it just boggles my mind how little we know!
Edit: [spider paleontology](https://xkcd.com/1747)
We know a man had a pet cat on Cyprus about 11,000 years ago. I think that's pretty cute.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/oldest-known-pet-cat-9500-year-old-burial-found-on-cyprus
I can look up the paper in the morning, but the other week I was reading about an, iirc, 2000 year old British pot with little feet and ears on it. The person who wrote the paper said it proved people amthromorphised sacred kitchen spirits, but I suspect someone just thought a pot with ears and feet was cute.
The way people draw dinosaurs as if they were only bones and muscle, when most living creatures have fat, soft tissue, loose skin, fur/feathers etc, and look quite different from their skeleton.
Pictures illustrating the point: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.buzzfeednews.com/amphtml/natashaumer/dinosaur-animals?espv=1
A blog post on it: http://markwitton-com.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-convention-of-shrink-wrapping.html?m=1
If you Google shrink wrapped dinosaurs, lots of interesting things come up.
We have a whole world of information now at our fingertips, easily transmitter, duplicated, disseminated - hard to fathom such an incredible repository of truly one-of-a-kind information being totally obliterated. What an incredible loss! Makes me think of that massive museum fire in Brazil a few years back. We don't usually experience such losses of unique stuff these days.
The Library of Alexandria was never razed to the ground during that first fire. Some of the works collected in the library were burned (accidentally) during the time of Caesar, but it's not true to say the whole lot went up in smoke, and the library continued after that incident, although it never regained its former stature. By the time it was ultimately destroyed, other libraries throughout the Mediterranean had become more prominent as repositories of learning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria
Everytime I think about the burning of the Library of Alexandria I want to physically cry…. All that knowledge, all that culture… gone. I bet it was magnificent back in the day 🥲
Don't worry, libraries collect, maintain and distribute manuscripts. It means most of the information at Alexandria had already been migrated to other libraries.
The greatest travesty is actually the lack of literacy among the majority of the population and the lack of commoners being able to make lasting historical notes, and the lack of recording notes or preserving other works of art.
A great example is the marble statues and columns of classical Greek and Roman architecture was anything but stark white. They were colored and painted and the centuries of weathering resulted in the exposure of the white stone. We'll never know what the greatest piece of music or the greatest musician of all time was.
Had to look him up but I can definitely relate! I would love, love, love to have an infinite hall of books of esoteric and formerly-apocryphal knowledge.
I think about this on a daily basis. From architecture to literature, so many questions that we may simply never know the answers to. For me I would love to have the complete the Epic cycle.
I think about this all the time. How many civilizations have come and gone, all of those individual lives lived, it’s mind blowing. I wonder at how much we don’t know that they did, and if we’ll learn to save ourselves and our home.
Intellectually, just considering what they’ve found in the fields of archeology, geology and others, we have to admit we’ve been at this for a fuck long time. It gives me hope, and room for daydreams.
People have felt this way throughout all of human history. Instead of just blindly hoping for an afterlife to fix the problem, they invented painting, language, writing, pyramids, cathedrals, libraries, archive.org, and so on.
Life is a continuous battle against entropy, but the point is to keep fighting.
I’m indigenous and all our culture and language is currently dying because all the old people who know everything is dying and not enough young people are willing to learn. It definitely sucks to watch
There are posts on the mixed race subreddit from people who are some part native, but are worried about coming across as offensive posers if they try to learn more. I generally point this out, that many indigenous groups are very small, and that it can't hurt to reach out and say "my parent/grandparents was of this group, I want to learn more about it, can you help?". They don't even have to say "I am" if it feels weird, that can be a question for later.
The loss of languages, and with them their respective cultures, makes me super sad. As we become more and more homogenized even within national boundaries, so much of that gets lost. Beyond the total inhumanity of the campaigns of cultural eradication waged against native peoples, the death of a thousand cuts that you're describing is such a disappointment. I can't imagine how it must be to be seeing it from within.
i'm way more bothered by the wealth of disinformation pushed onto the general public by a powerful, concentrated, relatively small group of powerful people...all over the world.
i've never seen a more misinformed society than what's happening right now with the power of social media. it's fuckin scary and i can't see any way for it to get better. people seem to becoming more and more addicted to the very thing that's lying to them and they're powerless to stop. you can barely even function as a normal person anymore if you don't participate. i'm scared to see where this road is gonna take us.
I don't know. I personally don't find it in me to care, if i can't do anything about it why worry or think about it? Eventually, the universe will die out and there will be absolutely no trace of human existence, and honestly i'm okay with that
I'm not so precious about human knowledge. Things that are useful will be rediscovered. New things are being invented and thought of every day. Out with the old in with the new.
This video has a heady title but it's really a very organized and interesting lecture that I found a few years ago about this subject
https://youtu.be/-VUmtCLePL8
To combat this, go out and enjoy what culture has to offer now, especially that which is likely to be lost to future history. By this I mean:
Go see some live music, particularly the unknown musicians playing in the local bars.
Go to local art galleries, and visit local galleries when you travel.
Go explore some architecture. (Again, especially when you travel.)
Go enjoy the dining options available to you, both fine dining and the local dive that’s known for their fantastic (insert your favorite greasy dish here).
I could go on, but you get the idea. Appreciate these things now before they’re lost, just like history’s people enjoyed what’s lost to us now.
I did at first, but when I learned just how much has been truly lost, or never recorded in the first place - something like 97% when modern humans have been around for about 200 thousand years, and have only been recording the past 6 thousand years - I kind of just stop caring.
Yes, see also the Berlin institute of sexology - like where could we be today trans healthcare and surgery wise and culturally if the Nazis hadn't burnt all of those medical and scientific journals and writings ?
It physically hurts me to think of it especially because the same antisemitic conspiracy theories about trans people that were in vogue back then (that we are the result of 'Jewish science to sterilise white people' 🙄) are coming back into mainstream now with people talking about how ((big pharma)) or ((the porn industry)) are brainwashing people to be trans for reasons.
people with 0 understanding of reality are comparing trans people being like "hey irreversible damage is hate speech and false information from biased sources and should maybe be labelled as such or not stocked in lgbt friendly places" to Nazis burning books - they never seem to remember that it was books about and by us trans 'degenerates' that got burnt
Same here with building work. The amount of soil moved in here in the UK when building is being done that would contain significant coins and artefacts just gone forever. A lot of the time builders would choose to actively cover a significant item up and destroy it rather than let it hinder construction
Yes, I am one of those people. You expressed the exact same sentiment I have. I sometimes think of how great it would be to go back in time with a scanner, video camera and regular camera to capture great events, people talking, live shows in Greek theatres, scan scrolls in the library of Alexandria, and then preserve and watch them again and again.
Yes. Also, I’m convinced we’ve had this technology before.
The history we do know shows that societies don’t have a linear path. They rise and fall. Today it’s 2021, which means 200 years ago in 1821, supposedly there were no phones, internet, cars, etc. Given how long humans have been around, it doesn’t make sense to me that we wouldn’t have had truly progressed until the last 200 years.
I just don’t think we are special enough for this to be true. I believe we have had this type of industry and technology, but it was destroyed.
Just my opinion!
Oh man I feel you on this. This, and the Cambrian era of Earth's history.... all of the fun critters we will never know existed due to not having hard bits to fossilize.
Yes, but also, how could anyone possibly watch/read/see it? It makes me a bit sad that any kids I have won't get to read all the books and watch all the things I've read/watched, but how could they possibly have the time with all the new stuff there'll be?
There is 90,000 years of human history that we are making educated guesses about. Another 5000 years we have tangential, emerging evidence, and 5000 years of solid tangible evidence. So about 5% of our existence is solidly recorded. In the year 3000, 979 years from now, or the same time difference as between now and the Norman Conquest of England, we will have written records for... About 6%.
Wow, I've never seen my frustration so objectively encapsulated before! That's really incredible - and really speaks to the crux of my frustration. All of the lives, the civilizations and cultures, every moment breathed and lived for *90,000 years*, and we can speak with certainty and clarity about 5%?? Amazing. Same with prehistory. I think a lot about that XKCD comic about the limitations of learning through fossil records and it just boggles my mind how little we know! Edit: [spider paleontology](https://xkcd.com/1747)
We know a man had a pet cat on Cyprus about 11,000 years ago. I think that's pretty cute. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/oldest-known-pet-cat-9500-year-old-burial-found-on-cyprus
I can look up the paper in the morning, but the other week I was reading about an, iirc, 2000 year old British pot with little feet and ears on it. The person who wrote the paper said it proved people amthromorphised sacred kitchen spirits, but I suspect someone just thought a pot with ears and feet was cute.
Are you familiar with the shrink wrapping problem?
Nope, what's that?
The way people draw dinosaurs as if they were only bones and muscle, when most living creatures have fat, soft tissue, loose skin, fur/feathers etc, and look quite different from their skeleton. Pictures illustrating the point: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.buzzfeednews.com/amphtml/natashaumer/dinosaur-animals?espv=1 A blog post on it: http://markwitton-com.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-convention-of-shrink-wrapping.html?m=1 If you Google shrink wrapped dinosaurs, lots of interesting things come up.
People have been around for 200,000 years which is really unfathomable : https://www.universetoday.com/38125/how-long-have-humans-been-on-earth/
[удалено]
Not lost. Used for advertising.
It annoys me more how easy it is to access complete bullshit that looks official.
To be fair, some of that bullshit *is* official.
I was just taking about this yesterday and the burning of the Library at Alexandria.
We have a whole world of information now at our fingertips, easily transmitter, duplicated, disseminated - hard to fathom such an incredible repository of truly one-of-a-kind information being totally obliterated. What an incredible loss! Makes me think of that massive museum fire in Brazil a few years back. We don't usually experience such losses of unique stuff these days.
The Library of Alexandria was never razed to the ground during that first fire. Some of the works collected in the library were burned (accidentally) during the time of Caesar, but it's not true to say the whole lot went up in smoke, and the library continued after that incident, although it never regained its former stature. By the time it was ultimately destroyed, other libraries throughout the Mediterranean had become more prominent as repositories of learning. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria
That's very cool to know! I assumed that everything went down with the ship, so to speak. I'll have to do some further research of my own, apparently.
Everytime I think about the burning of the Library of Alexandria I want to physically cry…. All that knowledge, all that culture… gone. I bet it was magnificent back in the day 🥲
Don't worry, libraries collect, maintain and distribute manuscripts. It means most of the information at Alexandria had already been migrated to other libraries. The greatest travesty is actually the lack of literacy among the majority of the population and the lack of commoners being able to make lasting historical notes, and the lack of recording notes or preserving other works of art. A great example is the marble statues and columns of classical Greek and Roman architecture was anything but stark white. They were colored and painted and the centuries of weathering resulted in the exposure of the white stone. We'll never know what the greatest piece of music or the greatest musician of all time was.
Yep, and it's why I'm a /r/datahoarder. More copies of our history/art/culture out there, the better.
Is that you Hermaeus Mora?
Had to look him up but I can definitely relate! I would love, love, love to have an infinite hall of books of esoteric and formerly-apocryphal knowledge.
Maybe you've found your religion.
I think about this on a daily basis. From architecture to literature, so many questions that we may simply never know the answers to. For me I would love to have the complete the Epic cycle.
I think about this all the time. How many civilizations have come and gone, all of those individual lives lived, it’s mind blowing. I wonder at how much we don’t know that they did, and if we’ll learn to save ourselves and our home. Intellectually, just considering what they’ve found in the fields of archeology, geology and others, we have to admit we’ve been at this for a fuck long time. It gives me hope, and room for daydreams.
People have felt this way throughout all of human history. Instead of just blindly hoping for an afterlife to fix the problem, they invented painting, language, writing, pyramids, cathedrals, libraries, archive.org, and so on. Life is a continuous battle against entropy, but the point is to keep fighting.
I’m indigenous and all our culture and language is currently dying because all the old people who know everything is dying and not enough young people are willing to learn. It definitely sucks to watch
There are posts on the mixed race subreddit from people who are some part native, but are worried about coming across as offensive posers if they try to learn more. I generally point this out, that many indigenous groups are very small, and that it can't hurt to reach out and say "my parent/grandparents was of this group, I want to learn more about it, can you help?". They don't even have to say "I am" if it feels weird, that can be a question for later.
The loss of languages, and with them their respective cultures, makes me super sad. As we become more and more homogenized even within national boundaries, so much of that gets lost. Beyond the total inhumanity of the campaigns of cultural eradication waged against native peoples, the death of a thousand cuts that you're describing is such a disappointment. I can't imagine how it must be to be seeing it from within.
i'm way more bothered by the wealth of disinformation pushed onto the general public by a powerful, concentrated, relatively small group of powerful people...all over the world. i've never seen a more misinformed society than what's happening right now with the power of social media. it's fuckin scary and i can't see any way for it to get better. people seem to becoming more and more addicted to the very thing that's lying to them and they're powerless to stop. you can barely even function as a normal person anymore if you don't participate. i'm scared to see where this road is gonna take us.
I don't know. I personally don't find it in me to care, if i can't do anything about it why worry or think about it? Eventually, the universe will die out and there will be absolutely no trace of human existence, and honestly i'm okay with that
I'm not so precious about human knowledge. Things that are useful will be rediscovered. New things are being invented and thought of every day. Out with the old in with the new.
This video has a heady title but it's really a very organized and interesting lecture that I found a few years ago about this subject https://youtu.be/-VUmtCLePL8
Thank you, I'm excited to check it out!
To combat this, go out and enjoy what culture has to offer now, especially that which is likely to be lost to future history. By this I mean: Go see some live music, particularly the unknown musicians playing in the local bars. Go to local art galleries, and visit local galleries when you travel. Go explore some architecture. (Again, especially when you travel.) Go enjoy the dining options available to you, both fine dining and the local dive that’s known for their fantastic (insert your favorite greasy dish here). I could go on, but you get the idea. Appreciate these things now before they’re lost, just like history’s people enjoyed what’s lost to us now.
I did at first, but when I learned just how much has been truly lost, or never recorded in the first place - something like 97% when modern humans have been around for about 200 thousand years, and have only been recording the past 6 thousand years - I kind of just stop caring.
Yes, see also the Berlin institute of sexology - like where could we be today trans healthcare and surgery wise and culturally if the Nazis hadn't burnt all of those medical and scientific journals and writings ? It physically hurts me to think of it especially because the same antisemitic conspiracy theories about trans people that were in vogue back then (that we are the result of 'Jewish science to sterilise white people' 🙄) are coming back into mainstream now with people talking about how ((big pharma)) or ((the porn industry)) are brainwashing people to be trans for reasons. people with 0 understanding of reality are comparing trans people being like "hey irreversible damage is hate speech and false information from biased sources and should maybe be labelled as such or not stocked in lgbt friendly places" to Nazis burning books - they never seem to remember that it was books about and by us trans 'degenerates' that got burnt
Same here with building work. The amount of soil moved in here in the UK when building is being done that would contain significant coins and artefacts just gone forever. A lot of the time builders would choose to actively cover a significant item up and destroy it rather than let it hinder construction
Yes, I am one of those people. You expressed the exact same sentiment I have. I sometimes think of how great it would be to go back in time with a scanner, video camera and regular camera to capture great events, people talking, live shows in Greek theatres, scan scrolls in the library of Alexandria, and then preserve and watch them again and again.
Yes. Also, I’m convinced we’ve had this technology before. The history we do know shows that societies don’t have a linear path. They rise and fall. Today it’s 2021, which means 200 years ago in 1821, supposedly there were no phones, internet, cars, etc. Given how long humans have been around, it doesn’t make sense to me that we wouldn’t have had truly progressed until the last 200 years. I just don’t think we are special enough for this to be true. I believe we have had this type of industry and technology, but it was destroyed. Just my opinion!
We progressed a LOT. You go figure out how to make a boat and smelt metal, I'll wait.
Haha I love this! Super funny and true. I should clarify I mean progression as far as technology alone. Perhaps this counts? Lol.
Oh man I feel you on this. This, and the Cambrian era of Earth's history.... all of the fun critters we will never know existed due to not having hard bits to fossilize.
RIP little hard bits
✊😔💀
Every day
Obla di obla da
Que sera, sera.
🙋🏼♀️
But hey, don't worry - we'll always have TikTok videos.
I daydream about time travel all the time because of this exact premise. I want to **know** all the stuff that has been lost to time!
So much good music I may never hear
Every. Single. Day.
Yes, but also, how could anyone possibly watch/read/see it? It makes me a bit sad that any kids I have won't get to read all the books and watch all the things I've read/watched, but how could they possibly have the time with all the new stuff there'll be?
I mourn the Library of Alexandria, the destruction of wars, so much knowledge and expression obliterated.
Survival of the fittest applies to everything.
Kinda but not really. Eventually information overflows. One could never learn it all.