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TIL people keep saying the Library of Alexandria burning set us back 1000 years and it bugs me
I was at a cookout in Tucson last weekend and a guy at the grill swore up and down that one fire in Egypt killed all ancient knowledge. Here is the thing though, I actually looked into this after a history class two summers ago, and the library did not go out in one big blaze. It went downhill over like 300 years from budget cuts, staff leaving, and a bunch of smaller fires and wars. Most of the scrolls got copied and sent to other libraries around the Mediterranean anyway. So the whole what if scenario people love to run with is kind of built on a myth in the first place. The real alternate history question is what if the Ptolemies had kept funding it and kept paying scholars to stay. That is way more interesting to me than one dramatic fire. Has anyone else run into a popular what if that falls apart once you check the actual timeline?
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vera_johnson97d ago
The part about the whole what if scenario being built on a myth really hits home for me. I had the same thing happen when I found out that the "dark ages" weren't actually a big drop in knowledge like everyone says, and that always bothered me too because it gets repeated everywhere. It sounds like you actually did the reading instead of just going with the cookout version, and that takes some effort when the myth is so much easier to repeat. The Ptolemies funding question is a much better one because it's about choices people made, not some random fire. Sorry the guy at the grill was so sure of himself, that kind of thing is annoying when you know better.
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