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unixronin: Galen the technomage, from Babylon 5: Crusade (Default)
Unixronin

December 2012

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Thursday, August 3rd, 2006 05:53 pm

The BBC reports that X-ray fluorescence techniques have just enabled the reconstruction of some original texts written by Archimedes and others.  The parchment contains works including the only Greek version of On Floating Bodies known to exist, the only surviving ancient copy of The Method of Mechanical Theorems and of a mathematical puzzle called the Stomachion, as well as treatises on the Equilibrium of Planes, Spiral Lines, The Measurement of the Circle, and Sphere and Cylinder.  These are important and groundbreaking texts, several of which form the foundations of areas of modern mathematics.

So why were these writings lost in the first place?

The original texts were transcribed in the 10th Century by an anonymous scribe on to parchment.

Three centuries later a monk in Jerusalem called Johannes Myronas recycled the manuscript to create a palimpsest.

Palimpsesting involves scraping away the original text so the parchments can be used again.  To create [the] book, the monk cut the pages in half and turned them sideways.

[...] Myronas also used recycled pages from works by the 4th Century Orator Hyperides and other philosophical texts.

Destroying and recycling the writings of Archimedes, among others, to create ... a book of prayers.  It's enough to make you weep.  One has to wonder what other wonders of knowledge have been lost or destroyed through the centuries for no better reason than so that some pious fool who did not understand (or did not care) what he was destroying could scribble paeans to the ineffability of his chosen deity.

Friday, August 4th, 2006 05:15 am (UTC)
I have several times been to witness the situation where someone is discarding 50-year-old documents, for example the users manuals and maintenance instructions to the very first air surveillance computers. The person said "Oh, someone else sure has the museum copies, it is not necessary for us to keep these." I would insist on checking whether the relevant museum or archival organisations in fact do have exemplars, and if necessary, having the documents shipped to them instead of being shredded.

One can not be everywhere. I'm sure time and again someone discards a piece of junk, unthinking, or even perhaps thinking that it can not be the last or unique or that it is not their task to preserve history.
Friday, August 4th, 2006 01:15 pm (UTC)
There is that, indeed.