I wish they had phones back then so all of it could be recorded. Nowadays we record even the most trivial things but I can’t help but wonder how many amazing stories and people have been left behind forever.
thefartingmango on
more than 90%
Cultural-Flow7185 on
Well that’s because most civilizations didn’t care to write down the history of 90% of its population.
You’re a kingdom or an empire, you write about kings and emperors.
Apprehensive_Gur_302 on
Relax guys, if it wasn’t recorded, it probably wasn’t important
/s
Crafty-Mention-5091 on
More sad (maybe for me) 90% plus of dinosaur species won’t be discovered
KenseiHimura on
A few days ago, I had actually joked that due to how the library of Alexandria worked with its written records, not everything would be some great lexicon of lost knowledge, but look more like an ancient Youtube and somewhere lost in the fires was probably the ancient world’s version of ‘Skibidi Toilet’.
But, yes, I often wish I had a time machine, not to change history but so it can be witnessed and documented properly.
AbsolutelyHorrendous on
Thankfully this meme has been repeated so often that, if anything, losing it to history will be a blessed relief
AwesomePossum_1 on
Sorry what does this even mean? At best 99% of my day is unrecorded, does that mean that 99% of modern history is lost forever? Or did you mean that we don’t have recorded history before 3000BC? Yeah 99% of Homo Sapiens history is lost by that logic. Sorry for venting, I’m just sick of how low brow and low effort this sub has become.
SNSkurton on
At least we have the important parts.
TheDwarvenGuy on
This is where archaeology comes in
Of course, 99% of artifacts have also been lost to history, which is where comparative linguistics and genetics comes in
Of course, 99% of languages and gene lines….
WheelspinAficionado on
It’s unfair that we know so much about Cicero, but it took another +1000 years before Scandinavians started recording anything with more than a sentence or two.
AmpovHater on
I’m Bulgarian and we had great victories and tragedies fighting Byzantium. According to the Byzantines.
One historian wrote that hundreds of years after the fact, we were still singing songs about the death of Tzar Samuil. Unlike the Catholics, the medieval Orthodox monks didn’t write down folklore. They didn’t write down our songs, they didn’t write about the lives of our tzars, or medieval history, or daily life.
Not a shred of it exists.
[deleted] on
[deleted]
Letsgoshuckless on
Something Something Chinese conspiracy theory about how western history is made up due to lack of documentation Something Something
TiberiusGemellus on
I wish it were only 90%.
Senjen95 on
Not just what went unrecorded…
Examples as early as Ancient Egypt show intentional destruction of recorded history. We know this from examples like the near-successful erasure of the Egyptian pharoah Hatshepsut by her successors.
We have lots of documented discussion over the *size* of the Library of Alexandria, which was partly destroyed by Caesar and further in later invasions/sacks.
And we have even more modern evidence with WWII, where Nazis burned books by the thousands- not just by genre or topic, but even by authors they did not want accredited & remembered in their unforgivable revisionism of German society.
And that’s just the written history; we’ve destroyed incredible amounts of archeological evidence between wars to using mummies as paint.
layinbrix on
“Constantly bring to thy recollection those who have complained greatly about anything, those who have been most conspicuous by the greatest fame or misfortunes or enmities or fortunes of any kind: then think where are they all now? Smoke and ash and a tale, or not even a tale.” – Marcus Aurelius
Not even a tale.
AdLast848 on
This makes me wish we had better history for regions like Sub-Saharan Africa or the Pre-Columbian Americas. And how much of the ones we did have got destroyed by settlers or invading forces
Meme_Pope on
99% of unrecorded history was humans bonking each other with sharp rocks and raping
Nice-Analysis8044 on
Something like 98% of all people across all history have been smallholding peasant farmers and we have *well-nigh fuckall* of their thoughts and dreams and hopes and aspirations and biographies and it makes me sick to my stomach that all of that is irrevocably lost, because I bet a lot of them were very smart and very interesting people.
20 Comments
I wish they had phones back then so all of it could be recorded. Nowadays we record even the most trivial things but I can’t help but wonder how many amazing stories and people have been left behind forever.
more than 90%
Well that’s because most civilizations didn’t care to write down the history of 90% of its population.
You’re a kingdom or an empire, you write about kings and emperors.
Relax guys, if it wasn’t recorded, it probably wasn’t important
/s
More sad (maybe for me) 90% plus of dinosaur species won’t be discovered
A few days ago, I had actually joked that due to how the library of Alexandria worked with its written records, not everything would be some great lexicon of lost knowledge, but look more like an ancient Youtube and somewhere lost in the fires was probably the ancient world’s version of ‘Skibidi Toilet’.
But, yes, I often wish I had a time machine, not to change history but so it can be witnessed and documented properly.
Thankfully this meme has been repeated so often that, if anything, losing it to history will be a blessed relief
Sorry what does this even mean? At best 99% of my day is unrecorded, does that mean that 99% of modern history is lost forever? Or did you mean that we don’t have recorded history before 3000BC? Yeah 99% of Homo Sapiens history is lost by that logic. Sorry for venting, I’m just sick of how low brow and low effort this sub has become.
At least we have the important parts.
This is where archaeology comes in
Of course, 99% of artifacts have also been lost to history, which is where comparative linguistics and genetics comes in
Of course, 99% of languages and gene lines….
It’s unfair that we know so much about Cicero, but it took another +1000 years before Scandinavians started recording anything with more than a sentence or two.
I’m Bulgarian and we had great victories and tragedies fighting Byzantium. According to the Byzantines.
One historian wrote that hundreds of years after the fact, we were still singing songs about the death of Tzar Samuil. Unlike the Catholics, the medieval Orthodox monks didn’t write down folklore. They didn’t write down our songs, they didn’t write about the lives of our tzars, or medieval history, or daily life.
Not a shred of it exists.
[deleted]
Something Something Chinese conspiracy theory about how western history is made up due to lack of documentation Something Something
I wish it were only 90%.
Not just what went unrecorded…
Examples as early as Ancient Egypt show intentional destruction of recorded history. We know this from examples like the near-successful erasure of the Egyptian pharoah Hatshepsut by her successors.
We have lots of documented discussion over the *size* of the Library of Alexandria, which was partly destroyed by Caesar and further in later invasions/sacks.
And we have even more modern evidence with WWII, where Nazis burned books by the thousands- not just by genre or topic, but even by authors they did not want accredited & remembered in their unforgivable revisionism of German society.
And that’s just the written history; we’ve destroyed incredible amounts of archeological evidence between wars to using mummies as paint.
“Constantly bring to thy recollection those who have complained greatly about anything, those who have been most conspicuous by the greatest fame or misfortunes or enmities or fortunes of any kind: then think where are they all now? Smoke and ash and a tale, or not even a tale.” – Marcus Aurelius
Not even a tale.
This makes me wish we had better history for regions like Sub-Saharan Africa or the Pre-Columbian Americas. And how much of the ones we did have got destroyed by settlers or invading forces
99% of unrecorded history was humans bonking each other with sharp rocks and raping
Something like 98% of all people across all history have been smallholding peasant farmers and we have *well-nigh fuckall* of their thoughts and dreams and hopes and aspirations and biographies and it makes me sick to my stomach that all of that is irrevocably lost, because I bet a lot of them were very smart and very interesting people.