The Library of Alexandria: What Did We Lose? 

I can always tell when Vessi is sponsoring the podcast by the enraptured look in Simon’s eyes.

You did make a video about this library in the past 😂

Papyrus paper Simon👍

You can totally tell the sponsor by the level of excitement in your voice as you begin the ad read. Honestly, if it was viable to buy them in Australia, I would, purely based on your ads.

😮😮😮 😅

Y'all better like this, this is fucking funny.

"Give me all of your dead dove don't eat"

*Giggles as I read an ao3 au

Alexandria Of Our Own

And urban dictionary

Simon isn’t real he is pure A.I.

I mean, Simon's secret is pretty well known - he doesn't read any of his stuff in advance. No proofreading. No editing. No rehearsing. Just read it live

Simonius Maximus

​@@brianmulholland2467WE'LL DO IT LIVE! 😂 OGBB! shit wrong channel😂

Then it’s no wonder they burnt it down 😂

The whole piece comes off very dismissive imo

i thought they put it that way as a joke. like the petty person pretending they're not impressed that you see in a lot of comedy movies

I wish he went into more detail on the guy too. most sources I've read on him say that his nickname of "beta" was intended as a compliment suggesting that he was 2nd best at everything, but Carl Sagan said he was given it by a jealous peer.

The author seems to have a chip on their shoulder when it comes to modern academia (understandable), and has projected it on this piece. "These academics didn't study anything useful. But if they did it might have involved vivisection."

If my intro to surveying professor didn't use entirely sh!t sources, Eratosthenes' calculation using only an obelisk and a well yielded a result that was less than 1% off of the actual circumference of the Earth. I feel like many of those watching would've appreciated that factoid.

Simon doesn't believe in ghost; you think he believes in a group of people fighting Jefferson Starships and Werepires?

It's just a term for educated persons. I'm not sure she was aiming for that reference

i mean it was a fun but god awful show. it ran way too long and the stories were way too representative. just have to always keep upping the stakes because yea.... but then 20+ episode seasons so plenty of time for side quests!

He wouldnt- he's a Mandroid.

@@roborob4296I liked it when it was about monsters n demons. I lost interest when it was about him being the devil or god or whatever

So much for "FACT"boi

@@chasebob8327 😂

Scrolled this as he said it... goosebumps

Can't believe he's still falling for that one

unbelievable that Simon still falls for the big bird media

Yes this irked me. Even a library that was moderate by modern standards WOULD be a wonder thousands of years ago.

I imagine the ancient herbs/treatments lost due to the burning of the library. Imagine if one rare tribe found a way to treat cancer and cure it. A war hits them so they are reduced to 5 members and within one more generation they are now all dead. Their cure was written down only once and placed on an obscure shelf in the very back of the library, forgotten but safe, and then the library burns and it is lost forever. Or the lost plants and animals we will now never know about(if something went extinct 3000 years ago not likely many people would know of it today...same idea)....I also loath the vatican for committing nearly the same thing. The vatican has who knows what books/papyri/ancient medical texts/botany texts/engineering marvels of the ancient world....someday we, humanity as a whole, needs to pass a what ever it takes to make them share each and everything hidden away in their vaults, etc.

Especially since artifacts like the Antycathera Mechanism are proof that the extreme high end of speculation and mythos of what Archimedes was able to achieve in his lifetime is likely real. The device alone is proof they had sophisticated clockwork technology nearly 2000 years before it was rediscovered. Had the knowledge accumulated during that time been recorded and heavily distributed it's entirely possible the moon landing could have happened during the Roman age. But it wasn't knowledge that was particularly relevant to their day to day lives and so it was lost.

There's perhaps a missing link here: if the Greeks were so focused on the knowledge as described, it wouldn't have been full of secret technologies, it would have been full of the arts and history. A loss for sure, but not of how to farm or build rocket engines. As was said, not everyone could read and trade knowledge was passed down through individual training, not study. It's possible some math or recipe was lost, but it's just not likely it was of the substance to have stymied human progress by a thousand years.

We still have books of ancient Roman technology, such as the autonomous vehicle that could move by itself for 10 minutes and their mechanism for automatic doors that involved lighting a fire that after 2 hours would proceed to open a door. We also still have books of their math equations, their study in medicine, how they exercised, and the fasting diets they used to get in shape for the Olympics. Even when it comes to the guy (Marcus Manilius) who invented the method for extract horoscopes from the zodiac signs using math and diagrams we still have his books in which is still used today for creating horoscopes. The "24 hours, 60 minutes, 60 seconds" in a day and "365 days" in the year, and our calender is all from Romen books. Our greatest knowledge of Socretes comes from the written works of Xenophon a Spartan General. Our only knowledge of Epictetus is the discourses written down by Arrian a Roman General. Another thing to add is in these books the authors also mention hundreds of other books that no longer exist. Here we are today still confused about how the pyramids were built. However the political structure in the US is all based on the political structure in Athens 2,400 years ago in which both Xenophon, Diodorus, Plato, Aristotle, and others wrote about.

Yes, please!

Yes. This dude was my high school English teacher's favorite literary figure. I was less impressed.

Moot

@@tolkienfan1972 I thought it looked wrong.

@@jackvos8047 😁

Really? His horse? I had no idea. That's cool.

With a statue and all! He loved that horse, bless him.​@@phaedrapage4217

Pretty sure that's a fake background

@@marieseaman7855 Possibly, but Simon did mention somewhere in the episode that he's working from home and, "that's why the background looks different." It COULD be edited in, but I also know Simon takes pride in designing his backdrops to fit specific channels, so I wouldn't put it passed him to build up his home office to also be generally aesthetic.

do you have any evidence that these were all stored in the library? Or are you just assuming that they were there without evidence.

​@@MrChickennugget360 your answer is literally in his comment when he said "might".

Isn't the recipe for Greek fire in the Anarchist's Cookbook? Could've sworn I read it in there as a teenager. At the time, you could find all the ingredients at Menards.

​@phaedrapage4217 you may be thinking of napalm. Greek fire, much like Roman concrete and REAL Damascus steel have yet to be replicated

Can't speak for Greek fire, but didn't they recently discover the secret to Roman concrete was the seawater they used to mix it? That it basically made it self-repairing, but it's too soft for many modern applications, something like that. They also have been able to use non-destructive imaging to see inside the antikythera machine and clear up a lot of the mystery. Take it with a grain of salt, I'm not sure where I saw this info, but it was within the last year or two (probably) and it very likely was one of Simon's channels 😂

Library of Ashurbanipal, Library of Alexandria, House of Wisdom, and these are just ones we know of or about.

simon mentioned records on the building of pyramids. today we're still trying to figure out how they were built, unless, of course, it was aliens

I mean we have a lot of amazing technology now, internet, smartphones, planes, trains, cars etc. I don't think we really lost anything, i would say our modern world is just fine compared to the ancient world.

@@user-vv8ve4px5j I agree. Speaking for myself I ain't mystifying, etc. those 3 libraries I mentioned. I just find it pretty cool.

There were reports of the Tigris and Euphrates running black with ink from the books thrown it. Still sticks with me today.

"The Past was the Worst" example 465: Builds library in a semi-arid desert next to the sea...It burns down: nobody had invented 'firefighting' in the last 2mil years since hominids 'discovered' how to use fire.

"CRINGE"

@@Maxtyur Like your comment.

@@Phobos_Anomaly CRINGE.

@@Maxtyur EGNIRC

He was already old even then 🤣

Shhh! Nobody is supposed to know Keith is immortal.

i never even considered that but it could very well happen that way sometimes... "and hence, mistakes were copied and recopied without correction" -- me pretending to be on the history channel

@@vulcanfeline Nice one :D

He's probably still making videos at his house. There was construction at the office, lol

This could make an episode unto itself

​@@benzomanic2972 I thought he got a ''shared workspace'' for that. It would be tough to record that much with kids around.

It got burned down

The Library of Whistleria, lost to the ages.

Me too! I just really wish they hadn’t spent so much time on the boring Christian stuff.

😂 Simon didn’t even question that the men of letters are fighting the nights off hell. Love supernatural

Oh so thats what the knights of hell was lol. I was so confused, thinking they meant the templars or something

Idk if you're referring to Esoterica or not but this was what I got out of his episode on this. At least, I'd never really considered this perspective before seeing that episode

Kinda the way we are quietly letting accuracy die nowadays. 😔

@@bryanvigue8779 I believe it was Lady of the Library. Similar content though.

​@@SoManyRandomRamblings Accuracy? As in accurately giving the truth, accurately using a weapon, or some other definition? You're being too vague, unless you mean in all uses of the word.

@@ALLMINDmercenarysupportsystem all they lying that is allowed, even praised.

You would have to be VERY careful with that one, depending on which wish granting situation you were in! You would indeed get all the important stuff, but you would almost certainly be overloaded with things like "do you like me, circle yes or no" notes!! 😂😂😂

You'd be filled with useless knowledge as much as profound.

@@captainspaulding5963 oh my I never thought of this😂you have given me lots to think about

@@honestkyn718 maybe getting everything written down that could be categorized as factual ? I would say scientific,, but I would always want spiritual, philosophical, whatever you would call stuff like Gilgamesh&gods

​@@captainspaulding5963A UNIVERSES' WORTH OF TERMS OF SERVICE DOCUMENTS

na not really. very important works would have likely been transferred to other libraries as it's status declined

​@@RandomGuy-lu1enexactly

That's the thing isn't it? Simon and his channels tend to be pretty science focused which is fine don't get me wrong. But it means that things like this are ignored or their importance not recognized. Is it earthshaking that we don't know exactly how the pyramids were designed and built? No. Did it badly damage human progress that we only have three complete plays by Sophocles who apparently cranked out plays the way James Patterson spins out novels? Not really, but it's a shame nonetheless that these things didn't survive the passage of time.

I believe alot of these "lost" knowledge and history has not entirely been lost, but has been hoarded and collected by the catholic church and likely exsist in some form in the Vatican secret archives. The fact that more pressure towards the Vaticans gatekeeping of knowledge and history in order to protect the religious narrative, surprises me that there are not more of humanity uprising against the church for locking away miles of possible ancient knowledge

Does knowledge bring happiness? Does progress create fulfillment or endless possibilities for more and more suffering?

@@edeliteedelite1961 the debate and answer to that question was also lost, condemning humanity to still not get it

philosophy had generally always been connected to religion. The idea of them being separate is a modern concept. It was not only during the Middle Ages that "academic" became popular again it was well recorded during the early Middle Ages.

The reality was the fall of the Western Roman Empire was not simply political but also economic. This is both due to the fall of Rome but also due to rise of Islam. Because Christianity and Islam were ideologically opposed the region that had encompassed the Roman Empire (specifically its trade routes) would never be reunited. This slowed the recovery of Western Europe, as Islamic trade routes tended to be antagonistic toward Europeans. Generally speaking, the richest parts of the Roman Empire would be captured by Muslims over time, (Carthage, Alexandria, Asia Minor and ultimately Constantinople) Western Europe's rise to world dominance as well as the scientific revolution were the result of circumnavigation of the globe and the following trade dominance that followed.

@@MrChickennugget360 Islam did not even exist for another two hundred years after the fall of the western Empire, and it was a bit longer before the concept of a Caliphate could be acted on. What are you talking about? Also, I very specifically said that academics on any topic *not of immediate interest to the church leadership* was eschewed if not harassed. Not that there was no academics at all. Some exceptions for daily life, obviously, but a feudal lord sponsoring a better beer brewer or sword technology is not on the same level with putting steam engines to work, for instance. The former you can do if you have an estate, but the latter requires a society.

@@MrChickennugget360 it is also worth pointing out that many of the results of Alexandria and other Classical era institutions like it were preserved by the eastern and, later, Islamic worlds but in a much less curious way. More rote than inquisitive or experimental. And eventually, of course, Islam entered a period similar to that of the Christian world in which advancement of any non-theologocal esoterics or academia was persecuted. The west in some sense began to try and awaken a few times, but it didn't take off until the late Medieval period. I would point to Charlamagne as one example of an attempt, Oxford was founded after the Norman invasion, and so on but it wasn't really until the 12th century that the ice began to thaw into what we might start to recognize as efforts at modern ways of viewing the world.

Even those who are not dedicated Children of Atom may bask in his Glow.

*once cause i'm a reincarnated spelling cop and care about spelling and not spreading faulty facts