Crimes Against Civilization

There probably have been countless times when Humanity (or a segment of it) has wiped out a significant portion of our collective, accumulated literary and scientific record.

But here are four that might be some of the more egregious ones, at least insofar as what is known to me.

Remember Cleopatra? She was the last Queen of Egypt. I think it's historically pretty certain that she had affairs with Julius Caesar and Marc Antony, but she may have had a political motive. She saw the writing on the wall and was trying to be on the winning side (when the Romans conquered Egypt) and thus save some of her own power.

Well, the reason for bringing her up is just to set the stage. While all this was going on and Roman soldiers were in Egypt, the great library at Alexandria—a depository of much of the then-world's learning—burned. It's not clear whether the Romans torched it or if there was an accident involved; but the fact that we today have only thirty-some extant ancient Greek plays (out of hundreds that were written) probably is just one small part of the immeasurable loss to civilization that was the burning of that library.

Second, Islamic civilization was not only largely heir to much of the learning of the ancient Greeks but had made brilliant progress in mathematics and astronomy. It is fortunate that at least some of that eventually was transmitted to the West (initially via Venice); but again, much has surely been lost. The glorious empire that Islamic rulers had achieved, spreading over much of the world, came under attack from several sides. When the Mongols invaded from the east, they tossed innumerable books into the river. It is said that the Tigris and Euphrates rivers ran black from the ink of the books that had been thrown in.

In Spain, Islamic caliphates were also part of the brilliant world of Islamic learning. In 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella II, with their united forces, completed the reconquest (so-called Reconquista) of Spain by Christians over Muslims. Among innumerable bad consequences (by today's lights)—including the end of tolerance of Jews and Muslims, all of whom had to get out or be killed, often in a painful and horrible way—the new rulers also destroyed all Islamic books except some medical texts.

Oh, and maybe I should mention the Vikings. In the era of Viking raids (starting around 800 AD or earlier, and lasting for a couple hundred years), the Vikings pretty much destroyed a civilization in the north of England and wiped out monasteries. This resulted in the destruction of manuscripts and learning in general, along with the monasteries' scriptoria and schools that taught writing, Latin, and choir. As a witness to the results of this, King Alfred the Great, writing in the 9th century and in the South of England, which had not directly suffered from the Viking raids, lamented the sad state of learning and literacy in England, stating that even many of the clergy were illiterate.

The march of civilization, if it's mostly been forward, has certainly had many, many steps backward, from the fall of civilizations, the sacking and burning of cities, the destruction of libraries, etc.

Update, November 19, 2012
Another destruction of learning, in the form of books and music manuscripts, occurred during the World War II Allied  fire bombing of Dresden, Germany--which, by the way, killed tens of thousands of civilians. According to Wikipedia, and despite efforts to move much of the library's collection to less vulnerable locations, some 200,000 manuscripts were destroyed. And then the Soviets, who occupied the eastern or Soviet zone of post-War Germany, plundered another 250,000 volumes, just as they carried off machinery from German factories and personnel such as German rocket scientists; but that's another story.

Update, July 4, 2013
Yet another tragic loss of a great library occurred in 1258 when invading Mongols destroyed the library at Baghdad. The Tigris river was stained by the ink of the books that were thrown in it.

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein