We’ve uncovered less than 1% of the Assyrian/Babylonian tablets that are thought to exist. Theres a lot of stuff out there that’s well preserved thankfully even if we haven’t uncovered it yet.
Whats cool is cuneiform could be written phonetically so a Babylonian scribe could write down any language even if they don’t understand it. They apparently could also write at the speed a person speaks so they acted like stenographers in court or executive assistants for rich merchants or elites.
People probably used a lot of slate+chalk or wax tablets for regular note-taking.
Similarly, archival grade paper and printing is STILL really expensive and folks STILL aren’t doing that for their grocery lists and honey-dos. Not to mention that nearly all of our digital writings are extremely ephemeral. Wont somebody think about the future historians!!!
I keep a paper diary which I just assumed would rot away as a write-only set of documents, but then I think of all the digital work from 10+ years ago I’ve lost to plain bit rot, and I wonder if these chickenscratch braindumps on graphite and cheap recycled paper aren’t the more durable medium.
Yeah you have to be careful what you write in there for legal reasons, but you could just omit some stuff or use coded phrases only you know the meaning to (eg. Got to the milk just before it expired = had hot homo sex in the park).
If we actually had lots of surviving material like that it would be amazing.
Before the early modern period it was rare for people to write down boring or mundane shit because writing was hard and expensive.
We’ve uncovered less than 1% of the Assyrian/Babylonian tablets that are thought to exist. Theres a lot of stuff out there that’s well preserved thankfully even if we haven’t uncovered it yet.
Whats cool is cuneiform could be written phonetically so a Babylonian scribe could write down any language even if they don’t understand it. They apparently could also write at the speed a person speaks so they acted like stenographers in court or executive assistants for rich merchants or elites.
People probably used a lot of slate+chalk or wax tablets for regular note-taking.
Similarly, archival grade paper and printing is STILL really expensive and folks STILL aren’t doing that for their grocery lists and honey-dos. Not to mention that nearly all of our digital writings are extremely ephemeral. Wont somebody think about the future historians!!!
Now writing is very easy, though I’m somewhat glad the whole bullshit going on on social media is rather easily lost as well. 🫠
I keep a paper diary which I just assumed would rot away as a write-only set of documents, but then I think of all the digital work from 10+ years ago I’ve lost to plain bit rot, and I wonder if these chickenscratch braindumps on graphite and cheap recycled paper aren’t the more durable medium.
I’ve thought about keeping a journal but I don’t think having a copy of a lot of my thoughts laying around for someone to find is a good idea.
Yeah you have to be careful what you write in there for legal reasons, but you could just omit some stuff or use coded phrases only you know the meaning to (eg. Got to the milk just before it expired = had hot homo sex in the park).