When I watch documentaries about archaeology (which is often) I wonder what archaeological evidence our culture is going to leave behind. What will remain of our civilization in a thousand years, or three thousand years? The pyramids will undoubtedly still be here, and very likely the Acropolis, the Colosseum, the Great Wall of China, and countless other structures and artifacts made of stone and perhaps pottery, if conditions are right. But what of our buildings and artworks? Wood burns, steel rusts, pigments fade, and plastic (eventually) disintegrates. Concrete is the only durable material we regularly build with, but even it will fall apart if exposed to the weather, and the way we use it certainly won't give a favourable impression of our aesthetic values.
It seems strange to me that the most powerful and wealthy civilizations that have ever existed can't seem to afford to build with beautiful stone. When was the last time a stone building was erected in your city, or even your country? Is there anyone carving our stories into friezes and columns, or at least painting them into plaster? No, our stories are printed on paper—thin, fragile paper. And for the last 150 years or so, our stories have been written on the worst kind of paper, acidic tree-pulp paper, which is now busily dissolving itself on our library shelves.
Things have improved somewhat with more books being printed on neutral and alkaline papers, but even cotton paper, which can last for centuries, can't match the durability and longevity of parchment. The skins of calves and lambs have proved to be a most reliable medium for transmitting human art and knowledge, sometimes even more reliable than stone and plaster. I've been reading The Geometry of Love by Margaret Visser, a peripatetic history of the church of Sant' Agnese fuori la mura in Rome. Time and again Visser describes how burial places, altars, shrines, mosaics, carvings, even entire basilicas have been preserved only in written records. Weather, wars, and recycling have damaged the art and architecture of early Roman Christianity, but books and scrolls have survived to tell their tale. Learning this astonishes me, but perhaps I shouldn't be astonished. Perhaps a book is a much easier thing to preserve than a building or a marble inscription.
Here is an example. Visser describes how Pope Damasus I (366-384) had marble inscriptions in a purpose-made calligraphic alphabet placed in various martyr's shrines around Rome. It was not until 1728 that the first more-or-less intact example was discovered (on the underside of one of the paving stones in Sant'Agnese fuori la mura), but about sixty more had long been known of from medieval manuscripts, copied from earlier manuscripts. I wonder if Pope Damasus could have imagined that parchment would be, for the most part, more durable than marble?
In truth, the longevity of parchment is probably entirely dependent on the continuity of a tradition that values and preserves human knowledge. I have heard many stories of how Christian monasteries preserved and copied ancient books and scrolls from many traditions through times of upheaval and persecution. But monasteries are in precipitous decline—I'm not sure we can look to them to preserve even the best of the vast literary output of humanity.
What about secular libraries? Civilizations have made remarkable efforts to preserve written records—the libraries of Nineveh and Alexandria come to mind—but when those civilizations fell, their libraries fell with them. Will today's libraries still be standing in a thousand years? We've seen what has happened to Iraq's national library in the course of a mere "regime change." Large, centralized libraries are as vulnerable as any building in times of change. But perhaps with the whole-hearted dedication of librarians like Saad Eskander of Iraq, they will survive somehow, and future civilizations will be able to know and learn from us.
