Comment by pfdietz
6 hours ago
Paper doesn't easily survive for thousands of years.
You know that pleasant used bookstore smell? It's paper slowly decomposing.
6 hours ago
Paper doesn't easily survive for thousands of years.
You know that pleasant used bookstore smell? It's paper slowly decomposing.
I'd be willing to bet that there's a lot more readable paper from thousands of years ago than there will be readable digital data from today in thousands of years. Digital information has to be actively preserved in every case, whereas paper can be passively preserved in some cases.
Texts from thousands of years ago survive only because they were repeatedly copied. There are some extreme examples like the Dead Sea Scrolls but they are the exception.
Modern acid-free paper might last 1000 years; 500 is more typical. Acid paper breaks down in less than a century.
Parchment was so expensive it was often scraped and reused; old texts can sometimes be recovered after being overwritten (palimpsests).