Not necessarily, stuff like all the documents in the Library of Alexandria were probably some of the best documents about science, maths and other subjects even by today’s standards.
There's this idea that if a story becomes so ubiquitous that everyone in the culture knows it, they eventually stop writing it down, leaving only references for historians to uncover. A story can ironically be too popular to survive.
this reminds me of that one post i read some years back talking about some super popular/important trade hub city that no one noted the location of because it was so obvious to them and now (as far as I know) archeologists can't find where the city was. it's so tragic and so fascinating to me
And on Wikipedia you can read about some authors stuff like "his contemporaries praised his comedies but only the text of one of his tragedies has been found".
Probably less than that if we include stories that were just told or sung or something. Greatest story ever told might have been by some lady living in Siberia 20 thousand years ago in an extinct language.
I often think about the quote, “One day somebody is going to think of you for the last time, then you are going to be forgotten for the rest of eternity.”
It's still happening, too. Every day both new and old media and literature and culture is lost to the ether of time. An entire Library of Alexandria worth of knowledge and experience has vaporized in your lifetime alone and there's no way to know you're seeing something for the last time.
Degradation of materials (a lot of stuff was written on stone or clay that is crumbled now), many purges of literature by conquering civilizations, accidents, getting lost, and fires (back before printing things had to be copied entirely by hand and often would just be a few copies)
ik when books get wet but really? if they're dried and kept they still can't last forever forever? ik they be getting sticky and yellow but never all destroyed.
Even quality paper begins to break down over hundreds of years of exposure to air and light, and a paper made to last is often worse at absorbing ink. And that's from just sitting on a shelf- a million things can destroy a book or render it unreadable in the real world.
These books often need to outlast entire civilizations, survive wars, natural disasters and mishandling to make it all the way to us. How many of your books are you currently keeping in a safe for future generations? They didn't do that much either.
I will mentally go "Well, the passage of time and impermanence of media of those days" and then I recall how many films from the 20th century don't exist any more and just get mad
And that's just what was written down. Imagine all the history and mythology that's forever lost because writing wasn't invented yet mixed with the downsides of oral tradition.
There is some beauty in the oral tradition. While it would be amazing to know them, the people sitting around that fire were possibly the first and only to experience a story. We're built on stories, and through some traditions, some people got to experience a unique moment in culture and community.
Same reason I love theatre. Sure there's a script and a set show and all, but sometimes there's an audience comment here, or the performer takes notice of something there, or a line gets memorably flubbed into something far more amusing, and now you've just seen a performance that'll never repeat.
The difference being the fact that there is a script at all. With oral tradition, you have to do it all from memory of what the previous storyteller told you, and it more than likely ended up in a game of telephone where the version that got written down isn't even the original one.
It's always the stuff you want to find that doesn't exist. We can't find information on long forgotten civilisations but we know why Bob was late for work in 201 bc
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But what volumes do you think were the ones that had copies elsewhere? Probably the best ones.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Wisdom
But yea depends on materials but it can degrade into being completely unreadable
"ARRRROOOOO!"