How much of human history is lost?

Human history spans back hundreds of thousands of years, yet much of it remains a mystery. Just how much has been lost to the ravages of time? While we may never know the full extent, by examining the archaeological and written records, we can begin to quantify the gaps and get a sense of how much human history has vanished.

Table of Contents

Prehistory: The Unwritten Past

The vast majority of human existence occurred before the advent of writing between 5,000-3,000 BCE. This prehistoric era accounts for over 95% of the time humans have lived on Earth. Without written records, our knowledge of this immense span of time is limited to what artifacts and sites archaeologists can uncover.

The archaeological record is incomplete. While stone tools and pottery shards can reveal much, they fail to tell the whole human story. Countless sites, artifacts, and even entire civilizations have been erased by the passage of time. Rising sea levels at the end of the last Ice Age drowned coastal settlements. Cities built of wood vanished without a trace. Entire languages and belief systems were lost without ever being recorded.

Our understanding of prehistory is also shaped by what sites happen to survive. Archaeologists estimate that less than 1% of all prehistoric sites remain. Our picture of the past is reconstructed from these rare and random survivals, like trying to comprehend a movie from a handful of scattered film frames.

Furthermore, many artifacts remain unstudied and untranslated. Of the estimated 7 million objects excavated in the Middle East between 1884 and 1979, only 2-5% had been examined and published. Who knows what insights this backlog of artifacts may hold?

Key Prehistoric Gaps

Here are some of the major gaps in our knowledge of prehistory:

Origins of bipedalism and stone tool use – When and why did hominins begin walking upright and using stone tools? The record prior to 3 million years ago contains tantalizingly few clues.
The control of fire – Hard evidence only goes back 300,000-400,000 years. Fire was likely controlled much earlier.

Paleolithic art in Africa – European cave art gets much attention, but comparable finds in Africa are scarce, likely due to preservation factors.
Rituals, spirituality & early language – These left no physical trace. We can only speculate about their origins and evolution.
Seafaring and island settlement – When did prehistoric peoples first make ocean voyages? How did settlement occur on distant islands?

Megafauna extinctions – What caused the mass extinction of large mammals like woolly mammoths at the end of the last ice age? Overhunting or climate change?
Neanderthal extinction – What led to the disappearance of Neanderthals after flourishing for 300,000+ years? Competition with modern humans? Climate? Disease?

These are just a handful of the enduring enigmas around human prehistory. Entire volumes could be devoted to all we do not know.

Ancient History: The Fragility of Early Writing

The development of writing enabled the preservation of history like never before. However, materials like stone, clay, papyrus, and parchment were fragile. Of ancient texts written, only a tiny sample has survived to today.

For example, only about 1% of Latin literature from the Roman Empire remains intact. For ancient Greek literature, the figure is closer to 5%, but the vast majority of texts have been lost:

Sophocles wrote over 100 plays, 7 of which survive.

Euripides authored almost 100 plays, 19 remain.
There were over 40,000 Greek statutes and sculptures, yet only about 600 intact examples survive.

As the classicist Mary Beard argues, we must imagine “a mass of texts as lost as those of Aeschylus or Euripides that happen to have gone missing, but which would transform entirely our view of classical civilization.”

Major Losses of Ancient Texts

Some pivotal ancient texts that have been lost, leaving major holes in our understanding:

Theocritus – One of the few ancient Greek poet whose works are substantially intact. Only about 1/3 of his poems survive.
Sappho – Revered as one of the greatest lyric poets of antiquity, yet only 1 complete poem and various fragments of her work remain.

Pre-Socratic philosophers – The originators of early Greek philosophy in the 6th century BCE, like Heraclitus and Pythagoras, are known only from a few references and quotations.
Aristotle’s lost works – Some of his major treatises on topics like rhetoric, politics, ethics, and natural sciences have been lost over time.
Most classical Greek and Roman music – Musical notation was primitive. Of many thousands of ancient compositions, only about 60 fragments have been preserved.

For many monumental works and authors from ancient civilizations, all we have are intriguing titles or references in other texts. Their original works are lost, denying us a comprehensive understanding of antiquity.

The Medieval Period: Up in Flames

Book burnings became common in the medieval era, obliterating numerous pre-Christian and early Christian works. The library of Alexandria, the greatest repository of ancient knowledge, was burned and destroyed multiple times between 48 BCE and 642 CE.

While the Renaissance and printing press eventually allowed books to proliferate and survive in many copies, the medieval period saw much go up in flames. Major documented book burnings include:

The burning of the Library of Alexandria (multiple occurrences).
Burning of the Library of Nisibis in Syria in 1009 CE when the city surrendered to the Fatimid caliph al-Hakim – over 10,000 manuscripts lost.
Emperor Jovian ordered the burning of the Library of Antioch in 364 CE – thousands of both Christian and “pagan” texts lost.

Burning of the great Library of Tripoli by the Crusaders around 1109 CE – the library was said to hold over 3 million manuscripts.
Catholic authorities burned entire collections of what they deemed heretical books.
Countless other smaller public and private book burnings over centuries.

Some key medieval texts we have lost:

Beowulf – The original manuscript was destroyed in fires in 1731 CE. Modern text based on a transcription made prior.
The vast body of Ango-Saxon literature – Only 4 major manuscripts and a few fragments have survived.

The Epic Cycle – These 6 ancient Greek epic poems about the Trojan War only survive in fragments.
The Gospel of Eve – This disputed gospel only survives in a few fragmented quotations.
Ten Books of Proclus – Lost works of the last major Greek Neoplatonist philosopher.

Numerous plays, poems, and manuscripts from the East lost during the Crusades.

The mass destruction of libraries like Alexandria and Antioch represents an incalculable loss of ancient knowledge. Countless works spanning every field are gone forever, making medieval history harder to reconstruct.

Early Modern Period: Decay and Deliberate Destruction

The spread of movable type printing in the 15th century finally allowed knowledge to be widely dispersed and preserved. However, older manuscripts and books continued to be lost throughout the early modern period from natural decay and deliberate destruction.

Until paper acidity was neutralized in the 19th century, early book collections crumbled over time. It’s estimated that one-third of all books printed before 1501 have been lost, along with half of those printed before 1641.

Some examples of valuable written works destroyed during this era:

Maya codices – Only 4 survive out of thousands of bark-paper books burned by Spanish conquistadors and Catholic priests in the 16th century.

Aztec codices – Likewise mostly destroyed by conquistadors.
Sacred religious texts of the Incas – Lost in the turmoil of the Spanish conquest of Peru.
Records and libraries of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy – British soldiers burned these manuscripts during the American Revolutionary War.

The Cotton Library – Fabulously wealthy collection of rare manuscripts at Ashburnham House in London burned in 1731 CE, with only about 25% of works saved.
Countless texts from monasteries and churches destroyed during the Protestant Reformation and Henry VIII’s dissolution of monasteries in England starting in 1536 CE.

While printing allowed for mass book production, texts continued to be deliberately destroyed for religious and political reasons. Persecution and war claimed many written works over the centuries.

Modern Losses: War, Disasters and Neglect

The 20th century saw improved book preservation as well as devastating global wars. While no precise accounting exists, some major modern book losses include:

The destruction of the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. by British forces in 1814 CE during the War of 1812.
The Duchess Anna Amalia Library fire in 2004 destroyed 50,000 books, including historic manuscripts and musical scores.

The National Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina suffered damage in 1992 during the Bosnia war with over 5,000 rare books and manuscripts destroyed.
Much Iraqi archival material and books destroyed in the 2003 Iraq War, including rare historical records at the Iraq National Library and Archives.
The 1986 flooding of the Arno River resulted in 500,000 damaged books and manuscripts at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze in Italy.

Nazi book burnings destroyed over 18,000 titles of “un-German” and Jewish authors.

These modern disasters reveal texts remain vulnerable despite digital backups becoming more commonplace. Natural calamities like fires, floods, and mold can swiftly ruin vulnerable archives. Armed conflict often sees libraries and archives deliberately targeted, their history lost.

However, sheer neglect does as much damage as war and disaster. An estimated 80% of U.S. silent films from the early 20th century have been lost due to deterioration and lack of preservation. Despite boasting large libraries, less than 10% of films made before 1929 have survived in the U.S. and Europe.

Even in today’s digital age, texts continue to be lost as formats change. Digital media decays and becomes unreadable as technology changes. Digitization is no guarantee records are preserved indefinitely.

What Can Be Done?

While there are enduring gaps in the written record, a few measures can improve preservation:

International agreements prohibiting destruction of cultural heritage sites in war.

Digitize and backup records, books, film, and art in multiple locations.
Improve storage standards in archives and libraries.
New scanning techniques like multispectral imaging to read damaged texts.

Support libraries and archives financially, enabling them to fulfill their preservation role.

Vigilance is required to reduce future losses. While we can never recover what has been destroyed, a commitment to preservation can stem further destruction of our shared cultural heritage.

Conclusion

Human history is filled with immense gaps. Overall, it’s estimated that less than 1% of all written works made it to the modern era. For each work that survives, a thousand are lost.

Entire civilizations have vanished, their written records gone. Our picture of the past resembles Swiss cheese, more hole than substance. While forensic techniques and chance finds fill in some gaps, most are likely to remain blank forever.

The chronicle of humanity is an unfinished book, its innumerable missing pages representing entire lost peoples. This sheer scale of oblivion illustrates why preserving what remains is so crucial. It is the task of each generation to minimize future lacunae by maintaining vigilance against the forces that continue to erase our collective memory.