WI No Burning of the Library of Alexandria

KingKulami

Banned
Wi No Burning of the Library of Alexandria? Library founded by Alexander the Great.
Would there be effects on tech advances?
 
It is burn at some other time
Not necessarily.

And if it did survive, technology would be decades if not a century or so ahead of us now. The ancients knew things we didn't rediscover until centuries later, and some of which we are just now finding, and all of that was in the Library. And technologically, just because they didn't use extension cords with their devices doesn't mean they're inventions weren't as practical or effective as modern devices of similar activity, if not more so, and we would still have records of how to craft those.
 

Leo Caesius

Banned

Library of Alexandria Saved from Fire!

The Great Library at Alexandria didn't burn, its knowledge survived to the present!

And of course, the thread that you've managed to salvage from deep within the mists of time (four days ago),

WI: Library of ALexandria doesn't burn down!

That's ignoring all of the "Heron of Alexandria invents the steam engine, Roman moon bases by 300 AD" threads that there are out there.
 
As much as I love the idea of having the knowledge contained in the Library of Alexandria survive intact there is one problem. Whether the ancients knew about certain technological developments is one thing, the big question is whether they would actually put them into practice.

To us, the idea of steam power seems to be an obvious breakthrough, however the problem is that during those times it was seen more as a toy than anything else. They simply didn't have any real use for it. The same is probably true for many other ideas.

Ancient people's were certainly very clever, but many of the technological developments that we would look at and think "why didn't they develop this further?" were more novelties than anything.

It is one thing to have the knowledge in the library survive, it is another to have a situation arise where the technology found therein would be viewed as more than something to simply tinker with.
 
It doesn't matter. Everything at Alexandria plus more was at Constantinople. The Fourth Crusade was much worse as far as the destruction of knowledge goes.
 
Is that true?

Alexandria was the scientific and engineering center of the ancient world. It was one of the last refuges of Pythagoras' intellectual descendants outside the school at Athens.

I think an important thing is that we have no idea about the majority of the material stored there.
 

Leo Caesius

Banned
Is that true?

Alexandria was the scientific and engineering center of the ancient world. It was one of the last refuges of Pythagoras' intellectual descendants outside the school at Athens.

I think an important thing is that we have no idea about the majority of the material stored there.
We do have significant collections of contemporary manuscripts from other parts of Egypt (e.g. Oxyrhynchus). So far, no marvels of engineering. The vast bulk of the finds have been letters, paperwork, and the like; quite a lot of literature has been discovered, but nothing answering to scientific marvels. I don't doubt that the bulk of the material at the Museum would have been literary. Works of philosophy would also be well-represented.

Seeing as the collection was regularly augmented and updated by scouring ships, I suspect that a portion of it would be nautical - copies of logs, charts, maps, tables, and other navigational aids.
 
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