I’ve just finished reading some Middle Eastern mythology, mostly from the Sumerians and Babylonians. Not the most uplifting stuff, what with gods intermarrying and trying to overthrow each other. The myths we do have from those areas were fragments found written in cuneiform on clay tablets that are a few thousand years old.

Not much else was left behind by these civilizations: some deeply buried building foundations, the practice of irrigation, and so forth. Powerful societies have come and gone throughout the ages. It is interesting to me that of the few things that last, writing is a prominent one, and it is the writing that scholars rely upon to piece together a picture of these societies.

The ancient priests and scribes found it important enough to preserve facts (and fiction, in some cases) by writing them down. Much has been learned about ancient civilizations through little more than discovering and deciphering their writings.

It makes me wonder what future generations, having nothing else to go on, would learn about our society through its writings. If all they found were newspapers, they’d find a bleak picture. Would they be able to access the myriad texts stored in electronic formats, such as disk drives and Web servers?

Obviously, we are living in an era where nearly all of the entire world is in touch, and I imagine that it would be difficult for an entire society to cease to exist without affecting the rest of us and readily leaving behind knowledge about it. The Internet and other technology through which we communicate so quickly has broadened community to the point that I doubt any of us could disappear as completely as some of the ancients did.

Still, I think it’s important for us to write as if that’s the only thing that would give future generations any idea about what life is like for us. Ancient civilizations may have failed to make enough of a mark to be remembered until archaeologists stumbled upon their remnants, but one impression they can yet make on us: A society that leaves behind no writings may hardly be counted to have existed at all.

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