Quote:
Originally Posted by Sirtel
Who cares about some old personal documents in such a situation? People would be too busy with just surviving.
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Before the development of writing, each generation had to pass down their learned knowledge verbally to the next generation. If they didn't, then technology and advancements would be lost, and sometimes that indeed happened. There was a lot of relearning things their ancestors learned centuries before but failed to pass along. Now to be clear, I'm talking about the "real" world, not some fantasy book world. Without literacy there is little capacity to archive knowledge, little capacity to administrate civilization, little capacity to track business transactions, et cetera. Basically speaking, without literacy humanity would likely return to hunter-gatherer mentality after several generations once they lost the knowledge of their ancestors, forgot how to succeed in agriculture and animal husbandry. Once they reached the point of no longer being able to read the literature of their ancestors, they would eventually reach the point of having to relearn long forgotten knowledge. The good news is, they would also lose the ability to make war on large scales, ad their ability to destroy the planet for all creatures would be decimated. So score that as a victory for Mother Earth.