You never know, you might only have a narrow window to enjoy something before its gone.

After 7 months, I have returned. In this long installment of Trey the Explainer, I discuss the history of books, literacy, and lost media. Are you ready to learn what you can never know?

Thumbnail art by Ida (https://twitter.com/ncdraw?s=20&t=1Qq...)

00:00 Introduction
03:22 The History of Books and Literacy
10:11 How Books were Lost
15:01 The Lost Books
16:43 Scientific Books
21:47 Historical Books
27:43 Books for Entertainment
33:00 Entire Libraries
36:04 Lost...and Found
39:34 The Importance of Books

Edit:
I have since realized that some of the information in this video should be more properly cited to their original authors, to avoid taking credit for their hard work.
38:48 (James S. Romm, Ghost on the Throne, 2012, pg. 188 & pg. 122)

Citations:
Starr, R. J. (1987). The circulation of literary texts in the roman world. The Classical Quarterly, 37(1), 213–223. https://doi.org/10.1017/s000983880003...
Chuchiak, J. F. (2010). Writing as resistance: Maya graphic pluralism and Indigenous Elite Strategies for survival in Colonial Yucatan, 1550-1750. Ethnohistory, 57(1), 87–116. https://doi.org/10.1215/00141801-2009...
Oleson, J. P., Clarysse, W., & Vandorpe, K. (2012). The Oxford Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the classical world. Oxford University Press.
Romm, J. S. (2012). Ghost on the throne: The death of alexander the great and the war for Crown and Empire. Alfred A. Knopf.
Townsend, C. (2019). Annals of native america: How the nahuas of colonial mexico kept their history alive. Oxford University Press.
Netz, R. (2020). Scale, space and canon in ancient literary culture. Cambridge University Press.
Diodorus. (?). The library. Philip Ii, Alexander the Great, and the successors. (R. Waterfield, Trans.). Oxford University Press.
Restall, M. (2019). When Montezuma Met Cortés: The true story of the meeting that changed history. Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
Madrigal, A. C. (2010, August 5). Google: There are exactly 129,864,880 books in the world. The Atlantic. Retrieved August 11, 2022, from https://www.theatlantic.com/technolog...

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Special thanks to
Dr. Jordan Pickett
Dr. Barbara E. Mundy
Dr. Matthew Restall
Yuric INC (@Yuric_INC.)
MajoraZ
Rafael Mena
(among others)