Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2010 10:03:27 -0700 (PDT)
From: Tamar Lindsay <dicconf at yahoo.com>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Give Me That Old Time Technology!
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

Madeleine Yeh wrote:

>   Would unbaked tablets have kept as well as the Sumerian
>ones?  Baked clay is pottery and nearly indestructible.
>  Dry clay is just dirt waiting for rain and a grass seed
>to destroy it.  I don't know anything and am just shooting
>off my mouth.

As I understand it, most Sumerian tablets were unbaked.
It was dry, almost desert, and over time they were buried
(sometimes fractured when the building fell in), thus
protected.  They are extremely at risk once they are dug up.
Many unbaked tablets were destroyed when some pirates dumped
them in the ocean because they were disappointed that the
carefully crated boxes weren't full of gold.

Some were accidentally baked as a result of invaders burning
the record-storage houses.  Sometimes the historians know
the date of the destruction and can date the tablets;
sometimes the tablets include a date and can confirm the
date of the attack.

>   Will there be jpeg twenty years from now?

If we believe the 2012-ers, there won't be anything
20 years from now.

Twenty years ago was 1990. I still have that computer
but it needs (probably) a new power supply.

And there's always hardcopy.

=Tamar