" We forget, to our detriment, that many ancient libraries were destroyed in wars and religious purges, so it is doubtful that we possess even a thousandth of the knowledge that was gathered together, analyzed and edited, subjected to additional commentaries, and regarded as reliable by ancient peoples. Richard Mooney, popular science writer, made up a short but important list of the destruction of the great libraries of the ancient world that should give us a bit of pause.: " The library of Pergamus in AsiaMinor... contained 200,000 books, all of which were destroyed. When the Romans razed Carthage in the punic Wars in 146 b.c. they also burned to ashes a library said to contain a half a million volumes. The Romans also destroyed under the leadership of Julius Ceaser, the Druidic library at Autun, France, containing thousands of scrolls on philosophy,medicine,astronomy,and mathematics. In China the Emperor Tsin Shi Hwang-to ordered all the ancient books destroyed in 213 A.D. Leo Isaurus burned 300,00 books in Byzantium in the 8th century A.D."
One of the great tragedies of our planets history, the destruction of the great library at Alexandria, deprived us of a library of 700,000 books in scroll form. The Bruchion contained 400,000 books and the Serapeum 300,000."
-Vine Deloria J.R.
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