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From Silicon Blog, Timespan:
Loss is the handmaiden of human archives. Ancient documents come and go. In the end, like most things, all are doomed. The culprit isn’t a dark overseer or a conspiracy. It’s water, the great solvent that allows us to exist, and which dissolves all.
Other natural forces, of course, also intervene to destroy our archives. Fire, earthquake, mold and insects do their fair share.
Our digital information is eroding from cosmic rays, solar flares, and quantum indeterminacy far faster than stone carvings fade. This is not to mention technical obsolescence and the stranding of vast content in archaic hardware and unlockable digital codes.
Alongside these, human folly is never to be underestimated. Things just get lost. Or consider that the greatest library ever assembled, containing originals from the hand of Aristotle and other giants of intellect and art, was at Alexandria in Egypt. It was put to the torch by an overzealous bishop. There you go.
All we have from the past is a declining base of information. The point of the lesson is humility. Never trust a history to be the only story.