I recently finished binge-watching Game of Thrones, a fantasy drama based on a novel series called A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin, with my family again. I highly recommend the show if you like the works of J.R.R Tolkein or really like drama. In the show, one of the characters, Sam, goes off to the Citadel in Westeros, which houses their world's largest collection of books and records. While watching the show, I knew the Citadel seemed familiar, but I have not been to Westeros. Then it hit me: the Citadel is parallel to the Library of Alexandria.

The Library of Alexandria was the world's best archive of knowledge. Alexander the Great wanted to create this library so that his empire could be full of knowledge. He died before his vision came to life, but Ptolemy I took over and created the library. Ptolemy filled the shelves with classical scrolls and invited many scholars to study and ponder their ideas in the library. After a while, they searched for books, keeping originals in the library and copies would be returned to the owner. The end goal was to have the Library of Alexandria house every book in the world and represent the entirety of human knowledge. Sadly, the library was set on fire, the cause of which is still heavily debated among historians. 

Thinking about all the memories and knowledge we lost because of the burning of this great library upsets me. Apparently, some scrolls already identified that the Earth was round and had calculations for its diameter. We know now that the Earth is round, but how many unnecessary wasted years went by when everyone still thought it was flat. Just imagine how much farther we would be with space exploration if we understood the Earth was spherical 1600 years earlier. Records in the library also described a steam engine over a thousand years before it was "invented" during the Industrial Revolution. Imagine how far we would have been in the world of travel and technology if we had kept that knowledge. We lost centuries of memories when the Library of Alexandria set fire, which led to slower progress as a society. I think this proves how important sharing and recording our memories is to future generations.