Chapter Six - When History Burned

CHAPTER SIX

When History Burned

WE LIKE TO imagine history as something found. Buried under sand, waiting to be uncovered.
But more often?

It was torched.

Not forgotten.
Destroyed.

Empires don’t just fall.
They get sacked. Pillaged. Scraped clean.

And when new rulers rise, they don’t just build new cities.
They rewrite the story of what came before.

Statues are torn down.
Names are chiseled off monuments.
Documents are burned.
Languages are outlawed.
Sacred sites become rubble.

Why preserve a past that undermines your rule?

So much of human memory has been lost not through time, but through intent.

Let’s talk about it, starting with the Library of Alexandria.

The most famous library in human history.
A repository of ancient science, philosophy, history, literature, and tens of thousands of scrolls.

And now?

Ashes.

We don’t know exactly who burned it. Could’ve been Julius Caesar. Could’ve been later invasions. Could’ve been slow neglect.

Doesn’t matter.

The result is the same:
A gaping hole in human knowledge.
An intellectual extinction event.

And if it happened once, it happened a thousand times.

There are forgotten libraries everywhere.

We just remember this one.

Because we need at least one cautionary tale.

The age of exploration was also the age of deletion.

European empires didn’t just conquer land.
They conquered memory.

In the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Oceania, local histories were deemed “myths,” oral traditions were mocked, and sacred stories were lost in translation or outright ignored.

Indigenous cultures with rich historical records that were held in song, ritual, and objects were told:

“That’s not real history.”

Because it wasn’t written in Latin.
Or French.
Or English.

Entire civilizations were overwritten.

And the stories we tell today?
They’re still shaped by what was silenced.

History isn’t just what survives.
It’s what’s allowed to survive.

Burn a library? You burn centuries.
Silence a people? You bury their past.
Control the story? You control identity, belonging, and destiny.

That’s why historical loss isn’t just academic.

It’s personal.