Permanent Record
Written records let later generations learn from experiences they did not witness. Preserving and interpreting those records supports cultural memory and reduces the need to rediscover lost knowledge.
THE IDEA
Permanent Record
People pass knowledge across generations through records as well as direct teaching. Libraries preserve accounts, methods, and ideas long after their authors are gone. Keeping a record useful requires preserving it so that later readers can recover and interpret it.
In 1849, Austen Henry Layard found Nineveh, an ancient Assyrian city that had once been the center of a civilization. It had been completely destroyed by fire in 612 BCE, and in the intervening millennia had been reduced to fiction. The destruction by fire, however, had an extremely valuable side effect: it had preserved the clay tablets that were contained in the city’s remarkable library. Ashurbanipal had collected texts from all over Mesopotamia, so the library was full of tablets chronicling not only Assyrian life, but Sumerian and Babylonian as well. Finding the library brought to life people, cities, and customs that had disappeared from history. The “library contained dictionaries and grammars, treatises on botany, astronomy, metallurgy, geology, geography, chronology, tracts on religion and history, and a collection of royal edicts, proclamations, laws, and decrees.”
The find gave us more context to understand human history. A tablet was discovered that chronicled a flood story similar to the one found in the Bible, but from centuries earlier. Ancient law codes, including the Code of Hammurabi, also provide insight into cultural norms. Such records help reconstruct human history and allow later generations to build on knowledge that might otherwise be lost.
When to use it
An organization creates a knowledge base to retain institutional memory, preventing the loss of know-how when employees leave.
A student uses historical case studies to understand modern geopolitical conflicts without starting from scratch.
A community archives oral histories to maintain its cultural identity and pass traditions to younger generations.
A scientist builds upon previously published research to make new discoveries, avoiding redundant experimentation.
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
Discovery of the Library of Ashurbanipal
The passage describes Austen Henry Layard’s 1849 work at Nineveh, destroyed in 612 BCE, and the recovery of clay tablets from Ashurbanipal’s library. Its dictionaries, scientific texts, laws, and stories expanded what could be known about ancient Mesopotamian life.
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
What knowledge have you preserved from your own experiences that could benefit future generations?
How would our understanding of the world differ if all libraries and records suddenly vanished?
In what ways do you rely on preserved knowledge in your daily decision-making?
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- The Great Mental Models Volume 2 Physics, Chemistry and Biology