Preserving Ancient Knowledge From the Middle East

The church was the only institution that had the wherewithal to try to preserve some of this ancient knowledge from the ancient middle east, or greece or rome. They devoted a tremendous, perhaps excessive, number of man hours and resources intoa trying to preserve ancient libraries. If your only technology for recording information in large quantities is on papyrus, or on parchment, then it's going to be extremely vulnerable. It's flammable. It can burn down in fires. It can be destroyed in floods. This was extremely labor intensive, time consuming work,. And it was a truly a uphill battle.