Saharan Village Is Home to Thousands of Ancient Texts

Re:Saharan Village Is Home to Thousands of Ancient Texts by radford-neal on Friday August 16, 2019 @04:07PM (#20719192)

Are you really so sure that confiscating historical treasures that have been preserved by a family for generations will have good results? Have you considered that this will encourage other people with treasures to sell them on the black market before they are confiscated? Have you considered that those stealing the treasures may not be all that concerned with preserving them? Have you considered that the treasures might be destroyed as people fight over them?

Maybe it would be better to help these families develop better preservation methods and security.

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Re:Saharan Village Is Home to Thousands of Ancient Texts by munk-a on Friday August 16, 2019 @06:13PM (#20720222)

I disagree, I don't see a family as an inherently secure method for transfer - how many libraries don't exist because one of the generations along the way had a gambler that sold off all the books to cover a debt?

I also didn't mean to suggest that the families be deprive of the content or even the originals they are preserving, I was only advocating for this information to be copied and preserved digitally. The article is sadly lacking on what sorts of preservation difficulties these families are running across, I assumed it would mostly be material degeneration which is quite destructive but thankfully can be side-stepped by copying.

I also don't think anything should be confiscated, these families should retain the originals - but copies should be made.

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