We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28649134.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_the_Irish_Saved_Civilizati...
Hellenic culture and texts had permiated Africa and and Mid-east. There were various ancient libraries and academies. Byzantine scholars at the Neoplatonic Academy fled to Persia after it was closed by Justinian. Later in the 8th Century, the Greaco-Arabic Translation Movement gathered books and translated original Greek texts into Arabic at the House of Wisdom (Grand Library of Baghdad). Study of hellenic philosophy restarted in the Arabic world until the Golden Age of Islamic Philosophy with Averroes whose commentarities reintroduced Hellenic philosophy to Europe in the 12th century.
I don't think that particular flow needs any Irish Monks but <shrug> I don't know the specific sources of books used by the Translation Movement.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recovery_of_Aristotle
2. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arabic-islamic-influence/
Of course, in todays world, one could say Arabic/Islam becoming the dominant culture/religion minimized the work and exposure others get.
Here are some of the more famous ones
Christians: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunayn_ibn_Ishaq - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishaq_ibn_Hunayn - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergius_of_Reshaina - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masawaiyh
Sabians: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinan_ibn_Thabit
Cult of Sin: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thābit_ibn_Qurra
Similarly, 10,000 books have been translated into Arabic in the past 1,000 years. That is fewer than the number translated in Spain in one year. (<https://articles.latimes.com/2008/jan/04/entertainment/et-ar...>)
what pittance of codices we have today come from Christianized Maya scribes, a massively condensed post-columbian highlight reel of their obliterated textual culture compiled at the behest of the Spanish crown and under the direction of their Catholic overseers.
(But I will say that the current policy of "protecting" the isolated tribes in the Amazon from human contact by categorically shutting them off is quite horrible and uncharitable. This is rooted in the preposterous myth of the noble savage. Tribal peoples are not innocent children.)
I dunno. If you make contact with them, most of them will die of diseases to which they have no immunity. This happens over and over. Amazon tribes. Pacific islands. On a huge scale in the Americas. For those that do survive, the event may be so traumatic that they develop a very understandable hostility to outsiders.
Disrupting a cycle of ritualized torture may find some support on humanitarian grounds, but it was no excuse to annihilate the rest of Maya literary culture as well.