Dwarkesh Patel

Right.

Interesting.

This is an enormous expense.

And so to have a library is to be not just rich but mega rich.

So only the wealthiest cities contain anybody who has a library.

The great library of the University of Paris, the library from Europe's perspective, has 600 books.

There's definitely more than 600 books in this room, right?

Every kiosk at an airport selling Dan Brown novels has more than 600 books.

This is nothing.

And at the same time as that, right, in the Middle East, sultans have libraries of over 1,000 books or 5,000 books.

There are libraries in sub-Saharan Africa with thousands of books.

There are libraries in China with thousands of books.

Because they, in China, have cheap paper and rice paper.

The Middle East has papyrus.

Europe, and only Europe, is writing on all other jackets.

So, well, so still zooming in on Fall of Rome.

Yeah.

Rome had lots and lots of books on papyrus.

They start falling apart because papyrus is brittle.

Most of our knowledge from antiquity is not lost at the burning of the Library of Alexandria.