“In approaching now the history of civilized nations we must note that not only shall we be selecting a mere fraction of each culture for our study, but we shall be describing perhaps a minority of the civilizations that have probably existed on the earth. We cannot entirely ignore the legends, current throughout history, of civilizations once great and cultured, destroyed by some catastrophe of nature or war, and leaving not a wrack behind; our recent exhuming of the civilizations of Crete, Sumeria and Yucatan indicates how true such tales may be.
The Pacific contains the ruins of at least one of these lost civilizations. The gigantic statuary of Easter Island, the Polynesian tradition of powerful nations and heroic warriors once ennobling Samoa and Tahiti, the artistic ability and poetic sensitivity of their present inhabitants, indicates a glory departed, a people not rising to civilization but fallen from a high estate. [...]"
Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.6, Section III, Section 3, 1935 (italics and formatting added)
"[...] Possibly every discovery is a rediscovery."
Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.6, Section III, Section 3, 1935
"Certainly it is probable, as Aristotle that, that many civilizations came, made great inventions and luxuries, were destroyed, and lapsed from human memory. History, said Bacon, is the planks of a shipwreck; more of the past is lost than has been saved. We console ourselves with the thought that as the individual memory must forget the greater part of experience in order to be sane, so the race has preserved in its heritage only the most vivid and impressive -- or is it only the best-recorded? -- of its cultural experiments. Even if that racial heritage were but one tenth as rich as it is, no one could possibly absorb it all."
Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.6, Section III, Section 3, 1935 (italics and bolded added)
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