Nobody knows how Greek Fire was made. Nobody quite knows the recipe for Roman concrete, or the process for Damascus steel; nobody knows the smell of silphium. There are countless examples of past knowledge lost to time.
It might be reassuring to think that knowledge builds on knowledge – that we sit on the sum total of the discoveries and innovations that came before. But the Library of Alexandria burned, and so did countless other manuscripts, and treatises, and scores and notebooks. We gain knowledge, and we lose it again. No one speaks Sumerian.
And yet, it’s somehow comforting to know that mankind remains on a journey of discovery, and that we don’t catch every idea the first time around. If it’s worth knowing, we’ll probably catch it the second time.
This includes musical ideas – what knowledge from past centuries is absolutely gone? We might not even know that it’s gone! – that’s how thoroughly some ideas leave us.