[DarknessFalls]

What if Hipparchus originally charted stars that no longer exist in our sky, due to having gone supernova hundreds of year ago? A thousand year time difference is roughly 1/3rd of a complete equinox precession, which would also be interesting to compare against our modern day observations.

All of this is valuable, both the cultural knowledge and the scientific. I doubt the monks realized the gravity of their choice so long ago.

[jact]

I’m not saying it’s not unfortunate that things get lost just that we shouldn’t act like this was some kind of act of ignorant vandalism.

[riazrizvi]

Oh they knew. They knew.

Okay just kidding, but also people stealing what they think are good ideas, discarding the rest, and passing off what is passed along as their own? Everyone does that. Anyone who says different is blind to their own behavior.

[throwpoaster]

With a less negative attribution bias this process is called “learning”.

[riazrizvi]

I prefer the phrase "adding value".

And let's take a moment to appreciate the word 'value', one of the true heavy lifters in the world of words.

[dismalaf]

> I doubt the monks realized the gravity of their choice so long ago.

I mean, the star chart was probably something equivalent to a text book for us. Many texts were uniquely preserved at St. Catherine's since they had Mohammed's letter of protection not to mention being a fortress in the middle of a desert.

At the time the monks probably thought it was a common enough text to not worry about.