Dead Sea Scrolls & Beta tapes

[Fournier, Judith]

While it is true that the Dead Sea Scrolls were in reasonable shape for
their age and could be read by experts on the language, there are other
inscriptions on even more durable media that are unintelligible today
because we don't have the continuous knowledge.   We are making very slow
progress with cuniform and mayan scripts, but other languages are gone, like
the knot script of the Incas.

     The point is, the medium is not the message, there has to be a
continuous thread of knowledge passed down through the ages.   Lets hope
that what we have written will be preserved and converted to new formats as
needed.