Paper or Plastic



In a family history class I attended at BYU, the discussion was about saving documents and sources verses printing them out.  The instructor, I apologize I cannot remember his name, asked what is the oldest surviving document we have today and what was it written on?  

What media has the greatest capability of survival?   What form of medium will be around in 10 or 15 years?  Will there be computers and computer programs to access what we save today in digital format?  Will the digital format survive environmental conditions so that if we can access them, they will be in decent condition?   

I can answer no to some of the above questions; as I have saved documents and just a few years later I am unable to read the or access the documents.  Specifically, I spent many hours transcribing my father’s mission letters.  There were two years of letters he wrote to his mother that I saved on my computer. Several years later I went to access them, and I could not even read the transcription.  Yes, I probably should have “migrated” them to newer software, however, that was many hours of work to have forever lost them digitally.  At least I have the printed copy of the transcription of the letters.  In addition, I was working on publishing a Roberts’s book and saved the document, over 250 pages, on three different CD’s.  When I went to open the compact discs, they were blank; apparently unknown to me, my CD writer was not working.  Everything was gone except what I had printed out.


Many times I have been asked why I don’t publish the newsletter digitally.  Why yes, I know it would be cheaper and it would save paper and I know I would save postage costs.  I have always been open to having my “printed out” view challenged until I received an email in 2004 from a neighbor who found my email address on an old copy of the newsletter.  This neighbor “inherited” all of the family’s photographs and personal papers.  She contacted me and wanted to know if I would like her to scan certain documents and photographs and then email them to me….Ummmmm YES!!!  She contacted me because she KNEW I would be interested in the genealogy she came across because she SAW the newsletter.  She probably wouldn’t have found the newsletter if it had been in a PDF in this person’s email. 

Finally, some of the readers of the newsletter don’t have email or internet.  Why would I prevent them from receiving the newsletter just because they are not digital?  Yes, I know I could email some readers and mail a printed copy to others, however I feel paper will last longer than digital…So I choose paper…

 
10-Oldest International Treaty 1269 BC written on a clay tablet.  (1)(2)
9-Oldest Surviving Medical Document 4,000 years old manuscript of ancient Egyptian medicine, written on papyrus
8-Oldest Surviving Religious Texts pyramids of Egypt’s; written or inscribed on the walls of the pyramids about 2465-2150 BC(1)(3)(4)
7-Oldest Surviving poem The Epic of Gilgamesh, around 2,000 BC written on a tablet about the size of a cell phone.  (1)(5)(6)
6-never mind
5-Oldest message in a bottle:  1784 was asking for rescue after a shipwreck washed up on a beach in 1935
4-Oldest Correspondence: diplomatic letters between the pharaohs of Egypt and neighboring statesmen.  Written on clay tablets, they are known as the Amarna letters.  14th century BC.
3-Oldest Printed Book Bearing A Date:  Diamond Sutra, is the oldest complete printed and dated book. Printed about 1007
2-Oldest Marriage Certificate:  5th Century BC found on the island of Elephantine in the River Nile.  Found with a cache of papyrus documents (7)
1-Oldest surviving set of laws:  The Codes of Ur Nammu; written about 2,050 BC  written on tablets I the Surmerian language

Oldest Newspaper:  published in Germany in the early 1600’s.  


(1)Boyle, Alan ,List Verse.com, posted 10 November 2013http://listverse.com/2013/11/10/10-oldest-surviving-documents-of-their-type-in-the-world-2/
 (2)United Nations, UN Multimedia, 24 September 1970, United Nations, New York, Photo # 111527
http://www.unmultimedia.org/s/photo/detail/111/0111527.html
(3)Dunn, Jimmy writing as Taylor Ray Ellison, About Egyptian Pyramids, online:  http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/pyramidtext.htm
(4)Mark, Joshua J., The Pyramid Texts:  Guide to the Afterlife, Ancient History Encyclopedia online published online 18 January 2012, http://www.ancient.eu/article/148/
(5) Web Pages University of Idaho, The Epic of Gilgamesh:  The First Epic, from The First Civilizationhttp://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/engl257/Ancient/epic_of_gilgamesh.htm
(6)Mark, Joshua J., “Gilgamesh”, Ancient History Encyclopedia online published 13 October 2010, http://www.ancient.eu/gilgamesh/
(7) West Semitic Research Project, Annenberg Exhibition, online http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/wsrp/educational_site/other_collections/annenberg/marriage.shtml

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