Burning the library
#56―We let the great Library of Alexandria fall. Will we do it again?
Welcome to Mind Flexing, your fortnightly thought expedition to everywhere and anywhere. Strap on your boots (or put your feet up), take a deep breath, and let’s get flexing.
“What is burning there is the memory of mankind.”
―Theodotus in Caesar and Cleopatra by George Bernard Shaw.
Some 2,308 years ago on the western edge of the Nile Delta alongside the turquoise waters of the Mediterranean Sea, the hands of men chiseled and stacked the stones of the Mouseion—the museum—a complex like no other, not architecturally speaking, but for the culture that flourished inside. It was not unlike a modern-day university, where scholars walked the covered halls discussing philosophy, lectured in the auditorium, debated in the dining hall. It was a place of thought, of ideas, of science and medicine, a living embodiment of the nine muses who inspired the world with music, dance, poetry, history, astronomy and comedy. A treasure chest of civilisation, and at its core lay the home of knowledge: the great Library of Alexandria, said to have possibly housed as many as half a million manuscripts at its zenith. Imagine the histories they contained, imagine the stories—all gone.
It's a tragic mystery. No one definitively knows what happened to the library. There are stories about Julius Caesar accidently burning it down in 48 BCE after setting fire to enemy ships in the harbour, there are stories about the Christians targeting pagan institutions some 440 years later, then similar stories about the Muslims another 250 years after that. Many believe a combination of all these led to a gradual decline, with neglect creeping in amid political instability and a changing economy.
All those stories, gone. All those memories, lost.
Surely, we wouldn’t make such a mistake today. Surely, we would see ourselves to be the foolish creatures of habit that we are and stop the library burning.
The library likely died gradually, like being devoured by acid story by story. Like 9,000 tonnes of nitrogen oxide corroding its histories year after year; 40 years because of ignorance, and then 45 more because of greed.
Surely, if there were a place on earth that stored more than one million stories (more than twice that of the Library of Alexandria), spanning 50,000 years of history, surviving depths of time we struggle to comprehend, surely we would want to save that.
Stories that tell of an Ice Age in which the sea was low and Tasmanian Tigers (since hunted to extinction for eating sheep) roamed the tropics some 4,500km from Tasmania. Stories that tell of songlines that travel from the archipelago across the landscape to the heart that is Uluru, stories of the Seven Sisters constellation in the sky, of cultural lore, of ceremony, of the spirit world, of how to distribute meat, of humans and tall ships, and how life changed with the rising sea, of sea turtles and dugongs; of the ancestral beings—the Marrga—who shaped the land and seas, who created life and lore. And amid all this, sits the oldest depiction of a human face.
This is a library of over one million petroglyphs carved and chiseled by ancient hands over the course of 50,000 years. It’s called Murujuga, and it’s burning a slow acidic death. It lies in the remote north-west of Australia on a peninsular that juts out like a hip bone of volcanic rock into the Dampier Archipelago. It’s like no other place on earth, not only because of its immense library of stories, but incredibly because these stories have maintained an unbroken link to the Ngurra-ra Ngarli peoples of the region today, one of the oldest continuing cultures on earth, who can read and understand these stories put there by their ancestors. The spirits within these petroglyphs are still well and truly alive.
Murujuga is the oldest of the world’s great libraries. You’ll find it nestled between the burning smokestacks of Woodside Petroleum’s Karratha Liquefied Natural Gas Plant on the North West Shelf, an operation that has spewed billions of tonnes of emissions into the air since the 1970s. Its acidic air disrupts the alkaline environment that has preserved this library for tens of thousands of years, settling on the ancient rocks and devouring the memories of mankind.
Research has found significant degradation of the petroglyphs since the 1970s. It's a case of petroglyphs vs petrochemicals.
Gas operations in the North West Shelf were scheduled to end, appropriately, in 2030. But in a shocking, but not surprising decision, the federal government last week indicated it would allow Woodside to extend its petrochemical operations until 2070, spewing anywhere between 6 to 15 billion tonnes of emissions into the atmosphere and making a mockery of net zero targets.
The climate ramifications of such a carbon bomb are immense, and ones I know you know all too well, so I won’t dwell on these equally important aspects of this absurdity. There are so many underlying factors to this decision. Gross political donations that can serve no other purpose than to influence and corrupt, power struggles between political factions, and between state and federal politicians, opposition from the powerful mining industry and its allied population, trade dollars, and economics. All can be refuted. Long-time economic commentator Ross Gittins explained in The Sydney Morning Herald this week, the economic and employment argument in favour of the extension is unjustifiable.
It is hard to compete with the noise generated by money and power. It is very loud. But overcoming it isn’t impossible. When the public so chooses, it can be very, very noisy, at which point, any listener choosing to preserve their sanity and their eardrums will cave to such a high-pitched cacophony.
UNESCO has raised its voice. The United Nation’s body dedicated to international cooperation in education, science, culture, and communication, last month warned it is likely to reject Murujuga’s bid for World Heritage Status citing the environmental degradation that surrounds it.
And I too have written to the Prime Minister and the Environment Minister, an act which means nothing when done alone, but can create an earth-shaking noise when cascading in the tens of thousands.
The government plans to appeal to UNESCO and says it has attached strict conditions to the North West Shelf expansion to ensure the protection of Murujuga. These conditions have not been made public, and Woodside has until next week to respond.
A deal hasn’t been signed, but the government sure is playing a dangerous game with an industry that has so frequently displayed disregard for history and the environment. Need I mention the 46,000 years of human history at Juukan Gorge, which last month commiserated the five-year anniversary of being blown to smithereens by Rio Tinto without consequence.
More than one million stories over 50,000 years of human history, a changing climate, rising sea levels and a warming atmosphere. If the great Library of Alexandria can teach us anything, it’s that this is the time for us to make noise.
A little more…
If you have 13 min to spare, this mini doco The Fight to Save Murujuga, written and produced by Stephen Long at The Australia Institute, provides an insight into the scientific evidence that demonstrates Woodside’s negative impact on Murujuga. It’s worth watching for the geography alone.
Etymology Monday
This week’s word has me feeling a little hungry.
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I just woke a short time ago, 4:45 local time, definitely against my will, with my back, hips and other joints absolutely on fire from my ankylosing spondylitis, and I finished this article which I’d begun reading last night. I went back to the beginning because I’d had to stop reading and care for my wife, who’s been ill for more than a week. As I read I was filled with the sadness of all the beautiful and irreplaceable things that we humans, as dwellers and custodians of the earth, have lost, and also the myriad (thanks, Alia!) things that we are in danger of losing in the foreseeable future. I’d never heard of Murujuga before last night, when I began reading your post. The thing that stood out to me was that generational thought is shaped not only by what we tell our young people, but perhaps more importantly, what we leave out of the curriculum that we formulate for them. Leaving things out can be as deceitful as telling outright lies. Thank you for your article and the accompanying video. I feel grateful for learning about Murujuga and I wish that every young person all over the world could see what we have in that site, and get a chance to think about what we’re going to lose if things don’t change in a hurry.
This brings me to the subject of the titles that writers choose to attach to their Substack newsletters. I can’t think of a better, more accurate title for your essays than “Mind Flexing.” It sums up perfectly what you’re working to accomplish with your writing. And personally, that title sums up what is going on in my own head when I read your work. Thank you for sharing your myriad insights and concerns, and encouraging readers like me to flex their minds!
Thank you Alia. I had never heard of this place, this heritage of our human history. Yes, I know of the destruction of the Alexandria Library, but here is a library burning in slow motion from industrial blight.