Ancient Scrolls Blackened by Vesuvius Are Readable at Last

If this is true, then the corollary is that given say, some ancient civilization of say 3,500 years ago - perhaps the more sophisticated ones used record keeping technology that would become total dust a mere 2,000 year ago - while the less sophisticated ones have records which have survived.

Source on that? Has flash memory really gotten that bad in terms of data retention?

I have flash memory in (rather small) USB drives that still work after a decade.

Same goes for drama. Discovering any additional ancient play would be completely staggering. We possess only one complete trilogy (Aeschylus' Oresteia) and only one complete satyr play -- an important genre, since it may represent a holdover from earlier forms of the worship of Dionysius that led to what we think of as ancient drama.

It's an awfully good time to be a classicist!

etiology: causation; how things got how they are.

harbinger: forerunner; advance warning. (The etymology is interesting. Originally a harbinger was someone who provides accommodation -- compare the French word "auberge". Then it came to mean someone sent ahead by, e.g., an army to prepare lodgings so that the troops would have somewhere to sleep when they arrived. And then, metaphorically, it came to mean any sort of forerunner.

forensics: = forensic science, meaning the application of science to answering the sorts of questions that come up in criminal trials. (Same origin as "forum"; in ancient Rome trials took place in the public square.) I think gloriousduke really just means something like "scientific investigation into past events" here.

ontology: actually means the study of what exists. (I.e., answering questions like "what kinds of things exist?".) I suspect gloriousduke meant something else, perhaps something as mundane as "the study of actual things that exist". In any case, his second sentence doesn't really add anything much to the first.

So I would translate gloriousduke's comment as follows. "If the universe is deterministic, like a big mechanical machine, then with better and better technology we will be able to do better and better at deciphering the past from its present remains: this thing with the scrolls is just the beginning. Also, I know some long words."

(Note that actually determinism isn't quite the issue. What matters is what you might call "backward determinism", where you extrapolate the future from the past. But it looks as if the laws of nature are kinda reversible, so the two are closely related.)

The Total Perspective Vortex sort of work by that mechanic.

From what I remember (it's been awhile), wasn't the villa that scrolls were found in not completely unearthed - with a possibility of more scrolls inside? I think, from what I remember, that these 1800 or so were found in a crate (in a part of said villa) people were trying to rescue while Vesuvius was doing its thing, leaving the possibility of more crates or even a full library still buried. Getty, I think, build a replica of that villa in Malibu.