Where We're Headed...

As discussed in Part 1 of this series, astrological cycles provide historical data that help us glimpse what may unfold in a current cycle and weigh the choices before us. Today's buzz around AI offers a timely lens to revisit earlier "Ages of Air" — moments when societies grappled with how to pool, protect, or control knowledge.

In the centuries ahead of us on this journey, we’ll trace six eras where humanity’s libraries and centers of knowledge rose, flourished, and often fell. Taken together, these turning points reveal a pattern: whenever knowledge is centralized in the hands of the powerful, it becomes vulnerable — but when it is shared, preserved, and valued across communities, it endures.

2052 – 1814 BCE

The Per Ankh, or “House of Life,” were attached to temples in Ancient Egypt and became intellectual centers for the elite. They functioned as scriptoriums, archives, and schools, housing religious and magical texts, medical papyri, wisdom literature, and astronomical data. While these collections flourished during the Middle Kingdom (circa 2040–1782 BCE), their weakness lay in their association with temples — making them vulnerable during later religious transitions of power.

1238 – 960 BCE

After Egypt, we turn to Upper Mesopotamia, where the alignment of early “book” collections with royalty continued. In fact, the Hittite Empire’s collections finally reached enough volume that it necessitated the invention of cataloguing. But when the empire fell around 1200 BCE, so did its catalogues. Cities and palaces such as Hattusas were destroyed or abandoned, and with them, the knowledge of writing — once sustained largely by palace administration. What followed in the 9th century was a “dark period.” Literacy had to be painstakingly relearned, with the Greeks eventually reviving reading, writing, and formal education by the 5th century BCE — the next Age of Air.

463 – 165 BCE

Centuries later, an unassuming port would become the site of history’s most famous library. When Alexander the Great founded Alexandria, it was little more than marshes and fishing villages. Yet it quickly transformed into one of the most important intellectual hubs of the Hellenistic world. 

Its wealth came from two sources: grain and papyrus. Because the papyrus plant thrived locally, Alexandria held a near-monopoly on quality writing material. The Ptolemaic kings of Alexandria capitalized on this material wealth to build their personal intellectual reputations. Each king brought in world-renowned tutors, and soon the city attracted scientists and scholars from across the Mediterranean. 

This intellectual wealth gave rise to the Museum and legendary Library of Alexandria. The Library grew and was eventually housed in two main buildings: the Mouseion (a temple to the Muses–the goddesses of culture and knowledge) and the Serapeum (a temple to the god Serapis–a Hellenistic-Egyptian god invented as the protector of Alexandria). Located near the port, ships brought in thousands of texts from other lands. Eventually, their walls housed hundreds of thousands of groundbreaking texts, securing Alexandria as the cultural hub of the ancient world.

Yet in another part of the world, the destruction of books served a different political agenda. In 213 BCE, the first Emperor of a unified China, Shi Huangdi, undertook the most extensive book burning the world has ever known. His goal was to destroy all literature predating his dynasty to enforce a state-sanctioned history. To underscore the point, he buried 460 Confucian scholars alive with their texts. Thus, both the consolidation and destruction of knowledge served political agendas.

332 – 690 CE

The Library of Alexandria’s prestige did not protect it from religious exclusivism however. In 391 CE, the Christian patriarch Theophilus burned part of the Library, targeting the Serapeum, its “pagan” texts, and its residing god designated to protect Alexandria from harm. And in 642 CE, while the Muslims were in the midst of their takeover of the Greco-Roman empire, Caliph Omar reportedly ordered further destruction because the collection contradicted the Quran. Thus, Alexandria’s fate illustrates how easily great libraries became casualties of religious conflict.

While Theophilus and Caliph Omar epitomized destruction, Cassiodorus represented preservation. Disturbed by the loss of the Palatine and Ulpian libraries during the siege of Rome, this Christian noble founded the Vivarium monastery in 544 CE, complete with a scriptorium far removed from political conflict. Inspired by this model, dozens of monasteries created scriptoria of their own, copying not only religious works but also literature and scientific texts. Their strength lay in their modest size (holding no more than a few hundred texts) and relative obscurity, which helped collections survive both the political and religious conflicts of their time.

Besides Christian monks, the Persian Academy of Gondishapur became a refuge for expelled scholars after Justinian closed the Academy of Athens in 529 CE. Already a teaching hospital and library, Gondishapur flourished after its influx of intellectual refugees by integrating Greek, Indian, and Persian traditions. While emperor Justinian thought he was helping the empire by banishing “pagan” scholars, he inadvertently aided the growth of an inclusive intellectual hub and helped spark the Islamic Golden Age.

1185 – 1425 CE

By the Renaissance, elites began to more fully understand the power of knowledge. The famous pre-Renaissance bookseller, Vespasiano, curated collections for the Vatican, nobles and clerics, influencing Cosimo de’ Medici’s founding of the San Marco Library (the first “public” library). Yet these collections were rarely altruistic. 

As author Matthew Battles notes:

“Big libraries didn’t spring up because of the economy and efficiency of the printing press… they were bound up in the appetites of dukes, merchants, and popes for the new learning aborning in the Renaissance… the control of massed knowledge offered a new basis for their power.” (p. 72)

In effect, dukes and popes had become the new emperors, consolidating and controlling knowledge as a source of personal power.

Beyond Europe, rulers weaponized knowledge more directly. Itzcoatl, founder of the Aztec Empire, ordered the burning of all Mexica books in 1439 CE to create a state-sanctioned history — a grim echo of Shi Huangdi. Ironically, the Spanish repeated this act of destruction upon the Aztecs less than a century later.

1980 – 2219 CE

The tension between preservation and control remains alive in our current Age of Air. In 2020, as COVID-19 shuttered physical libraries, the online library Internet Archive launched its National Emergency Library, making books digitally available through Controlled Digital Lending. Yet publishers viewed this as an existential threat. Lawsuits from four major publishers, followed by recording labels, forced the initiative to close and levied the nonprofit with heavy fines. The lawsuits sought not only to protect profit but also to maintain centralized control over information distribution.

Takeaway One: A Risk Assessment

The Alignment Problem

Across the Ages of Air, the fate of libraries has depended on alignment. When knowledge was housed under the authority of temples, states, or elites, it was vulnerable to destruction by zealots and princes alike.

In his book, Library: An Unquiet History, author Matthew Battles writes:

“Great libraries are problematic in times of war, disaster, or decay, for their fate becomes the fate of the literatures they contain. Much of what comes down to us from antiquity survived because it was held in small private libraries tucked away in obscure backwaters of the ancient world, where it was more likely to escape the notice of zealots as well as princes.” (p. 30-31)

Battles’ assessment is on point across these six Ages of Air. In short, any attempt to hoard a treasure will draw dragons.

The Alternative: Decentralization and Cultural Pooling

By contrast, when knowledge was decentralized — whether in monasteries like the Vivarium or intellectual refuges like Gondishapur — it endured. These decentralized, cross-cultural models preserved not only texts but also the spirit of inquiry itself.

Today, projects like the Internet Archive carry this tradition forward, though not without opposition. The lawsuits they face are reminders of an old pattern: attempts to monopolize or weaponize knowledge bring conflict, while collaborative, decentralized stewardship ensures its survival.

We are only at the beginning of our current Age of Air, but history suggests where alignment with power leads — and where resilience lies.