There weren't many people writing things down back in the days of Ancient Greece, which is why it was such a tragedy when the Library of Alexandria, one of the most expansive collections of texts in classical civilization, was burned to the ground (possibly). Another ancient library, the Abbasid Caliphate's House of Wisdom, was destroyed when the Mongols swept by on their way to Hungary and back again. Discuss with your team: how does destroying a society's history impact it? What would happen in our own world if information-tracking resources like Wikipedia and TikTok suddenly vanished?

• Alexandria was founded in Egypt by Alexander the Great. The Museum was a shrine of the Muses modeled after the Lyceum of Aristotle in Athens. The Museum was a place of study which included lecture areas, gardens, a zoo, and shrines for each of the nine muses as well as the Library itself. It has been estimated that at one time the Library of Alexandria held over half a million documents from Assyria, Greece, Persia, Egypt, India and many other nations. Over 100 scholars lived at the Museum full time to perform research, write, lecture or translate and copy documents. The library was so large it actually had another branch or "daughter" library at the Temple of Serapis. (read about the theories on how it was burned here). Most of the writers from Plutarch (who blamed Caesar) to Edward Gibbons (a staunch atheist or deist who liked very much to blame Christians and blamed Theophilus) to Bishop Gregory (who was particularly anti-Moslem, blamed Omar) all had an axe to grind and consequently must be seen as biased. Probably everyone mentioned above had some hand in destroying some part of the Library's holdings. The collection may have ebbed and flowed as some documents were destroyed and others were added. For instance, Mark Antony was supposed to have given Cleopatra over 200,000 scrolls for the Library long after Julius Caesar is accused of burning it. The real tragedy of course is not the uncertainty of knowing who to blame for the Library's destruction but that so much of ancient history, literature and learning was lost forever. (maybe if fire fighters existed and did something)
• The House of Wisdom or Khizanat-al-Hikma or the ‘Storehouse of Wisdom’, this great library in Bagdad was initially a private library that belonged to the Abbasid Caliphs in the late 8th century. Much later, during Al-Ma’mun’s reign, this personal library was opened to the general public to encourage educational activities. Ancient works in Pahlavi, Syriac, Greek, and Sanskrit were translated into Arabic and documented. For hundreds of years, this place was known as the hub of educational research and intellectual center in humanities and sciences. Five centuries later, the Mongols pillaged this land and looted not only people but also the most valuable treasures — the books that the House of Wisdom held — and dumped them all in the river Tigris. The number of books thrown away in the river can be gauged because the river ran black for half a year because of the ink from the thousands of books drowned to their deaths. With the help of Christian and Persian scholars, the Umayyads supervised the translation of most foreign works into Arabic. This was also the Islamic Golden Age when the Arabs flourished scientifically, culturally, and economically. TLDR: they made house of wisdom the second and it got destruction by Genghis Khan so the books were ripped and the leather cover was used for sandals and the end for the libraries and the Islamic Golden Age. (just read the article i dont wanna copy paste the whole thing here its pretty much self explanatory there)
• They left cause of the climate and it is shown thanks to the tree rings. Marshy terrain across the Hungarian plain most likely reduced pastureland and decreased mobility, as well as the military effectiveness of the Mongol cavalry, while despoliation and depopulation ostensibly contributed to widespread famine. These circumstances arguably contributed to the determination of the Mongols to abandon Hungary and return to Russia. The original article linked was kinda too long but it had something to do with the son of Genghis Khan since he was in Iraq (?) ruling or whatever. Genghis couldn’t bring horses or sources because of the climate in Austria and other parts of Europe due to the changing climate. (a scientific research article of the whole thing why they probably left, trust me it has an introduction and abstract in it but please read the original link in the question too)

On the other extreme lies the Tripitaka Koreana, the most exhaustively-catalogued collection of Buddhist scriptures in the world. In the 11th century, Korean monks took 80 years to carve their entire canon into wooden tablets—and then the Mongols (hello again!) destroyed them all. Unfazed, the monks tried again, creating over 80,000 woodblocks. Their effort was worth it; the new tablets have survived for almost a millennium. Research how they disaster-proofed those tablets using the technologies they had at the time. Should we adopt similar strategies for records of our society? Is it possible for us to prepare for events we can't predict?

• On the stunning slopes of Gaya Mountain, Haeinsa Temple is home to the Tripitaka Koreana, the most complete collection of Buddhist texts, laws and treaties in existence today. Engraved on approximately 80,000 woodblocks, the Tripitaka has been used by scholars as the authority of Zen Buddhism since its creation and has shaped the religion for nearly 1,000 years. This relic of the past is uncharacteristic of Korean treasures, as it is an original rather than a replication, and has a history as interesting as the woodblocks themselves. Taking more than 70 years to create, the original Tripitaka was completed in 1087, but was destroyed in 1232 during a Mongol invasion. According to tradition, monks used wood from silver magnolias, white birches and cherry trees from the Southern coast of the peninsula. The wood was soaked in sea water for three years, then cut into individual blocks during the winter to prevent warping. To protect the woodblocks from deterioration, the depositories were constructed to provide ventilation and moderate temperature and humidity. This incredible design has preserved the woodblocks for over 750 years from pests and extreme weather conditions. These exceptionally effective conservation methods, along with the buildings’ intriguing history, make the structure unique. The Tripitaka woodblocks were declared a National Treasure of South Korea in 1962 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995. In 2000, after nine long years of painstaking, costly research, the Tripitaka Koreana was put into electronic form.

If someone invites you to the opening of a time capsule from the year 1800, tell them it's a scam—the first time capsule, the "Century Safe", dates to 1876, and the term "time capsule" wasn't invented until the 1939 World's Fair. Research these early time capsules and what they contained, along with this much more recent Polish polar time capsule, then discuss with your team: what would you put in a time capsule if you were making one for scholars a hundred years from now? You may also want to look at the work of the International Time Capsule Society, which is trying to make sure no one forgets where all the time capsules are. (And there are apparently more than ever—why do you think that is?)

• The world’s first planned time capsule debuted in 1876, when New York magazine publisher Anna Deihm assembled a “Century Safe” at the U.S. Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The iron box was stuffed with 19th century relics including a gold pen and inkstand, a book on temperance, a collection of Americans’ signatures, and snapshots of President Ulysses S. Grant and other politicians taken by photographer Mathew Brady. After being sealed in 1879, the purple velvet-lined safe was taken to the U.S. Capitol and eventually left to languish under the East Portico. Though nearly forgotten, it was later rediscovered, restored and unlocked on schedule in July 1976 during the nation’s bicentennial festivities. At a ceremony attended by President Gerald Ford, Senator Mike Mansfield said the opening had honored “the wish of a lady who sought to speak to us from the other side of a 100-year gulf.”
• On an Arctic island, researchers have buried a stainless-steel tube stuffed with artefacts that they say sum up science and technology in 2017. The capsule, buried on 17 September, could remain in the ground for more than half a million years before it resurfaces as a result of geological uplift, sea-level rise and erosion. Placed five metres deep in an out-of-use borehole near the Polish Polar Station in Hornsund, Svalbard, the 60-centimetre-long tube holds smaller containers with samples that include a fragment of a 4.5-billion-year-old meteorite, basaltic lava from an Icelandic volcano eruption and Namibian sand hiding particles of kimberlite and diamonds — all geared at informing a future discoverer of our present understanding of Earth’s geology. To summarize biology, it includes dried DNA samples from humans, rats, salmon and potato, a bee in resin, seeds and around 300 tardigrades, the minuscule aquatic ‘water bears’ that can survive extreme radiation, drought and heat. (read more from the article im not gonna paste everything)
• The International Time Capsule Society is dedicated to tracking the world's time capsule to ensure that those that are created are not lost. Paul Hudson founder of ITCS and alumni of Oglethorpe University estimates that more than 80 percent of all time capsules are lost and will not be opened on their intended date. The International Time Capsule Society collects and oversees time capsule registrations from all over the world, of all types of time capsule, and has received many thousands of registrations for over 30 years. On receipt of a new registration the ITCS catalogs each time in the Not Forgotten Library Depository and provides public access to the Time Capsule records.
• Creating a physical time capsule suggests that one has lost faith in all the larger “time capsules” that are fundamental to national, institutional and traditional forms of memory. Consider (or just Google) ****all the ways the term time capsule is used metaphorically: to refer to books, art, libraries and archives, scientific collections, old buildings, archaeological sites, fossils and geological strata. Creating your own time capsule is likely to be a sign that you lack faith that any of these methods of transmitting history will be successful. Perhaps the most curious thing about the contemporary interest in making time capsules is the persistence of the practice, even as the chances of mankind surviving global warming, nuclear war or new pandemics are dwindling. But there is a paradoxical logic at work: If history is coming to an end, we better make history as fast as we can. Time capsules are full of what might be called instant relics. What we place inside them become history, at least to us, as soon as we seal them up and send them to the future, no matter how soon that will be.