The Three worst book burnings I'm still mad about.

 Okay, so there have been a lot of book burnings, both intentional and accidental, in history. Here are three burnings that I am still mad about to this day. 

Number one, probably the most archaic one: the 213 BC "Burning of books and burying of scholars" in Qin dynasty china. This one event is why we really don't know much about China before this year. Many accounts of the time period were lost forever. Because of this, China's history has been utterly inscrutable and I think this is a horrible loss. I am part Chinese and I feel the loss my culture sustained through this burning. I'm still mad about it.

Number two, probably the most well-known of book burnings: the loss of the Library at Alexandria. I believe that, had this library not burned, we would be several centuries advanced in our technology. Rome would have experienced an industrial revolution and we would be flying spaceships to other stars by now. This one event I believe set humanity back by centuries. While science can be rediscovered, the art in that library, the novels and plays and epics, are lost forever and can never be recovered. A dozen Iliads were lost that day. I'm still mad about it. 

And finally, the one that pains me the most: the burning of Aztec scripts (and the consequent Christian suppression of all traditional Native American knowledge. Not one of Christianity's highest moments.) I believe that, had we not burned their books and stamped out their culture, we would be spiritually advanced far beyond our current times. Yes, the Aztecs were nasty with human sacrifice and such. But I think that so much could be known about the spiritual world had we not burned their works. The religions of an entire society were lost forever during that burning. The Aztecs were not well-advanced scientifically, but there is a possibility of otherworldly contact--through aliens and such (I know it's crazy, bear with me)--that was recorded in those books that, because of the burnings and suppression of culture, we'll never know the truth of. I'm still mad about it.

I believe that book burnings suck, whatever the material may be. While today books are ubiquitous and it would be quite hard to burn all the copies of a single book--even without the internet--things weren't always this way. Sometimes humanity suffers these unrecoverable losses through idiocy, accident, or ideology, and I believe that they significantly hurt us today.