Kestemont told Hyperallergic that applying the unseen species model is a general method that can be used in other disciplines as well, like social history. “French-speaking Normans conquered England in 1066, which may have led to greater neglect and recycling of manuscripts written in English,” reads an article about the study published on Science News. The country with the lowest manuscript survival rate was England. ![]() For example, even though France had a vast tradition of medieval literature, since it was not as abundantly produced, a single library fire could render a story extinct. “A parallel emerges with some of the cultural diversity profiles for island regions reconstructed here: If land-isolated areas preserve biological heritage more effectively, then the same might hold true for cultural heritage,” the study reads.Īnd the report attributed these results to a previously overlooked factor: the evenness in which manuscripts were distributed. In ecology, the species that exist on an island - like Ireland or Iceland - have high species richness and evenness. Germany, Ireland, and Iceland had the highest rates. It also found that those stories were written down in a total of 40,614 manuscripts, but only 3,648 of those have survived.īut the study went beyond a general European inquiry, examining which countries’ manuscripts had the highest and lowest survival rates. Ultimately, the report found that 799 literary tales out of an original 1,170 are still around today. In this example, the parchment from a manuscript was used to reinforce a bishop’s miter.įragment of Strengleikar repurposed to stiffen a bishop’s miter, AM 666 b 4to (courtesy Arnamagnæan Manuscript Collection, Copenhagen, Denmark) Some manuscripts were destroyed when they were repurposed. They were also used as material for a bishop’s miter. Tailors also used them as measuring tapes. For example, fragments of manuscripts were used to bind books and wrap meat. There were many ways in which those missing manuscripts were lost: Some were destroyed in events like library fires, but others were lost when the parchment they were written on was repurposed. The study’s authors went on to explain that conventional approaches rely on mentions of lost works in places like library catalogs, “but many lost works will not have been mentioned.” A 2007 study examined printed books also using an unseen species model, but two previous studies examining Medieval manuscripts with scientific methods were met with sharp criticism “because the figures obtained did not fit with other historical evidence,” according to the recently published study. (courtesy Science)Īlthough there is still little quantitative research into the existence of medieval manuscripts, this study did not mark the first time scientific methods have been applied to historical record keeping. The types of manuscripts are categorized by language: Dutch, English, German, and French. This heatmap shows the locations of libraries and archives where manuscripts are held. Each individual story was treated like a species, and each manuscript containing the story was treated like a sighting of that species. In order to use the model, the researchers had to categorize the Medieval narratives and manuscripts as living things. ![]() For example, astronomers can’t be sure that they accounted for every star, linguists can’t know that they heard every word in a language, and computer scientists can’t know that they found every bug in a program.) (This problem of “unseen entities” extends to other fields too. ![]() This is a pervasive problem in ecology because it is nearly impossible for scientists to observe every single species in a given area. The unseen species model is used in ecology to determine how many species go undetected during a survey. The diverse team took a relatively novel approach to their research: Instead of using methods traditionally used for studying history, the team used a method used in ecology, called the “unseen species model.” This model was developed by biostatistician Anne Chao of the National Tsing Hua University in Hsin-Chu, Taiwan, one of the study’s authors. The team includes Mike Kestemont, Elisabeth de Bruijn, and Remco Sleiderink of the University of Antwerp in Belgium, Folgert Karsdorp of the KNAW Meertens Institute in Amsterdam in the Netherlands, Matthew Driscoll of the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, and others. The study was published by a large team of scholars whose areas of study range from literature to history and biostatistics.
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