English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Free Plan

How did written works evolve, disappear or survive down through the ages? Inthis paper, we propose a unified, formal framework for two fundamentalquestions in the study of the transmission of texts: how much was lost orpreserved from all works of the past, and why do their genealogies (their``phylogenetic trees'') present the very peculiar shapes that we observe or,more precisely, reconstruct? We argue here that these questions sharesimilarities to those encountered in evolutionary biology, and can be describedin terms of ``genetic'' drift and ``natural'' selection. Through agent-basedmodels, we show that such properties as have been observed by philologistssince the 1800s can be simulated, and confronted to data gathered for ancientand medieval texts across Europe, in order to obtain plausible estimations ofthe number of works and manuscripts that existed and were lost.

Lost Manuscripts and Extinct Texts: A Dynamic Model of Cultural Transmission