The Dead Sea scrolls were mostly saved by bribe and threat: unmindful finders re-interred the rest in hopes of gain. It vanished or decayed.
A trooper in the Greek campaign blown by Wehrmacht mortars down a limestone chute, glimpsed there a lettered chest—lost masterworks? new graphs
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by Euclid or his heirs, perhaps. Never reclaimed: the next rounds covered it up again. Fountains of blazing loam, then forced retreat—the blasted
ground left no remains of site-map to be guessed. Great Aztec wheels; Lascaux red bulls; dried funeral garlands of Neanderthals: all brought to
light by restless chance—a dropped hoe or a wandering goat. Vast evidence unknown, we stand on ranks of shoulders buried deep in earth
a fragmentary tune, made by the breeze against a bone protruding from a crumbled canyon wall.
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