Around a hundred and thirty lead tablets were dropped into the hot spring at Bath, asking a goddess for justice. She never answered. They survived anyway. The reason why is the most useful thing I know about writing loss. Two thousand years ago, someone stood at the edge of a steaming pool in Somerset, scratched a message into a thin sheet of lead, and dropped it into the water. The message wasn't a prayer of any grandeur. Somebody had taken their cloak from the bath-house. T