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For centuries, historians have been asking a question: "Where the hell is Punt?"
The Land of Punt was one of Ancient Egypt's most important trading partners. Egyptian records describe expeditions there. They brought back gold, incense, exotic animals, ivory, and other treasures. The Egyptians clearly knew where Punt was.
The problem is that we don't. Thousands of years later, historians, archaeologists, linguists, and geographers are still debating its location. Was it in Somalia? Eritrea? Sudan? Yemen? Somewhere else entirely? How can a place so important simply disappear?
The answer is simple. Not enough people wrote things down.
Most of what historians about Punt comes from a handful of Egyptian inscriptions and reliefs. The people of Punt themselves left few records that survived. Their own voices are largely absent. As a result, one of the most significant trading partners of one of history's greatest civilizations has become a mystery.
This is surprisingly common across history. Something may have been common knowledge back then. And so the historian recording it didn’t bother elaborating leading to a centuries long mystery.
A humorous example of this is the first Polish encyclopaedia, which included such definitions as "Horse: Everyone knows what a horse is", and "Dragon: Dragon is hard to overcome, yet one shall try."
Ancient Hindu texts and Puranas (such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata) reference flying chariots called "Vimanas". Apparently, these are flying palaces or chariots. But one truly doesn't know what they were referencing.
So what is the lesson here? It's about memory.
Every day, people live remarkable lives, build companies, raise families, create ideas, solve problems, and learn lessons. Most of it is never recorded. A generation later, details fade. A century later, they disappear entirely.
Writing is humanity's defense against forgetting.
When you write, you do more than communicate. You preserve. You leave a trail for the future. You allow people who have never met you to understand what you knew, what you built, and how you saw the world. The civilizations we admire today are often the civilizations that wrote. The people we remember are often the people who recorded their thoughts. The lessons that survive are the lessons that someone took the time to write down.
So write.
Write your ideas. Write your stories. Write your mistakes. Write what worked and what didn't. Write the things you wish someone had told you.
Because thousands of years from now, someone may be asking questions about our time just as we ask questions about Punt.
And the answer they find will depend on what we leave behind.