> Could you expand on this a little bit?

This may be more confusing than helpful, but here goes. As a tech person, my comments may offend professional historians :) Recorded history includes many transitions/translations of media, including:

Oral stories within a culture
Oral stories about distant cultures, by travelers
Written records of oral stories (e.g. "Aesop's" Fables)
Language translations (Egyptian, Greek, Latin, European, English)
Hand-written manuscripts
Printed books
Reprinted books

For a work to be migrated forward in history required:

(a) access to the original
(b) literacy in old & new formats
(c) financial resources & motivation
(d) political balancing acts with the rulers/censors of the period.

In the 17th century, Roger L'Estrange (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_L%27Estrange) was a publisher of propaganda in favor of Charles II, gained the authority to suppress (up to execution of the writer) seditious books (i.e. competing propaganda), and had licensing/publication veto over all books. Later in life, he would compile Aesop's fables and was allowed to print "problematic" fables by annotating them with apologetic commentary, http://bestlatin.blogspot.com/2011/09/sir-roger-lestrange-ae...

1913 biography of Estrange, https://archive.org/details/sirrogerlestrang00kitcuoft

Some examples of his writing, 1681-1687, http://www.gutenberg.org/files/40339/40339-h/40339-h.htm

Fast-forwarding four centuries, R.A. Lafferty (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/R._A._Lafferty), was an engineer and Catholic who took up scifi/fantasy writing in the 1960s at the age 45. He could read all languages of the Latin, German, and Slavic families, plus Gaelic and Greek. His personal library was about 8000 books, he wrote 29 novels and 225 short stories. His writing is a bit of an acquired taste, but often encapsulates multiple time periods of history. Don Webb, writing about Lafferty, http://www.revolutionsf.com/article.php?id=1110

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"Lafferty makes use of dead language words to play
upon our collective unconscious ... Lafferty's use of Greek, Latin, Irish, and Hebrew tags is not merely demonstration of his
vast erudition. It is a technique used by magicians for
centuries to give their spells potency. Whereas he directs
most of his narrative at our conscious—using simple
daytime language—he also directs the same tale at our
unconscious achieving a form of meta-communication.

... Lafferty plays upon our subconscious in another
way—the use of rhythm. Yevgeny Zamyatin developed
the concept of a "prose foot" as a way of internal
pacing of fiction. He saw it as a kind of rhythmic device
that by causing the reader to remember an earlier part
of the narrative became a force for a choral (as in
pertaining to choruses) cohesion that bound the story
together in a different way than plot mechanics."

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Because he could read so many languages, Lafferty was able to integrate primary source material, works which didn't migrate forward, today unavailable to readers who can't read Latin, Greek, etc. A recent article on Lafferty, http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/aug/13/ra-la...

Old books about science, religion & magic need to be evaluated in the context of historical timelines, e.g. it would be interesting to see a histomap for schools of thought, http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/08/12/the_1931_his... . Here are some Archive.org books that are pro/con a particular school of thought:

4th-15th century writings of the Eastern Orthodox Church, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philokalia & https://archive.org/details/Philokalia-TheCompleteText

1853, John Dowling, History of Romanism, arguing against the Roman Catholic Church, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dowling_(pastor)

1890, James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, anthropology of the human transition to science, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Bough

1896, Andrew Dickson White, founder of Cornell, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_History_of_the_Warfare_of_Sc...

1897, Charles William Heckethorn, The (160) Secret Societies of All Ages & Countries, https://archive.org/details/secretsocietieso01heckuoft & https://archive.org/details/secretsocietieso02heckuoft

Basically, every group has published propaganda about every other group, none of which should be trusted :) Once you're aware of the basic concepts and storylines, it's more interesting to read Lafferty-esque scifi or historical fiction that time-travels ancient patterns onto modern objects. Just as Samsung & Microsoft retail stores took cues from first-mover Apple, modernity continues to use communication techniques that were pioneered by magi-cians & religion, centuries ago. The major difference now is the speed of feedback loops.