An archive that cannot be lost

Libraries burn. Servers fail. Companies close, domains lapse, and whole decades of the web have already vanished. An archive that means to hold the human record for centuries cannot depend on one machine, one company, or one keeper staying alive.

So this one does not. Every published record in Humans of History is also inscribed on Arweave, a public blockchain built for one purpose: storing information permanently. Each biography, its references, and its portrait are written into a ledger that is copied across hundreds of independent machines around the world. Storage there is paid for once, up front, from an endowment designed to fund the copies for at least two hundred years.

Once a record is inscribed it cannot be edited, withdrawn, or deleted, not even by us. Corrections are published as new versions alongside the old, the way a careful archive keeps every edition of a document. If this website went dark tomorrow, every life recorded here would remain exactly where it was written, readable by anyone, for good.

See it for yourself

Records that carry the mark preserved for ever link directly to their permanent copy. You are not asked to trust this claim; you can check it. Here is one: the permanent copy of Pascal Koupaki, served straight from the blockchain rather than from our server.

The order of survival

The archive is built to degrade gracefully, one layer at a time. If our server fails, the domain serves the records from the blockchain instead. If the domain itself someday lapses, the archive remains reachable at its permanent Arweave address. And beneath every layer, each record answers at its own transaction ID from any Arweave gateway, with no involvement from us at all.

There is even a permanent reading room: a copy of this archive's library stored on the blockchain itself. It lists every inscribed record and renders it in your browser with no server involved, and it updates itself as new records are inscribed.

The open ledger

These are the most recent inscriptions. Each link serves the record's raw permanent copy from the blockchain, not from our server; the same link also appears on every preserved record's own page, beside its seal.

Help keep the record

Inscribing a biography costs a fraction of a cent, paid once. Donations go directly to inscribing more of them. The archive's wallet address on Arweave is:

3z76YtCjBxpLYQEc1MMZWywpu3Wx8T45t77uPia8xvQ

Anything sent there can only be spent on preservation. Questions, or a life you believe belongs in the permanent record? Write to [email protected], or read the editorial policy to see how records are written.