The Chain Is Unbroken. It Is Waiting.
The conditions are the same five things in every civilisation across twelve thousand years, and they are cheap. The capacity was never damaged. They are simply not being given the time, and that is a policy, not a fate.
Twenty-eight chapters is a long way to travel to arrive at something this plain, so let me put the conclusion first.
The chain is not broken. It never was.
Not at the Flood, when the coastal plains went under and the survivors carried what they could inland. Not at Alexandria, where the copying stopped and the shelves emptied over seven centuries. Not at Maní, where four books survived a fire meant to take everything. Not through the colonial dismantling of institutions across three continents.
Links thinned. Several broke. The chain held, because it is not a single strand and never has been.
What the chain requires is not repair. It is conditions.
And the conditions are not mysterious. This book has spent twenty-eight chapters describing them, and they turn out to be the same five things every time, in every civilisation, across twelve thousand years:
Protect the thinkers. Fund them properly. Free them from subsistence. Shield them from political interference and from market pressure. Give them time, not weeks, not months, but years, and institutions that will outlast any individual career, any government, any economic cycle.