For every California condor that is saved each year, thousands of other, less glamorous species will die; in the next century, half of the world’s 6500 languages will vanish; and if the rate of development continues in China, scores of architectural treasures will be demolished in favor of cinder-block monstrosities.

These are just a few of the disturbing prognostications that Alexander Stille offers up in The Future of the Past, his fascinating meditation on the ways we remember — and pave over — history. It’s not just that we are unable to preserve the world as we know it. He argues, " Our society is in the midst of a fundamental rupture with the past. "

To capture the urgency of this development, Stille traveled the globe visiting hot spots of decay. His dispatches, most of which originally appeared in the New Yorker, will be a rude awakening for readers who trust that the world’s most precious artifacts are safely tucked away in temperature-controlled environments.

The first three chapters focus on monuments, and it’s hard to read them without wincing. Wind and the meddling of well-intentioned (and not-so-well-intentioned) Egyptologists are eroding parts of the Sphinx’s rump. Ancient tombs in China are at risk because of the clumsy manner in which they are being exhumed. Meanwhile, in Italy, clandestine diggers steal treasures from archæological sites and sell them on a black market run by the Mafia.

Stille goes on to highlight the even more troublesome erosion of cultural memory — the kind passed down in traditions and trades. One lively chapter profiles Reginald Foster, an expatriate priest who’s trying to resurrect Latin and make it a spoken language. Another explores the death of traditions of oral poetry and canoe making on Kitawa, a remote island off the coast of Papua New Guinea.

Stille, the author of Excellent Cadavers: The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic and Benevolence and Betrayal: Five Italian Jewish Families Under Fascism, deploys his storytelling gifts well here and avoids becoming academic as he asks whether legacy is important and how the world honors it. Although the book began life as a series of essays, it does not feel discontinuous. Each scenario evokes the same telling irony: for all the technological advances we have made, the byproducts of this growth — industrialization, population explosion, and pollution — threaten to destroy things faster than we can preserve them. And rather than pointing fingers, Stille focuses on unraveling the complexities of each situation. He understands that for many parts of the world preservation is a luxury, and one likely to clash with the more immediate needs of local populations.

Some of the best chapters in The Future of the Past focus on how conservation can create its own problems. The author shows how an influx of US aid money meant to encourage bio-friendly planting in Madagascar has wound up in the hands of the wealthiest few. Many former farmers have been reduced to overhunting the local crayfish population, with the result that some rare species are now at risk. Then there’s the battle between Eastern and Western ideals. The Ise Shrine is a Japanese temple that was first constructed in the seventh century. Every two decades the building is ritually destroyed and rebuilt. To the Japanese, it is 1300 years old. But not to UNESCO, which has removed the shrine from its list of World Heritage sites.

In the end, Stille remains hopeful that we can preserve our heritage without compromising growth. Although he offers some suggestions for how to go about this, his essay would have been complete without them. After all, as an artifact itself, The Future of the Past suggests that our greatest asset in this task may not be electron microscopes or carbon dating systems but something as simple and anachronistic as a book.