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HISTORY OF WRITING
The invention of “writing” was around 3300 B.C.
Richard Overy, editor of The Times Complete History of the World, stated in “The 50 Key Dates of World History,” October 19, 2007:
“No date appears before the start of human civilizations about 5,500 years ago and the beginning of a written or pictorial history.”
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson stated in the Cosmos TV series (2014, natgeotv.com, episode 10, “The Immortals”):
“It was the people who once lived here, around 5,000 years ago, who first started chopping up time into smaller bite-size portions of hours and minutes. They call this place Uruk. We call it Iraq.
… The part of Mesopotamia – the land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The ‘city’ was invented here.
And one of humanities greatest victories was won over the ceaseless battle of time. It was here that we learned how to write.”
Writing was first on pieces of clay, then on papyrus reeds from the Nile Delta.
The reeds, which grew 16 feet tall, had their outer rind removed, leaving the sticky inner cores, which were cut into strips, interwoven together, soaked, pressed, and then dried.
The word “paper” comes from the word “papyrus.”
It was the main medium to write upon for nearly 3,000 years.
Writing was invented in China around 2,600 BC during the reign of the legendary Yellow Emperor.
Instead of using reeds, the Chinese used bamboo, which was cut into strips and written upon vertically.
These strips were tied together creating bamboo annals or books.
Around the same time, writing appeared in the Harappan civilization along the Indus River Valley in Punjab and Sindh, but it has never been deciphered.
Writing was also upon palm leaves, bark, bones, and stone.
Writing was then made on parchment made from the skins of sheep and goats, and on vellum made from calfskin.
WHO WAS ALLOWED TO WRITE?
Reading and writing was, for the most part, limited to the ruling elite.
It was the communication of the deep state class who wanted to control the ignorant and uneducated masses.
Anthropologist Claude Levi Strauss (1908-2008) wrote:
“Ancient writing’s main function was to facilitate the enslavement of other human beings.”
Emphasizing how tyrants need the masses of people to be ignorant, George Orwell wrote in Nineteen Eighty-Four:
“In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.”
James Madison wrote to W.T. Barry, August 4, 1822:
“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance.”
Kings had scribes who kept the court records.
Scribes kept track of the kings’:
- treasures,
- decrees,
- genealogies,
- astronomical observations,
- myths, and
- royal propaganda.
An early form of fake news, scribes’ records would omit military losses, rebellions, or anything that would portray the pharaoh negatively.
In order to carry out the king’s will, the administrative class and military class were granted security clearances to learn the secret of reading and writing.
Writing was the equivalent of the high tech industry.
Only one percent of Egypt could read and write. It was the scribes’ secret knowledge.
The National Archaeological Museum in Athens, Greece, in its section on Egyptian Artifacts, has a display on “Scribes,” stating:
“Only a small percentage of ancient Egypt’s population was literate, namely the pharaoh, members of the royal family, officials, priests and scribes.
… Particularly popular and lucrative, the scribe’s profession was mostly hereditary. Scribes had careers in the government, priesthood, and army. They began their rigorous training in their early childhood.
Most of their training took place inside a building called the “House of Life,” attached to the temple. Scribes wrote on stone or clay sherds.”
Elite ruling classes always kept common people and slaves uninformed, prohibiting them from being educated or from communicating.
Rulers controlled knowledge and communication throughout history:
- Islam’s burning of libraries and forbidding followers to read the Bible;
- Medieval feudal lords and clergy communicated only in Latin;
- banning and burning of books during Reformation, Jewish pogroms, National Socialist Workers Party (Nazi), Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), Erdogan’s Turkish government, etc.;
- confiscation of printing presses;
- during Revolution, Britain’s Writs of Assistance whereby British agents read all correspondence;
- Cultural Revolution in China; Khmer Rouge in Cambodia;
- attempts to restrict talk radio; and
- Big tech censorship of the internet.
Thomas Aquinas wrote of Mohammed in Summa contra Gentiles, 1258:
“It was a shrewd decision on his part to forbid his followers to read the Old and New Testaments, lest these books convict him of falsity.”
Thomas Jefferson wrote to William Branch Giles, December of 1794 (The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia, John P. Foley, ed., NY, Funk & Wagnalls Co., 1900:
“The attempt which has been made to restrain the liberty of our citizens meeting together, interchanging sentiments on what subjects they please, and stating their sentiments in the public papers, has come upon us a full century earlier than I expected.”
Limiting knowledge was seen in America prior to the Civil War where Southern Democrat States made it illegal for slaves to learn how to read and write.
North Carolina passed an Act in 1831:
“Whereas the teaching of slaves to read and write, has a tendency to excite dissatisfaction in their minds, and to produce insurrection and rebellion …
Be it enacted … That any free person, who shall hereafter teach, or attempt to teach, any slave within the State to read or write … shall be liable to indictment … and upon conviction, shall … be fined not less than one hundred dollars … imprisoned, or whipped.”
Ancient Israel was the first nation where the general population was literate.
In the 4th century A.D., Church historian Eusebius of Caesarea quoted the Jewish historian Eupolemus, who wrote circa 150 B.C.:
“Moses was the first wise man. He taught the alphabet to the Jews who passed it on to the Phoenicians, who passed it to the Greeks. Moses first wrote laws for the Jews.” (Praeparatio Evangelica, 9:26.1)
Levites taught the people the law, and taught them how to read the law.
Israel functioned as a Hebrew republic for four hundred years before they sinned by asking for a king.
The democracy of ancient Athens and the republic of ancient Rome also required citizens to be educated and informed.
Thomas Sowell wrote in “Degeneration of Democracy,” 6/2010:
“A democracy needs informed citizens if it is to thrive, or ultimately even survive.”
In The Lessons of History (Simon & Schuster, 1968, p. 77), Will and Ariel Durant wrote:
“Democracy is the most difficult of all forms of government, since it requires the widest spread of intelligence …
Ignorance … lends itself to manipulation by the forces that mold public opinion.”
James Madison wrote to W.T. Barry, August 4, 1822:
“A people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives …
A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both.”
As seen in Ancient Israel, Athens or Rome, for people to rule themselves in a democracy or a republic, the people need to be educated and informed.
Therefore, whoever controls education and information controls the country.
In America:
- The COUNTRY is controlled by LAWS >
- LAWS are controlled by POLITICIANS >
- POLITICIANS are controlled by VOTERS >
- VOTERS are controlled by PUBLIC OPINION >
- PUBLIC OPINION is controlled by MEDIA, EDUCATION, CHURCH & INTERNET (News, Hollywood, Big Tech, Social Media Platforms, …) >
- so whoever controls MEDIA, EDUCATION, CHURCH & INTERNET, controls the COUNTRY.
The Epoch Times reported, January 12, 2021:
“Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, indicated on Monday that Big Tech is now the ‘de facto arbiter of free speech,’ referring to their recent move to ban President Donald Trump.”
Vladimir Lenin stated in a conversation with A.V. Lunacharsky, April 1919:
“Of all the arts, for us the cinema is the most important.”
Yale President Timothy Dwight gave an address on July 4, 1798, tracing the origin of the radical, left-wing Jacobin organizers who agitated a violent overthrow of France’s government:
“The appropriation to themselves … of the places and honors of members of the French Academy, the most respectable literary society in France, and always considered as containing none but men of prime learning and talents.
In this way they designed to hold out themselves and their friends as the only persons of great literary and intellectual distinction in that country, and to dictate all literary opinions to the nation.”
On controlling public opinion, George Orwell wrote in “Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver’s Travels” (Polemic, September/October 1946):
“In a society in which there is no law, and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behavior is public opinion.
But public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law …
The individual … is under continuous pressure to make him behave and think in exactly the same way as everyone else.”
On controlling education, George Orwell commented in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four:
“If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened – that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death?
And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed – if all records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became truth.
‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future; who controls the present controls the past’.
And when memory failed and written records were falsified – when that happened, the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standards against which it could be tested.”
Orwell added:
“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”
This is similar to the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huangdi, who conquered many kingdoms to unify China in 221 BC.
When he was criticized for not ruling as rulers had in the past, he ordered all of the hand-written records of the past to be burned and the scholars buried.
The Basic Annals of the First Emperor of Qin reported that Qin’s Chancellor, Li Si, told the Emperor in 213 BC:
“I, your servant, propose that all historians’ records other than those of Qin’s be burned …
If anyone under heaven has copies of the Classics of History (Shu Jing) … they shall deliver them to the governor … for burning.
… Anyone who dares to discuss the Classics of History shall be publicly executed.
Anyone who uses history to criticize the present shall have his family executed …
Anyone who has failed to burn the books after thirty days of this announcement shall be subjected to tattooing and be sent to build the Great Wall.”
HISTORY OF PRINTING
The Qin Dynasty was overthrown, and in 202 BC the Han Dynasty ruled China.
In the following centuries, Chinese scribes developed the process of making paper from tree pulp and rags.
Beginning in 175 AD, during the Han Dynasty, scribes placed paper over stone engravings of texts of Confucius and made rubbings with charcoal.
This developed into laying paper over raised stone letters covered with ink, a technique which spread to other countries like Japan, where a Nara Empress printed a Buddhist charm in 768 AD.
Using a method with carved wooden or baked clay blocks, China, during the Tang Dynasty, created what could be considered the first “printed” book in 868 AD.
In China, Bi Sheng invented movable type printing with porcelain characters during the Song Dynasty, 1041, leading to China being the first country to have printed “paper currency.”
Printing of currency, using copper plates, occurred on a mass scale during Kublai Khan’s Yuan Dynasty, 1215-1294, even being mentioned by Marco Polo.
China’s over-printing of currency led to it being devalued, resulting in inflation and economic collapse.
Ultimately, the currency depreciated by 1,000 percent causing the country to become politically unstable.
This contributed to ending the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty in 1368.
The shear number of Chinese characters, over 50,000, discouraged China from making further printing innovations.
In 1234, Korea’s Goryeo Dynasty invented the first “metal” movable type printing press.
In 1443, Korean Emperor Sejong the Great introduced a 24-letter han’gul alphabet which made printing practical.
Whereas China used pictogram characters, and Egypt used hieroglyphs, Western Civilization had been using a phonetic characters dating back to a Semitic alphabet around 1500 BC.
It was not until 1400 AD that Europeans first began using carved wooden blocks applied with ink to print religious messages.
In Germany, Johannes Gutenberg invented a printing press – the Western world’s first “metal moveable type” printing press.
On AUGUST 24, 1455, Gutenberg printed his masterpiece, the Gutenberg Bible, regarded as the first book of significance ever printed.
No longer copied tediously by the hands of scribes, Bibles were soon mass produced.
Gutenberg, whose name means “beautiful mountain,” wrote about his 42-line Gutenberg Bible, also called the Mazarin Bible, 1455:
“God suffers in the multitude of souls whom His word can not reach.
Religious truth is imprisoned in a small number of manuscript books which confine instead of spread the public treasure.
Let us break the seal which seals up holy things and give wings to Truth in order that she may win every soul that comes into the world by her word no longer written at great expense by hands easily palsied, but multiplied like the wind by an untiring machine …”
Gutenberg continued:
“Yes, it is a press, certainly, but a press from which shall flow in inexhaustible streams the most abundant and most marvelous liquor that has ever flowed to relieve the thirst of men.
Through it, God will spread His word; a spring of pure truth shall flow from it; like a new star it shall scatter the darkness of ignorance, and cause a light hithertofore unknown to shine among men.”
In March of 1455, future Pope Pius II commented on Gutenberg’s Bible in a letter to Cardinal Carvajal:
“All that has been written to me about that marvelous man seen at Frankfurt is true. I have not seen complete Bibles but only a number of quires of various books of the Bible.
The script was very neat and legible, not at all difficult to follow – your grace would be able to read it without effort, and indeed without glasses.”
Unfortunately for Gutenberg, he had borrowed 8,000 guilders from Johann Fust, who sued him at the archbishop’s court in 1456 and took the print shop, leaving Gutenberg bankrupt.
Gutenberg re-started a smaller print shop, and participated in printing Bibles in the town of Bamberg.
Gutenberg’s invention was considered the most important event of the modern period as it began a printing revolution which spread knowledge, information and ideas at an unprecedented speed.
Gutenberg’s invention significantly fueled Europe’s Renaissance, Reformation, Age of Enlightenment, and the Scientific Revolution.
No longer was knowledge and information solely under the control of the ruling class establishment.
Later generations experienced innovations whereby individuals could communicate information with large numbers of people through theater, music, talk radio, television, telephone, and the internet.
Each method, though, has seen attempts by powerful deep state elites to regulate and control it.
Victor Hugo wrote in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 1831, book 5:
“The 15th century everything changes. Human thought discovers a mode of perpetuating itself …
Gutenberg’s letters of lead … supersede Orpheus’s letters of stone … The invention of printing is the greatest event in history. It is the mother of revolution …”
Hugo continued:
“Whether it be Providence or Fate, Gutenberg is the precursor of Luther.”
In A Tramp Abroad, 1880, Mark Twain wrote:
“We made a short halt at Frankfort-on-the-Main … I would have liked to visit the birthplace of Gutenberg, but … no memorandum of the house has been kept.”
Napoleon introduced the printing press into Egypt when he invaded in 1798.
On August 12, 1993, Pope John Paul II gave a rare copy of the Gutenberg Bible to President Bill Clinton at Denver’s Regis University in Colorado.
While in Colorado, the Pope, with Vice-President Al Gore in attendance, addressed over 375,000 at Cherry Creek State Park, August 15, 1993:
“At no other time in history, the ‘culture of death’ has assumed a social and institutional form of legality to justify the most horrible crimes against humanity … massive taking of lives of human beings even before they are born …
Any reference to a ‘law’ guaranteed by the Creator is absent … No longer is anything considered intrinsically ‘good’ and ‘universally binding’ …
Vast sectors of society are confused about what is right and what is wrong and are at the mercy of those with the power to ‘create’ opinion and impose it on others …”
Pope John Paul II continued:
“The family especially is under attack … The weakest members of society are the most at risk. The unborn, children, the sick, the handicapped, the old …
Do not be afraid to go out on the streets and into public places … This is no time to be ashamed of the Gospel.
It is a time to preach it from the rooftops … You must feel the full urgency of the task. Woe to you if you do not succeed in defending life.”
The word “Bible” comes from the Greek word “biblia” meaning books, as it is a collection of many Old Testament and New Testament books, bound together in one volume.
From 382 AD to the Renaissance and Reformation, there have been typically 73 books in the Bible. The Eastern Orthodox Bible has 78, the Geneva Bible has 80, and the Ethiopian Bible has 81.
In 1625, the King James Bible was revised to the number to 66 books.
Since Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in mid-1400’s, the HOLY BIBLE has been THE MOST PRINTED BOOK IN ALL OF WORLD HISTORY, estimated at over 6 billion copies.
Woodrow Wilson stated at the 300th Anniversary of the Translation of the King James Bible in the English Language, May 7, 1911:
“I wonder how many persons in this great audience realize the significance for English-speaking peoples of the translation of the Bible into the English tongue. Up to the time of the translation of the Bible into English, it was a book for long ages withheld from the perusal of the peoples of other languages …
Not a little of the history of liberty lies in the circumstance that the moving sentences of this Book were made familiar to the ears and the understanding of those peoples who have led mankind in exhibiting the forms of government and the impulses of reform which have made for freedom and for self-government among mankind …”
Wilson continued:
“For this is a book which reveals men unto themselves, not as creatures … under human authority …
It reveals every man to himself as a distinct moral agent, responsible not to men, not even to those men whom he has put over him in authority, but responsible through his own conscience to his Lord and Maker.
Whenever a man sees this vision he stands up a free man.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt stated October 6, 1935:
“The four hundredth anniversary of the printing of the first English Bible is an event of great significance …
The … influence of this greatest of books … so greatly affected the progress of Christian civilization …
This Book continues to hold its unchallenged place as the most loved, the most quoted and the most universally read and pondered of all the volumes …
It continues to hold its supreme place as the Book of books …”
FDR concluded:
“We cannot read the history of our rise and development as a Nation, without reckoning with the place the Bible has occupied in shaping the advances of the Republic …
Its teaching … is ploughed into the very heart of the race.
Where we have been truest and most consistent in obeying its precepts we have attained the greatest measure of contentment and prosperity.”
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This post originally appeared at https://americanminute.com/blogs/todays-american-minute/history-of-writing-printing-victor-hugo-on-gutenbergs-press-the-invention-of-printing-is-the-mother-of-revolution-american-minute-with-bill-federer