May 26, 2020 • 47 mins
Books are one of humanity’s greatest inventions, but where do they come from? In this Stuff to Blow Your Mind two-parter, Robert and Joe explore the history of book technology, from ancient clay tablets and papyrus scrolls to the codex and beyond.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And
today on Stuff to Blow Your Mind, we're gonna be
starting on an expedition into the history of books where
(00:23):
I guess this will be in the spirit of our
our previous show Invention. We're gonna look at an invention,
and I think the book is probably one of the
most underappreciated technologies. Obviously, it's not that people don't appreciate
books as things, but when we think about books, I
think there's a problem that we only appreciate the contents
of the books. We only think about them as literature,
(00:46):
and we don't think about what a marvelous technology the
modern book is. That's right. Yeah, we basically need to
take a step back here before we really get into
the idea of the invention of the book. Uh, books are,
in the words of Carl Sagan, a means of storing
additional information that exceeds the information carrying capacity of the brain.
(01:09):
And I realized that's that's kind of, uh, you know,
a simplified version of what they are. But it's also
kind of a useful overstatement of the obvious um. The
book is a tool. It is an extension of the
human body in the same way that a normal tool is,
but in this case it is a more precisely an
extension of the human mind, kind of an external hard
(01:31):
drive for the brain. Exactly. Yeah, I think this this
is an example where our our tendency to use computer
metaphors to understand our own minds. As you know, it's
actually pretty helpful. But of course, books are more than that.
Two books are a way for one author, or a
group of authors, or even a legacy of authors to
think their thoughts directly into another person's brain. It's a
(01:52):
it's a way of not only storing information, but disseminating information,
and as such it's played the books have played a
vital role in the spread of information, where, for instance,
would Western civilization be if not for the influx influx
of Arab books into the medieval world. And that's just
one example. Oh yeah, But as I think, it's a
fantastic example because it books provide a way for lost
(02:16):
knowledge to be reclaimed even when knowledge sort of like
fades into obscurity within sort of the the the oral
culture of a society. If there is a book that
contains that knowledge, that voice and and the book can
be found, suddenly all of that past knowledge can return.
And I think your example is a very good one.
Now thinking more about the metaphor of like the external
(02:39):
hard drive or the way of storing information outside the
carrying capacity of the brain. In some ways, I think
that's a really good metaphor, but there are also very
important ways that that doesn't quite capture everything that books
can do. For example, a book is a very different
kind of memory than a memory in the brain is.
And I would say one of the main issues is
(03:00):
it books are fixed physical documents, whereas memories in the
brain are not fixed. Memories are always changing. Every time
you recall a memory, you probably change it in some way.
And while you know it is possible, of course to
remember things in an accurate way, it is probably not
possible to say, remember the amount of exact nu miracle
(03:21):
figures that would be recorded in a book list of
assets or prices. As many you know of the oldest
books that there are, you know many of the oldest
books we have are basically trade documents of some kind
or to remember the exact wording of of an epic
poem describing a mythological foundation. Absolutely. You know. Another take
(03:41):
on this that I was reading about. I was reading
something from Andrew Robinson, author of the Story of Writing,
and he he points out that you know just how
powerful books are and how how feared books often are,
particularly by usurpers of power and conquerors who often burn
books of oppressive regimes, banned books. Uh, you know that
(04:01):
they are powerful reservoirs of human thought and um. And
to your point earlier, I mean, they endure in ways
that oral histories often cannot. Uh. Knowledge can be lost,
but then it can be regained through books, words and
the books that contain them. Um. They they freeze our
thoughts as well, in a way that in oral history
(04:22):
does not. The myth that it exists within the minds
and on the tongues of the people will continue to change.
But that which has been recorded, uh, you know, retains
all of the you know, the the curious edges that
it had when it was first written down. And you know,
I don't recall the source on this, but I remember
us bringing up this idea of of words and in
(04:45):
a literature freezing thoughts in the past. You know that
it's taking what is happening in our mind and just
fixing it. Yeah, I think the example of the way
myths change over time is a great one here. Like
it calls to mind the recent episodes we did about
the evolution and of the Medusa myth. You know, there's
clearly some kind of oral history mythology feeding into the
(05:06):
story that became Medusa and Athena, Medusa and Perseus. But
once you have a particular author writing their version of
that myth, suddenly that version is a fixed thing that
can be referred to, and it's no longer just just
you know, an uncountable part of this protean stew of mythology.
(05:26):
Now there is like Ovid's version of the Medusa myth,
and that that that's a thing you can refer to. Now.
Of course, it's not the case that books never changed.
I think, especially in the ancient world. One thing that
that's hard for us in the modern world to to
keep in mind is that books in the ancient world
had to be copied by hand when they were you know,
spread about, so changes could easily creep in, either by
(05:48):
mistakes from you know, scribes doing a sloppy job of
copying or just inserting their own little impremature on whatever
it is they're working on. That that did happen too
sometimes even in uh, you know, even in important books
like the works of Plato or in the Bible. Um.
But there's another interesting thing that I think, you know,
you you were talking about the political power of books,
(06:09):
the way that like you know, conquerors and and and
political leaders often like burn or banned books that scare them.
There is a power in written documents um to create
a kind of stability in a political sense, right, Because
I was thinking about how a lot of the earliest
written documents that exist in human history are lists of
(06:33):
nu miracle figures, like like a record of prices or
assets in in trade or possession, or lists of laws
like Hamarabi's Code. I actually got to see the Hamarabi's
Code steal in the Louver recently, and and and it
made me think they're about the significance of having a
written law code. Now, we might read the laws in
(06:55):
Hammurabi's Code and and see a lot of brutality and
unfairness in there. And I think there is absolutely that
kind of thing to find. But you can also appreciate
it in a certain way because having a list of
written laws, as opposed to sort of rule by the
ad hoc pronouncements of a leader does, at least in theory,
(07:16):
reduce the amount of caprice in how justice is administered.
Right Like a written law code, at least in theory,
if it's enforced well, allows you to know what the
rules and punishments are in advance, rather than just kind
of like living in fear of whatever the leader's mood
is going to be today. Yeah, you remove sort of
the whims of the tyrant. And also I mentioned in
(07:39):
another level, you kind of remove like, um, let's say
you weren't even dealing with the tyrant. Let's say you're
dealing with just sort of like the traditions and stories
of the people. Right, Um, you'd have to like interpret
those to get your laws. But here, no, here are
the laws in a list. You can in many cases
you may able to, you know, to look at it
all at once. All in things, you couldn't actually have
(08:01):
them all in your head at the same time, but
they are all on this stone at the same time
exactly right, Like it gives you a common foundation that
multiple people can refer to. Now, I want to get
back to the just the idea of of of books
here before we inevitably dive back through history again. You know,
I was thinking about how every now and you know,
hear somebody joke say something like remember books, uh when
(08:26):
when contemplating electronic resources such as e books and kindles
and what have you, um, which, you know, I get
that to a certain extent because I know I've I've
in my family have tried to cut down on con
clutter books in the home, you know, like how many
how many physical books do I actually need? I love
books have left my own devices. I'm sure that I
(08:47):
would have a lot of book clutter. But at the
end of the day, you know, is this something I'm
going to actually look forward? Am I going to actually
pull it out and uh and uh and and reference
it at some point? And or do I have an
electronic the already somewhere else. I've noticed in myself I
at least tend to accumulate kind of books of marginal interest,
(09:08):
Like I'll end up with books in my house that
are things that uh that I you know, there's probably
a low likelihood that I'll ever get around to reading them.
They're not high on my priorities list, and they're just
here somehow, either I got them at work or you
know that kind of or they just like looked interesting.
And he used a bookstore one time. It's like, hey,
it's sixty cents, I'll get it. Um. That reminds me
(09:31):
of if I'm remembering this correctly, Um, Burdo Ecco had
an anecdote about you know, Burdo Ecco, of course, had
quite a personal library. Um. I think he had to
like reinforce the floor to to allow him to keep it.
But at some point, some like a workman or somebody
had come over and they saw all the books and
they're like, oh, have you read all of these? And
he said, no, no, these are just the ones I
(09:53):
planned to read, which which I see that reflected in
some of my own books. You know, collec used to
are amassing books and you're like, uh, you know, I
haven't read these yet. Uh. I would like to read these,
and that's why they're taking a valuable space in my home.
But I still have a lot of books in the
house and and even beyond that, I mean, they're just books.
(10:13):
Everywhere still like there there's a library down the street
from where I live. There all these lending libraries, you know,
so you just just traveling from here to the library.
There are just books, little boxes, wooden boxes filled with
like various old cookbooks and to horror and sci fi books,
that sort of thing. And on top of this, our
(10:33):
various e books are PDFs. These are still digital extensions
of the the the idea, the concept of the book.
You know, they still obey the laws of the Codex
and and as such, I think the book will continue
to be with us for quite some time. But one
of the big questions we're gonna be asking in in
this episode or episodes of stuff to blow your mind
(10:55):
is how far back in time would you have to travel, uh,
you know, to reach a world in which a book
would not be identifiable as what it is. Well, that's
interesting because so the most common form of book that
we're familiar with today is the is the printed book,
you know, the product of a printing press. But as
(11:16):
I was saying earlier, that's actually a fairly recent phenomenon.
You know, for much of human history, if you had
a book that sucker had to be made by hand absolutely. Now. Now,
certainly the printed book as as we you know know,
like generally the first thing coming to your mind when
I say book. Uh, that only goes back as far
as the fifteenth century c. But while the printing press
(11:38):
certainly changed the trajectory of the book forever in ways
that will come back to, these were certainly not the
first books. Yeah, they were. Before this we had we
had handwritten books. We had the products of the of
you know, medieval European scriptoriums. And so you might think, well,
that's the beginning, right, we go back to the scriptorium,
and that would be the beginning of the book somewhere
(11:58):
in there. But this would also be correct. So to
to really get to the heart of the book, to
get the heart of the Kodak, we have to travel
much further back in time. And so what we're gonna
do is we're gonna take a quick break and then
we will begin that journey. Alright, we're back. So when
we talk about an invention, we like to talk about
(12:20):
what what came before, What were the prerequisites of this invention,
and what were the forces driving it. Now, when we're
talking about a book, this is obviously an invention with
many forms. What what counts as a book? Maybe we
can talk about that a little bit more as we
go on. Most of us, when we say book, we're
imagining what inform would be called like a codex, right,
it's bound. It has pages that face in from either
(12:42):
side and then are joined at a spine, and you
can flip through the pages and read them. But you know,
there are other ways of thinking about books, and all
of these are, no matter what their form, going to
trace back to the original invention of written language. Yes,
and and this in and of itself stands as one
of the greatest inventions, uh that that humans have wrought
(13:05):
writing systems themselves seem to emerge out of the fourth
millennium BC in Mesopotamia. So just to throughout some dates here, Um,
you know, in Egypt we're talking about b C. In
the Indus Valley we're talking about b C. In Crete
seventeen fifty BC, in China twelve hundred b C. And
(13:27):
in Central America five hundred BC. And so are those
different dates you're giving are those believed to be um
parts along a spreading evolution of language or independent inventions
of written language? Well, it's interested reading about this, and
apparently some scholars believe writing may have spread from culture
to culture, but the majority seemed to see it as
(13:49):
a situation of independent invention in the various major civilizations
of the ancient world and beyond the ancient world, as
it becomes increasingly important to record trade at a laws,
histories and more. Coming back again to you know, why
do we turn to the written word, Why do we
turn to keeping records of things? So that that's where
(14:10):
it begins. It's not the composition of poetry. Uh, it's
not that taking our oral histories and putting them down
in a solid form. It's it's initially about the data
about the laws, you know. In a way, it's it's
like it begins with computing, right, yeah, I think, well,
what we were talking about earlier, like fixing points of
information for future reference, so that you can either know,
(14:32):
you know, know something that is beyond your ability to
remember in a stable way just within your own brain,
or so that you can you and multiple other people
can all be able to point to the same thing
and and and be agreed because it's written in the text.
Of course, the thing with writing is you have to
you have to put it on something, right. Uh. Right.
You know if I take a note about what I
(14:53):
need to get at the grocery store and I put
it on, say, you know, a post it note. Great,
I have a note, But that's that's that's not a book.
I can't really make an argument that's a book, not
unless I do some serious folding. Right, and post it
notes did not exist in the ancient world. Most of
the oldest known written documents of any significant length, uh
that that still exists today are printed on solid, hard,
(15:16):
often heavy surfaces by carving a relief. Uh. And so
a great example would be one thing I already mentioned.
The Code of Hammurabi, dated to around seventeen fifty BC.
This is a law code from ancient Mesopotamia. Uh. There
was one law I was just looking at in it
that I thought was very interesting and related to a
recent episode. I believe this is law number one seven
(15:36):
of Hammurabi's code. If anyone point the finger at a
sister of a god or the wife of anyone and
cannot prove it, this man shall be taken before the
judges and his brow shall be marked. And the way
scholars interpret that idea of pointing the finger is as
slander I believe interesting. But but here we get in
(15:58):
one of our earliest own law codes, like the the
idea that pointing the finger is a very dangerous act
and it deserves judicial remedy. Um. But so the code
of hammer Rabbi is carved on what's known as a steel.
This is like a large block that cannot be easily transported,
for one from one place to another. It's not like
(16:19):
a book you can put in your pocket or sack
or carry away. You can't store it in a compact way.
It's this huge stone. And so a steel was often
an official decree or some kind of public document. They
would be meant for display display to onlookers, often bound
to a particular place, and the contents that are displayed
(16:41):
on a steel often bear out this usage. So contents
you might find would be laws, tomb or grave markers.
One example I really like is is a boundary steel.
We've talked about this in previous episodes. I believe where
you might have um in the ancient areas, there would
be like a marker at the edge of somebody's property,
(17:01):
and it might just contain a list of statements on it,
like this property here belongs to so and so you
can't come on the property. If you come on the property,
the gods will pluck out your eyes if you come
on the property, you know. And then it just like
list after you know, list item after list item of
all these like curses that will befall you if you
(17:23):
violate this, uh, this this property restriction. Yeah, it's it's
a wonderful idea. We need to bring it back. But
that I put one of those in my yard. Uh.
The if you come on this property without a mask, um,
the gods shall smite you. Um. The that episode was
I think we just titled it the Curse, and it
(17:43):
was an October publication, and there's a lot of interesting
stuff and that I remember going into some uses of
the curse in um in Chinese carpentry. Uh, there's just
some fun examples. Yeah, yeah, totally. But so these types
of you know, writing substrates or things that are gonna
be big fixed usually meant to stay in one place
(18:04):
and say something that has to do with that particular place.
Another example would be, uh, some of these ancient steel Uh,
I don't know what the plural is, actually I should
know the steely stelly stella whatever it is. Um, they
will like list to the exploits of a mighty king
and say, like all the people that he conquered and
all the heads that he smashed. Yeah, it's such an
(18:25):
amazing concept when you really think about it, because it's
not just writing down information Like these large scale examples
of this are you're taking you're taking this knowledge, you're
taking this history or this interpretation of history, or propaganda,
however you want to phrase it. And you're you're you're
you're printing it on the world. You're making it part
of the environment. Yeah, totally. Uh. And so I think
(18:47):
we should make a distinction here. While I think these
early you know, written documents that are carved on large
stones and and you know whatever you want to call
the steel tradition, I don't think that's a book. Probably.
I think for something to qualify as a book, it
really needs to include an element of compactness and portability.
(19:08):
I think it needs to be something that could reasonably
be carried from one place to another and could reasonably
be stored in multiples within a building or a home.
And that's a fancy way of saying, um, could you
kill a bug with it? Like if you could not
kill a bug with it. I'm not sure it's a
book in any in any way, shape or form. I
like your definition better, so let's side down a little
(19:30):
deeper in determining what is and what is in a book.
I of course turned to a book that I love
to dive into anytime. We start looking at an ancient invention.
That is the seventy Grade Inventions of the Ancient World,
edited by Brian Fagan Um and the contributor in this
book for the chapters dealing with writing and encryption in
(19:52):
the History of Books, uh is an individual. They're already
mentioned by the name of Andrew Robinson, who wrote the
story of writing Lost Languages and the man who deciphered
linear b So I want to read an excerpt from
Robinson's work in the seventy Grade Inventions of the Ancient
World quote. There is nothing in the concept of the
book that requires it to consist of pages with text
(20:13):
printed or written on paper still less sewn or glued
together between cardboard covers like present day examples. A cash
of Babylon clay tablets, an Egyptian papyrus, roll of vellum
codex from medieval Europe, A folding maya codex with jaguar
skin covers from Central America, a micro film, and an
electronic book all qualify as books as much as printed
(20:37):
paper volume. And uh this, when I was reading this
instantly brought to mind the concept of a physical book,
as presented in Frank Herbert's Dune, which of course takes
place in the far future of humanity. I don't know
if you remember this, Joe, there's this concept of a
first of all film books, which are described as sugar
wire imprints used in training and carrying anemonic pulse. Well
(21:01):
that clears it up. Yeah, yeah, ignore that part. But
because there's also mention of an old fashioned book, but
with a futuristic twist. It's an old orange Catholic bible
that a character gives to another, and it's made for
space travelers. Were told it's printed on filament paper that
you can't actually touch. It has its own magnifier, and
(21:22):
it has an electrostatic charge system, so the charge holds
the book closed, forcing against spring locked covers. Were told
you press the edge of the book and the selected
pages open, the magnifier slides into place, and you can
move it ahead page by page. In this fashion fashion
without ever touching these like super delicate pages. I remember
(21:45):
reading that for the first time as a kid and
just being like blown away by this this idea of
this this tiny little space bible that has its own
magnifier and it's um, you know, it's using this electric
electrostatic charge system to turn the tiny little pages. So
it's kind of like a combination of a book and
a micro fiche. But it's like it's got its own
reading apparatus exactly. Yeah, But I want to come back
(22:07):
to what Robinson was talking about. He's he's sort of
rolling out what he sees as the criteria for calling
something a book. Quote. They are all made for public circulation,
enjoy a considerable degree of permanence, and are relatively portable compared,
say to a monumental inscription through their different media. They
are all capable of knowledge transmission, transcending space and time.
(22:30):
Of course, printing with movable type, which was invented much
later than the book, vastly increases its potential readership, but
it does not define the concept. Well, there's something he
kind of hints at in the last sentence there which
which I find interesting, which is the idea of a
possible link between the mass production of books and and
people's ability to read books. Because another thing, you know,
(22:53):
we we talked about how for most of human history,
books were not mass produced. They had to be copied
by hand. They were precious and rare things that were
difficult to make um and so you know, obviously the
only people who could afford to have them would be
like institutions or very rich people or monasteries that kind
of thing. But also, you know, for most of human history,
(23:13):
most people have been illiterate. It's only really in the
past couple of centuries that that widespread public literacy has
been a goal. Absolutely, Yeah, so you have to ask yourself.
I mean, obviously a book that cannot be read is
still for the most part of book, but by some
definitions maybe not. Like for instance, we discussed the Voliche
manuscript in the past on the show, you know, and
(23:34):
it's unreadable nature that continues to uh intrigue and confuse us.
You know, if if the book cannot convey information, if
the boot, if the book is mute. Uh, you know,
what does that say? It's if I feel similar ways
about say like if Wu Tang puts out an album
that know, but the only one person can listen to
or John Malkovich makes a film that nobody can watch
(23:57):
for a hundred years, like it's really an album? Is
that really a movie? Because um, you know this is
like a communication has to take place for this to
really be media in certain certain respects. Yeah, I agree,
it's an interesting way of thinking about it. Uh So
Robinson goes on to just briefly outline some of the
(24:19):
core examples of of early things that we could we
could say we're books. Uh So, the two earliest contenders
that he highlights, first of all, Mesopotamian clay tablets. These
would be handwritten Cuneiform script inscribed in clay with a
red and then baked. And then the other one, Uh,
that's this one of the two contenders here is Egyptian
(24:39):
papyrus rolls written in ink with a brush. The papyrus itself.
Uh this was this was made from sheets that were
made from the papyrus plant, so stripped, sliced, overlapped in
layers of pith, pressed and then allowed to dry. And
I'll come back to this one in more detail and
a bit. However, three other innovations that are worth highlighting
(24:59):
shiny is bamboo and wooden slips bound together with chords. Uh.
This basically constitutes the idea of a book. And of
course the Chinese would have would go on to invent
paper itself in one oh five C. And from there
it would spread through East Asia, though it would be
nearly a thousand years before Europe followed suit. You also
(25:19):
have Mediterranean writing tablets. These would be consist of one
to ten pieces of wood bound together by a clasp
or hinge, or alternatively by a chord strung through holes
around along the edges. And then you also have Greek
and Roman wax writing tablets. Uh. And of course they
also use papyrus and parchment rolls as well. And of
course all of these examples of what we might call books, Uh,
(25:42):
we're leading up to what we refer to as the codex,
in which a number of sheets of parchment are bound
together with writing on both sides of each sheet. Yeah,
and it's really the codex. I think that's the first
thing that we recognize as is morphologically the same as
the modern books that we have, despite changes in materials
and stuff. The codex is what you're thinking of when
(26:05):
you think of a book it folds, it has pages
you leave through the pages to read exactly. So I
was reading an excellent brief overview of the history of
things leading up to the Codex in a book called
the book The Life Story of a Technology by Nicole Howard.
I think this was released at some point through Johns
Hopkins University Press UM. But but Howard's overview is interesting.
(26:27):
So she mentioned some of the same things you're talking about,
of course, that you know in in the early archaeological
record of written documents, hard surfaces rule the day. And
of course these would include like the steel that we
mentioned before, uh, and the you know, the Mesopotamian clay tablets,
the what the Assyrians the Babylonians used to preserve written information,
and you know, making in dense on clay tablets, but
(26:50):
also things like wood and bone. She also mentioned several
other substrates that I thought were interesting as as surfaces
for writing on, including ivory towards us shell, linen, palm leaves,
and what's called bast fiber, which is a tough fiber
from the vascular tissue of some plant species, which is
often used to make things like rope or matting. And
(27:13):
and she identifies the most direct ancestor to the modern
hardware of a book, a bound book with pages, as
what emerges in northern Africa around twenty b c. E.
I've I've read some other estimates putting it earlier, around
three thousand or we don't know exactly, but of course,
whenever it did emerge, this was papyrus. And it's time
(27:35):
to sound the alarm. We got it. We got a
Plenty of the Elder Alert. Are you ready for some plenty? Yeah? Yeah,
let's let's touch in with Plenty of the Elder for
little history here, But first we should probably take one
more break. Oh okay, we're gonna we're gonna jump out,
but then we'll be right back in with plenty. All right,
we're back. So we're jumping in with Plenty of the
(27:57):
Elder and his description of the ancient papyrus industry. So
Plenty of the Elder, of course, was a first century
Roman military officer and author, encyclopedist, president of the Lead
Acetate Fan Club, of course, he he wrote at length
about what he believed on the history and production of papyrus,
and this would be I'm gonna read a section here
(28:18):
from the Bostock and Riley translation of Plenty's Natural History,
which is his his big encyclopedia. It's got, it's got
all the info you'll ever need. Uh So, Plenty rights,
we have not as yet taken any notice of the
marsh plants, nor yet of the shrubs that grow upon
the banks of rivers. Before quitting Egypt, however, we must
make some mention of the nature of the papyrus, seeing
(28:41):
that all the usages of civilized life depend in such
a remarkable degree upon the employment of paper at all events,
the remembrance of past events. Um so and so he's
he's talking about the translation there uses the word paper.
Of course, this is not exactly what we'll talk about
when we get into the Knese papermaking tradition. That this
(29:02):
is papyrus, a slightly different thing, though it's a sort
of paper. Like he calls papyrus that commodity by which
immortality is ensured to man. So Plenty of ranking papyrus
up there as like one of the most important inventions
in Roman civilization, He's like, hey, without papyrus, basically, like
we we couldn't have a civilization, We couldn't have remembrance
(29:25):
of things past. So he goes on to introduce the
plant by saying, quote, Papyrus grows either in the marshes
of Egypt or in the sluggish waters of the River
Nile when they have overflowed and are lying stagnant, in
pools that do not exceed a couple of cubits in depth.
The route lies obliquely and is about the thickness of
one's arm. The section of the stalk is triangular, and
(29:49):
it tapers gracefully upwards towards the extremity, being not more
than ten cubits at most in height. And then Plenty
goes on to explain the way that papyrus was made.
This is coming sort of from Howard summary. Basically, you
would you would cut the plant into segments, and you
would remove this outer green rind to access the pith inside,
(30:10):
which is this pulpy substance that's made primarily of cellulose. Cellulose,
of course, is fiber. And then the pith would be
laid out in these long, thin strips on a damp
table or board and hammered flat side by side to
form these single layer sheets. And then a second layer
of strips was laid flat perpendicular to the first sheet,
(30:31):
and then also pounded or pressed flat, and plenty claims
that these perpendicular sheets were quote moistened with nile water,
a liquid which, when in a muddy state, has the
peculiar qualities of glue. Now, Howard mentions that modern scholars
do not think nile water was actually used as a
glue here. Instead they think that, uh, the glue would
(30:54):
just be a natural property of these plant fibers. There
would be a sap in the reed, and that sap
would bind the sheets together once they had been pounded
or pressed in a perpendicular fashion. Yes, Robinson writes this
as well, that it's the naturally occurring sap. Yeah. But
either way, you would then dry the sheets, and so
an individual sheet of papyrus might be small. It just
(31:16):
might be, you know, around twelve inches in height. But
what you can do is glue sheets together at the edges,
and then once you've attached a bunch of papyrus sheets together,
they can be rolled up into scrolls. And scrolls, of course,
are an important book technology that precedes the codex, and
we can explore that more as we go forward. Um,
But Howard points out an interesting side effect of the
(31:40):
production process. She says that by hammering the strips together
in this perpendicular fashion, this was actually important because it
would allow you to to get a much more durable material. Right,
the paper will be flexible, it'll be fairly tough, you know,
because you've got this crossing here. But also as a
side effect, you'd get one side of the papyrus sheet
(32:02):
with natural fibers running top to bottom, while the other
side would have fibers running horizontally. And this has practical
implications for writing. The side with the fibers running horizontally
was fairly easy to write on, you know, think about
like line to note paper, right, but the side with
the fibers running vertically was often considered unfit for writing.
It was difficult to write on, and a lot of
(32:23):
archaeologists have found that in the ancient world, a lot
of people just didn't write on this side of the page,
which is very interesting because you know, when you consider
writing material as a relatively precious commodity compared to how
you know, cheap and easily accessible paper is today. Yeah,
and it's almost like they were natural. Um. I find
with children it's similar, like you have to remind them, Hey, uh,
(32:46):
the printer paper didn't grow on trees, so please use
the back of the printer paper when you were you know,
sketching monsters and and whatnot. But because their natural instinct
seems to be just to to do the front and
just leave it at that, I don't know, but no,
my marker bleeds through. I need to have you know,
clean monsters on either side. Yeah. Um, we may come
(33:07):
back to this in a bit. But I'm reminded earlier
I mentioned how like her e books are essentially the codex, uh,
you know, in in a in E form. But of
course I should probably add this because I know a
lot of people may have been thinking this as well.
You know, it depends on how you have your set
your viewing settings in place. For instance, the notes that
we are using here, I've uh, mine are currently in
(33:29):
a PDF form, so I'm reading it in Adobe Acrobat
Pro and uh currently it is scrolling. Now there is
a separation between pages, so it's like I have scrolling pages. However,
if I go to my view settings, I can change that.
I can remove the space between the pages and turn
(33:50):
it into essentially a digital scroll. Um. Instead I'm doing
something that is I think ultimately more like a codex. Uh,
And you can even you know, of course, do think
as we have like opposing pages and all as well.
So I don't know, maybe we are living in a
in an age where um, there's maybe a preference for
the codex, but we certainly have scroll like options available
(34:13):
to us as well. Yeah, I see what you're talking about.
I mean, this isn't the first time I've heard this. Actually,
I remember many years ago watching some interview where, um,
the literary scholar Harold Bloom was in a in a
you know, characteristically grumpy fashion, lamenting the rise of the
idea of e books. He he just seemed to hate
(34:35):
this idea and he cared. He with the way he
described it was like two thousand years after we made
the transition to the codex, finally we are transitioning back
to the scroll. And he thought this was just awful.
Not saying I necessarily agree with that sentiment, though, there
is something about like scrolling down to read an article,
(34:55):
say on a website, that I don't really like as
a reading format, Like it is more pleasant to have
the same article in a format where you can just
turn the pages. I like the sequential nature of page turning. Um,
there's something. I mean, maybe it's just two elementary you
know that it feels like I'm I'm, I'm, I'm taking
care of a task one after the other, one page
(35:16):
at a time, in a way where an endless scroll
might seem intimidating. I don't know, uh, Or maybe it's
just this is what I'm used to and this is
what I like to do, because like I'm when I'm
using my kindle, there's certainly more of a feeling of
side to side, page to page, and you know, you'd
even have some sort of a page count up there
as well. Yeah, I agree. Okay, so interesting side facts
(35:39):
Plenty notes here he plenty starts describing a bunch of
different kinds of paper. He's like, not, now, I will
tell you about the nine different kinds of papyrus, thanks Plenty,
But he mentions one kind he's telling about the Egyptians
describing this um high quality white papyrus as what's called
hieratic or this is sometimes translate it as holy paper,
(36:01):
since it was reserved entirely for the use of religious books,
and the footnote in the Bostock and Riley translation of
the Natural History says quote. The priests would not allow
it to be sold lest it might be used for
profane writing, but after it was once written upon, it
was easily procurable. The Romans were in the habit of
purchasing it, largely in the latter state, and then washing
(36:24):
off the writing and using it as paper of the
finest quality. Hence it received the name of Augustus as
representing in Latin its Greek name hierradicus, or sacred. In
the length of time, it became a common impression, as
here mentioned that this name was given in honor of
Augustus Caesar. But I think that first part is interesting,
(36:46):
so like if the if their characterization is correct here
that like certain kinds of papyrus were guarded in a
material sense and regarded as holy because they would be
used at some point to write holy scripture on, not
because anything had been written on them yet. But then
once something had already been written on them, then it
(37:07):
was no longer sacred, and then you could easily just
get it and I guess wash off the holy scripture
and write whatever you wanted on it. Oh wow, that's interesting.
That reminds me of the I think it was a
two part episode. Maybe it's just a one part that
it did with did with Christian back in the day
on the idea of Grimore's of you know, books that
end up taking on sacred qualities, uh, you know, generally
(37:28):
because of the sacred contents that they have. Um. There
was I remember there being one Um we were talking
about a cash of Qurans that had been discovered and uh.
And and part of the issue was is like these books,
these holy books had been used and reused to the
point where they were kind of falling apart. They weren't
really usable anymore, they weren't presentable, but they were also
(37:50):
sacred so they couldn't be destroyed. So they were kind
of walled away in in a building. And then they
were discovered much later. And I if I remember correctly,
you know, they gave us some of the oldest examples
of the Quran um that we have been able to,
you know, to to acquire. Uh. So Yeah, when you
start getting into the idea of of sacred information put
(38:12):
onto a material, a material that may itself be considered sacred. Uh, Yeah,
everything gets gets very complicated. Yeah, that is interesting, Like
the the conceptual contagion, that the the sacredness of the
content of what's written on the paper or the papyrus
or the ink or whatever eventually extends by contagion to
(38:34):
the physical form itself. It's not just that what is
written in here is holy, but like the actual physical
book is holy. This is such a weird concept, Like
it seems like the kind of thing that might be
utilized by like an artist. Like what if you had
what if you had a Bible, okay, like a you know,
a Catholic Bible, and you found out that it was
(38:55):
made from from paper that had been recycled from pornography. Um,
like what how would how would we deally? I don't
think we would particularly like it would be a weird
thing to focus on today. It would also be weird
that you were, you know, making it exclusively from pornography recyclings.
But um, but would that even would that begin to
(39:15):
sort of creep into our idea of of contagion, that
like the that this is this this book is is profane.
It's some sort of a blasphemy because you made it
on such recycled material. I feel like a lot of
modern religious people would probably would probably house the distinction
in the intent of the person who made it, So
(39:35):
it would be like, did you know you were making
making it out of this recycled paper or not? Like it?
I think most people today like if they found that
out but they knew it was just recycled paper and
the person had no intention of making that particular transition,
they wouldn't care, but they might get annoyed at the
idea that someone did this on purpose, right, like if
(39:55):
it were in a museum in New York City or something. Um.
But then again, imagine this. I can easily see somebody,
say like a televangelists marketing their own Bible that they
can guarantee is not made using recycled pornography. People be like, yes,
how have I been using an impure Bible this whole time?
There might be some pornography in there, right, Well, I mean,
(40:16):
if you've got somebody who's good at selling it, they'll
be good at selling it. Yeah, Okay, So I guess
to get back to papyrus. So how was papyrus written on? Well,
Howard mentions that the ancient Egyptians would write on pyrus
using reads or quills, often dipped in an ink made
out of charcoal deluded in water. Uh. And again a reminder.
At this time we've mentioned this, but if you wanted
(40:38):
a copy of a book at this time, it had
to be written out by hand. You could not get
it from a printing press. And Howard mentions that scribes
in ancient Egypt would copy scrolls either by sight, so
you just have one copy of a book on you know,
one part of your desk and another blank scroll on
the other part, and you just copy it out by hand,
or you'd have a book read aloud and you'd have
(41:00):
to copy it down from dictation, which sounds even harder.
But this was a slow and laborious process, not just
for the obvious reasons you might imagine. It would also
be slow and laborious to copy a book in this way,
because there are also mechanical limitations, like you had to
wait for the ink to dry as you're going, and
there's no backspace key if you make a mistake, and
(41:21):
so forth. But papyrus made out of the read the
Cyprus papyrus planted it was a major industry, supplying writing
material to the broader Mediterranean world. But but Howard identifies
an interesting shift, and it begins especially around the first century.
There's there's some elements of this shift in earlier centuries,
(41:42):
but it really gets going around the first century that
there's this long running, major shift from papyrus to parchment
for writing material. Now why this shift, Well, one explanation
given by historians is a basic shortage of supply. Again, papyrus,
writing material had to be made of this specific plant
there reads cyperus papyrus, and if there was a sudden
(42:03):
scarcity of the read that would mean a scarcity of
the writing material for export. But Howard also mentions that
there were sort of pressures put on Egypt by military
incursions in the previous centuries, and so whatever the cause
of the dwindling supply of exported papyrus around the first century,
bookmaking people's elsewhere in the Mediterranean, we're really we're really
(42:25):
starting to seek out an alternative, which they found in
parchment and vellum. Now, what are these substances. Basically, think
like paper made out of treated animal skins. Parchment is
made from untanned sheep leather, and vellum is made from
calf skin. So to treat these animal skins for us
as writing surfaces, first, of course, you had to clean them.
(42:47):
You had to get all the biological gunk off, you know,
all the hair and stuff, and then they would they
would clean the smooth surface with applications of pumice and lime,
and Howard points out that this was a difficult process
since the animal skin had to be stretched and dried
at the same time. So the goal was to stretch
it out in such a way that it wouldn't contract
(43:09):
back to its original shape once it was finished drying.
And there are actually several ways that parchment and vellum
proved superior to papyrus as writing material. One way is
that they can be made pretty much anywhere. Papyrus was
dependent on Egypt. It was dependent on this Egyptian industry,
especially since it was made from a reed native to
the Nile Delta area. Though I think there were papyrus
(43:31):
or papyrus like products also made from some of the
Mesopotamian empires based on reed plants from the Tigris and Euphrates.
I don't know if it was the same species of plant,
but it seems primarily papyrus was coming from Egypt. But nevertheless,
the ancient Romans were generally dependent on Egyptian papyrus for
their needs. Meanwhile, sheep and calves they could be pretty
(43:54):
much anywhere. They were raised pretty much anywhere, so you
could always make parchment or vellum locally. And Howard doesn't
mention this, but I've read in other sources that the
process of making papyrus writing material was also a closely
guarded industrial secret, and I kind of wonder if this
might also have proved important in its decline. Yeah, you
(44:15):
ultimately you just need an alternative to that that trades
secret um papyrus. So yeah, you turn to like, what
can I do? What are some other organic sources I
can source to turn into something that I can write
on right now. On top of this, there was some
other benefits as well. Parchment and vellum were just more
durable than papyrus. They held up better over time and
(44:37):
and held up against wear and tear better. But finally,
there were aesthetic and practical reasons parchment worked better than papyrus. One,
it was easier to write on without the facially perpendicular
fibers of the plant matter. Once you had written on it, Also,
the text stood out more clearly from from the background
than it did on papyrus, and to some extent, parchment
(44:58):
actually allowed a scribes to erase mistakes or other unwanted
writing more easily than than papyrus, did I mean by
virtue of it being just more durable for starters, because
we have to remember that. I think we went into
this we talked about our on our Invention episode about
the pencil and the eraser. Like erasing, uh is often
(45:19):
a a matter of taking away from this the material
upon which you have written. And so if you're already
dealing with fragile papyrus, there's there's just less you can
do without destroying the paper totally. Uh So, So by
about the fourth century CE, parchment had replaced papyrus for
most written documents in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.
(45:42):
And so that's gonna play a very important part in
shaping the physical evolution of the book, especially once we
start talking about the form wars of scroll versus codex.
But there's something else we need to get into. I
guess at the beginning of the next episode, I think
we're running out of time for today. But parallel to
the papyrus and parchment industries being established in those regions
in the West eastward in China, written documents had found
(46:04):
a home on a totally different writing material and this
would be paper. So maybe in the next episode we
should start off by looking at the paper industry. Absolutely so, uh,
definitely join us next time as we continue this look
at the history of the codex, the history of paper,
the history of writing itself also kind of bound up
into a well, not a single volume, multiple volume, so
(46:27):
you can think of each each episode of the show
is a volume, right, um, so join us next time.
In the meantime, if you would like to check out
other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Uh, you
know exactly where to find us. You can find us
wherever you get your podcasts. And what can you do
to support us? Well, you can rate, you can review,
you can subscribe. Huge thanks as always to our excellent
(46:49):
audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to
get in touch with us with feedback on this episode
or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
just to say hello, you can email us at contact
at stuffed blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow
(47:09):
Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more
podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And
today on Stuff to Blow Your Mind, we're gonna be
starting on an expedition into the history of books where
(00:23):
I guess this will be in the spirit of our
our previous show Invention. We're gonna look at an invention,
and I think the book is probably one of the
most underappreciated technologies. Obviously, it's not that people don't appreciate
books as things, but when we think about books, I
think there's a problem that we only appreciate the contents
of the books. We only think about them as literature,
(00:46):
and we don't think about what a marvelous technology the
modern book is. That's right. Yeah, we basically need to
take a step back here before we really get into
the idea of the invention of the book. Uh, books are,
in the words of Carl Sagan, a means of storing
additional information that exceeds the information carrying capacity of the brain.
(01:09):
And I realized that's that's kind of, uh, you know,
a simplified version of what they are. But it's also
kind of a useful overstatement of the obvious um. The
book is a tool. It is an extension of the
human body in the same way that a normal tool is,
but in this case it is a more precisely an
extension of the human mind, kind of an external hard
(01:31):
drive for the brain. Exactly. Yeah, I think this this
is an example where our our tendency to use computer
metaphors to understand our own minds. As you know, it's
actually pretty helpful. But of course, books are more than that.
Two books are a way for one author, or a
group of authors, or even a legacy of authors to
think their thoughts directly into another person's brain. It's a
(01:52):
it's a way of not only storing information, but disseminating information,
and as such it's played the books have played a
vital role in the spread of information, where, for instance,
would Western civilization be if not for the influx influx
of Arab books into the medieval world. And that's just
one example. Oh yeah, But as I think, it's a
fantastic example because it books provide a way for lost
(02:16):
knowledge to be reclaimed even when knowledge sort of like
fades into obscurity within sort of the the the oral
culture of a society. If there is a book that
contains that knowledge, that voice and and the book can
be found, suddenly all of that past knowledge can return.
And I think your example is a very good one.
Now thinking more about the metaphor of like the external
(02:39):
hard drive or the way of storing information outside the
carrying capacity of the brain. In some ways, I think
that's a really good metaphor, but there are also very
important ways that that doesn't quite capture everything that books
can do. For example, a book is a very different
kind of memory than a memory in the brain is.
And I would say one of the main issues is
(03:00):
it books are fixed physical documents, whereas memories in the
brain are not fixed. Memories are always changing. Every time
you recall a memory, you probably change it in some way.
And while you know it is possible, of course to
remember things in an accurate way, it is probably not
possible to say, remember the amount of exact nu miracle
(03:21):
figures that would be recorded in a book list of
assets or prices. As many you know of the oldest
books that there are, you know many of the oldest
books we have are basically trade documents of some kind
or to remember the exact wording of of an epic
poem describing a mythological foundation. Absolutely. You know. Another take
(03:41):
on this that I was reading about. I was reading
something from Andrew Robinson, author of the Story of Writing,
and he he points out that you know just how
powerful books are and how how feared books often are,
particularly by usurpers of power and conquerors who often burn
books of oppressive regimes, banned books. Uh, you know that
(04:01):
they are powerful reservoirs of human thought and um. And
to your point earlier, I mean, they endure in ways
that oral histories often cannot. Uh. Knowledge can be lost,
but then it can be regained through books, words and
the books that contain them. Um. They they freeze our
thoughts as well, in a way that in oral history
(04:22):
does not. The myth that it exists within the minds
and on the tongues of the people will continue to change.
But that which has been recorded, uh, you know, retains
all of the you know, the the curious edges that
it had when it was first written down. And you know,
I don't recall the source on this, but I remember
us bringing up this idea of of words and in
(04:45):
a literature freezing thoughts in the past. You know that
it's taking what is happening in our mind and just
fixing it. Yeah, I think the example of the way
myths change over time is a great one here. Like
it calls to mind the recent episodes we did about
the evolution and of the Medusa myth. You know, there's
clearly some kind of oral history mythology feeding into the
(05:06):
story that became Medusa and Athena, Medusa and Perseus. But
once you have a particular author writing their version of
that myth, suddenly that version is a fixed thing that
can be referred to, and it's no longer just just
you know, an uncountable part of this protean stew of mythology.
(05:26):
Now there is like Ovid's version of the Medusa myth,
and that that that's a thing you can refer to. Now.
Of course, it's not the case that books never changed.
I think, especially in the ancient world. One thing that
that's hard for us in the modern world to to
keep in mind is that books in the ancient world
had to be copied by hand when they were you know,
spread about, so changes could easily creep in, either by
(05:48):
mistakes from you know, scribes doing a sloppy job of
copying or just inserting their own little impremature on whatever
it is they're working on. That that did happen too
sometimes even in uh, you know, even in important books
like the works of Plato or in the Bible. Um.
But there's another interesting thing that I think, you know,
you you were talking about the political power of books,
(06:09):
the way that like you know, conquerors and and and
political leaders often like burn or banned books that scare them.
There is a power in written documents um to create
a kind of stability in a political sense, right, Because
I was thinking about how a lot of the earliest
written documents that exist in human history are lists of
(06:33):
nu miracle figures, like like a record of prices or
assets in in trade or possession, or lists of laws
like Hamarabi's Code. I actually got to see the Hamarabi's
Code steal in the Louver recently, and and and it
made me think they're about the significance of having a
written law code. Now, we might read the laws in
(06:55):
Hammurabi's Code and and see a lot of brutality and
unfairness in there. And I think there is absolutely that
kind of thing to find. But you can also appreciate
it in a certain way because having a list of
written laws, as opposed to sort of rule by the
ad hoc pronouncements of a leader does, at least in theory,
(07:16):
reduce the amount of caprice in how justice is administered.
Right Like a written law code, at least in theory,
if it's enforced well, allows you to know what the
rules and punishments are in advance, rather than just kind
of like living in fear of whatever the leader's mood
is going to be today. Yeah, you remove sort of
the whims of the tyrant. And also I mentioned in
(07:39):
another level, you kind of remove like, um, let's say
you weren't even dealing with the tyrant. Let's say you're
dealing with just sort of like the traditions and stories
of the people. Right, Um, you'd have to like interpret
those to get your laws. But here, no, here are
the laws in a list. You can in many cases
you may able to, you know, to look at it
all at once. All in things, you couldn't actually have
(08:01):
them all in your head at the same time, but
they are all on this stone at the same time
exactly right, Like it gives you a common foundation that
multiple people can refer to. Now, I want to get
back to the just the idea of of of books
here before we inevitably dive back through history again. You know,
I was thinking about how every now and you know,
hear somebody joke say something like remember books, uh when
(08:26):
when contemplating electronic resources such as e books and kindles
and what have you, um, which, you know, I get
that to a certain extent because I know I've I've
in my family have tried to cut down on con
clutter books in the home, you know, like how many
how many physical books do I actually need? I love
books have left my own devices. I'm sure that I
(08:47):
would have a lot of book clutter. But at the
end of the day, you know, is this something I'm
going to actually look forward? Am I going to actually
pull it out and uh and uh and and reference
it at some point? And or do I have an
electronic the already somewhere else. I've noticed in myself I
at least tend to accumulate kind of books of marginal interest,
(09:08):
Like I'll end up with books in my house that
are things that uh that I you know, there's probably
a low likelihood that I'll ever get around to reading them.
They're not high on my priorities list, and they're just
here somehow, either I got them at work or you
know that kind of or they just like looked interesting.
And he used a bookstore one time. It's like, hey,
it's sixty cents, I'll get it. Um. That reminds me
(09:31):
of if I'm remembering this correctly, Um, Burdo Ecco had
an anecdote about you know, Burdo Ecco, of course, had
quite a personal library. Um. I think he had to
like reinforce the floor to to allow him to keep it.
But at some point, some like a workman or somebody
had come over and they saw all the books and
they're like, oh, have you read all of these? And
he said, no, no, these are just the ones I
(09:53):
planned to read, which which I see that reflected in
some of my own books. You know, collec used to
are amassing books and you're like, uh, you know, I
haven't read these yet. Uh. I would like to read these,
and that's why they're taking a valuable space in my home.
But I still have a lot of books in the
house and and even beyond that, I mean, they're just books.
(10:13):
Everywhere still like there there's a library down the street
from where I live. There all these lending libraries, you know,
so you just just traveling from here to the library.
There are just books, little boxes, wooden boxes filled with
like various old cookbooks and to horror and sci fi books,
that sort of thing. And on top of this, our
(10:33):
various e books are PDFs. These are still digital extensions
of the the the idea, the concept of the book.
You know, they still obey the laws of the Codex
and and as such, I think the book will continue
to be with us for quite some time. But one
of the big questions we're gonna be asking in in
this episode or episodes of stuff to blow your mind
(10:55):
is how far back in time would you have to travel, uh,
you know, to reach a world in which a book
would not be identifiable as what it is. Well, that's
interesting because so the most common form of book that
we're familiar with today is the is the printed book,
you know, the product of a printing press. But as
(11:16):
I was saying earlier, that's actually a fairly recent phenomenon.
You know, for much of human history, if you had
a book that sucker had to be made by hand absolutely. Now. Now,
certainly the printed book as as we you know know,
like generally the first thing coming to your mind when
I say book. Uh, that only goes back as far
as the fifteenth century c. But while the printing press
(11:38):
certainly changed the trajectory of the book forever in ways
that will come back to, these were certainly not the
first books. Yeah, they were. Before this we had we
had handwritten books. We had the products of the of
you know, medieval European scriptoriums. And so you might think, well,
that's the beginning, right, we go back to the scriptorium,
and that would be the beginning of the book somewhere
(11:58):
in there. But this would also be correct. So to
to really get to the heart of the book, to
get the heart of the Kodak, we have to travel
much further back in time. And so what we're gonna
do is we're gonna take a quick break and then
we will begin that journey. Alright, we're back. So when
we talk about an invention, we like to talk about
(12:20):
what what came before, What were the prerequisites of this invention,
and what were the forces driving it. Now, when we're
talking about a book, this is obviously an invention with
many forms. What what counts as a book? Maybe we
can talk about that a little bit more as we
go on. Most of us, when we say book, we're
imagining what inform would be called like a codex, right,
it's bound. It has pages that face in from either
(12:42):
side and then are joined at a spine, and you
can flip through the pages and read them. But you know,
there are other ways of thinking about books, and all
of these are, no matter what their form, going to
trace back to the original invention of written language. Yes,
and and this in and of itself stands as one
of the greatest inventions, uh that that humans have wrought
(13:05):
writing systems themselves seem to emerge out of the fourth
millennium BC in Mesopotamia. So just to throughout some dates here, Um,
you know, in Egypt we're talking about b C. In
the Indus Valley we're talking about b C. In Crete
seventeen fifty BC, in China twelve hundred b C. And
(13:27):
in Central America five hundred BC. And so are those
different dates you're giving are those believed to be um
parts along a spreading evolution of language or independent inventions
of written language? Well, it's interested reading about this, and
apparently some scholars believe writing may have spread from culture
to culture, but the majority seemed to see it as
(13:49):
a situation of independent invention in the various major civilizations
of the ancient world and beyond the ancient world, as
it becomes increasingly important to record trade at a laws,
histories and more. Coming back again to you know, why
do we turn to the written word, Why do we
turn to keeping records of things? So that that's where
(14:10):
it begins. It's not the composition of poetry. Uh, it's
not that taking our oral histories and putting them down
in a solid form. It's it's initially about the data
about the laws, you know. In a way, it's it's
like it begins with computing, right, yeah, I think, well,
what we were talking about earlier, like fixing points of
information for future reference, so that you can either know,
(14:32):
you know, know something that is beyond your ability to
remember in a stable way just within your own brain,
or so that you can you and multiple other people
can all be able to point to the same thing
and and and be agreed because it's written in the text.
Of course, the thing with writing is you have to
you have to put it on something, right. Uh. Right.
You know if I take a note about what I
(14:53):
need to get at the grocery store and I put
it on, say, you know, a post it note. Great,
I have a note, But that's that's that's not a book.
I can't really make an argument that's a book, not
unless I do some serious folding. Right, and post it
notes did not exist in the ancient world. Most of
the oldest known written documents of any significant length, uh
that that still exists today are printed on solid, hard,
(15:16):
often heavy surfaces by carving a relief. Uh. And so
a great example would be one thing I already mentioned.
The Code of Hammurabi, dated to around seventeen fifty BC.
This is a law code from ancient Mesopotamia. Uh. There
was one law I was just looking at in it
that I thought was very interesting and related to a
recent episode. I believe this is law number one seven
(15:36):
of Hammurabi's code. If anyone point the finger at a
sister of a god or the wife of anyone and
cannot prove it, this man shall be taken before the
judges and his brow shall be marked. And the way
scholars interpret that idea of pointing the finger is as
slander I believe interesting. But but here we get in
(15:58):
one of our earliest own law codes, like the the
idea that pointing the finger is a very dangerous act
and it deserves judicial remedy. Um. But so the code
of hammer Rabbi is carved on what's known as a steel.
This is like a large block that cannot be easily transported,
for one from one place to another. It's not like
(16:19):
a book you can put in your pocket or sack
or carry away. You can't store it in a compact way.
It's this huge stone. And so a steel was often
an official decree or some kind of public document. They
would be meant for display display to onlookers, often bound
to a particular place, and the contents that are displayed
(16:41):
on a steel often bear out this usage. So contents
you might find would be laws, tomb or grave markers.
One example I really like is is a boundary steel.
We've talked about this in previous episodes. I believe where
you might have um in the ancient areas, there would
be like a marker at the edge of somebody's property,
(17:01):
and it might just contain a list of statements on it,
like this property here belongs to so and so you
can't come on the property. If you come on the property,
the gods will pluck out your eyes if you come
on the property, you know. And then it just like
list after you know, list item after list item of
all these like curses that will befall you if you
(17:23):
violate this, uh, this this property restriction. Yeah, it's it's
a wonderful idea. We need to bring it back. But
that I put one of those in my yard. Uh.
The if you come on this property without a mask, um,
the gods shall smite you. Um. The that episode was
I think we just titled it the Curse, and it
(17:43):
was an October publication, and there's a lot of interesting
stuff and that I remember going into some uses of
the curse in um in Chinese carpentry. Uh, there's just
some fun examples. Yeah, yeah, totally. But so these types
of you know, writing substrates or things that are gonna
be big fixed usually meant to stay in one place
(18:04):
and say something that has to do with that particular place.
Another example would be, uh, some of these ancient steel Uh,
I don't know what the plural is, actually I should
know the steely stelly stella whatever it is. Um, they
will like list to the exploits of a mighty king
and say, like all the people that he conquered and
all the heads that he smashed. Yeah, it's such an
(18:25):
amazing concept when you really think about it, because it's
not just writing down information Like these large scale examples
of this are you're taking you're taking this knowledge, you're
taking this history or this interpretation of history, or propaganda,
however you want to phrase it. And you're you're you're
you're printing it on the world. You're making it part
of the environment. Yeah, totally. Uh. And so I think
(18:47):
we should make a distinction here. While I think these
early you know, written documents that are carved on large
stones and and you know whatever you want to call
the steel tradition, I don't think that's a book. Probably.
I think for something to qualify as a book, it
really needs to include an element of compactness and portability.
(19:08):
I think it needs to be something that could reasonably
be carried from one place to another and could reasonably
be stored in multiples within a building or a home.
And that's a fancy way of saying, um, could you
kill a bug with it? Like if you could not
kill a bug with it. I'm not sure it's a
book in any in any way, shape or form. I
like your definition better, so let's side down a little
(19:30):
deeper in determining what is and what is in a book.
I of course turned to a book that I love
to dive into anytime. We start looking at an ancient invention.
That is the seventy Grade Inventions of the Ancient World,
edited by Brian Fagan Um and the contributor in this
book for the chapters dealing with writing and encryption in
(19:52):
the History of Books, uh is an individual. They're already
mentioned by the name of Andrew Robinson, who wrote the
story of writing Lost Languages and the man who deciphered
linear b So I want to read an excerpt from
Robinson's work in the seventy Grade Inventions of the Ancient
World quote. There is nothing in the concept of the
book that requires it to consist of pages with text
(20:13):
printed or written on paper still less sewn or glued
together between cardboard covers like present day examples. A cash
of Babylon clay tablets, an Egyptian papyrus, roll of vellum
codex from medieval Europe, A folding maya codex with jaguar
skin covers from Central America, a micro film, and an
electronic book all qualify as books as much as printed
(20:37):
paper volume. And uh this, when I was reading this
instantly brought to mind the concept of a physical book,
as presented in Frank Herbert's Dune, which of course takes
place in the far future of humanity. I don't know
if you remember this, Joe, there's this concept of a
first of all film books, which are described as sugar
wire imprints used in training and carrying anemonic pulse. Well
(21:01):
that clears it up. Yeah, yeah, ignore that part. But
because there's also mention of an old fashioned book, but
with a futuristic twist. It's an old orange Catholic bible
that a character gives to another, and it's made for
space travelers. Were told it's printed on filament paper that
you can't actually touch. It has its own magnifier, and
(21:22):
it has an electrostatic charge system, so the charge holds
the book closed, forcing against spring locked covers. Were told
you press the edge of the book and the selected
pages open, the magnifier slides into place, and you can
move it ahead page by page. In this fashion fashion
without ever touching these like super delicate pages. I remember
(21:45):
reading that for the first time as a kid and
just being like blown away by this this idea of
this this tiny little space bible that has its own
magnifier and it's um, you know, it's using this electric
electrostatic charge system to turn the tiny little pages. So
it's kind of like a combination of a book and
a micro fiche. But it's like it's got its own
reading apparatus exactly. Yeah, But I want to come back
(22:07):
to what Robinson was talking about. He's he's sort of
rolling out what he sees as the criteria for calling
something a book. Quote. They are all made for public circulation,
enjoy a considerable degree of permanence, and are relatively portable compared,
say to a monumental inscription through their different media. They
are all capable of knowledge transmission, transcending space and time.
(22:30):
Of course, printing with movable type, which was invented much
later than the book, vastly increases its potential readership, but
it does not define the concept. Well, there's something he
kind of hints at in the last sentence there which
which I find interesting, which is the idea of a
possible link between the mass production of books and and
people's ability to read books. Because another thing, you know,
(22:53):
we we talked about how for most of human history,
books were not mass produced. They had to be copied
by hand. They were precious and rare things that were
difficult to make um and so you know, obviously the
only people who could afford to have them would be
like institutions or very rich people or monasteries that kind
of thing. But also, you know, for most of human history,
(23:13):
most people have been illiterate. It's only really in the
past couple of centuries that that widespread public literacy has
been a goal. Absolutely, Yeah, so you have to ask yourself.
I mean, obviously a book that cannot be read is
still for the most part of book, but by some
definitions maybe not. Like for instance, we discussed the Voliche
manuscript in the past on the show, you know, and
(23:34):
it's unreadable nature that continues to uh intrigue and confuse us.
You know, if if the book cannot convey information, if
the boot, if the book is mute. Uh, you know,
what does that say? It's if I feel similar ways
about say like if Wu Tang puts out an album
that know, but the only one person can listen to
or John Malkovich makes a film that nobody can watch
(23:57):
for a hundred years, like it's really an album? Is
that really a movie? Because um, you know this is
like a communication has to take place for this to
really be media in certain certain respects. Yeah, I agree,
it's an interesting way of thinking about it. Uh So
Robinson goes on to just briefly outline some of the
(24:19):
core examples of of early things that we could we
could say we're books. Uh So, the two earliest contenders
that he highlights, first of all, Mesopotamian clay tablets. These
would be handwritten Cuneiform script inscribed in clay with a
red and then baked. And then the other one, Uh,
that's this one of the two contenders here is Egyptian
(24:39):
papyrus rolls written in ink with a brush. The papyrus itself.
Uh this was this was made from sheets that were
made from the papyrus plant, so stripped, sliced, overlapped in
layers of pith, pressed and then allowed to dry. And
I'll come back to this one in more detail and
a bit. However, three other innovations that are worth highlighting
(24:59):
shiny is bamboo and wooden slips bound together with chords. Uh.
This basically constitutes the idea of a book. And of
course the Chinese would have would go on to invent
paper itself in one oh five C. And from there
it would spread through East Asia, though it would be
nearly a thousand years before Europe followed suit. You also
(25:19):
have Mediterranean writing tablets. These would be consist of one
to ten pieces of wood bound together by a clasp
or hinge, or alternatively by a chord strung through holes
around along the edges. And then you also have Greek
and Roman wax writing tablets. Uh. And of course they
also use papyrus and parchment rolls as well. And of
course all of these examples of what we might call books, Uh,
(25:42):
we're leading up to what we refer to as the codex,
in which a number of sheets of parchment are bound
together with writing on both sides of each sheet. Yeah,
and it's really the codex. I think that's the first
thing that we recognize as is morphologically the same as
the modern books that we have, despite changes in materials
and stuff. The codex is what you're thinking of when
(26:05):
you think of a book it folds, it has pages
you leave through the pages to read exactly. So I
was reading an excellent brief overview of the history of
things leading up to the Codex in a book called
the book The Life Story of a Technology by Nicole Howard.
I think this was released at some point through Johns
Hopkins University Press UM. But but Howard's overview is interesting.
(26:27):
So she mentioned some of the same things you're talking about,
of course, that you know in in the early archaeological
record of written documents, hard surfaces rule the day. And
of course these would include like the steel that we
mentioned before, uh, and the you know, the Mesopotamian clay tablets,
the what the Assyrians the Babylonians used to preserve written information,
and you know, making in dense on clay tablets, but
(26:50):
also things like wood and bone. She also mentioned several
other substrates that I thought were interesting as as surfaces
for writing on, including ivory towards us shell, linen, palm leaves,
and what's called bast fiber, which is a tough fiber
from the vascular tissue of some plant species, which is
often used to make things like rope or matting. And
(27:13):
and she identifies the most direct ancestor to the modern
hardware of a book, a bound book with pages, as
what emerges in northern Africa around twenty b c. E.
I've I've read some other estimates putting it earlier, around
three thousand or we don't know exactly, but of course,
whenever it did emerge, this was papyrus. And it's time
(27:35):
to sound the alarm. We got it. We got a
Plenty of the Elder Alert. Are you ready for some plenty? Yeah? Yeah,
let's let's touch in with Plenty of the Elder for
little history here, But first we should probably take one
more break. Oh okay, we're gonna we're gonna jump out,
but then we'll be right back in with plenty. All right,
we're back. So we're jumping in with Plenty of the
(27:57):
Elder and his description of the ancient papyrus industry. So
Plenty of the Elder, of course, was a first century
Roman military officer and author, encyclopedist, president of the Lead
Acetate Fan Club, of course, he he wrote at length
about what he believed on the history and production of papyrus,
and this would be I'm gonna read a section here
(28:18):
from the Bostock and Riley translation of Plenty's Natural History,
which is his his big encyclopedia. It's got, it's got
all the info you'll ever need. Uh So, Plenty rights,
we have not as yet taken any notice of the
marsh plants, nor yet of the shrubs that grow upon
the banks of rivers. Before quitting Egypt, however, we must
make some mention of the nature of the papyrus, seeing
(28:41):
that all the usages of civilized life depend in such
a remarkable degree upon the employment of paper at all events,
the remembrance of past events. Um so and so he's
he's talking about the translation there uses the word paper.
Of course, this is not exactly what we'll talk about
when we get into the Knese papermaking tradition. That this
(29:02):
is papyrus, a slightly different thing, though it's a sort
of paper. Like he calls papyrus that commodity by which
immortality is ensured to man. So Plenty of ranking papyrus
up there as like one of the most important inventions
in Roman civilization, He's like, hey, without papyrus, basically, like
we we couldn't have a civilization, We couldn't have remembrance
(29:25):
of things past. So he goes on to introduce the
plant by saying, quote, Papyrus grows either in the marshes
of Egypt or in the sluggish waters of the River
Nile when they have overflowed and are lying stagnant, in
pools that do not exceed a couple of cubits in depth.
The route lies obliquely and is about the thickness of
one's arm. The section of the stalk is triangular, and
(29:49):
it tapers gracefully upwards towards the extremity, being not more
than ten cubits at most in height. And then Plenty
goes on to explain the way that papyrus was made.
This is coming sort of from Howard summary. Basically, you
would you would cut the plant into segments, and you
would remove this outer green rind to access the pith inside,
(30:10):
which is this pulpy substance that's made primarily of cellulose. Cellulose,
of course, is fiber. And then the pith would be
laid out in these long, thin strips on a damp
table or board and hammered flat side by side to
form these single layer sheets. And then a second layer
of strips was laid flat perpendicular to the first sheet,
(30:31):
and then also pounded or pressed flat, and plenty claims
that these perpendicular sheets were quote moistened with nile water,
a liquid which, when in a muddy state, has the
peculiar qualities of glue. Now, Howard mentions that modern scholars
do not think nile water was actually used as a
glue here. Instead they think that, uh, the glue would
(30:54):
just be a natural property of these plant fibers. There
would be a sap in the reed, and that sap
would bind the sheets together once they had been pounded
or pressed in a perpendicular fashion. Yes, Robinson writes this
as well, that it's the naturally occurring sap. Yeah. But
either way, you would then dry the sheets, and so
an individual sheet of papyrus might be small. It just
(31:16):
might be, you know, around twelve inches in height. But
what you can do is glue sheets together at the edges,
and then once you've attached a bunch of papyrus sheets together,
they can be rolled up into scrolls. And scrolls, of course,
are an important book technology that precedes the codex, and
we can explore that more as we go forward. Um,
But Howard points out an interesting side effect of the
(31:40):
production process. She says that by hammering the strips together
in this perpendicular fashion, this was actually important because it
would allow you to to get a much more durable material. Right,
the paper will be flexible, it'll be fairly tough, you know,
because you've got this crossing here. But also as a
side effect, you'd get one side of the papyrus sheet
(32:02):
with natural fibers running top to bottom, while the other
side would have fibers running horizontally. And this has practical
implications for writing. The side with the fibers running horizontally
was fairly easy to write on, you know, think about
like line to note paper, right, but the side with
the fibers running vertically was often considered unfit for writing.
It was difficult to write on, and a lot of
(32:23):
archaeologists have found that in the ancient world, a lot
of people just didn't write on this side of the page,
which is very interesting because you know, when you consider
writing material as a relatively precious commodity compared to how
you know, cheap and easily accessible paper is today. Yeah,
and it's almost like they were natural. Um. I find
with children it's similar, like you have to remind them, Hey, uh,
(32:46):
the printer paper didn't grow on trees, so please use
the back of the printer paper when you were you know,
sketching monsters and and whatnot. But because their natural instinct
seems to be just to to do the front and
just leave it at that, I don't know, but no,
my marker bleeds through. I need to have you know,
clean monsters on either side. Yeah. Um, we may come
(33:07):
back to this in a bit. But I'm reminded earlier
I mentioned how like her e books are essentially the codex, uh,
you know, in in a in E form. But of
course I should probably add this because I know a
lot of people may have been thinking this as well.
You know, it depends on how you have your set
your viewing settings in place. For instance, the notes that
we are using here, I've uh, mine are currently in
(33:29):
a PDF form, so I'm reading it in Adobe Acrobat
Pro and uh currently it is scrolling. Now there is
a separation between pages, so it's like I have scrolling pages. However,
if I go to my view settings, I can change that.
I can remove the space between the pages and turn
(33:50):
it into essentially a digital scroll. Um. Instead I'm doing
something that is I think ultimately more like a codex. Uh,
And you can even you know, of course, do think
as we have like opposing pages and all as well.
So I don't know, maybe we are living in a
in an age where um, there's maybe a preference for
the codex, but we certainly have scroll like options available
(34:13):
to us as well. Yeah, I see what you're talking about.
I mean, this isn't the first time I've heard this. Actually,
I remember many years ago watching some interview where, um,
the literary scholar Harold Bloom was in a in a
you know, characteristically grumpy fashion, lamenting the rise of the
idea of e books. He he just seemed to hate
(34:35):
this idea and he cared. He with the way he
described it was like two thousand years after we made
the transition to the codex, finally we are transitioning back
to the scroll. And he thought this was just awful.
Not saying I necessarily agree with that sentiment, though, there
is something about like scrolling down to read an article,
(34:55):
say on a website, that I don't really like as
a reading format, Like it is more pleasant to have
the same article in a format where you can just
turn the pages. I like the sequential nature of page turning. Um,
there's something. I mean, maybe it's just two elementary you
know that it feels like I'm I'm, I'm, I'm taking
care of a task one after the other, one page
(35:16):
at a time, in a way where an endless scroll
might seem intimidating. I don't know, uh, Or maybe it's
just this is what I'm used to and this is
what I like to do, because like I'm when I'm
using my kindle, there's certainly more of a feeling of
side to side, page to page, and you know, you'd
even have some sort of a page count up there
as well. Yeah, I agree. Okay, so interesting side facts
(35:39):
Plenty notes here he plenty starts describing a bunch of
different kinds of paper. He's like, not, now, I will
tell you about the nine different kinds of papyrus, thanks Plenty,
But he mentions one kind he's telling about the Egyptians
describing this um high quality white papyrus as what's called
hieratic or this is sometimes translate it as holy paper,
(36:01):
since it was reserved entirely for the use of religious books,
and the footnote in the Bostock and Riley translation of
the Natural History says quote. The priests would not allow
it to be sold lest it might be used for
profane writing, but after it was once written upon, it
was easily procurable. The Romans were in the habit of
purchasing it, largely in the latter state, and then washing
(36:24):
off the writing and using it as paper of the
finest quality. Hence it received the name of Augustus as
representing in Latin its Greek name hierradicus, or sacred. In
the length of time, it became a common impression, as
here mentioned that this name was given in honor of
Augustus Caesar. But I think that first part is interesting,
(36:46):
so like if the if their characterization is correct here
that like certain kinds of papyrus were guarded in a
material sense and regarded as holy because they would be
used at some point to write holy scripture on, not
because anything had been written on them yet. But then
once something had already been written on them, then it
(37:07):
was no longer sacred, and then you could easily just
get it and I guess wash off the holy scripture
and write whatever you wanted on it. Oh wow, that's interesting.
That reminds me of the I think it was a
two part episode. Maybe it's just a one part that
it did with did with Christian back in the day
on the idea of Grimore's of you know, books that
end up taking on sacred qualities, uh, you know, generally
(37:28):
because of the sacred contents that they have. Um. There
was I remember there being one Um we were talking
about a cash of Qurans that had been discovered and uh.
And and part of the issue was is like these books,
these holy books had been used and reused to the
point where they were kind of falling apart. They weren't
really usable anymore, they weren't presentable, but they were also
(37:50):
sacred so they couldn't be destroyed. So they were kind
of walled away in in a building. And then they
were discovered much later. And I if I remember correctly,
you know, they gave us some of the oldest examples
of the Quran um that we have been able to,
you know, to to acquire. Uh. So Yeah, when you
start getting into the idea of of sacred information put
(38:12):
onto a material, a material that may itself be considered sacred. Uh, Yeah,
everything gets gets very complicated. Yeah, that is interesting, Like
the the conceptual contagion, that the the sacredness of the
content of what's written on the paper or the papyrus
or the ink or whatever eventually extends by contagion to
(38:34):
the physical form itself. It's not just that what is
written in here is holy, but like the actual physical
book is holy. This is such a weird concept, Like
it seems like the kind of thing that might be
utilized by like an artist. Like what if you had
what if you had a Bible, okay, like a you know,
a Catholic Bible, and you found out that it was
(38:55):
made from from paper that had been recycled from pornography. Um,
like what how would how would we deally? I don't
think we would particularly like it would be a weird
thing to focus on today. It would also be weird
that you were, you know, making it exclusively from pornography recyclings.
But um, but would that even would that begin to
(39:15):
sort of creep into our idea of of contagion, that
like the that this is this this book is is profane.
It's some sort of a blasphemy because you made it
on such recycled material. I feel like a lot of
modern religious people would probably would probably house the distinction
in the intent of the person who made it, So
(39:35):
it would be like, did you know you were making
making it out of this recycled paper or not? Like it?
I think most people today like if they found that
out but they knew it was just recycled paper and
the person had no intention of making that particular transition,
they wouldn't care, but they might get annoyed at the
idea that someone did this on purpose, right, like if
(39:55):
it were in a museum in New York City or something. Um.
But then again, imagine this. I can easily see somebody,
say like a televangelists marketing their own Bible that they
can guarantee is not made using recycled pornography. People be like, yes,
how have I been using an impure Bible this whole time?
There might be some pornography in there, right, Well, I mean,
(40:16):
if you've got somebody who's good at selling it, they'll
be good at selling it. Yeah, Okay, So I guess
to get back to papyrus. So how was papyrus written on? Well,
Howard mentions that the ancient Egyptians would write on pyrus
using reads or quills, often dipped in an ink made
out of charcoal deluded in water. Uh. And again a reminder.
At this time we've mentioned this, but if you wanted
(40:38):
a copy of a book at this time, it had
to be written out by hand. You could not get
it from a printing press. And Howard mentions that scribes
in ancient Egypt would copy scrolls either by sight, so
you just have one copy of a book on you know,
one part of your desk and another blank scroll on
the other part, and you just copy it out by hand,
or you'd have a book read aloud and you'd have
(41:00):
to copy it down from dictation, which sounds even harder.
But this was a slow and laborious process, not just
for the obvious reasons you might imagine. It would also
be slow and laborious to copy a book in this way,
because there are also mechanical limitations, like you had to
wait for the ink to dry as you're going, and
there's no backspace key if you make a mistake, and
(41:21):
so forth. But papyrus made out of the read the
Cyprus papyrus planted it was a major industry, supplying writing
material to the broader Mediterranean world. But but Howard identifies
an interesting shift, and it begins especially around the first century.
There's there's some elements of this shift in earlier centuries,
(41:42):
but it really gets going around the first century that
there's this long running, major shift from papyrus to parchment
for writing material. Now why this shift, Well, one explanation
given by historians is a basic shortage of supply. Again, papyrus,
writing material had to be made of this specific plant
there reads cyperus papyrus, and if there was a sudden
(42:03):
scarcity of the read that would mean a scarcity of
the writing material for export. But Howard also mentions that
there were sort of pressures put on Egypt by military
incursions in the previous centuries, and so whatever the cause
of the dwindling supply of exported papyrus around the first century,
bookmaking people's elsewhere in the Mediterranean, we're really we're really
(42:25):
starting to seek out an alternative, which they found in
parchment and vellum. Now, what are these substances. Basically, think
like paper made out of treated animal skins. Parchment is
made from untanned sheep leather, and vellum is made from
calf skin. So to treat these animal skins for us
as writing surfaces, first, of course, you had to clean them.
(42:47):
You had to get all the biological gunk off, you know,
all the hair and stuff, and then they would they
would clean the smooth surface with applications of pumice and lime,
and Howard points out that this was a difficult process
since the animal skin had to be stretched and dried
at the same time. So the goal was to stretch
it out in such a way that it wouldn't contract
(43:09):
back to its original shape once it was finished drying.
And there are actually several ways that parchment and vellum
proved superior to papyrus as writing material. One way is
that they can be made pretty much anywhere. Papyrus was
dependent on Egypt. It was dependent on this Egyptian industry,
especially since it was made from a reed native to
the Nile Delta area. Though I think there were papyrus
(43:31):
or papyrus like products also made from some of the
Mesopotamian empires based on reed plants from the Tigris and Euphrates.
I don't know if it was the same species of plant,
but it seems primarily papyrus was coming from Egypt. But nevertheless,
the ancient Romans were generally dependent on Egyptian papyrus for
their needs. Meanwhile, sheep and calves they could be pretty
(43:54):
much anywhere. They were raised pretty much anywhere, so you
could always make parchment or vellum locally. And Howard doesn't
mention this, but I've read in other sources that the
process of making papyrus writing material was also a closely
guarded industrial secret, and I kind of wonder if this
might also have proved important in its decline. Yeah, you
(44:15):
ultimately you just need an alternative to that that trades
secret um papyrus. So yeah, you turn to like, what
can I do? What are some other organic sources I
can source to turn into something that I can write
on right now. On top of this, there was some
other benefits as well. Parchment and vellum were just more
durable than papyrus. They held up better over time and
(44:37):
and held up against wear and tear better. But finally,
there were aesthetic and practical reasons parchment worked better than papyrus. One,
it was easier to write on without the facially perpendicular
fibers of the plant matter. Once you had written on it, Also,
the text stood out more clearly from from the background
than it did on papyrus, and to some extent, parchment
(44:58):
actually allowed a scribes to erase mistakes or other unwanted
writing more easily than than papyrus, did I mean by
virtue of it being just more durable for starters, because
we have to remember that. I think we went into
this we talked about our on our Invention episode about
the pencil and the eraser. Like erasing, uh is often
(45:19):
a a matter of taking away from this the material
upon which you have written. And so if you're already
dealing with fragile papyrus, there's there's just less you can
do without destroying the paper totally. Uh So, So by
about the fourth century CE, parchment had replaced papyrus for
most written documents in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.
(45:42):
And so that's gonna play a very important part in
shaping the physical evolution of the book, especially once we
start talking about the form wars of scroll versus codex.
But there's something else we need to get into. I
guess at the beginning of the next episode, I think
we're running out of time for today. But parallel to
the papyrus and parchment industries being established in those regions
in the West eastward in China, written documents had found
(46:04):
a home on a totally different writing material and this
would be paper. So maybe in the next episode we
should start off by looking at the paper industry. Absolutely so, uh,
definitely join us next time as we continue this look
at the history of the codex, the history of paper,
the history of writing itself also kind of bound up
into a well, not a single volume, multiple volume, so
(46:27):
you can think of each each episode of the show
is a volume, right, um, so join us next time.
In the meantime, if you would like to check out
other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Uh, you
know exactly where to find us. You can find us
wherever you get your podcasts. And what can you do
to support us? Well, you can rate, you can review,
you can subscribe. Huge thanks as always to our excellent
(46:49):
audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to
get in touch with us with feedback on this episode
or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
just to say hello, you can email us at contact
at stuffed blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow
(47:09):
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