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Speaker 1: Welcome to stot to Blow Your Mind production of My

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and

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Speaker 1: we're back with part two of our talk about the

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Speaker 1: Invention of the Book. Now, if you didn't listen to

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Speaker 1: the last episode, you should probably go back and listen

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Speaker 1: to that one first. That was the Invention of the

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Speaker 1: Book Part one, where we talked about what constitutes a

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Speaker 1: book conceptually, what are the earliest things that might be

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Speaker 1: thought of to count as a book in the archaeological record.

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Speaker 1: We talked about various materials on which ancient writings were printed,

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Speaker 1: you know, from hard surfaces and steals into things like

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Speaker 1: papyrus and and parchment and vellum. But today we wanted

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Speaker 1: to come back and talk a little bit more about

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Speaker 1: the overall form of books, and I thought a great

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Speaker 1: place to start with here would be one of the

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Speaker 1: most significant transitions in the history of books, and that

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Speaker 1: is the transition between the scroll and the codex. And

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Speaker 1: just to put you in the right frame of mind

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Speaker 1: for this, have you ever thought about how, once upon

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Speaker 1: a time you had to rewind books? Oh? Absolutely, when

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Speaker 1: you think about the way a scroll works. And indeed,

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Speaker 1: how you know, some electronic versions of documents work as well.

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Speaker 1: Where you want is scrolling through the document. Uh. It

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Speaker 1: is like very much like say that the ribbon in

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Speaker 1: a VCR tape. It is a thing that has a

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Speaker 1: beginning in an end and uh, and if you were

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Speaker 1: to jump around in it, you were going to have

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Speaker 1: to scroll through it, you know. I know there must

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Speaker 1: be some writing attesting to this in the ancient world,

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Speaker 1: But I just wonder if you had, like an ancient library,

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Speaker 1: did you have the like the video store problem of

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Speaker 1: the person who checked out the scroll before you didn't

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Speaker 1: rewind it and you have to take it back from

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Speaker 1: the end to the beginning, Yeah, or those like poorly

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Speaker 1: wound or something. Yeah, I mean, I guess it's always

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Speaker 1: the case with books, and books are precious objects, and

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Speaker 1: we're even more precious in the past book scrolls. Whatever

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Speaker 1: you know, you want to refer to this compiled a

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Speaker 1: form of written knowledge, and yeah, if it's something that

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Speaker 1: is communal in nature, you don't want the person before

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Speaker 1: you mistreating it, right. So, so this world where you

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Speaker 1: had to rewind books, this was of course the world

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Speaker 1: of the scroll, which was the most prominent physical form

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Speaker 1: of the book throughout you know, much of the Mediterranean World,

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Speaker 1: North Africa, Europe, the Middle East, UM and unlike the

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Speaker 1: codex model that we're familiar with today. Remember again the

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Speaker 1: codex is basically like the books we know today where

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Speaker 1: there uh, there's a spine where the pages are attached

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Speaker 1: and you can leave through the pages to read the text. Uh.

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Speaker 1: The scroll was essentially one really long page that was

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Speaker 1: made by attaching successive sheets of material, usually would be

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Speaker 1: papyrus or parchment in to end with either glue or

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Speaker 1: with stitching. You could sew them together. And then to

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Speaker 1: read a scroll, of course, as you would make your

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Speaker 1: way through, you would unroll the the long sheet from

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Speaker 1: from a from a winding stick on one end, and

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Speaker 1: then you would roll it up on the other one.

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Speaker 1: And a scroll could unravel either vertically or horizontally. In

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Speaker 1: the direction of the rolling for a particular document often

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Speaker 1: depended on what language was being written, like was the

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Speaker 1: script naturally oriented vertically or horizontally. Last time, in the

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Speaker 1: previous episode, I mentioned the book the book The Life

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Speaker 1: Story of a Technology by Nicole Howard, which we were

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Speaker 1: using as one of our references and Howard draws attention

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Speaker 1: to a number of basic practical limitations of the scroll,

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Speaker 1: some of which I had never considered before, but I

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Speaker 1: thought these were really interesting in helping us think about

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Speaker 1: what would cause the transition from the scroll to the

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Speaker 1: codex over time. So, even with scrolls, you might think

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Speaker 1: that the idea of pages having pages in a document,

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Speaker 1: you know, these sort of like blocked out sections of

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Speaker 1: the text, that that would emerge with the codex because

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Speaker 1: it's natural to leaf through the page is But Howard

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Speaker 1: points out that there was sometimes a need for something

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Speaker 1: like the concept of a page, even in a scroll,

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Speaker 1: because just imagine trying to read a scroll. Imagine you

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Speaker 1: are writing in a script that flows horizontally like English,

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Speaker 1: it goes from left to right, and you're working with

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Speaker 1: a scroll that unravels horizontally. Do you write one line

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Speaker 1: that goes the entire fifty feet or whatever of the

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Speaker 1: entire scroll, and then back up, rewind the entire thing,

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Speaker 1: and then start on the second line. I mean, that's

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Speaker 1: obviously impractical. So instead, Howard writes that sometimes scribes would

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Speaker 1: mark off columns of text of some manageable length, maybe

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Speaker 1: a few inches wide, and then once the column was

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Speaker 1: filled down to the bottom, you would start at the

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Speaker 1: top of a new column. Basically, these would be pages

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Speaker 1: just like in a book, except you would roll and

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Speaker 1: unroll them instead of leafing through them. But she also

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Speaker 1: points out a really obvious disadvantage of the scroll, and

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Speaker 1: this is in addition to the need to rewind your

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Speaker 1: when you're done with the scroll, it is going to

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Speaker 1: be really tedious to jump to places in the middle

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Speaker 1: or end of a document to reference something. So imagine

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Speaker 1: it's you know, the Bible, and you want to reference

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Speaker 1: a particular verse. Early books might might not even have

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Speaker 1: had page numbers like foldable, you know, codex books might

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Speaker 1: not have had page numbers on the pages. But imagine it.

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Speaker 1: Even without page numbers to refer to, it's just going

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Speaker 1: to be so much easier to leaf through and find

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Speaker 1: a later passage in a codex than it is going

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Speaker 1: to be to roll through and find a later passage

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Speaker 1: in a scroll, mostly due to the ease of page

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Speaker 1: flipping as a mechanical action as opposed to the rolling

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Speaker 1: and unrolling action. This is interesting. It makes me think

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Speaker 1: of of e books once again, because for for my

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Speaker 1: own money, well, first of all, I want to say

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Speaker 1: that sometimes I'll use e books when researching this podcast,

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Speaker 1: and in those cases I'll use a browser based um

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Speaker 1: like Kindle Reader, which allows me to jump around a

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Speaker 1: lot and do word searches and so forth, that a

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Speaker 1: little more flexible. But for for my more personal reading,

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Speaker 1: if I'm reading a novel um in the book form,

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Speaker 1: I'll use my Kindle. And when I'm using the Kindle,

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Speaker 1: I have the experience that is more like a scroll,

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Speaker 1: where I find that I'm generally going just straight through

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Speaker 1: it and if I jump around, I risk losing my spot.

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Speaker 1: And part of that maybe I just don't know how

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Speaker 1: to use the Kindle properly. You know, it might be

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Speaker 1: a little user error on my part. But for the

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Speaker 1: most part, I feel like I've just got to keep going.

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Speaker 1: I can't jump around, I can't go back. And if

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Speaker 1: it is a book that I know has like a

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Speaker 1: glossary at the end or some sort of encyclopedia related

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Speaker 1: to the world, something like saying our Scott Baker book, Uh,

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Speaker 1: then I'm just not going to get that in a

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Speaker 1: in an electronic form. I'm going to get the hard

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Speaker 1: copy so I can flip around, so I could go

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Speaker 1: to the back and look up characters or places or

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Speaker 1: wars and see how they relate to the spot that

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Speaker 1: I'm reading in. Yeah, my experience is exactly like yours.

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Speaker 1: I find that. If it's so when I'm talking about

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Speaker 1: an e book, if it's a book I'm using for

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Speaker 1: a reference, I really only want to read it on

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Speaker 1: a desktop so that I can like use the mouse

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Speaker 1: to navigate with the slider and use the search function

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Speaker 1: easily and all that. If it's a book that I'm

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Speaker 1: just reading for pleasure, I'd rather read it like on

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Speaker 1: my phone, uh, where I can just leave through the

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Speaker 1: pages one at a time. But yeah, in in that

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Speaker 1: format it is tedious to try to flip back and

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Speaker 1: forth too in notes or whatever. You know. I have

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Speaker 1: to dragon Dungeons and Dragons a little bit here. I

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Speaker 1: don't know to what extent this was intentional, but one

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Speaker 1: thing that you see in Dungeons and Dragons with spell

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Speaker 1: books and spell scrolls is that a spell book is

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Speaker 1: something you reference, is something like your your wizard character

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Speaker 1: carries around or picks up and learns new spells from.

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Speaker 1: But a spell scroll is this this more like magical

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Speaker 1: text that is consumed as you read it. To read

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Speaker 1: the scroll is to is to cast the spell that

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Speaker 1: is contained in the magical writing in the scroll itself,

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Speaker 1: and then afterwards it is gone. That's very entry thing

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Speaker 1: that I mean. That seems to reflect some kind of

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Speaker 1: knowledge about the differences of these two formats, And it

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Speaker 1: does make you wonder about the different psychological effects of

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Speaker 1: reading cultures based on a scroll versus reading cultures based

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Speaker 1: on a on a codex. Right, yeah, I can't help

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Speaker 1: but wonder how it alters the metaphor of internal narrative,

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Speaker 1: you know, to have to flip rather than to scroll. Now. Now, granted,

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Speaker 1: I imagine literacy was you know, not widespread enough for

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Speaker 1: the technological metaphor to be that meaningful you know, to

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Speaker 1: the majority of the population in ancient times. But it's

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Speaker 1: interesting to think about. I also think it's interesting to

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Speaker 1: think about personal reading, like the reading that you know,

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Speaker 1: someone does on their own in a quiet room, as

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Speaker 1: inherently invoking an internal narrative or voice, as opposed to

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Speaker 1: the external narrative voice that you would get through say,

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Speaker 1: communal storytelling or communal singing, you know, these other modes

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Speaker 1: of sharing a a story or a text with other people. Uh.

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Speaker 1: It also you know, it makes me wonder about how

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Speaker 1: the the format the scroll versus the codex would cause

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Speaker 1: people to think differently about what books were for. Like

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Speaker 1: if a scroll based culture, I wonder, would be more

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Speaker 1: likely to suggest that you should read through an entire

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Speaker 1: book at once in order, rather than using it as

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Speaker 1: something to consult isolated sections from. On one hand, you know,

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Speaker 1: I wonder that, and that is kind of a common

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Speaker 1: sensical uh bit of induction from the idea of a scroll.

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Speaker 1: But honestly, then again, I would say I don't necessarily

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Speaker 1: see a lot of direct evidence of this, Like it

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Speaker 1: does seem like ancient religious texts and scroll cultures were

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Speaker 1: pretty thoroughly consulted for isolated quotes in a in a

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Speaker 1: piecemeal fashion. I mean, I think about like the rabbinical

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Speaker 1: tradition and Judaism, which was very scroll based at the time.

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Speaker 1: But then again, I don't know, Like, um, I wonder,

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Speaker 1: here's another thing. Does a scroll culture maybe place more

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Speaker 1: emphasis on the memorization of books and narratives that you read?

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Speaker 1: Maybe so? And and I also can't help but think

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Speaker 1: maybe part of this is just we are we are

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Speaker 1: not scroll based individuals. Ours is not a scroll based culture,

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Speaker 1: So of course we we see like that we imagine

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Speaker 1: the regular use of scrolls as being somewhat alien and clumsy.

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Speaker 1: But I guess if one is versed in the use

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Speaker 1: of scrolls, if one is accustomed to it, you know,

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Speaker 1: obviously you're gonna have uh, you know, more flexibility and

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Speaker 1: using one totally. I I do get the impression that

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Speaker 1: that it is generally just easier, you know, like you like,

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Speaker 1: there are strict efficiency advantages to the codex over the scroll,

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Speaker 1: but that those are magnified by being unfamiliar with how

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Speaker 1: to use the scroll. Yeah, I think that's fair. But

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Speaker 1: then so I want to go back to another thing

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Speaker 1: Nicole Howard talks about, which I hadn't really thought about much,

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Speaker 1: but this is interesting as well. So to read a scroll,

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Speaker 1: you often needed to use either both hands at the

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Speaker 1: same time, or you needed to set it on a

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Speaker 1: desk with a with a pair of weights to hold

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Speaker 1: the open section down and keep it from rolling around.

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Speaker 1: So uh so, like think of the ease with which

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Speaker 1: you can hold a book, a codex book open in

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Speaker 1: one hand and write down notes or copy text with

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Speaker 1: the other hand. Or with some books, you know, if

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Speaker 1: it's a very nicely bound book, and it's got the

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Speaker 1: right balance of weight and everything. You don't even need

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Speaker 1: one hand. You can just set it down on the

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Speaker 1: desk and leave it open, or put it on a

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Speaker 1: reading stand and it stays open to your place. Scrolls

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Speaker 1: were usually nowhere near this convenient. And uh, And I

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Speaker 1: think we've often talked about the underappreciated evolutionary advantage of

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Speaker 1: technologies or methods that allow free hands while in use.

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Speaker 1: I think this is very clearly a case of that. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, certainly when you get into the use of

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Speaker 1: these various grimores, uh, these these sacred books, you know,

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Speaker 1: they're they're often intended to be taken with you. You

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Speaker 1: know a lot of times they are. They are handy

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Speaker 1: travel volumes of important texts then may be carried on

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Speaker 1: your person, as opposed to you know, left in the scriptorium.

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Speaker 1: And I mean, if we're going to use a biological analogy,

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Speaker 1: obviously books are things much like genes that get reproduced

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Speaker 1: through copying. And so in a way, you could almost

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Speaker 1: think of books that are easier to copy as having

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Speaker 1: a kind of sexual selection advantage, right, like it's easier

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Speaker 1: for them to reproduce. If a book is easier to

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Speaker 1: make a copy of because you can hold it in

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Speaker 1: one hand or set it down easily while you copy

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Speaker 1: it onto another sheet. I mean, I wonder if that

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Speaker 1: literally results in just more copies of those types of

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Speaker 1: books getting made. Yeah, I mean it's I know, it

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Speaker 1: ultimately makes it more readable. And like we said in

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Speaker 1: the last episode, a book that is not read or

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Speaker 1: cannot be read in some ways isn't a book like

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Speaker 1: it is, Like so much of it is about the

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Speaker 1: the transference of information and not just the collection of information. Yeah, totally.

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Speaker 1: Uh So, here's another interesting issue Howard raises. When you're

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Speaker 1: pulling a book like we have today off the shelf,

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Speaker 1: do you have a hard time figuring out which book

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Speaker 1: to grab? I mean usually no, right, because the titles

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Speaker 1: are right there on the spine. It's totally easy to

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Speaker 1: find what you're looking for. Right, And even if the

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Speaker 1: spine does not have the title, or the spine has

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Speaker 1: been taped over, etcetera, you just flip it open, you

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Speaker 1: go right to the title page, the copyright page. You

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Speaker 1: can find all the information you need. Right. The issue

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Speaker 1: of identifying documents quickly from within a large collection was

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Speaker 1: nowhere near this easy and scroll based cultures of the

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Speaker 1: ancient world, Howard writes, quote readers of scrolls dealt with

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Speaker 1: the problem of identification by applying small tags to the

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Speaker 1: upper edges of scrolls. In Greek, these were called silly boss,

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Speaker 1: which is where we get the term syllabus uh and

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Speaker 1: she goes on, while the Romans referred to them as titulus,

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Speaker 1: which is where we get the term title. Tags made

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Speaker 1: it easier to organize and identify scrolls, but there remained

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Speaker 1: the problem of storage. Being rounded, they did not lend

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Speaker 1: themselves to neet stacking. Instead, scrolls were placed in groups

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Speaker 1: in a stone or wooden jar, known in Greek as

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Speaker 1: a biblioteca. And there's a great piece of terminology like

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Speaker 1: etymology there. Think of how this jar library, this jar

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Speaker 1: that had scrolls, and it influenced the names for library

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Speaker 1: buildings in the Romance languages today. You know, the Spanish

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Speaker 1: word for a library is biblioteca yea. Though there's a funny,

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Speaker 1: perhaps false etymology that always followed from that in my head,

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Speaker 1: which is also the Spanish word disco teca for discotheq,

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Speaker 1: which makes me think it's like the disc library that

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Speaker 1: probably doesn't quite work out right, But Howard also acknowledges

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Speaker 1: that bookmaking in the ancient world was not a uniform industry, right.

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Speaker 1: It wasn't like they had, you know, factories that would

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Speaker 1: uh that would print all these books in this exactly

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Speaker 1: similar way. For many centuries, scrolls were the standard, but

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Speaker 1: you would find weird exceptions here and there, and she

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Speaker 1: cites the examples of books made out of papyrus and

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Speaker 1: parchment that were stored not in scrolls but by folding

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Speaker 1: like a map, were folding in an accordion style. And

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Speaker 1: while this format was unusual at the time, that accordion

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Speaker 1: style fold may well have set an important precedent because

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Speaker 1: the accordion style fold, if you think about it, would

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Speaker 1: have actually allowed for finding a place in a document

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Speaker 1: more easily with a flipping motion through the folded sections,

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Speaker 1: rather than the tedious rolling and unrolling of a scroll.

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Speaker 1: And of course we still see this form all the time,

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Speaker 1: not only with maps, um but also with me news

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Speaker 1: and more importantly brochures. Oh totally. They're just trying to imagine,

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Speaker 1: like I like those big maps that fold out, and

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Speaker 1: you've got to find the right way to fold it

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Speaker 1: back or you'll be putting the wrong direction creases in

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Speaker 1: when you try to, yeah, and it'll be it won't

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Speaker 1: be flat, it'll be like a little little puffy, and

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Speaker 1: then it doesn't actually go back where you're stowing your maps.

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Speaker 1: Imagine trying to to map fold your edition of Moby Dick.

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Speaker 1: That sounds like a nightmare. But so where does the

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00:15:57,640 --> 00:16:01,240
Speaker 1: actual codex come in? Remember the the codex format again,

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00:16:01,320 --> 00:16:03,560
Speaker 1: is the book that's still in use today and involves

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Speaker 1: stacks of pages folded inward fastened into spine, which you

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Speaker 1: read by leafing through one page to the next. We

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00:16:10,320 --> 00:16:12,600
Speaker 1: mentioned in the last episode that it seems like the

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00:16:12,640 --> 00:16:16,040
Speaker 1: Codex started to be produced in the Roman world around

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Speaker 1: the first century. Nicole Howard points to a very important

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Speaker 1: predecessor technology though, which likely gave rise to the Codex,

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Speaker 1: and this is a technology known as the diptic. So

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Speaker 1: the easiest way to imagine a diptic is to picture

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Speaker 1: a hardback book cover without any pages inside it. So

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00:16:35,440 --> 00:16:38,880
Speaker 1: a diptic would usually consist of two solid flaps made

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Speaker 1: out of something hard like would usually like she she says,

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Speaker 1: often ebony or box would and they would be attached

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Speaker 1: at the edges with some kind of hinge. So you

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00:16:48,600 --> 00:16:52,040
Speaker 1: could sew them together with with string or thread or

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Speaker 1: with leather straps, and this would allow them to open

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Speaker 1: and close like the cover of a book. And the

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00:16:57,360 --> 00:17:02,320
Speaker 1: diptic was used generally as a temporary restorage space for information.

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Speaker 1: So the inside surfaces of these flaps that open and

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Speaker 1: closed would be coated with wax, and then writing could

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Speaker 1: be scratched into the wax with a sharp implement or

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Speaker 1: with a stylus, and then the wax surface could be

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Speaker 1: reused simply by rubbing out the indentations or scratches bearing

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Speaker 1: the writing, essentially erasing the board and preparing it to

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00:17:23,400 --> 00:17:25,760
Speaker 1: record new information again. And these could be used for

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Speaker 1: all kinds of things, for taking notes about something, for

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Speaker 1: sending a message to someone. It was a general purpose,

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Speaker 1: reusable writing surface. But then there comes in a mystery.

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Speaker 1: So we know that there was this diptic device, but

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Speaker 1: we don't know who or when it first occurred to too,

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Speaker 1: simply so pages of parchment or papyrus in between the

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Speaker 1: flaps of the diptic. We don't know who came up

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Speaker 1: with this idea, where it first emerged. We know we

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Speaker 1: we think it probably happened first in the first century CE,

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Speaker 1: because we have some archaeological evidence of code codesas from

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Speaker 1: within the first century, and the Latin poet Marshal who

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00:18:07,359 --> 00:18:10,960
Speaker 1: lived from thirty eight to one oh four, ce mentions

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00:18:11,040 --> 00:18:14,280
Speaker 1: this invention. He talks about it in some verses that

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00:18:14,320 --> 00:18:17,320
Speaker 1: he wrote and published in the eighties, I believe, between

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00:18:17,359 --> 00:18:20,359
Speaker 1: the years like eighty four and eighty six, talking about

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00:18:20,359 --> 00:18:24,440
Speaker 1: how awesome these new parchment codices are, and he tells

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00:18:24,480 --> 00:18:29,000
Speaker 1: you specifically in his poem where you can buy them,

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00:18:29,040 --> 00:18:30,960
Speaker 1: which I like because poems of today that you know,

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00:18:31,000 --> 00:18:34,640
Speaker 1: they don't usually just like include free advertisements for shops

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00:18:34,680 --> 00:18:37,919
Speaker 1: for things, um, which is a shame. They should, they

347
00:18:37,920 --> 00:18:41,119
Speaker 1: should really monetize that, right exactly. So, I found a

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00:18:41,160 --> 00:18:44,399
Speaker 1: translation that was cited in a in a BBC article

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Speaker 1: by a writer named Keith Houston or Houston that I'm

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Speaker 1: gonna refer back to in a minute. But this translation

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Speaker 1: of the section from Marshals versus goes, you who long

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Speaker 1: for my little books to be with you everywhere, and

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Speaker 1: want to have companions for a long journey, buy these ones,

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00:19:01,320 --> 00:19:05,960
Speaker 1: which parchment confines within small pages. Give your scroll cases

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00:19:06,000 --> 00:19:10,320
Speaker 1: to the great authors. One hand can hold me, which

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00:19:10,359 --> 00:19:12,720
Speaker 1: is great. You know, He's like, oh, it's so sad

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00:19:12,760 --> 00:19:15,160
Speaker 1: you can't travel with my books because they're on scrolls. Well,

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00:19:15,200 --> 00:19:17,199
Speaker 1: you can now take them with you on, take me

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00:19:17,240 --> 00:19:19,920
Speaker 1: with you on the road. And then yeah, all all

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00:19:19,960 --> 00:19:22,960
Speaker 1: those you know, the homers and whatever, you can cram

361
00:19:23,000 --> 00:19:25,160
Speaker 1: them into a scroll, stick him in a jar somewhere.

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00:19:25,240 --> 00:19:28,479
Speaker 1: That's fine. No, this is great. It's like saying, you know,

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00:19:28,560 --> 00:19:31,120
Speaker 1: my my books, you know, and this in the work.

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00:19:31,160 --> 00:19:33,400
Speaker 1: I'm not one of the great authors, but my work

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00:19:33,400 --> 00:19:36,160
Speaker 1: will be a part of your life, right uh. Yeah,

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00:19:36,160 --> 00:19:38,480
Speaker 1: And then he goes on to say, oh, by the way,

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00:19:38,480 --> 00:19:40,400
Speaker 1: here's where you can get them, so that you are

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00:19:40,400 --> 00:19:42,800
Speaker 1: not ignorant of where I am on sale, and don't

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00:19:42,800 --> 00:19:45,560
Speaker 1: wander aimlessly through the whole city. I will be your

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00:19:45,600 --> 00:19:48,600
Speaker 1: guide and you will be certain. Look for Secundous, the

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00:19:48,720 --> 00:19:52,800
Speaker 1: freedomen of learned Loucnsus, behind the threshold of the Temple

372
00:19:52,920 --> 00:19:55,840
Speaker 1: of Peace and the Forum of Palace. So there you go.

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00:19:56,040 --> 00:19:58,679
Speaker 1: I mean, look him right up. But it doesn't make

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00:19:58,720 --> 00:20:01,800
Speaker 1: me wonder, like how recent of an invention this was,

375
00:20:01,840 --> 00:20:04,399
Speaker 1: Like it was there only one shop in the Roman

376
00:20:04,440 --> 00:20:08,280
Speaker 1: Empire selling selling the Codex at this time? Or was it, like,

377
00:20:08,440 --> 00:20:11,400
Speaker 1: you know, did people generally sort of know what they are,

378
00:20:11,480 --> 00:20:13,679
Speaker 1: but he was trying to spread the word or I

379
00:20:13,680 --> 00:20:15,960
Speaker 1: don't know. It's not quite clear. I mean it could

380
00:20:16,000 --> 00:20:17,920
Speaker 1: have been in a in a sense kind of like

381
00:20:18,040 --> 00:20:21,159
Speaker 1: the like the early days of like the iPhone or

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00:20:21,200 --> 00:20:23,800
Speaker 1: the iPad. Right, maybe you couldn't get him everywhere. He

383
00:20:23,760 --> 00:20:25,600
Speaker 1: had to go to that apple store, right, this was

384
00:20:25,680 --> 00:20:30,440
Speaker 1: the Secundus had the apple store of the day. Yeah,

385
00:20:30,480 --> 00:20:33,399
Speaker 1: look up Secundus. Then you can take me everywhere. I

386
00:20:33,440 --> 00:20:35,760
Speaker 1: love it. So so, even though Marshall thought that the

387
00:20:35,800 --> 00:20:40,440
Speaker 1: parchment Codex was great, it did not immediately take off. Instead,

388
00:20:40,560 --> 00:20:43,800
Speaker 1: for hundreds of years, books within the Roman Empire in

389
00:20:43,840 --> 00:20:48,560
Speaker 1: the Mediterranean region would remain this mix of codsseas and scrolls,

390
00:20:48,560 --> 00:20:53,840
Speaker 1: with codssease slowly gathering greater popularity over the decades. It

391
00:20:53,920 --> 00:20:58,320
Speaker 1: seems some sources assert that the codsseas became mainstream and

392
00:20:58,400 --> 00:21:02,119
Speaker 1: maybe like the third or fourth centuries. Howard says that

393
00:21:02,160 --> 00:21:04,960
Speaker 1: it wasn't really until the fifth century that the codex

394
00:21:05,000 --> 00:21:09,720
Speaker 1: became extremely common commonplace. But whenever you date the accomplishment

395
00:21:09,800 --> 00:21:13,400
Speaker 1: of the codex takeover, it's clear that it wasn't overnight.

396
00:21:13,440 --> 00:21:17,560
Speaker 1: It was a long, slow march and There's another really

397
00:21:17,600 --> 00:21:20,000
Speaker 1: interesting thing that I learned. I was reading an article

398
00:21:20,480 --> 00:21:23,199
Speaker 1: for the BBC by by this author, Keith Houston or

399
00:21:23,200 --> 00:21:26,439
Speaker 1: Houston who the author of a book called the book

400
00:21:26,600 --> 00:21:29,479
Speaker 1: a cover to cover exploration of the most powerful object

401
00:21:29,520 --> 00:21:32,880
Speaker 1: of our time, and he points out an interesting cultural

402
00:21:32,920 --> 00:21:38,840
Speaker 1: trend that emerges that ties book technology to specific religious groups. Uh.

403
00:21:38,920 --> 00:21:42,560
Speaker 1: He writes, quote, Rome's pagan majority, along with the Jewish

404
00:21:42,600 --> 00:21:45,919
Speaker 1: population of the ancient world, preferred the familiar form of

405
00:21:45,960 --> 00:21:49,960
Speaker 1: the scroll. The Empire's fast growing Christian congregation, on the

406
00:21:50,000 --> 00:21:55,640
Speaker 1: other hand, enthusiastically churned out paged books containing Gospels, commentaries

407
00:21:55,680 --> 00:21:59,159
Speaker 1: and esoteric wisdom. And since I've read this in several

408
00:21:59,200 --> 00:22:02,920
Speaker 1: other sources that there seemed to be this this preference

409
00:22:03,080 --> 00:22:07,199
Speaker 1: for the Codex specifically, I mean among Christians generally, but

410
00:22:07,280 --> 00:22:11,080
Speaker 1: specifically I believe, among the Christians of North Africa. And

411
00:22:11,240 --> 00:22:13,600
Speaker 1: it's interesting to wonder. I don't know if there's an

412
00:22:13,600 --> 00:22:16,880
Speaker 1: answer for why, in particular, the Codex took off with

413
00:22:17,240 --> 00:22:21,560
Speaker 1: Christians within the region and and only more slowly spread

414
00:22:21,560 --> 00:22:23,959
Speaker 1: to the other religious groups. I mean, one one can

415
00:22:24,000 --> 00:22:25,880
Speaker 1: only assume that it just had to do with the

416
00:22:25,920 --> 00:22:30,959
Speaker 1: advantages of codices and how they particularly applied to those groups.

417
00:22:31,000 --> 00:22:35,080
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe it's the mobility for instance, Right, So, yeah,

418
00:22:35,119 --> 00:22:37,320
Speaker 1: we know several things about them there there may be

419
00:22:37,480 --> 00:22:40,879
Speaker 1: easier to leave through quickly and reference things. They're easier,

420
00:22:40,880 --> 00:22:43,960
Speaker 1: they're smaller and more compact that you can take them,

421
00:22:44,000 --> 00:22:46,879
Speaker 1: you carry them around more easily. I mean, when I

422
00:22:46,960 --> 00:22:50,199
Speaker 1: think about some of the great early UH codesseas in

423
00:22:50,400 --> 00:22:52,880
Speaker 1: in the archaeological record, a lot of them that come

424
00:22:52,920 --> 00:22:56,119
Speaker 1: to mind are Christian documents, you know, like the books

425
00:22:56,119 --> 00:22:59,480
Speaker 1: of the Nagamadi Library and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah,

426
00:22:59,520 --> 00:23:01,640
Speaker 1: I mean, so you could get into the fact that

427
00:23:01,640 --> 00:23:04,600
Speaker 1: that perhaps they're easier to secret away. That could be

428
00:23:04,640 --> 00:23:07,040
Speaker 1: possible as well. Yeah, all right, on that note, we're

429
00:23:07,040 --> 00:23:08,680
Speaker 1: going to take a break, but when we come back

430
00:23:08,880 --> 00:23:16,719
Speaker 1: we will dive into the world of Mesoamerican codices. All right,

431
00:23:16,760 --> 00:23:20,159
Speaker 1: we're back. So uh You're probably some of you are

432
00:23:20,160 --> 00:23:22,360
Speaker 1: probably wondering, well, what about the codices from other parts

433
00:23:22,400 --> 00:23:24,440
Speaker 1: of the world. In fact, some of the more famous

434
00:23:24,480 --> 00:23:26,960
Speaker 1: codices from elsewhere in the world are, for instance, the

435
00:23:26,960 --> 00:23:31,080
Speaker 1: Mayan codices. And despite the name, you know that these

436
00:23:31,119 --> 00:23:35,960
Speaker 1: were these were not UH codices in the strictest sense

437
00:23:36,160 --> 00:23:41,000
Speaker 1: of the word. UM these were typically long folded sheets.

438
00:23:41,640 --> 00:23:45,080
Speaker 1: Um that were there were more in keeping with that

439
00:23:45,080 --> 00:23:49,040
Speaker 1: that accordion style system we were talking about earlier and

440
00:23:49,160 --> 00:23:50,880
Speaker 1: uh and so yeah, if you're being very strict about

441
00:23:50,920 --> 00:23:53,200
Speaker 1: the definition of a codex is as you know, having

442
00:23:53,280 --> 00:23:56,720
Speaker 1: whole flipping pages front and back. Uh, this is not

443
00:23:56,760 --> 00:23:59,520
Speaker 1: going to fit that description. But they are incredible works.

444
00:24:00,040 --> 00:24:04,200
Speaker 1: They reveal a great deal about a Mayan culture. Now

445
00:24:04,400 --> 00:24:08,600
Speaker 1: I've seen them referred to as screenfold codices and uh

446
00:24:08,840 --> 00:24:11,919
Speaker 1: and uh. And some writers such as Victor Wolfgang von Hagen,

447
00:24:12,000 --> 00:24:16,120
Speaker 1: author of UM nineteen forty three's Paper and Civilization, they

448
00:24:16,119 --> 00:24:19,359
Speaker 1: are very firm on the position that these were definitely

449
00:24:19,480 --> 00:24:22,439
Speaker 1: books that you shouldn't you shouldn't try and like skirt

450
00:24:22,480 --> 00:24:24,119
Speaker 1: them out of the you know, the way of the

451
00:24:24,640 --> 00:24:28,920
Speaker 1: book uh categorization, like these were books to be very clear.

452
00:24:29,200 --> 00:24:31,080
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean I think we're in general going

453
00:24:31,119 --> 00:24:33,359
Speaker 1: with the bigger definition of the book as scrolls or

454
00:24:33,400 --> 00:24:36,520
Speaker 1: books as well for us. Yeah. So I was reading

455
00:24:36,520 --> 00:24:40,119
Speaker 1: more about these um about Mayan codices, in particular in

456
00:24:40,320 --> 00:24:43,600
Speaker 1: the Construction of the Codex in Classic and Post Classic

457
00:24:43,680 --> 00:24:48,840
Speaker 1: period Maya Civilization by Dr Thomas J. Tobin of Duquesne University,

458
00:24:48,880 --> 00:24:52,600
Speaker 1: which incidentally, I learned today Werner Herzog attended school there

459
00:24:52,600 --> 00:24:56,680
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties. Everything comes back to her zag though.

460
00:24:56,720 --> 00:24:58,560
Speaker 1: There there again we have a we do have a

461
00:24:58,600 --> 00:25:00,840
Speaker 1: South American connection there with her Bizog, of course, but

462
00:25:01,320 --> 00:25:04,959
Speaker 1: at any rate, um Tobin points out that the Romans

463
00:25:04,960 --> 00:25:07,040
Speaker 1: were making advancements in what we think of as the

464
00:25:07,080 --> 00:25:10,000
Speaker 1: Codex between one hundred and seven hundred see as we

465
00:25:10,000 --> 00:25:13,760
Speaker 1: were previously discussioning, but that that's during that same time

466
00:25:13,800 --> 00:25:18,560
Speaker 1: period the Mayan civilization in meso America was making advances

467
00:25:18,760 --> 00:25:22,640
Speaker 1: in their own recording of information on paper. He writes

468
00:25:22,680 --> 00:25:25,359
Speaker 1: that the Maya developed paper pretty early in the millennium.

469
00:25:25,359 --> 00:25:28,840
Speaker 1: Based on archaeological evidence, they were making bark paper in

470
00:25:28,880 --> 00:25:32,719
Speaker 1: the early fifth century see. Basically, the idea is that

471
00:25:32,760 --> 00:25:36,400
Speaker 1: they were already using bark cloth tunics and from that

472
00:25:36,520 --> 00:25:39,879
Speaker 1: developed huon a writing surface that could be used to

473
00:25:39,920 --> 00:25:43,600
Speaker 1: record information. Now, the cloth and question was apparently a

474
00:25:43,680 --> 00:25:46,359
Speaker 1: kind of tappa cloth, and it was made from not

475
00:25:46,440 --> 00:25:48,919
Speaker 1: the outer bark but the inner bark of certain trees.

476
00:25:49,280 --> 00:25:52,840
Speaker 1: And this evolved into papermaking over time, and the result

477
00:25:52,960 --> 00:25:59,040
Speaker 1: is apparently somewhat superior to papyrus by many estimations. Yeah. Interesting. Uh,

478
00:25:59,119 --> 00:26:01,800
Speaker 1: this is especially in our Here's a quote from from Tobin.

479
00:26:01,960 --> 00:26:05,119
Speaker 1: In this right up quote, the Maya developed paper screen

480
00:26:05,240 --> 00:26:08,920
Speaker 1: fold codices as a direct step beyond carving information into

481
00:26:08,920 --> 00:26:13,240
Speaker 1: stone buildings and steely, unlike Western papermaking, which took him

482
00:26:13,280 --> 00:26:16,879
Speaker 1: more circuitous route to reach its final form single sheets,

483
00:26:16,920 --> 00:26:20,760
Speaker 1: papyrus rolls, and then leafed codices. So I found that

484
00:26:20,760 --> 00:26:23,720
Speaker 1: that interesting. Decided that again the Maya make a a

485
00:26:23,800 --> 00:26:28,280
Speaker 1: direct jump from seemingly from carving into stone to using

486
00:26:28,320 --> 00:26:32,680
Speaker 1: these codices. Huh. Yeah. Now, one of the great tragedies here,

487
00:26:32,720 --> 00:26:36,359
Speaker 1: of course, is that despite records of thousands of Mayan

488
00:26:36,400 --> 00:26:40,360
Speaker 1: codices and the inventories of Spanish conquistors who made contact

489
00:26:40,359 --> 00:26:43,720
Speaker 1: with the Mayans in the sixteenth century, the vast majority

490
00:26:43,800 --> 00:26:46,840
Speaker 1: of these codices were destroyed, uh later due to their

491
00:26:47,400 --> 00:26:50,679
Speaker 1: either either they were seen as being satanic in nature,

492
00:26:50,720 --> 00:26:54,320
Speaker 1: being you know, just you know, there's something dangerous about them,

493
00:26:54,560 --> 00:26:56,720
Speaker 1: or they were just seen as useless, just you know,

494
00:26:56,800 --> 00:26:59,640
Speaker 1: garbage to be disposed of, and so most of them

495
00:26:59,760 --> 00:27:05,040
Speaker 1: were disposed of. Um. But I think, uh, what the

496
00:27:05,119 --> 00:27:07,280
Speaker 1: source I was reading here, they were like they're like

497
00:27:07,359 --> 00:27:10,520
Speaker 1: four complete codices of the Maya's left in the world,

498
00:27:10,880 --> 00:27:13,760
Speaker 1: and that's it, you know, just this vast wealth of information,

499
00:27:13,840 --> 00:27:17,399
Speaker 1: these libraries and information are just lost to us. Just

500
00:27:17,400 --> 00:27:20,200
Speaker 1: just one more horror of the subjugation of the Maya

501
00:27:20,240 --> 00:27:24,600
Speaker 1: people by European invaders. Um. Yeah, that kind of destruction

502
00:27:24,640 --> 00:27:29,240
Speaker 1: of knowledge is just like such a blasphemy. Yeah. So

503
00:27:29,400 --> 00:27:32,000
Speaker 1: like just you know, without getting into the just sort

504
00:27:32,000 --> 00:27:35,080
Speaker 1: of the larger horror of that whole situation. Just in

505
00:27:35,200 --> 00:27:39,200
Speaker 1: terms of trying to understand how the Mayan's made paper,

506
00:27:39,440 --> 00:27:42,480
Speaker 1: you know, what was what what was their original papermaking process,

507
00:27:42,680 --> 00:27:45,199
Speaker 1: it becomes difficult because then researchers have to you know,

508
00:27:45,240 --> 00:27:48,080
Speaker 1: they have to try and reconstruct their methods based on

509
00:27:48,440 --> 00:27:50,439
Speaker 1: you know, the few remaining codicies, but also a lot

510
00:27:50,480 --> 00:27:54,240
Speaker 1: of secondary evidence looking to modern traditions in that part

511
00:27:54,240 --> 00:27:57,000
Speaker 1: of the world and sort of you know, backtracking from that,

512
00:27:57,160 --> 00:27:59,879
Speaker 1: and then of course engaging in a lot of experimentation.

513
00:28:00,240 --> 00:28:03,280
Speaker 1: So Tobin himself tries this out in this paper, uh,

514
00:28:03,320 --> 00:28:05,920
Speaker 1: you know, trying to create his own Mayan paper and

515
00:28:06,000 --> 00:28:09,840
Speaker 1: ultimately his own Mayan uh codex. As best we can tell,

516
00:28:10,160 --> 00:28:14,000
Speaker 1: it was probably an intricate process that by necessity lines

517
00:28:14,080 --> 00:28:16,479
Speaker 1: up with some of the steps used in other paking

518
00:28:16,560 --> 00:28:20,760
Speaker 1: papermaking processes. H. Likewise, there is some guesswork involved in

519
00:28:20,800 --> 00:28:24,080
Speaker 1: the evolution of the craft how it developed from that.

520
00:28:24,119 --> 00:28:26,840
Speaker 1: You know that the garment craft that we already mentioned,

521
00:28:27,240 --> 00:28:30,520
Speaker 1: we ultimately you know, know more with certainty about say

522
00:28:30,560 --> 00:28:34,160
Speaker 1: Egyptian and Chinese papermaking. But you know, it's it's really

523
00:28:34,200 --> 00:28:37,960
Speaker 1: a shame because the Mayan technology was pretty advanced, uh,

524
00:28:38,200 --> 00:28:41,320
Speaker 1: and it hasn't received as much attention, in part due

525
00:28:41,520 --> 00:28:45,160
Speaker 1: to the cultural destruction. I certainly recommend anyone out there

526
00:28:45,400 --> 00:28:47,959
Speaker 1: to to to when you get a chance, look up

527
00:28:47,960 --> 00:28:50,640
Speaker 1: the Mayan codices and look at some of the examples

528
00:28:50,640 --> 00:28:53,840
Speaker 1: of the surviving codices the photographs of them, because they're

529
00:28:53,880 --> 00:28:56,480
Speaker 1: really fascinating with all of the uh, you know, the

530
00:28:56,480 --> 00:29:00,400
Speaker 1: Mayan writing and glyphs inside of it. Uh. They're beautiful

531
00:29:00,400 --> 00:29:01,880
Speaker 1: to behold, and you in some of the pictures you

532
00:29:01,880 --> 00:29:04,360
Speaker 1: can get a real good sense of the folds that

533
00:29:04,400 --> 00:29:08,520
Speaker 1: are involved here. Yeah. Well, especially the symphasis on paper

534
00:29:09,680 --> 00:29:13,440
Speaker 1: brings me back to the materials on which writing is

535
00:29:13,520 --> 00:29:16,840
Speaker 1: preserved and how fundamental that is to the history of

536
00:29:16,880 --> 00:29:19,640
Speaker 1: book technology. Because you know, we talked about in the

537
00:29:19,680 --> 00:29:23,479
Speaker 1: previous episode about the various advantages of parchment and vellum

538
00:29:23,600 --> 00:29:28,120
Speaker 1: versus papyrus. But basically everything we're talking about in the

539
00:29:28,160 --> 00:29:32,280
Speaker 1: ancient world is going to be relatively difficult to produce

540
00:29:32,480 --> 00:29:34,760
Speaker 1: and and you're gonna have a more limited supply of

541
00:29:34,800 --> 00:29:38,720
Speaker 1: it than we would have of, say, say paper today.

542
00:29:38,800 --> 00:29:41,120
Speaker 1: So maybe we should go back and look at another

543
00:29:41,320 --> 00:29:43,600
Speaker 1: branch on the paper tree here and and look at

544
00:29:43,640 --> 00:29:46,520
Speaker 1: the Chinese origins of paper. Yeah, yeah, this is this

545
00:29:46,560 --> 00:29:50,400
Speaker 1: is an area that we know a lot more about. Um. So, yeah,

546
00:29:50,400 --> 00:29:53,400
Speaker 1: previously we touched on the Chinese origins of paper, uh

547
00:29:53,440 --> 00:29:56,200
Speaker 1: in roughly, I think we said one oh five CE,

548
00:29:56,400 --> 00:29:59,760
Speaker 1: and this is nearly a thousand years ahead of the Europeans.

549
00:29:59,840 --> 00:30:02,440
Speaker 1: I think there's some dispute about the dating of the

550
00:30:02,440 --> 00:30:05,200
Speaker 1: originary paper in China. Yeah, yeah, and we'll we'll get

551
00:30:05,240 --> 00:30:07,959
Speaker 1: into some of that here. Traditionally, credit for the invention

552
00:30:08,000 --> 00:30:11,760
Speaker 1: of paper is given to one Psiloon, who was an

553
00:30:11,760 --> 00:30:15,720
Speaker 1: imperial eunuch, and he is said to have created paper

554
00:30:15,920 --> 00:30:20,280
Speaker 1: or g uh, which Andrew Robinson in sevent d Inventions

555
00:30:20,280 --> 00:30:24,120
Speaker 1: of the Ancient World says, was defined in contemporary dictionaries

556
00:30:24,160 --> 00:30:27,880
Speaker 1: as quote a matt of refuse fibers from tree bark,

557
00:30:28,200 --> 00:30:32,680
Speaker 1: hemper remnants, colloth rags, and old fishing nets. Yeah. To

558
00:30:32,760 --> 00:30:35,320
Speaker 1: complement this, I was reading a section in Howard about

559
00:30:35,320 --> 00:30:38,320
Speaker 1: the production of paper here in China, and she says,

560
00:30:38,480 --> 00:30:42,360
Speaker 1: the Chinese originally used silk fiber to make paper. Uh.

561
00:30:42,400 --> 00:30:44,240
Speaker 1: And obviously this would have made a paper of a

562
00:30:44,320 --> 00:30:47,200
Speaker 1: high quality, but this was going to be very expensive,

563
00:30:47,640 --> 00:30:50,640
Speaker 1: and over time this was replaced with hemp fiber, which

564
00:30:50,680 --> 00:30:53,800
Speaker 1: was cheaper, and then after that replaced with the sort

565
00:30:53,840 --> 00:30:56,760
Speaker 1: of melange of things you're talking about it, she says,

566
00:30:56,800 --> 00:31:00,240
Speaker 1: a quote a combination of bark, scraps of rag that

567
00:31:00,280 --> 00:31:04,200
Speaker 1: had been discarded and bast fiber. And remember we mentioned

568
00:31:04,240 --> 00:31:07,840
Speaker 1: bast fiber in the last episode. It's the vascular tissue

569
00:31:07,880 --> 00:31:11,120
Speaker 1: of a plant that the plant uses to transport vital

570
00:31:11,240 --> 00:31:15,280
Speaker 1: organic compounds produced by photosynthesis from one place to another

571
00:31:15,320 --> 00:31:17,720
Speaker 1: within the plant's body. So it's kind of like a

572
00:31:17,760 --> 00:31:21,720
Speaker 1: plant's arteries. You can imagine ropes and ancient paper made

573
00:31:21,760 --> 00:31:25,160
Speaker 1: out of plant arteries. Yeah, kind of the scaffolding for

574
00:31:25,160 --> 00:31:28,520
Speaker 1: the paper. Right. But so the process for this was

575
00:31:28,560 --> 00:31:31,280
Speaker 1: that you would put all these various fibrous materials into

576
00:31:31,320 --> 00:31:33,920
Speaker 1: a big vat of water, and then you would soak

577
00:31:34,000 --> 00:31:37,080
Speaker 1: them through until they became a kind of pulp or paste,

578
00:31:37,600 --> 00:31:39,800
Speaker 1: and then you would do your best to mix up

579
00:31:39,840 --> 00:31:43,120
Speaker 1: and thoroughly emulsify the paste, and then you would press

580
00:31:43,160 --> 00:31:46,040
Speaker 1: it flat to squeeze the water out, and then when

581
00:31:46,040 --> 00:31:49,520
Speaker 1: it dried, you would have a crude form of paper. Um.

582
00:31:49,680 --> 00:31:51,760
Speaker 1: And just thinking about the roll of the water here

583
00:31:51,880 --> 00:31:55,240
Speaker 1: I I couldn't help but be reminded of our recent

584
00:31:55,280 --> 00:31:58,160
Speaker 1: episode on soap, and it just makes me appreciate again

585
00:31:58,840 --> 00:32:02,240
Speaker 1: how much usually just passes by us unnoticed, regarding the

586
00:32:02,280 --> 00:32:06,520
Speaker 1: deep connections between chemistry and the more human subjects like

587
00:32:06,640 --> 00:32:10,760
Speaker 1: history and culture and literature, Like how the molecular properties

588
00:32:10,800 --> 00:32:14,479
Speaker 1: of water are so deeply entwined in life and history

589
00:32:14,480 --> 00:32:17,680
Speaker 1: and everything we know because of these polar opposite charges

590
00:32:17,720 --> 00:32:20,840
Speaker 1: across the length of the water molecule, the potency of

591
00:32:20,840 --> 00:32:24,120
Speaker 1: those charges to dissolve and ingest the corn ucopia of

592
00:32:24,120 --> 00:32:27,640
Speaker 1: the material world. Water is, of course, the defining substance

593
00:32:27,640 --> 00:32:30,520
Speaker 1: of all cells and life processes. Remember that quota we

594
00:32:30,560 --> 00:32:34,240
Speaker 1: talked about on the soap episode. The Hungarian biochemist Albert

595
00:32:34,680 --> 00:32:38,200
Speaker 1: sent Gurgi, who said that quote, life could leave the

596
00:32:38,240 --> 00:32:41,080
Speaker 1: ocean when it learned to grow a skin bag in

597
00:32:41,120 --> 00:32:43,600
Speaker 1: which to take the water with it. We're still living

598
00:32:43,680 --> 00:32:47,560
Speaker 1: in water, having the water now inside. Yeah, and we'll

599
00:32:47,560 --> 00:32:51,200
Speaker 1: continue to to stress here just how important water is

600
00:32:51,280 --> 00:32:56,000
Speaker 1: to this advance of of paper and ultimately bookmaking technology.

601
00:32:56,040 --> 00:32:58,280
Speaker 1: It's enough to make you wonder if you had, say

602
00:32:58,320 --> 00:33:01,160
Speaker 1: a desert world like um, I don't know, like like

603
00:33:01,200 --> 00:33:05,920
Speaker 1: tattooing in Star Wars, right, Like could a world like that? Um, Like,

604
00:33:05,960 --> 00:33:07,800
Speaker 1: what with the world like that, what would be the

605
00:33:07,880 --> 00:33:13,000
Speaker 1: chances of sentient life forms developing paper that is that

606
00:33:13,000 --> 00:33:15,040
Speaker 1: that functions in the same way our paper was. It

607
00:33:15,040 --> 00:33:16,520
Speaker 1: seems like they might even have to have like a

608
00:33:16,560 --> 00:33:21,320
Speaker 1: different material um solution to the same problem. Well, yeah,

609
00:33:21,320 --> 00:33:23,560
Speaker 1: I mean for the same reasons you would have a

610
00:33:23,560 --> 00:33:26,080
Speaker 1: hard time imagining paper, you would have a hard time

611
00:33:26,120 --> 00:33:29,080
Speaker 1: imagining life forms at all, just because, like, it's the

612
00:33:29,120 --> 00:33:31,959
Speaker 1: same reason that water is the substance of life on

613
00:33:32,040 --> 00:33:34,800
Speaker 1: Earth and the step ladder of all life and technology.

614
00:33:34,840 --> 00:33:37,480
Speaker 1: It's the same reason that water is good for washing

615
00:33:37,480 --> 00:33:39,720
Speaker 1: your hands in your dishes, and now it's also the

616
00:33:39,760 --> 00:33:42,120
Speaker 1: same reason that it's used to make this pulp that

617
00:33:42,160 --> 00:33:45,280
Speaker 1: we squeeze into paper. It's just the ultimate dissolver and

618
00:33:45,520 --> 00:33:48,440
Speaker 1: ingestor of all things. Uh. Sorry, I guess that's kind

619
00:33:48,440 --> 00:33:51,000
Speaker 1: of a digression. But every now and then you just

620
00:33:51,040 --> 00:33:53,120
Speaker 1: got to go down the water hole. Oh yeah, yeah,

621
00:33:53,120 --> 00:33:54,360
Speaker 1: And like I said, we'll keep going down in the

622
00:33:54,360 --> 00:33:56,840
Speaker 1: water hole in this episode. Well, well, let's come back

623
00:33:56,880 --> 00:34:01,240
Speaker 1: to um. That idea of China, the Chinese area of paper, uh,

624
00:34:01,360 --> 00:34:04,120
Speaker 1: coming in roughly one oh five c E. Again, that's

625
00:34:04,120 --> 00:34:08,400
Speaker 1: the traditional story. However, there is archaeological evidence that indicates

626
00:34:08,840 --> 00:34:11,000
Speaker 1: that a very early form of paper might have been

627
00:34:11,040 --> 00:34:15,400
Speaker 1: in use and western China, the UM much earlier than this,

628
00:34:15,480 --> 00:34:19,400
Speaker 1: pushing the probable beginnings of Chinese paper back to perhaps

629
00:34:19,480 --> 00:34:24,239
Speaker 1: the second century b CE in tropical south and southeastern China.

630
00:34:24,440 --> 00:34:27,120
Speaker 1: Robinson even says that it's possible it began in the

631
00:34:27,200 --> 00:34:31,040
Speaker 1: sixth or fifth centuries b c E, as this is

632
00:34:31,120 --> 00:34:35,080
Speaker 1: when we've dated the washings of himp and linen rags too.

633
00:34:35,440 --> 00:34:39,200
Speaker 1: The idea here is that someone might have accidentally discovered

634
00:34:39,239 --> 00:34:43,319
Speaker 1: paper making while drying wet fibers on a mat, which

635
00:34:43,360 --> 00:34:46,720
Speaker 1: indeed is very central to some of the paper making

636
00:34:47,480 --> 00:34:50,240
Speaker 1: techniques that we're discussing here and will continue to discussing

637
00:34:50,280 --> 00:34:54,000
Speaker 1: this episode. So if I'm understanding this right. The hypothesis

638
00:34:54,120 --> 00:34:58,360
Speaker 1: is maybe somebody was washing some old rags and hemp

639
00:34:58,440 --> 00:35:00,880
Speaker 1: and stuff in water and then left it there for

640
00:35:00,920 --> 00:35:03,480
Speaker 1: a while and then it started to kind of mush

641
00:35:03,600 --> 00:35:06,080
Speaker 1: up and turn into this pulp in the water, and

642
00:35:06,120 --> 00:35:08,920
Speaker 1: then they tried to dry it out and it formed

643
00:35:09,040 --> 00:35:12,080
Speaker 1: this this substance. Right. Though again this would be like

644
00:35:12,080 --> 00:35:15,759
Speaker 1: a big question. It's basically saying the thing that we

645
00:35:15,840 --> 00:35:19,879
Speaker 1: think people were doing to accidentally discover paper, they were

646
00:35:19,920 --> 00:35:23,640
Speaker 1: doing it far before we're dating the discovery of paper.

647
00:35:23,760 --> 00:35:26,239
Speaker 1: So there's a certain amount of guesswork there. Did they

648
00:35:26,280 --> 00:35:29,919
Speaker 1: or didn't they? It's impossible to say. I do want

649
00:35:29,920 --> 00:35:33,240
Speaker 1: to note that there are other historians, such as um

650
00:35:33,280 --> 00:35:36,960
Speaker 1: A History of China author John Key is a source

651
00:35:37,000 --> 00:35:40,400
Speaker 1: I come back to uh again and again for Chinese

652
00:35:40,440 --> 00:35:43,480
Speaker 1: history related matters, and he, for one, seems to stick

653
00:35:43,520 --> 00:35:46,680
Speaker 1: to the first and second centuries CE as the origins

654
00:35:46,719 --> 00:35:49,760
Speaker 1: of paper. And I think this is probably a matter

655
00:35:49,880 --> 00:35:52,799
Speaker 1: of you know, what has proven and recorded versus what

656
00:35:52,960 --> 00:35:57,399
Speaker 1: seems possible based on additional evidence. Uh So, I think

657
00:35:57,480 --> 00:36:00,640
Speaker 1: either way, it's it's fair to say that paper was

658
00:36:00,680 --> 00:36:03,560
Speaker 1: a product of the Han dynasty, which you know, gives

659
00:36:03,600 --> 00:36:06,840
Speaker 1: us a nice. Uh, A nice spread between two O,

660
00:36:06,960 --> 00:36:11,080
Speaker 1: two b C and two Okay, but we do know

661
00:36:11,160 --> 00:36:15,319
Speaker 1: once paper was established UH in China did spread out

662
00:36:15,400 --> 00:36:18,560
Speaker 1: from there, right right, paper would have spread from China

663
00:36:18,640 --> 00:36:22,560
Speaker 1: to Korea, Vietnam and Japan, and eventually it would follow

664
00:36:22,600 --> 00:36:25,280
Speaker 1: the Silk Road out of the East into Central Asia

665
00:36:25,640 --> 00:36:29,080
Speaker 1: and then the Arab world. UM. I was reading more

666
00:36:29,120 --> 00:36:33,480
Speaker 1: about this in the books of James Burke, specifically Connections

667
00:36:33,880 --> 00:36:36,560
Speaker 1: and The Daily Universe Changed, both of which were also

668
00:36:36,920 --> 00:36:38,640
Speaker 1: television series that I know of a lot of our

669
00:36:38,680 --> 00:36:44,120
Speaker 1: listeners UH grew up watching as well. So more specifically,

670
00:36:44,400 --> 00:36:48,520
Speaker 1: Burke points out that, uh, the Arabs end up acquiring

671
00:36:49,440 --> 00:36:56,359
Speaker 1: paper technology when they overran Um summerkand in seven, during

672
00:36:56,360 --> 00:36:59,120
Speaker 1: which they captured Chinese workmen who had been sent there

673
00:36:59,440 --> 00:37:04,120
Speaker 1: to set up a paper manufacturing factory and samarcandas that

674
00:37:04,160 --> 00:37:08,359
Speaker 1: would be in what is Central Asia like modern days Pakistan. Yeah, yeah,

675
00:37:08,400 --> 00:37:12,000
Speaker 1: so like basically the Chinese had papermaking interests there and

676
00:37:12,560 --> 00:37:15,920
Speaker 1: when Arab forces overran the city, Uh, they ended up

677
00:37:16,719 --> 00:37:19,680
Speaker 1: capturing the workmen and learned about it that way, and

678
00:37:19,440 --> 00:37:22,480
Speaker 1: it took off from there. By ten fifty, for example,

679
00:37:22,640 --> 00:37:27,560
Speaker 1: the Byzantine Empire was importing Arab paper. Now. Uh. There

680
00:37:27,560 --> 00:37:30,239
Speaker 1: are some wonderful sections in both books where Burke talks

681
00:37:30,280 --> 00:37:34,040
Speaker 1: about about paper in the Arab world in the day

682
00:37:34,080 --> 00:37:37,960
Speaker 1: the universe changed. He points out that the availability of

683
00:37:38,000 --> 00:37:42,239
Speaker 1: paper quote, encouraged the development of a highly literate community,

684
00:37:42,480 --> 00:37:47,920
Speaker 1: with regular postal services delivering correspondences as far away as India.

685
00:37:48,160 --> 00:37:50,360
Speaker 1: And he also points to the air abuse of paper

686
00:37:50,400 --> 00:37:54,600
Speaker 1: money which played into export and import duties. Yeah. This

687
00:37:54,680 --> 00:37:58,239
Speaker 1: already suggests a very interesting back and forth between material

688
00:37:58,280 --> 00:38:01,920
Speaker 1: economics and literary culture, like the idea of the presence

689
00:38:01,960 --> 00:38:06,040
Speaker 1: of a cheaper medium for transmitting the written word potentially

690
00:38:06,080 --> 00:38:10,000
Speaker 1: allowing a culture to become more literary just because like

691
00:38:10,080 --> 00:38:13,239
Speaker 1: it's easier to produce written materials. Yeah. I found this

692
00:38:13,320 --> 00:38:16,360
Speaker 1: to be at a fascinating passage. Again, just Burt talking

693
00:38:16,400 --> 00:38:19,239
Speaker 1: about the the the the Arab world by virtue of

694
00:38:19,280 --> 00:38:23,040
Speaker 1: their paper technology, just having this this highly literate community

695
00:38:23,120 --> 00:38:26,919
Speaker 1: and the better communication. Yeah. And of course papermaking would

696
00:38:26,920 --> 00:38:29,600
Speaker 1: go on to become an important industry. And like the

697
00:38:29,600 --> 00:38:32,839
Speaker 1: medieval Islamic world, and you can you can chart the

698
00:38:32,920 --> 00:38:36,480
Speaker 1: pathway that paper took through the medieval Islamic world to

699
00:38:36,680 --> 00:38:40,840
Speaker 1: medieval Europe. There was some initial resistance to to paper

700
00:38:40,880 --> 00:38:43,000
Speaker 1: in Europe. I was reading about this in Howard's book.

701
00:38:43,080 --> 00:38:46,400
Speaker 1: She says that, quote, Uh, in twelve twenty one, the

702
00:38:46,440 --> 00:38:50,040
Speaker 1: Holy Roman Emperor Frederick the second issued a decree that

703
00:38:50,160 --> 00:38:55,120
Speaker 1: invalidated any government documents written on paper, such a Muslim

704
00:38:55,200 --> 00:39:00,000
Speaker 1: tool being unwelcome in christened which would an amazingly ridiculou

705
00:39:00,040 --> 00:39:03,160
Speaker 1: this gesture. But she she points out that the sanction

706
00:39:03,360 --> 00:39:06,920
Speaker 1: was not effective. She says, quote, paper mills spread quickly

707
00:39:06,960 --> 00:39:10,360
Speaker 1: throughout Europe, and his mills became more efficient, costs dropped,

708
00:39:10,360 --> 00:39:12,920
Speaker 1: and in the fifteenth century, uh to the to the

709
00:39:12,920 --> 00:39:15,920
Speaker 1: point where paper was one six the price of vellum.

710
00:39:16,160 --> 00:39:18,840
Speaker 1: So it's just like the material advantages and the cheapness

711
00:39:18,840 --> 00:39:23,800
Speaker 1: of paper overcame whatever kind of attempted bands or cultural

712
00:39:23,880 --> 00:39:27,280
Speaker 1: prejudice that we're attempting to keep paper out of Europe.

713
00:39:27,520 --> 00:39:30,200
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely, And we'll come back to this UH

714
00:39:30,239 --> 00:39:33,560
Speaker 1: in a bit, UH, because this is the prejudice against

715
00:39:33,560 --> 00:39:36,800
Speaker 1: the new new paper is UH is such a wonderful topic.

716
00:39:37,400 --> 00:39:39,719
Speaker 1: But first I'd like to go back to China for

717
00:39:39,800 --> 00:39:43,080
Speaker 1: just a minute, UH with a word on printed books,

718
00:39:43,640 --> 00:39:45,520
Speaker 1: because this was also really cool. I was again, I

719
00:39:45,520 --> 00:39:47,560
Speaker 1: was reading in Keys A History of China, which is

720
00:39:47,600 --> 00:39:51,960
Speaker 1: a nice suitably thick tone, but concise tone, mobile mobile

721
00:39:52,040 --> 00:39:55,000
Speaker 1: tone about the you know, the epic history of China.

722
00:39:55,600 --> 00:39:58,719
Speaker 1: He discusses in one part a Buddhist book titled the

723
00:39:58,760 --> 00:40:03,319
Speaker 1: Diamond Sutra, which is an old uh Mayana sutra that

724
00:40:03,440 --> 00:40:06,520
Speaker 1: was translated into various languages first and I think four

725
00:40:06,600 --> 00:40:09,400
Speaker 1: hundred c e. And it was so called the diamond

726
00:40:09,480 --> 00:40:13,120
Speaker 1: Sutra because for those who mastered it, mastered its teachings.

727
00:40:13,400 --> 00:40:16,319
Speaker 1: It was said to cut away all worldly illusions like

728
00:40:16,360 --> 00:40:20,759
Speaker 1: a diamond. So there's a Tang dynasty translation that was

729
00:40:20,920 --> 00:40:25,239
Speaker 1: found uncovered again in nineteen hundred C. And it was

730
00:40:25,320 --> 00:40:30,200
Speaker 1: subsequently dated to May eleven, eight sixty eight C. And

731
00:40:30,239 --> 00:40:34,479
Speaker 1: it consisted of seven printed pages pasted together to form

732
00:40:34,520 --> 00:40:38,400
Speaker 1: a scroll. Now Key points out that this is sometimes

733
00:40:38,480 --> 00:40:42,200
Speaker 1: wrongfully cited as the world's first printed book, but then

734
00:40:42,239 --> 00:40:46,440
Speaker 1: he adds quote replicating images and written characters using inked

735
00:40:46,440 --> 00:40:50,399
Speaker 1: blocks carved in relief, a process not much removed from

736
00:40:50,440 --> 00:40:54,040
Speaker 1: that used for making molds for ceramics and medals, had

737
00:40:54,080 --> 00:40:57,320
Speaker 1: been practiced in China since at least the eighth century.

738
00:40:57,360 --> 00:41:00,600
Speaker 1: But it is the oldest complete printed text with a

739
00:41:00,719 --> 00:41:04,480
Speaker 1: date a date. Yeah. Uh and uh again this is

740
00:41:04,520 --> 00:41:06,680
Speaker 1: one worth looking up a picture of because it's really

741
00:41:06,719 --> 00:41:10,120
Speaker 1: beautiful to look at the the art inside, um uh

742
00:41:10,680 --> 00:41:13,799
Speaker 1: is just absolutely beautiful. Uh. Yes, so I was reading

743
00:41:13,800 --> 00:41:17,160
Speaker 1: others considered this to be the oldest surviving printed book

744
00:41:17,239 --> 00:41:20,520
Speaker 1: in the world, and it's it's worth noting. He makes

745
00:41:20,520 --> 00:41:22,600
Speaker 1: a Key makes a point on this. Uh. This was

746
00:41:22,800 --> 00:41:26,960
Speaker 1: seven centuries before Gutenberg. This was eleven centuries before the

747
00:41:27,000 --> 00:41:30,600
Speaker 1: printing of India's scripts. Key contends that this was quote

748
00:41:30,840 --> 00:41:34,960
Speaker 1: undoubtedly the most momentous of all Chinese inventions. As a result,

749
00:41:35,200 --> 00:41:38,640
Speaker 1: Europe and India still have dozens of languages and literatures,

750
00:41:38,640 --> 00:41:43,359
Speaker 1: but China only one. Uh. Now, he's you know, making

751
00:41:43,400 --> 00:41:47,480
Speaker 1: he's not saying that China only has one language per

752
00:41:47,480 --> 00:41:51,000
Speaker 1: se here, because obviously China has numerous languages. Um. But

753
00:41:51,320 --> 00:41:54,880
Speaker 1: but just talking about the consolidated um uh, you know,

754
00:41:55,239 --> 00:41:59,320
Speaker 1: focus on a single literature in a single language within

755
00:41:59,520 --> 00:42:02,600
Speaker 1: Chinese history. Yeah. Well, I think this would go back

756
00:42:02,600 --> 00:42:05,720
Speaker 1: to what we talked about in the Chinese Typewriter episode,

757
00:42:05,800 --> 00:42:08,680
Speaker 1: right with the idea that the am I correct in

758
00:42:08,719 --> 00:42:12,560
Speaker 1: thinking the different spoken languages of Chinese would still use

759
00:42:12,640 --> 00:42:17,319
Speaker 1: the same written script. Yes, yes, absolutely, yeah, uh and yeah.

760
00:42:17,440 --> 00:42:19,160
Speaker 1: I will remind people if you're interested in that. If

761
00:42:19,160 --> 00:42:21,720
Speaker 1: you want more about Chinese language, go back and listen

762
00:42:21,760 --> 00:42:24,320
Speaker 1: to that. Was it one episode or two? I can't recall.

763
00:42:24,719 --> 00:42:27,960
Speaker 1: I think it was one, one really long episode about

764
00:42:28,000 --> 00:42:32,120
Speaker 1: the Chinese typewriter. Yeah. We talked with the author Thomas S. Mulaney,

765
00:42:32,160 --> 00:42:36,360
Speaker 1: who wrote Chinese Typewriter, a History. In his book, Keys

766
00:42:36,400 --> 00:42:41,000
Speaker 1: stresses that the real infotech revolution took place mostly during

767
00:42:41,040 --> 00:42:44,400
Speaker 1: the Five Dynasty's Ten Kingdoms period, which would have been

768
00:42:44,480 --> 00:42:47,960
Speaker 1: nine oh seven to nine seventy nine. The first use

769
00:42:48,000 --> 00:42:51,360
Speaker 1: of movable type may also date to this period, he adds,

770
00:42:51,520 --> 00:42:54,799
Speaker 1: but the earliest authoritative account of it being used would

771
00:42:54,800 --> 00:42:58,040
Speaker 1: come a few decades later, in the early eleventh century.

772
00:42:58,320 --> 00:42:59,960
Speaker 1: All right, I think we need to take another break,

773
00:43:00,120 --> 00:43:02,760
Speaker 1: but when we come back, we can discuss paper making

774
00:43:02,800 --> 00:43:09,560
Speaker 1: its way to European alright, we're back now. Earlier we

775
00:43:09,600 --> 00:43:12,840
Speaker 1: already mentioned the idea of the influx of paper making

776
00:43:12,880 --> 00:43:16,600
Speaker 1: technology into Europe through the Muslim world in the Middle Ages,

777
00:43:16,680 --> 00:43:19,960
Speaker 1: and some attempts to to to stem the tide of

778
00:43:20,320 --> 00:43:24,240
Speaker 1: oncoming paper technology, but ultimately any attempts of those sorts

779
00:43:24,239 --> 00:43:27,720
Speaker 1: would fail. Paper was destined to be the writing material

780
00:43:27,760 --> 00:43:31,040
Speaker 1: of choice. That's right, And so we already discussed wherey

781
00:43:31,080 --> 00:43:34,160
Speaker 1: where he mentioned how paper from the Arab world is

782
00:43:34,200 --> 00:43:37,719
Speaker 1: going to make its way into Europe. Now specifically it

783
00:43:37,840 --> 00:43:41,560
Speaker 1: ends up spreading through the Arab world to Moorish Spain,

784
00:43:42,000 --> 00:43:46,719
Speaker 1: specifically um I believe it's pronounced Sha Tiva, which is

785
00:43:46,760 --> 00:43:50,040
Speaker 1: south of Valencia, and this is where the Moore's established

786
00:43:50,040 --> 00:43:54,640
Speaker 1: paper mills, and from here the technology spread to Christian Europe. Now,

787
00:43:54,640 --> 00:43:58,360
Speaker 1: an interesting note from Burke about paper making technology in

788
00:43:58,400 --> 00:44:02,000
Speaker 1: both connections and the day the univer change. Water powered

789
00:44:02,040 --> 00:44:05,640
Speaker 1: paper milling was in effect by at least twelve eighty.

790
00:44:05,800 --> 00:44:09,279
Speaker 1: Again the power of water coming into play here where

791
00:44:09,280 --> 00:44:13,000
Speaker 1: where it was used in the Italian marshes. Basically, water

792
00:44:13,160 --> 00:44:16,440
Speaker 1: powered trip hammers were used in these factories to pound

793
00:44:16,560 --> 00:44:19,760
Speaker 1: linen that was submerged in water to produce a white

794
00:44:19,840 --> 00:44:23,200
Speaker 1: pulp which has then spread out to dry on wire

795
00:44:23,360 --> 00:44:26,800
Speaker 1: mesh and then pressed in a screw press to squeeze

796
00:44:26,800 --> 00:44:28,600
Speaker 1: the water out and then you would hang it up

797
00:44:28,640 --> 00:44:32,160
Speaker 1: to dry. Uh. And then here's another fund. This is

798
00:44:32,440 --> 00:44:36,640
Speaker 1: a classic connections here. Burke wrights that the timing was

799
00:44:36,760 --> 00:44:40,320
Speaker 1: just right on the mesh front, because again it was

800
00:44:40,360 --> 00:44:43,279
Speaker 1: like a metal mesh, and it was the work of

801
00:44:43,360 --> 00:44:47,440
Speaker 1: tailors who had far less work to do following the

802
00:44:47,520 --> 00:44:51,120
Speaker 1: Black Death. These were craftspeople who would have previously been

803
00:44:51,160 --> 00:44:55,040
Speaker 1: stitching gold and silver threads into garments, but now in

804
00:44:55,040 --> 00:44:57,800
Speaker 1: the wake of the Black Death there was garment making

805
00:44:57,960 --> 00:45:01,040
Speaker 1: was was was less of a business. There was there

806
00:45:01,080 --> 00:45:03,719
Speaker 1: was less of it to go around. So these very

807
00:45:04,200 --> 00:45:07,640
Speaker 1: crafts people were now making these fine meshes that were

808
00:45:07,680 --> 00:45:11,120
Speaker 1: so important to the paper making process. Anyway, back to

809
00:45:11,200 --> 00:45:14,760
Speaker 1: the water powered paper factories here. By the fourteenth century,

810
00:45:14,800 --> 00:45:18,360
Speaker 1: these new advancements in in the water power technology allowed

811
00:45:18,480 --> 00:45:22,000
Speaker 1: linen rags, which were collected by rag and bone men

812
00:45:22,200 --> 00:45:24,600
Speaker 1: a lot of the times, to be pounded into cheap,

813
00:45:24,760 --> 00:45:27,480
Speaker 1: durable paper, and by the end of the fourteenth century

814
00:45:27,520 --> 00:45:30,520
Speaker 1: the price of paper in Bologna had dropped by four

815
00:45:30,600 --> 00:45:35,279
Speaker 1: hundred percent, So this was cheaper than parchment. But parchment purist,

816
00:45:35,600 --> 00:45:38,719
Speaker 1: they some of them resisted the change, insisting that, well,

817
00:45:38,840 --> 00:45:41,640
Speaker 1: parchment can last a thousand years, but this new paper,

818
00:45:41,760 --> 00:45:45,160
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, i'd grant I think parchment

819
00:45:45,239 --> 00:45:50,600
Speaker 1: probably is more durable than paper, right, yeah, four cheaper,

820
00:45:51,040 --> 00:45:54,400
Speaker 1: you know, it's hard to argue with that. It certainly is.

821
00:45:55,160 --> 00:45:57,360
Speaker 1: Now I want to throw in a note about rag

822
00:45:57,440 --> 00:45:59,520
Speaker 1: and bone men. Now some of you might hear that,

823
00:45:59,560 --> 00:46:02,279
Speaker 1: and you might well, this sounds like reanimate corpses that

824
00:46:02,320 --> 00:46:06,640
Speaker 1: are doing the will of the of the papermakers. Uh. No,

825
00:46:06,840 --> 00:46:09,480
Speaker 1: they were not. They were, but they were impoverished junk

826
00:46:09,520 --> 00:46:12,520
Speaker 1: dealers that traveled around England. They were also known as

827
00:46:12,600 --> 00:46:17,279
Speaker 1: bone grubbers, and they did indeed scavenge bones as well

828
00:46:17,320 --> 00:46:20,920
Speaker 1: as junk for resale. In fact, burke rights and connections

829
00:46:20,920 --> 00:46:23,680
Speaker 1: that the bone scavenging, uh that you know that was

830
00:46:23,719 --> 00:46:26,560
Speaker 1: previously their main gig was all about collecting the bones

831
00:46:26,640 --> 00:46:30,200
Speaker 1: for use in fertilizer. But they then came to collect

832
00:46:30,239 --> 00:46:34,279
Speaker 1: and sell old rags to the paper makers, and it

833
00:46:34,360 --> 00:46:38,000
Speaker 1: was a tradition that lasted for centuries. Linen rags especially

834
00:46:38,040 --> 00:46:41,799
Speaker 1: were excellent raw materials for high quality, durable paper. Man.

835
00:46:41,840 --> 00:46:43,640
Speaker 1: That brings to mind a couple of things. First of all,

836
00:46:43,719 --> 00:46:46,880
Speaker 1: like this, uh, the class of people who collect things

837
00:46:46,960 --> 00:46:50,360
Speaker 1: counterintuitively that they can sell to well, it makes me

838
00:46:50,400 --> 00:46:53,000
Speaker 1: think of an ancient Rome, the people who collected urine

839
00:46:53,480 --> 00:46:56,520
Speaker 1: from from city latrines in order to sell to you know,

840
00:46:56,680 --> 00:47:00,399
Speaker 1: laundries and and the various businesses that used urine for

841
00:47:00,960 --> 00:47:03,360
Speaker 1: you know, its properties at the time. I remember, I

842
00:47:03,360 --> 00:47:06,799
Speaker 1: believe it was the Emperor Vespasian who first put a

843
00:47:06,880 --> 00:47:10,200
Speaker 1: tax on urine in order to support something he wanted

844
00:47:10,239 --> 00:47:13,360
Speaker 1: to do. And that's where the phrase money has no

845
00:47:13,480 --> 00:47:16,680
Speaker 1: smell comes from. You know. Somebody was like challenging him

846
00:47:16,680 --> 00:47:19,240
Speaker 1: on this and saying, the tax on urine to raise funds,

847
00:47:19,280 --> 00:47:22,440
Speaker 1: that's disgusting, and he's like, I don't smell anything on

848
00:47:22,480 --> 00:47:26,400
Speaker 1: the money. Urine also a friend of the the alchemist,

849
00:47:26,520 --> 00:47:29,160
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, yeah. Who was it who had the big

850
00:47:29,160 --> 00:47:33,399
Speaker 1: old that of urine experiment? Oh goodness, that was when

851
00:47:33,400 --> 00:47:35,879
Speaker 1: we were talking about this is when in our history

852
00:47:35,920 --> 00:47:38,280
Speaker 1: the match we got into this. Yeah, when the Invention

853
00:47:38,320 --> 00:47:41,440
Speaker 1: episode about the match. Um, I forget that the exact

854
00:47:41,840 --> 00:47:44,840
Speaker 1: timetable there, but yeah, there were some key alchemists that

855
00:47:44,960 --> 00:47:49,400
Speaker 1: were experimenting with urine and nnick bround it was the

856
00:47:49,400 --> 00:47:53,560
Speaker 1: big yeah, yes, yeah, yeah, I remember that now. So yeah,

857
00:47:53,560 --> 00:47:56,480
Speaker 1: if you want more urine based content, go look up

858
00:47:56,520 --> 00:47:59,600
Speaker 1: that Invention episode on the match stick. You know, for

859
00:47:59,640 --> 00:48:02,680
Speaker 1: a brief literary digression, I could not help but think

860
00:48:02,719 --> 00:48:04,759
Speaker 1: when you were talking about the rag and Bone Man,

861
00:48:04,880 --> 00:48:08,160
Speaker 1: the rag and Bone Collectors. I couldn't help but think

862
00:48:08,200 --> 00:48:11,360
Speaker 1: about the poem The Circus Animals Desertion by the famous

863
00:48:11,400 --> 00:48:14,880
Speaker 1: Irish poet William Butler Yates, and its image of the

864
00:48:14,920 --> 00:48:19,280
Speaker 1: foul rag and bone shop of the heart. This is

865
00:48:19,440 --> 00:48:21,759
Speaker 1: it's it's really interesting. So this poem was written in

866
00:48:21,760 --> 00:48:24,359
Speaker 1: the final years of yates his life, and in the

867
00:48:24,360 --> 00:48:27,640
Speaker 1: early parts of the poem he describes a kind of

868
00:48:27,760 --> 00:48:32,320
Speaker 1: poetic jealousy of his younger self, based in the agony

869
00:48:32,480 --> 00:48:36,719
Speaker 1: of feeling that the imagination and inspiration that came so

870
00:48:36,800 --> 00:48:39,880
Speaker 1: easily to him in youth have now abandoned him, and

871
00:48:39,920 --> 00:48:43,200
Speaker 1: he finds himself in old age struggling to find something

872
00:48:43,280 --> 00:48:47,480
Speaker 1: meaningful or interesting to say. Uh So, in instant you

873
00:48:47,480 --> 00:48:50,000
Speaker 1: know if you if you ever felt yourself in one

874
00:48:50,000 --> 00:48:52,280
Speaker 1: of those right early moods, you will know the agony

875
00:48:52,320 --> 00:48:57,120
Speaker 1: of it. Uh Instead, he finds himself nostalgically obsessing about

876
00:48:57,120 --> 00:48:59,640
Speaker 1: the characters and themes that he had written about in

877
00:48:59,680 --> 00:49:03,080
Speaker 1: early your poems of his, one of those subjects being

878
00:49:03,120 --> 00:49:05,960
Speaker 1: one of our favorite mythical buddies, the Irish hero Kukulan

879
00:49:06,040 --> 00:49:10,680
Speaker 1: or Kuhlan. Uh So, he just to read a couple

880
00:49:10,680 --> 00:49:12,919
Speaker 1: of these lines. He's you know, he's musing on these

881
00:49:12,920 --> 00:49:15,680
Speaker 1: things he used to write about all the time, he says,

882
00:49:15,719 --> 00:49:18,440
Speaker 1: And when the fool and blind man stole the bread,

883
00:49:18,800 --> 00:49:23,759
Speaker 1: Kucullen fought the ungovernable see heart mysteries there. And yet

884
00:49:23,800 --> 00:49:27,440
Speaker 1: when all is said, it was the dream itself enchanted me,

885
00:49:28,120 --> 00:49:31,799
Speaker 1: character isolated by a deed to engross the present and

886
00:49:31,920 --> 00:49:36,080
Speaker 1: dominate memory. Players and painted stage took all my love,

887
00:49:36,520 --> 00:49:39,759
Speaker 1: and not those things that they were emblems of, Which

888
00:49:39,800 --> 00:49:42,600
Speaker 1: is an interesting admission, Like he's saying, I think that,

889
00:49:42,719 --> 00:49:46,160
Speaker 1: you know, he once believed he was using mythical figures

890
00:49:46,160 --> 00:49:50,440
Speaker 1: and stories as metaphors or allegory to convey some underlying

891
00:49:50,520 --> 00:49:54,719
Speaker 1: message about principles or politics or whatever, but now admits

892
00:49:54,800 --> 00:49:57,719
Speaker 1: that the underlying message was always sort of a pretense,

893
00:49:57,800 --> 00:50:01,920
Speaker 1: and what he really liked were the mythical elements themselves,

894
00:50:02,000 --> 00:50:05,080
Speaker 1: that their face value. He liked the heroes, he liked

895
00:50:05,080 --> 00:50:07,480
Speaker 1: the settings, He like the images. Yeah, this is not

896
00:50:07,520 --> 00:50:09,160
Speaker 1: a work of his. I was familiar with that, but

897
00:50:09,200 --> 00:50:11,319
Speaker 1: I really like that sentiment. Uh. And then in the

898
00:50:11,400 --> 00:50:12,920
Speaker 1: end of the poem, when he gets to that image

899
00:50:12,920 --> 00:50:14,920
Speaker 1: I mentioned, he asks himself like, well, where did these

900
00:50:14,920 --> 00:50:17,520
Speaker 1: images first come from? When you first? You know, when

901
00:50:17,520 --> 00:50:20,160
Speaker 1: I wrote them? In the beginning and in its concluding

902
00:50:20,280 --> 00:50:23,200
Speaker 1: right lines, he writes, now that my ladder is gone,

903
00:50:23,239 --> 00:50:26,120
Speaker 1: I must lie down where all the ladders start, in

904
00:50:26,160 --> 00:50:30,080
Speaker 1: the foul rag and bone shop of the heart. Uh.

905
00:50:30,080 --> 00:50:32,319
Speaker 1: And I know this last line is interpreted by some

906
00:50:32,400 --> 00:50:35,560
Speaker 1: critics to refer to the paper on which the poem

907
00:50:35,680 --> 00:50:38,520
Speaker 1: is composed, the rag and bone shop being of course

908
00:50:38,560 --> 00:50:40,600
Speaker 1: the place where you would buy paper, I guess, or

909
00:50:40,680 --> 00:50:42,800
Speaker 1: to part you know, sell the stuff to make the paper.

910
00:50:43,600 --> 00:50:47,280
Speaker 1: And so, for another weird connection between technology and literature,

911
00:50:48,080 --> 00:50:51,720
Speaker 1: I think this ending suggests to me that sometimes imagination

912
00:50:51,840 --> 00:50:55,000
Speaker 1: comes out of pure labor. He's suggesting that, you know,

913
00:50:55,080 --> 00:50:58,319
Speaker 1: the same way. Inventors are often not people dreaming up

914
00:50:58,360 --> 00:51:01,600
Speaker 1: ideal machines and the alitude of an ivory tower, but

915
00:51:01,920 --> 00:51:05,680
Speaker 1: people working with many hours of hands on experience with

916
00:51:05,719 --> 00:51:09,840
Speaker 1: a particular mechanical problem. And in the same way, often

917
00:51:09,840 --> 00:51:13,040
Speaker 1: the poet who conjures great imagery and themes is not

918
00:51:13,120 --> 00:51:15,760
Speaker 1: the one who, you know, shoots lightning bolts of genius

919
00:51:15,760 --> 00:51:18,080
Speaker 1: straight out of their brain, but it's somebody who does

920
00:51:18,120 --> 00:51:20,680
Speaker 1: a lot of work on the page, writing and writing

921
00:51:20,719 --> 00:51:24,320
Speaker 1: lots of junk until things begin to click and beauty emerges.

922
00:51:24,880 --> 00:51:28,799
Speaker 1: Just pounding the pulp until you have you can make

923
00:51:28,840 --> 00:51:33,000
Speaker 1: a fine piece of parchment out of out of old rags.

924
00:51:33,840 --> 00:51:38,160
Speaker 1: Now to go back to the paper industry itself, there's

925
00:51:38,200 --> 00:51:40,279
Speaker 1: another bit from Burke here that I wanted to share,

926
00:51:40,440 --> 00:51:43,479
Speaker 1: writes that quote as the paper mill spread, so too

927
00:51:43,480 --> 00:51:47,399
Speaker 1: did the spirit of religious reform unquote. And this would

928
00:51:47,400 --> 00:51:51,080
Speaker 1: have been alongside literacy itself and scriptoriums. And is the

929
00:51:51,120 --> 00:51:54,600
Speaker 1: price of paper fell. The development of eyeglasses advanced to

930
00:51:54,640 --> 00:51:57,920
Speaker 1: meet the demand for literacy, something we discussed in our

931
00:51:58,080 --> 00:52:02,920
Speaker 1: our our podcast episode of Invention on the sunglasses, But

932
00:52:02,960 --> 00:52:06,280
Speaker 1: there would still be too a far, too few scribes

933
00:52:06,320 --> 00:52:08,800
Speaker 1: in Europe to meet the demands of the business world

934
00:52:08,840 --> 00:52:12,400
Speaker 1: at the time. Even if you were now making cyborg

935
00:52:12,520 --> 00:52:17,280
Speaker 1: scribes via your your spectacle technology, you know, extending the

936
00:52:16,880 --> 00:52:20,120
Speaker 1: the the basically the uh you know, the life of

937
00:52:20,160 --> 00:52:24,399
Speaker 1: a scribe by altering their eyes with these fabulous lenses. Um,

938
00:52:24,600 --> 00:52:28,520
Speaker 1: you still needed one invention yet that will really you know,

939
00:52:28,640 --> 00:52:32,120
Speaker 1: boost literacy enough to you know, to give you the

940
00:52:32,160 --> 00:52:34,720
Speaker 1: scribes you need for the for the business world to thrive,

941
00:52:35,040 --> 00:52:38,000
Speaker 1: and that, of course is the printing press. But that,

942
00:52:38,239 --> 00:52:41,239
Speaker 1: as they say, is another story, and she'll be told

943
00:52:41,280 --> 00:52:45,359
Speaker 1: another time. Man, I'm not done thinking about how not

944
00:52:45,480 --> 00:52:47,680
Speaker 1: just the contents of the books we read, but the

945
00:52:47,680 --> 00:52:50,640
Speaker 1: physical form of the book has shaped our brain. I

946
00:52:50,680 --> 00:52:54,640
Speaker 1: think that there are there are insights yet left unearthed

947
00:52:54,880 --> 00:52:58,520
Speaker 1: on this subject. Absolutely all right, we're gonna have to

948
00:52:58,560 --> 00:53:01,000
Speaker 1: close it out for now, but we hope you enjoyed

949
00:53:01,040 --> 00:53:04,279
Speaker 1: our our two episode look at the invention of the book,

950
00:53:04,280 --> 00:53:08,040
Speaker 1: the inventive invention of the codex. Uh. Perhaps this is

951
00:53:08,080 --> 00:53:10,480
Speaker 1: just the beginning of a journey for us as we know.

952
00:53:10,560 --> 00:53:16,080
Speaker 1: Come back to UH two additional literary inventions paper inventions

953
00:53:16,560 --> 00:53:20,239
Speaker 1: in subsequent episodes. In the meantime, if you would like

954
00:53:20,280 --> 00:53:22,440
Speaker 1: to listen to other episodes of Stuff to boil your mind.

955
00:53:23,080 --> 00:53:26,160
Speaker 1: For you who long for our little podcast to be

956
00:53:26,239 --> 00:53:28,799
Speaker 1: with you everywhere and want to have companions for a

957
00:53:28,840 --> 00:53:32,920
Speaker 1: long journey, you can find them wherever you get your podcasts.

958
00:53:33,040 --> 00:53:37,279
Speaker 1: They look up Secundus behind the Temple of Palace right

959
00:53:37,560 --> 00:53:40,160
Speaker 1: and when you get our podcasts from Secundus, make sure

960
00:53:40,200 --> 00:53:43,640
Speaker 1: that you rate, review and subscribe for more. Huge thanks

961
00:53:43,680 --> 00:53:47,560
Speaker 1: as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.

962
00:53:47,800 --> 00:53:49,279
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us

963
00:53:49,280 --> 00:53:51,720
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

964
00:53:51,760 --> 00:53:54,279
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, just to say hello, you

965
00:53:54,280 --> 00:53:57,080
Speaker 1: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your

966
00:53:57,120 --> 00:54:07,280
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production

967
00:54:07,320 --> 00:54:10,040
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for My heart Radio,

968
00:54:10,280 --> 00:54:12,960
Speaker 1: visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

969
00:54:13,000 --> 00:54:23,040
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.