Historian traces how the invention of the book shaped humanity
Like the wheel, books are one of humanity's greatest innovations, says Irene Vallejo
*Originally published on March 5, 2024.
In the modern era, books are so ubiquitous as to seem mundane. But for philologist and historian Irene Vallejo, who has traced written texts back to their earliest origins, the simple fact of their existence is extraordinary.
According to Vallejo, the book is one of humankind's greatest inventions.
"We take it for granted," Vallejo said in conversation with IDEAS host Nahlah Ayed.
"But if we weren't so used to it, I think we would think about it as a miracle."
As a physical vessel for intellectual thought and self-expression, the book — Vallejo argues — enabled an unprecedented exchange of ideas.
And because books also preserved those ideas for future generations, modern readers can engage with the thoughts and experiences of writers who lived thousands of years ago.
"The invention of books was perhaps the greatest triumph in our tenacious struggle against destruction," she writes in her book Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World.
"With their help, humanity has undergone an extraordinary acceleration of history, development, and progress."
Scrolls as musical scores
Over the millennia, the book has undergone its own development process — from papyrus scrolls to codices to the paperback and more recently the e-book. As each new iteration of the book took hold, it opened new doors for personal expression and intellectual thought.
The earliest ancestors of the book were rectangular tablets, often made of clay or resin-coated wood. But a pivotal development in the book's form came in the third millennium B.C., when Egyptians discovered that papyrus reeds could be used to make sheets for writing.
Papyrus scrolls were light and flexible; they also allowed for much longer texts to be contained within a single document, opening up new possibilities for literature. However, as Vallejo explains, the text contained within these scrolls would not have been easy for modern readers to decipher.
"At the very beginning, there was no space between words and they didn't have paragraphs," she told Ayed. "It was like [a] continuity of letters, and it was difficult to decipher the text."
"The idea was you [were] going to read it aloud to yourself. And then by reading it aloud, you will hear the text and then understand it."
In an oral and widely illiterate society, papyrus scrolls were initially treated as a sort of script — something more akin to a musical score than a modern-day book. Those who could read them would do so aloud, often in front of a crowd.
"[In] the beginning texts were just scores in order not to forget the text, or to rehearse the performance," Vallejo told Ayed. "But they were not conceived for a private use or to be something that could substitute orality."
The rise of silent reading
While the arrival of papyrus scrolls didn't immediately supplant orality, Vallejo notes that it did significantly change the nature of those oral performances.
Before the advent of written texts, the content of a poem or story would change according to the whims of the performer. Once a text was recorded on papyrus, however, it was committed to a single form — one that could then be repeated word for word, rather than improvised.
It took millennia for readers to develop the art of reading in silence. According to Vallejo, the first written evidence of silent reading came in the fourth century, when Saint Augustine saw the Bishop Ambrose of Milan wordlessly engaging with a text.
Vallejo says it was a profound shift.
"[Augustine] realizes that Ambrose is understanding what the letters say, but his tongue stays silent and quiet," she told Ayed. "And Augustine realizes that his professor, his friend — despite his physical proximity — is not beside him. He has escaped into another, freer, more fluid world of his choosing. And he's travelling without moving."
According to Vallejo, Augustine's awe-filled account may be the first ever documentation of a reader engaging in a silent conversation with themselves.
"I think, the way he described the scene — his wonder, his amazement — is what we should feel about it," Vallejo said.
"But we are so used to it that we can not be astonished anymore."
New realms of subversive thought
Another major landmark in the history of books came with the development of parchment in what is now Turkey during the second century B.C.
Constructed from animal skin, parchment made for a much more durable writing surface than papyrus, which was highly fragile and susceptible to damage. Consequently, says Vallejo, "the life expectancy of books increased."
Parchment also dramatically widened the availability of books in the ancient world, ushering in a new era of literacy.
"It was more available and even cheaper than papyrus," Vallejo told Ayed. "And [it] … had enormous impact in societies where the access to books [was] so difficult, so restricted to privileged people."
Several hundred years later, in the first century C.E., the book as we know it today — cover-bound and filled with individual pages — was invented in Rome.
Known as codices, these early books were made of parchment pages bound with covers, often of leather and wood, which further protected the text from damage.
According to Vallejo, the rise of the codex can be largely attributed to its popularity with persecuted Christians, who found codices easier to conceal in the folds of their tunics and carry on apostolic journeys.
A victory against oblivion
Even in the age of the codex, literary works remained susceptible to damage and destruction — from both natural causes and political causes.
"They were in serious danger many times," she told Ayed. "Above all, when there is some significant change in civilization."
Vallejo points to the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 C.E. as one such pivotal moment — a time when literacy plummeted, libraries were shuttered and the preservation of books became an afterthought.
As the Roman Empire collapsed, Vallejo writes, authorities undertook a mission to purge society from "the dangers of pagan literature."
Many of the ancient books that we now consider classics — from Plato to Ovid — survived largely because of the efforts of monastic monks and nuns to preserve those so-called 'pagan' texts. Monasteries became de facto printing houses, where the beloved texts of an earlier era were meticulously copied and preserved by hand.
Vallejo sees echoes of that ancient struggle against censorship playing out today, as debates continue to rage over which texts should be permitted in modern-day libraries and classrooms.
"Books have been attacked and destroyed and burned since the very beginning of history," Vallejo reflected in her conversation with Ayed.
"And … we need to pay attention to these questions, because our freedom is at stake."
By allowing modern readers to engage with the most pivotal texts of the ancient world, Vallejo argues, books made it possible for many of humanity's most valuable ideas to endure — from the concept of democracy to the Hippocratic oath.
"My favourite definition of what books really mean is our victory against silence, destruction and oblivion," she told Ayed.
"That's what books have given us, really — this sense of continuity, among generations, among centuries. And the guarantee that our best ideas, our best discoveries, our best poems and stories could be safeguard[ed]."
Listen to the full episode by downloading the IDEAS podcast from your favourite app.
*This episode was produced by Annie Bender.
