# What if the printing press had been invented in antiquity? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 14, 2011, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-printing-press-had-been-invented-in-antiquity/599633 "2011-10-14T14:33:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2011, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-printing-press-had-been-invented-in-antiquity/599633/41 "2011-10-15T21:14:27Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > How many times do I have to go over this? > > No, No, NO! Gah! People don’t bother to learn anything about history and then spew whatever someone supposedly told them he felt on the internet. This is true. > [@](#): > > For a brief start: banking went along just fine before the rise of large Jewish finance houses Yes. It is tempting to think that the Jews dominated early medieval moneylending and banking because so many of the documents that survived are Jewish in origin. For example, consider the [Geniza archive](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_Geniza). It contains a huge number of Maghribi commercial documents, all because it was Jewish practice to dump their documents in a cemetery. We happened to be lucky enough to find this one. > [@](#): > > antisemitism predates Christianity Long predates it. The best book you will ever read on the rise of anti-semitism in the Middle Ages is _The Formation of a Persecuting Society_ by RI Moore. There is something unique about late medieval and Renaissance persecution, and RI Moore teases it out really well. He links persecution to literacy, the increase of bureaucratization, and ultimately the rise of the middle class. It is a very stimulating read and is quite short. > [@](#): > > and in any case even the idea that the Church completely prohibited interest is not particualrly accurate, either. Also true. Christians, who dominated banking and finance during the Middle Ages, had no problem charging each other interest. They could receive special pardons from the church (usually for some sort of fee), they hid loans in bogus partnerships, and added surcharges and handling fees to contracts that did not explicitly bear interest. LeGoff has the classic book on the subject, called _Your Money or Your Life_. He argues that the church invented Purgatory to give moneylenders the hope of eventually going to heaven. Another great book, also very short. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2011, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-printing-press-had-been-invented-in-antiquity/599633/42 "2011-10-15T21:35:38Z")
**Maeglin** , I could - _Checks whether Maeglin is male or female_ - offer you a warm-hearted by completely platonic handshake. I may even check out those books. ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2011, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-printing-press-had-been-invented-in-antiquity/599633/43 "2011-10-15T21:48:03Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > **Maeglin** , I could - > > _Checks whether Maeglin is male or female_ > > - offer you a warm-hearted by completely platonic handshake. I may even check out those books. Ha, thanks. I didn’t even know where to start with some of the above arguments, so I figured I’d just pick up where you left off. I think that the role Jews played in early medieval finance was very important, though. They did have better access to eastern luxury goods until the Italians superseded them. The Jews were also important royal financiers in the early Middle Ages, also ultimately replaced by the Italians. They were moneylenders to kings because they had no political recourse whatsoever. Kings could refinance their debts to Jews at whim on whatever terms because they had no other protection save the king. The Plantagenets bled the Jews dry before tossing them out of England at the end of the 12th century and then promptly started borrowing from Italians. ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2011, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-printing-press-had-been-invented-in-antiquity/599633/44 "2011-10-15T21:53:50Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > And the [Old Persian script](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Persian_language#Script) BTW, was a “semi-alphabetic” syllabary and might have been efficiently printable. Likewise with the [Devanagari](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devanagari) script of India. So, add those cultures to the print-bound world before too long. Devanagari comes onto the scene about 1500 years _after_ your printing press innovation. In 600 BC, Indians were probably using some flavors of Brahmi (descended from the Aramaic script) and would have also probably been printable. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2011, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-printing-press-had-been-invented-in-antiquity/599633/45 "2011-10-16T17:12:33Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > They did porn. I took an Art History class a few years back. The teacher showed us a picture of a painted vase showing two men having anal sex. (I wondered, though, what the ambient attitude might have been in those days. Would such a portrayal have been considered “illigitemate” or “dirty” in a sense similar to the modern view of porn? Or would it have been considered a perfectly valid subject to portray in art? The point here (in my mind) is NOT whether homosexual activity is “legit”, but whether portrayal of same in art was “legit”.) I took a class specifically on Ancient Greek art in college, and I remember the professor saying that vases were basically the wall posters of Ancient Greece. They weren’t considered fine art. ---
**Author:** ![ModernPrimate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85e7bf/32.png) [@ModernPrimate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ModernPrimate)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2011, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-printing-press-had-been-invented-in-antiquity/599633/46 "2011-10-16T20:37:55Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > or somebody of that time gets the obvious idea from seal-stamps or textile-printing blocks I think you are crazy. It’s not an “obvious idea” at all. ---
**Author:** ![psychonaut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/psychonaut/32/4655_2.png) [@psychonaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychonaut)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2011, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-printing-press-had-been-invented-in-antiquity/599633/47 "2011-10-16T22:15:01Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Of course, we’re not just talking about Greece – the contemporary Phoenicians (who invented the alphabet) The Phoenicians did no such thing. Their alphabet, like ours, evolved gradually from earlier scripts. The earliest undisputed alphabetic script predates the Phoenician one by at least five hundred years. ---
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2011, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-printing-press-had-been-invented-in-antiquity/599633/48 "2011-10-16T22:37:01Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > 😕 Is this a whoosh? Why would God be inimical to print existing in Jesus’ time? You kidding me? Christianity is deeply dependent on an oral culture to gain a foothold. You woulda had say 17,000 books being mass produced in the greater Jerusalem metro area alone in Jesus’s “lifetime,” none of them eyewitness accounts of his miracles, or those few deeply flawed as to their reliability or authenticity (“I Balled Jesus of Nazareth–and He was Good!” by Mary Magdalene, etc.) and the religion would have been a laughingstock before it ever got started. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2011, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-printing-press-had-been-invented-in-antiquity/599633/49 "2011-10-17T00:01:18Z")
> [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](#): > > You kidding me? Christianity is deeply dependent on an oral culture to gain a foothold. You woulda had say 17,000 books being mass produced in the greater Jerusalem metro area alone in Jesus’s “lifetime,” none of them eyewitness accounts of his miracles, or those few deeply flawed as to their reliability or authenticity (“I Balled Jesus of Nazareth–and He was Good!” by Mary Magdalene, etc.) and the religion would have been a laughingstock before it ever got started. You can’t seriously be suggesting that oral tradition is more reliable – or more dignified – than print media. ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2011, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-printing-press-had-been-invented-in-antiquity/599633/50 "2011-10-17T00:21:44Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > You can’t seriously be suggesting that oral tradition is more reliable – or more dignified – than print media. This would be a perfectly reasonable assertion. People lie in print media just like they do in oral traditions. If anything, the lies are worse in print media just because the act of printing itself heightens expectations of truth. Somehow oral traditions managed to pass on quite a lot of dignity. Homer has stood up pretty well. ---
**Author:** ![ModernPrimate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85e7bf/32.png) [@ModernPrimate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ModernPrimate)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2011, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-printing-press-had-been-invented-in-antiquity/599633/51 "2011-10-17T00:24:34Z")
I think this Brainglutton considers himself too “brainy” for his own good. ---
**Author:** ![Silophant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a698b9/32.png) [@Silophant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Silophant)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2011, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-printing-press-had-been-invented-in-antiquity/599633/52 "2011-10-17T00:30:37Z")
This is unlikely. **Brainglutton** ’s fairly established here. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2011, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-printing-press-had-been-invented-in-antiquity/599633/53 "2011-10-17T00:39:46Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > Somehow oral traditions managed to pass on quite a lot of dignity. Homer has stood up pretty well. Of course, a lot of oral traditions bear a nearer resemblance to Chaucer. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2011, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-printing-press-had-been-invented-in-antiquity/599633/54 "2011-10-17T00:57:47Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > How many times do I have to go over this? > > No, No, NO! Gah! People don’t bother to learn anything about history and then spew whatever someone supposedly told them he felt on the internet. > > For a brief start: banking went along just fine before **the rise of large Jewish finance houses** , antisemitism predates Christianity, and in any case even the idea that the Church completely prohibited interest is not particualrly accurate, either. Bolding added. To also quote Maeglin: > [@](#): > > There is something unique about late medieval and Renaissance persecution, and RI Moore teases it out really well. He links persecution to literacy, the increase of bureaucratization, and ultimately the rise of the middle class. > [@](#): > > I think that the role Jews played in early medieval finance was very important, though. They did have better access to eastern luxury goods until the Italians superseded them. The Jews were also important royal financiers in the early Middle Ages, also ultimately replaced by the Italians. They were moneylenders to kings because they had no political recourse whatsoever. Kings could refinance their debts to Jews at whim on whatever terms because they had no other protection save the king. The Plantagenets bled the Jews dry before tossing them out of England at the end of the 12th century and then promptly started borrowing from Italians. So far as I can tell nothing either of you said actually contradicts anything which anyone else said? :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2011, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-printing-press-had-been-invented-in-antiquity/599633/55 "2011-10-17T01:13:25Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Bolding added. > > To also quote Maeglin: > > So far as I can tell nothing either of you said actually contradicts anything which anyone else said? :dubious: You. You are completely wrong and the causal chain you posit in post 26 is not borne out by the facts as we know them. Your linkage between anti-semitism and commercial development is at first glance wrong for two basic reasons. The first is chronological. The height of Jewish importance in the growth of medieval finance occurred in the early Middle Ages, when broadly speaking, society was far more tolerant of Jews (and Muslims). Anti-semitism _followed_ but did not cause the decline of the financial importance of medieval Jewry. Second, the persecutions of the 13th century were not limited to Jews. Religious experimentation within the church itself, which flourished in the 12th century, was brutally extirpated. Consider Fourth Lateran in 1213, which forbid the foundation of any new _Catholic_ religious orders. Persecutions of homosexuals, lepers, prostitutes, mystics, female spirituals, and other fringe elements of society occurred at exactly the same time as accusations of blood libel against the Jews. Marginal groups from all over medieval society were under heavy pressure in this period. 13th century persecution was special, but not because it concerned Jews. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2011, 7:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-printing-press-had-been-invented-in-antiquity/599633/56 "2011-10-17T07:28:02Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > Basically, the printing press in Ancient Greece would have been an interesting toy. But until a society somewhere had enemies living across the street from one another, forming strict contracts based on mistrust, and devising ways to get rich off of one another, you wouldn’t see much scientific growth beyond what a single wealthy genius can develop in his garage. That’s a hugely interesting post but I’m not sure I agree. I’m thinking in particular of a king’s need to promulgate laws and pronouncements. Printing - even on clay tablets which are then fired - is vastly cheaper than an army of scribes. Imagine if Hammurabi’s laws had been widely promulgated, cast in stone, and not subject to the changing whim of the magistrate? Or Rameses II’s pronouncements were able to be sent on papyrus to the leader of each nome? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2011, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-printing-press-had-been-invented-in-antiquity/599633/57 "2011-10-17T15:33:19Z")
> [@Maeglin](#): > > Your linkage between anti-semitism and commercial development is at first glance wrong for two basic reasons. What’s more fundamentally wrong is the linkage **Sage Rats** draws between the “philosophical underpinnings” of commercial development and those of a literate, print-hungry society. He is saying the ancient Greeks, Phoenicians, etc., **could not** be modern societies in that sense because they lacked real individualism and they were still Mexicans in their family-based worldview, or something. **That’s** bullshit. There was never a civilization more literacy-oriented nor more family-oriented than China, after all. **Of course** they would’ve done something with print if they had a script you could fit in a printer’s letter-case. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2011, 5:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-printing-press-had-been-invented-in-antiquity/599633/58 "2011-10-17T17:20:50Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Say, around the Sixth Century B.C. (the age of the first definitely known Greek philosopher, Thales of Miletus), when alphabetic Greek was just getting going as a literary language. Suppose you go back in a time machine to around then and introduce a printing press and make no other change – or somebody of that time gets the obvious idea from seal-stamps or textile-printing blocks – does the course of history change? Or do we just have a better record of it? Printing is still going to be difficult and expensive. Remember that paper had not been invented. So you’re printing on clay tablets (which are then fired), parchment, vellum, or papyrus. Papyrus is cheap but fragile. I think that the prime consumers (if you will) will be the lawmakers and diplomats. With particular reference to the latter, the technology would soon spread east, first to the Persian empire, then India, and then to China. The technology might be sufficient to make them change to an alphabet. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2011, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-printing-press-had-been-invented-in-antiquity/599633/59 "2011-10-17T20:48:43Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > Printing is still going to be difficult and expensive. Remember that paper had not been invented. So you’re printing on clay tablets (which are then fired), parchment, vellum, or papyrus. Papyrus is cheap but fragile. I think that the prime consumers (if you will) will be the lawmakers and diplomats. With particular reference to the latter, the technology would soon spread east, first to the Persian empire, then India, and then to China. The technology might be sufficient to make them change to an alphabet. Doubtful. Korea’s example didn’t. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [October 17, 2011, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-printing-press-had-been-invented-in-antiquity/599633/60 "2011-10-17T22:56:21Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Doubtful. Korea’s example didn’t. But we’re talking 500 BC, not significantly later. This is right in the middle of the Spring and Autumn period, prime time for the spread of the printed word. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-printing-press-had-been-invented-in-antiquity/599633.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-the-printing-press-had-been-invented-in-antiquity/599633.md?page=4)