Ancient Romans Invented The First Bound Book

AncientPages.com - The history of writing goes very far back in time. In Mesopotamia people wrote on clay tables.

Cuneiform tablets were one of the earliest systems of writing invented by the Sumerians.

The highly controversial Tartaria tablets represent according to some researchers the first writing in the world, which we know of.

The Tartaria tablets which are 1,000 years older than the Mesopotamian writings contain signs that have remained undeciphered until this day.

Even though many ancient civilizations were familiar with writing, it did take some time before bound books appeared. Most ancient civilizations writing was done on heavy clay tablets and unwieldy scrolls.

Ancient Egyptians used Papyrus books in the form of a scroll of several sheets pasted together, for a total length of 10 meters or more. Paper was invented in China around the 1st century AD. The first printing of books started in China and was during the Tang Dynasty (618–907), but exactly when is not known.

Ancient Romans are credited with the invention of bound books. The Roman codex is considered the very first manifestation of the modern-day books.

Ancient Romans streamlined the medium by creating the codex, a stack of bound pages that is recognized as the earliest incarnation of the book. The first codices were made of bound wax tablets, but these were later replaced by animal skin parchment that more clearly resembled pages.

According to ancient historians Julius Caesar created an early version of a codex by stacking pages of papyrus to form a primitive notebook, but bound codices did not become popular in Rome until the first century or thereabouts. Early Christians became some of the first to adopt the new technology, using it extensively to produce copies of the Bible.

AncientPages.com