There’s so much beauty to be found at The International Printing Museum. This month we’d like to feature a selection of photographs taken of the plaques affixed to various machines and printing related equipment we have at the Museum. There’s history and stories in these metal signs.
Every faded letter, scratch and ink stain is a remnant of a time past.
Remember to Always Read the Plaque!
The world was an exciting and engaging place during the Industrial Revolution. In the 18th and 19th centuries, both Europe and America witnessed the creation of some amazing inventions. During this time, Eli Whitney invented the modern cotton gin, Thomas Saint designed the sewing machine, and James Watt created the world’s first efficient steam engine.
These inventions led to the development of still others, several of which had an effect on the printing industry. The steam engine, for example, helped Friedrich Koenig and Andreas Bauer to invent the first steam-powered rotary printing press. This press used a rotating cylinder rather than a flat surface, as Gutenberg designed.
This invention was not without controversy. Samuel Smiles, in his book Men of Invention and Industry, reported that the pressmen at the London Times, where the new press was located, heard rumors about the steam press and “vowed vengeance against the inventor and his invention, and that they had threatened destruction to him and his traps.” Their trepidation was warranted due to the fact that this first “modern” newspaper press was five times the speed of what came before it.
Mr. J. Walter, proprietor of the newspaper, warned the pressmen against using any violence and offered to assist those whose jobs would be lost due to the new technology. This compromise led to the printing of the first newspaper on a steam-powered cylinder press during the early hours of November 29, 1814.
This domino effect of one invention leading to another can be found in the development of lithography.
Johann Alois Senefelder, the father of lithography, had a love for the theatre, but wasn’t a very good actor. He was, however, a very good playwright. Due to the high cost of printing, he found it hard to reproduce and disseminate his plays. So, he began looking for a less costly method of copying of his work.
One day, Senefelder was in his workshop experimenting with copper plates and other materials that could be used as a printing plate. His mother called to him because she needed pen and paper to record the clothing items that she was sending out to the laundry. Rather than look for pen and paper, he hastily reached for a block of limestone he had just prepared for one of his printing experiments. Using what was, in essence, a grease pencil, Senefelder wrote the list on the limestone intending to copy it later onto a sheet paper.
However, when Senefelder went to clean the laundry list off of the limestone, he discovered that the greasy writing on the limestone surface naturally repelled the water he was attempting to use to erase the writing. Though the surface of the stone was wet, the writing remained dry. When he applied oily printer’s ink to the wet stone it resulted in the reverse affect: the greasy writing accepted the oily ink while the wet limestone surface repelled it.
Senefelder continued experimenting with this chemical principle of oil repelling water and vice versa. By 1798, Senefelder had formally invented a new printing process, one that was completely different from both the raised letters and images invented by Gutenberg known as letterpress, and engraving, where the image is carved or scratched into a flat metal plate. He named his new process lithography, from the Greek “lithos,” meaning stone, and “graphein,” meaning to write. His invention of lithography allowed artists to draw their original artwork on a limestone surface with a grease crayon and then economically print multiple copies. Lithography quickly spread across Europe and into America.
Two Americans who took full advantage of the new printing process were Nathaniel Currier and James Merritt Ives. Their very successful printmaking firm was based in New York City.
The firm described itself as “Publishers of Cheap and Popular Prints.” Currier and Ives published over 7,500 original lithographs between the years of 1835 and 1907.
Currier & Ives employed or used the work of many celebrated artists of the day to produce the original drawings. This included artists like Frances “Fanny” Flora Bond Palmer, who liked to do picturesque panoramas of the American landscape
The lithographs were produced on lithographic limestone printing plates. A stone often took over a week to prepare for printing. Each print was pulled by hand. Prints were then hand-colored by a dozen or more women. They worked in assembly-line fashion, one color to a worker, and were paid $6 for every 100 colored prints. These artists produced more than a million prints by hand-colored lithography.
Currier and Ives were the most prolific and successful lithographers in the U.S. Their work, representing every phase of American life, was among the most popular wall hangings of the Victorian Era.
Because Lithography was an easy medium for artists to use the process became popular throughout the world. Many famous artists in Europe who used stone lithography includes Francisco de Goya, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Paul Gauguin.
One European, a Frenchman named Nicéphore Niépce, was particularly interested in lithography. It was his interest that led to the development of another revolutionary invention of the era: photography.
Last month we learned about The Graphic Effect of the Industrial Revolution and the invention of lithography. This month we’ll see how lithography had an impact on the creation of another Industrial Revolution invention, photography.
Nicéphore Niépce and his brother Claude were avid inventors. In the early 19th century, the brothers constructed a prototype of an internal combustion engine. Their machine was strong enough to power a 2,000-pound boat upstream on the Saône River in eastern France. On July 20, 1807, the brothers were awarded a patent for their invention, which was signed by Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.
It was this love for creation and invention that moved Nicéphore Niépce to explore the newly invented art form of lithography. He soon realized he lacked the necessary skill and artistic ability to draw images onto the litho stones.
In her book, A to Z of STS Scientists, Elizabeth Oakes credits Niépce’s son, Isidore, with the creation of the artwork used on his lithographs. While his son was creating the designs, Niépce focused on the reproduction process. His goal was to invent a mechanical device that could produce images, thereby eliminating the need for lengthy artistic training.
All of the items necessary to create these images seemed to be right in front of Niépce, it was just a matter of putting them together. He was fully aware of inventions that could reproduce multiple images from a single plate. He understood lithography and was familiar with copperplate engraving. Combining this knowledge with his understanding of chemical reactions and his familiarity with the something known as the camera obscura (the earliest version of the camera), led Niépce to believe that he could create images employing light.
The camera obscura, in one version or another, dates back to prehistory. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the device was quite popular among artists. It allowed individuals to place the camera box in front of an object and with the use of a small hole, lens, mirror, and ground glass they could see and trace an image of the object on to a piece of paper (see image below). Niépce’s dream was to use the camera obscura to produce an image on a litho stone, copper plate, or piece of paper.
Beaumont Newhall, in his definitive work The History of Photography: From 1839 to the Present, explained that in 1816, Niépce began experimenting with paper and various chemicals to “paint” with light. Niépce was disappointed with his first attempts because they resulted in producing a negative image. He wanted to “secure pictures directly in the camera” thus he needed a positive image.
To create positive images, Niépce turned his attention to other materials that were affected by light. Eventually, he focused his experiments on Bitumen of Judea, naturally occurring asphalt. In an 1824 letter to his brother Claude, Niépce explained he had his first real success using bitumen applied to the surface of a lithographic stone, which was then exposed to light through a camera obscura. For the first time, he obtained a fixed image of a landscape. Though Niépce’s letter claimed he had produced the first photograph, there is no physical evidence of the event: Niépce ground out the exposed image from the stone so he could use the stone in further experiments.
Niépce also explored the use of metal plates. The next attempt to record an image from light is recorded in a letter from Niépce’s son, Isidore in 1825. Niépce covered a polished pewter plate with Bitumen of Judea. He then covered the plate with a sheet of paper already printed with an engraving of a boy and a horse; both were exposed to direct sunlight. In essence, Niépce was making a contact print.
The sunlight “exposed” the plate except for the area covered by the lines on the engraved paper. According to Isidore, after the exposure was finished, Niépce “immersed the plate in a solvent which, bit by bit, brought out the image which, until then, had remained invisible…” Niépce had created a photochemical process to record a positive image onto a plate. He called it heliography, which literally means “sun writing.”
The lines on the plate were too shallow to fill with ink and reproduce multiple copies of the image. Thus Niépce sent the plate to an engraver who worked the lines of the plate so the image could be replicated.
Examples of his process still survive today. The image on the right is a print made from one of Niépce original 1825 heliographic plates. The print is simply a sheet of plain paper printed with ink using a printing press, like ordinary etchings, engravings, or lithographs. What makes this print different is that the printing plate used was created photographically by the heliographic process rather than by hand engraving or drawing on lithographic stones. The print can be found in the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris. (https://pdfs.fr/)
These “sun writings” were more photo-engravings than a photograph. Not satisfied, Niépce began experimenting with glass, copper, and polished silver plates. He even tried using lavender oil and iodine vapors that would interact with the Bitumen of Judea. His experiments led to superior quality images.
While the exposure times for the images were long, sometimes hours or days, in 1826 or 1827 Niépce finally created what is considered genuine photographs in black and white on a metal plate. The preciseness of these images was amazing for the time. Below you’ll find an image of the oldest surviving photograph formed in a camera.
The photograph, View from the Window at Le Gras, shows parts of the buildings and surrounding countryside of Niépce’s estate, Le Gras, as seen from a high window.
While Niépce was improving his invention, not far away, Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre was also experimenting with the camera obscura. Except Daguerre was using phosphorescent powders to record an image. Unfortunately, these images were only visible for a few hours, and then they slowly faded away. According to Newhall, both inventors shared a mutual lens maker, Chevalier of Paris. Through this mutual acquaintance, the two began exchanging correspondence.
At first, both men were cautious, not wanting to reveal too much to the other regarding their experiments. Then the two met in September of 1827. Niépce wrote to his son Isidore to tell him about the meeting.
“I have had many and very long interviews with M. Daguerre,” wrote Niépce. “He came to see us yesterday. His visit lasted for three hours…and the conversation on the subject which interest us is really endless….”
After three years of correspondence and meetings, the two men finally joined forces and became business partners in December of 1829. Unfortunately, four years into their partnership, Niépce suffered a stroke and died; Isidore took his father’s place in the business.
Over the following years, Isidore Niépce and Louis Daguerre improved on the photographic process. Their modifications eventually led to the development of what they termed “daguerreotype.”
Nicéphore Niépce’s understanding of lithography led to his development of heliography. By trial and error, he was able to improve his technique, and his partnership with Daguerre advanced the process yet further. After he was gone, photography continued to evolve.
Englishman William Henry Fox Talbot used paper as an intermediate negative to produce the first negative-positive process in 1841. This modification made it possible to make multiple copies of the same image.
For decades, photographers continued to use glass, metal, and paper as the base for their images. It was the American George Eastman who had the idea to replace those traditional base materials with celluloid rolls, and the concept of film rolls was born in 1888.
It’s noteworthy how one invention often inspires the creation of another. The evolution and stories of lithography and photography are only two innovations that had a profound effect on the printing industry. Whether through serendipity, trial and error, or evolution, the development of technology during the Industrial Revolution was a testament to man’s inventive drive and creative abilities.
At The International Printing Museum in Carson, California, visitors can explore these inventive stories and so much more. Every year 25,000 students are exposed to the collection through working and engaging tours. Just maybe some of them will be inspired to create and invent their own solutions to the problems of the future.
When we think of Gutenberg, we think of books. His invention of the adjustable mold and his use of metal alloys allowed for the mass-production of movable metal type. This invention, combined with his use of oil-based ink and a wooden printing press, led to the first printing of the most read book in the world, the Bible.
While it was Gutenberg’s system that made it economically viable for printers to mass-produce books, the concept of the “book” pre-dates Gutenberg by thousands of years.
The oldest surviving printed book, The Diamond Sutra, dates from 868 AD. This woodblock-printed paper scroll contains a Buddhist text. It also includes an inscription on the lower right-hand side that reads “Reverently made for universal free distribution by Wang Jie on behalf of his two parents.”
Woodblock printing is a labor-intensive process and calls for the collaboration of several skilled craftsmen. For each page to be printed, a block of fine-grained wood, about an inch thick, was needed.
Next, the text must be carved into the block of wood. This is a relief printing process, so the artist needs to cut away the parts of the wood that will not print. This leaves only the raised portion, the Chinese characters, to receive the ink. And, if the artisan made a single mistake in carving, he would have to throw away the wood block and start again from scratch. Also, the carving must also be done in reverse so that the final printed product will be right reading.
The Diamond Sutra is 17-and-a-half-feet-long. A book this size would take artisans months to carve the many wood blocks needed to reproduce the book.
The book was discovered in the Cave Temples of Dunhuang. This network of over 500 caves was an old outpost on the Silk Road at the edge of the Gobi Desert. Also known as the Mogao Grottoes, or Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, they’re a UNESCO World Heritage site.
The Diamond Sutra was found in the Library Cave of the complex. The cave contained nearly 50,000 ancient manuscripts, silk banners and paintings, fine silk embroideries and other rare textiles dating from before the early 1000s.
This book is a excellent example of the power of print and written communication. The Diamond Sutra is part of a larger group of sacred texts in the branch of Buddhism most common in China, Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia. This is interesting because Buddhism was actually founded in Northeastern India during the sixth century BC. This means the contents of the book was originally written in Sanskrit and then translated into Chinese and disseminated throughout Asia.
Before The Diamond Sutra was printed, other Buddhist books were transported along the Silk Routes to areas in Northern, Central, and Southeast Asia. Archeologists have found what may be the oldest surviving Buddhist texts in what is today is Pakistan and Afghanistan. These birch bark “books” date to the 1st century AD.
These books were not printed like The Diamond Sutra. These manuscripts were written on tree bark. In India and many parts of ancient Asia, it was common to write on prepared plant surfaces. In addition to bark, palm leaf books were prevalent. Today India possesses an estimated five million manuscripts, many on palm leaves that cover a variety of themes, scripts, languages, calligraphies, illuminations, and illustrations.
Palm leaves were among the first writing materials to be used, predating papyrus. Some sources say that Sanskrit was first written on this material more than 6,000 years ago.
The bookmaking process is relatively straightforward. Take a look at the video from the Rangiri Technical Centre and see how the palm leaves are prepared and the books are produced.
I found it especially interesting how the monk held the leaves in one hand and with the other inscribed lettering from left to right using a needle-like instrument. It appears as if he is writing, but the results are nearly invisible. Only when the leaf is wiped with soot or another pigment, sometimes mixed with oil, is the writing made clear.
Once the leaf is cleaned of excess pigment, the dark residue remains behind in the scratches carved into the surface. The books are then bound together with string using the holes drilled into them when the leaves were prepared for writing.
Books made from palm leaves were convenient to carry and made it easy to travel with a book.
Gutenberg’s printing press allowed the common man to read the bible and draw his own conclusions, giving strength to the Reformation already in progress in Europe. In much the same way, a belief system that began in India was able to spread all across Asia. Buddhist missionaries and pilgrims traveling along the Silk Routes, first with their religious palm leaf and later printed books in hand, were able to spread Buddhism to millions of people. The graphic object known as the BOOK was the object that made this transformation happen.
When most people think of Saint Patrick’s Day, they think of shamrocks, green beer, and parades. When I think of Saint Patrick, I think of monks, monasteries, and manuscripts. You may be surprised to learn that, if not for Saint Patrick and the monks and missionaries that followed him, civilization as we know it may not exist. To understand this, we need to look back 2,000 years to appreciate the impact of the Roman Empire.
Long before the birth of Saint Patrick, the Roman Empire ruled most of the known world. At its peak, the empire reached from Britain into most of Europe and extended into the Middle East and North Africa.
While the Romans, like the Greeks before them, relied heavily on an oral tradition, they were also literate people. An empire the size of Greece or Rome needed written laws and codified business practices. Thus, the Greeks and Romans kept excellent written records. These were written on clay and wax tablets, and on papyrus. Here’s a section of Aristotle’s Constitution of the Athenians.
In addition to record keeping, the Romans were big on libraries. The first public library in Rome, established by Asinius Pollio in the Atrium Libertatis, was bilingual, containing both Greek and Latin texts. It also held portrait busts of authors and served as a museum for works of art in general. These libraries could be found throughout the empire.
In 2018, archaeologists unearthed what may be the oldest library in the Roman Empire’s northwest provinces. The library’s remains were discovered in the middle of Cologne, Germany. Researchers think the library dates to the middle of the second century, around the same time the Romans built the library at Ephesus.
A visitor to a Roman library would quite likely find a copy of Rome’s newspaper, the Acta Diurna, (translated Daily Acts) which contained public notices hand-written, on sheets of papyri.
Or a visitor may pick up be a copy of Assemblies of Aesopic Tales, stored within the niches of the library’s walls. With this book, they could entertain and educate their children with stories about The Grasshopper and the Ant, The Fox and the Grapes or The Tortoise and the Hare.
If a visitor was interested in philosophy, they might pick up a work by one of the most prolific writers of ancient Rome, the brilliant Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero. It was Cicero who introduced the Romans to the chief schools of Greek philosophy. He wrote political essays as well as books on ancient philosophy. Here’s a 5th century bilingual, Latin and Greek, papyrus of a Ciscro speech.
The influence of the works of Aesop and Cicero, along with other Greek and Roman authors, on western civilization cannot be overemphasized. These ancient works were so important that, once Gutenberg perfected printing, they were some of the first books printed.
In 1480, Lorenzo de Medici, de facto ruler of the Republic of Florence, commissioned a special volume of Aesop’s Fables for his young son, Piero. This is one of the first known examples of the fables being printed specifically for a children’s audience.
n 1484 Englishman William Caxton published the first English-language copy of Aesop’s Fables, illustrated with woodcuts. Caxton translated the fables into English from a French translation of the works. You can see a page from Caxton’s book here.
The first extant book printed in Italy was Cicero’s De oratore. It was printed by two clerics, Konrad Sweynheym from Mainz and Arnold Pannartz from Cologne. The two traveled to the ancient Benedictine monastery at Subiaco, in the mountains east of Rome. There, in 1465, they produced the book and taught some of the monks at the monastery how to print. Some historians believe Sweynheym may have worked with Gutenberg from 1461-1464 while living in Eltville, Germany.
Cicero’s importance was again emphasized with Sweynheim and Pannartz’s publication of the 1468 edition of Cicero’s Epistulae ad Familiares. It was at this time that the two printers developed a unit of measurement for typography called a cicero. It’s just a little larger than a pica. Printers in Italy, France, and other continental European countries continued to use this measurement for many years.
You may be asking yourself, what does all this have to do with Saint Patrick? Well, the patron saint of Ireland was a Roman citizen of Britain. And, living in the 5th century A.D., he witnessed first hand the slow fall of the western half of the Roman Empire.
When the Empire fell, barbarian tribes such as the Visigoths, Angles, Saxons, Franks, and others took turns ravaging the Empire and Europe entered the Dark or Early Middle Ages.
Things were different in Ireland, though. Through his missionary work, Saint Patrick instilled a sense of literacy and learning in the people. This created the conditions that allowed Ireland to become “the isle of saints and scholars.” According to Thomas Cahill, author of How the Irish Saved Civilization, Patrick’s impact on Ireland was impressive.
“As the Roman Empire fell…unwashed barbarians descended on the Roman cities, looting artifacts and burning books, the Irish, who were just learning to read and write, took up the great labor of copying all of Western literature — everything they could lay their hands on,” writes Cahill.
As one of the most successful Christian missionaries in history, Saint Patrick established Ireland’s first monasteries. In these monasteries were pious and self-disciplined monks who made it their mission to copy all forms of literature, sacred and secular.
The most famous example of the monks’ rich legacy is the 1,200-year-old Book of Kells. This spectacularly illuminated manuscript of the Gospels can be found today in Dublin’s Trinity College. Its decorations and calligraphy have earned it the reputation as the world’s most beautiful book.
So, as the barbarians ravaged most of Europe, patient scribes in Ireland labored for centuries in their scriptoriums, small rooms devoted to the writing, copying and illuminating of manuscripts. These monks, inspired by Saint Patrick, and others who followed including Saint Columba, copied Greek, Roman and Jewish classics as well as Christian texts. They preserved the works of Homer, Virgil, Demosthenes, Cicero, Plato, and Aristotle. Without these monks, all would have been utterly lost to posterity.
If not for the work of these Irish monks, there would have been no Aesop’s Fables for Caxton to print. Sweynheim and Pannartz would have none of Cicero’s works to publish. And civilization, as we know it may not exist.
So the next time you lift a pint of green beer to your lips, take pause and thank Saint Patrick and the monks of Ireland for preserving Western culture by safeguarding the texts of the ancient world.
What makes a book, a book? Must a book contain a story? Must there be multiple pages, bound together? Must it be hand-held? Does a portable electronic device count? Is an audiobook a book? Is a book of stamps a book? What about a record of financial transactions as in, the company’s books show a profit? Are any or all of these considered books?
The Merriam-Webster dictionary has 18 different definitions for the word “book.” The first two are what most of us perceive as a traditional book.
A set of written sheets of skin or paper or tablets of wood or ivory
A set of written, printed, or blank sheets bound together between a front and back cover
In my earlier posts, The History of the Book, Part 1, and The History of the Book, Part 2, I discussed books that adhere to these traditional definitions. In this post, we’re going to explore what may be considered an unconventional view of the book.
Located in Bulgaria’s National History Museum is a set of “written sheets bound together” to make a rather unconventional book. It predates the Gutenberg Bible, the Diamond Sutra, and the Book of Kells.
Over 2,600 years ago, the Etruscans, a civilization of ancient Italy, created a book made of gold. It’s composed of six pages of 24-carat gold, bound together with golden rings. It is thought to be a type of prayer book made for the funeral of an aristocrat. The Etruscans were not the only society to write on gold.
Dating from around the same time, archeologists have found sheets or plates of gold containing both Etruscan and Phoenician writing.
These gold sheets, on display at the National Etruscan Museum in Rome, Italy, contain holes around the edges. Scholars believe these holes were used to bind the pages together, like a book.
When is a book not a book? One of Merriam-Webster’s definitions for a book reads, “all the charges that can be made against an accused person.” You’ve no doubt heard the phrase “they threw the book at him.” Based on this definition, the Code of Hammurabi could be called a book.
The Babylonian King Hammurabi reigned from 1792 to 1750 B.C. He enacted one of the earliest and most complete written legal codes. The code covered numerous topics including slander, theft, liability, adultery, divorce, and perjury. The Code of Hammurabi could be found all around the kingdom written on baked clay tablets and basalt steles.
Clay tablets were the writing substrate of choice throughout Babylon and most of Mesopotamia. Many of these tablets were used to record financial transactions. It was a way for a business to keep their “books” in order. Many tablets contained great works of literature that were held in large libraries.
King Ashurbanipal of Assyria established a library in the city of Nineveh with over 30,000 clay tablets. In the ruins of that library was found one of the oldest adventure stories still in existence, the Epic of Gilgamesh.
The Epic, comprised of 12 individual tablets, was written around 2100 B.C. It was on tablet 11 that the original Mesopotamian story of the Great Flood, which pre-dates the story in the Bible, was found.
In this account, you’ll find many similarities to the biblical version of the flood. There’s a man, Utnapishtim, who is told by a god to build a boat. This god, Ea, gave Utnapishtim precise dimensions for the boat and that it was to be sealed with pitch and bitumen. Once completed, Utnapishtim’s entire family went aboard together with his craftsmen and “all the animals of the field.” Soon after, a violent storm arose, and the rest of humankind was annihilated. After the rain, the boat lodged on a mountain, and Utnapishtim released a dove, a swallow, and a raven. When the raven failed to return, he opened the ark and freed its inhabitants. He then offered a sacrifice to the gods, who smell the sweet savor and gathered around. This is just one of many stories found in the Epic of Gilgamesh that Bible readers may find familiar.
Another story from the Epic that parallels a biblical account includes that of Ninti, the Sumerian goddess of life. The story explains that she was created from the god Ea’s rib. She was created to heal Ea after he had eaten forbidden flowers. Some say this story served as the basis for the account of Eve creation from Adam’s rib in the Book of Genesis.
Religious books are some of the oldest unconventional books. The Egyptian Book of the Dead, dating from nearly 4,000 years ago, was not one book but rather a body of texts that contained spells and illustrations written on papyrus scrolls. These “books” were placed in the tombs and graves with the deceased. Each was written specifically for the individual who could afford to purchase one. These “books” were designed to guide the deceased through the dangers of the underworld, ultimately ensuring eternal life. Much of the content of the scrolls originated from concepts depicted in tomb paintings and inscriptions from as early as 2670 B.C.
Reaching back even further in history, can we say humans living before the Egyptians and Sumerians, those living in prehistoric times, did they have books? The word “prehistoric” means before history, before writing. So, can we truthfully say that people living 35,000 years ago had books? Let’s take a look at another of Merriam-Webster’s definitions for “book.”
The dictionary’s definition #3 reads, “something that yields knowledge or understanding.” Based on this definition, there were many “books” created in prehistory.
Today we have picture books that tell a story and individuals, living as long as 35,000 years ago, also told their stories through pictures. All around the globe, in places as diverse as Bulgaria, Argentina, Somalia, India, France, Spain, and Australia, cave paintings can be found. There are images of powerful bulls in the caves at Lascaux, France and Altamira, Spain. Beautiful human handprints are found in the Cueva de las Manos, in Argentina. And, some of the Australian Aboriginal rock art (see above image) contains maps to local sources of water. All are examples of humans communicating with each other.
Through the centuries, the technologies may have changed, but the goal remains the same. Humans need to communicate with each other. We love to tell stories, offer advice and direction, and discuss and preserve economic and environmental information. All of which is made possible due to the book.
