Since its inception, humanity has been striving for knowledge. This, first of all, was caused by a difficult, and sometimes quite fierce competition with wildlife. In order to win, to occupy his niche in an aggressive environment, man was forced to evolve, first of all, intellectually. Indeed, even the first representatives of Homo Sapiens in the person of Neanderthals could not compare in strength and dexterity with saber-toothed tigers and cave bears. But how to keep the accumulated knowledge? Which information carrier in ancient Russia was revered more than others?
Why transfer experience to descendants?
People came up with more and more tricks and tricks to nullify the unbridled power of animals. However, the ancients in the process of development faced another problem - the training of descendants. Given the short average life expectancy of a person, sometimes the knowledge and experience gained died with him. And the new generation was already learning from its mistakes, not being able to use some kind of information carrier in Ancient Russia, for example. This significantly slowed down the entire evolutionary process and constantly put a person on the brink of survival.
Probably, it was the desire to pass on the accumulated experience and knowledge to future generations that motivated the authors of ancient cave paintings. Indeed, very often there were depicted scenes from hunting, healing and medicine, and other useful activities of the first people. It can be argued that in this way they tried to find the oldest natural carriers of information. After all, some of them have passed through the ages and have survived to this day.
Over time, the problem of the preservation and transfer of experience became more and more urgent. After all, the accumulated knowledge was summarized and required a more thorough description when passing it on to the next generation. With all the beauty and deep sense of cave paintings, the nuances of this or that action they still did not convey. It’s interesting for us to understand how they taught and studied in Ancient Russia, for example.
What is information?
It will not be superfluous to find out what information is as such. Sublimating the opinions and calculations of most experts, we give the following definition: this is a set of data on persons, events and phenomena, which does not depend on the form of presentation. If we talk about everyday content, then information is the data that a person receives from the surrounding nature or society.
As a result of evolution, written sources of information appeared, custodians of accumulated data. Tangible media are documents that contain a set of data concentrated for subsequent transmission in time or space.
Studying the most ancient material carriers, we come to the conclusion that there were more non-material, that is, people who transmitted their knowledge exclusively in oral form. The human factor in this case is extremely unreliable.
Writing and Document
And although in ancient times there was no such concept as “documents”, they are precisely the written sources of information that have survived to this day. So what is it?
Of course, with some exaggeration can be considered documents cave paintings, which are found by modern archaeologists. In them, to one degree or another, information is transmitted about events that occurred in distant times. Nevertheless, real material information carriers and their development appeared with the advent of writing.
An interesting fact is that at first people tried to put their letters “the old fashioned way” on the rocks. Probably, the covenants of their ancestors spoke of the reliability of this method of transmitting information. But practice has shown that this is not so. Unlike drawings, ancient letters very often were incoherent in character, applied finely and therefore quickly blurred or wiped off. Therefore, to see something like this these days is quite difficult.
Clay - the oldest media
The history of information carriers begins, perhaps, from the time when people learned to fix their thoughts in more secure forms. One of the first materials available for creating ancient documents was clay. This simple material was discovered by the ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia. It was the Sumerians who came up with scratching their letters on small clay tablets.
This way of presenting information was already very different from rock and wall painting. And although this can not be called true writing, the fact that some tablets have survived to this day speaks volumes. With the development of the Sumerian civilization , the tablets gradually became more complicated and improved. On fresh clay, they no longer just painted, but pressed signs with a special style.
At the end of their civilization, the ancient Sumerians, using clay tablets, wrote entire books and created real libraries from them. The oldest natural carriers of information, the collection of which we know as the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, totaled more than 30 thousand tablets. And this indicates a rather serious flow of information that the ancient people kept.
From clay to metal - a journey of several centuries
Writing, meanwhile, developed more and more. The texts that were displayed on the tablets became longer. Clay, by its natural composition, is rather heavy, therefore it turned out to be inconvenient for preserving the long opuses of ancient people.
An alternative carrier was needed. What were the oldest natural media in the history of mankind? After clay, people used more advanced bone or metal plates. The first mention of such documents is found in ancient Egypt. It was there that the letters on the tablets were improved and ordered. For drawing the text, it was no longer a chisel that was used, but a special sharp style, which scratched the desired text.
Given the compactness and reliability of these media, sometimes whole poems were placed on them. The ancient Greeks, for example, wrote their messages on lead tablets, then putting them in tombs to drive away evil spirits.
Such an innovation was picked up by Ancient Rome. Taking into account the general enlightenment of the inhabitants of the empire, it is not surprising that almost everything was written on such tablets - from wills to decrees issued by the Senate. True, in the latter case, this was done on bronze, which was then exposed to the public. However, the manufacture of records was quite expensive even for wealthy Rome.
Wax - a cheap solution for a storage medium
Plates began to be made of wax. The base was made of ivory or wood. Wax was poured into a special depression on its front side. It turned out to be a kind of modern reusable children's screen on which they write sharp style and erase what was written if necessary. We can say that in this way the idea of ancient and modern information carriers was connected.
The system was so successful that it lasted 1,500 years. Wax tablets were also used by our ancestors, who called them cera. It is noteworthy that this media in Ancient Russia was very often used by Russian merchants as books and notebooks. But not only merchants, cera liked. Public services issued decrees and interpretations on them. For example, an amazing document dated to the 11th century has survived. It was called the Novgorod Code and consisted of four pages.
Papyrus - the oldest paper
Unfortunately, due to climatic conditions, wax tablets very often fell into disrepair. For obvious reasons, cera poorly tolerated hot weather. While this was the main medium of information in Ancient Russia, the inhabitants of Egypt appeared papyrus. Yes, as in the case of clay tablets, Egypt became the birthplace of this innovation.
The appearance of the first papyrus, scientists date the XXV century BC. The raw material for the manufacture of papyrus was reed, which grew in abundance on the banks of the Nile. Papyrus itself was made from the core of the plant, which was cut into thin strips and then lapped out under a large and smooth stone. He, in turn, was set under the scorching Egyptian sun. After drying, the papyrus was polished with special scrapers made of ivory. The ready-to-eat papyrus was a long ribbon, so it was stored mostly in scrolls.
A little later, the sheets began to be combined into books. Papyrus is quite widespread in Greece and in the Roman Empire. But despite the popularity of this information carrier, it was still unreliable. Often torn, burned, deteriorated from dust. However, a number of documents made on papyrus have survived to this day. True, this is rather an exception to the rule.
Papyrus as a carrier of information in Ancient Russia was practically not used. Our ancestors preferred more reliable materials in the form of wax planks, and then birch bark.
Parchment
In the second century BC, people mastered the production of parchment. It is possible that the principle “everything new is well forgotten old” worked. But animal skins again began to be used as the basis for the production of a future information carrier. The main difference from papyrus was the higher strength of this material. They invented it in the city of Pergamum and, without further ado, gave the name of their products.
Despite the fact that the cost of the new medium was much higher than that of the papyrus, parchment firmly and confidently replaced thin and fragile sheets of reed from use. Parchment was made from non-cut skin of animals, mainly sheep or calf.
The approximate appearance of parchment dates back to the 2nd century BC. According to scientists, this material was more popular than papyrus. The fact that this storage medium was used in Ancient Russia is evidenced by numerous manuscripts that have survived to this day.
Parchment was quite widespread in the ancient world, however, due to the high cost of manufacturing, people still began to look for an alternative.
Birch bark is a gift of nature
In Russia, parchment was almost never produced until the 15th century AD. Everything was brought from abroad, so it was inaccessible to the inhabitants. As in the case of clay tablets, people gradually came to the conclusion that a tree can be used for writing. This is not about serious dressing, as in the process of making papyrus, but about a rough notch of characters on the front of a wooden surface. This method significantly reduced the cost of the entire production process and made the paper publicly available.
The history of this technology originates in equatorial countries. It was from there that she came to Western Europe and Ancient Russia, but somewhat modified and improved. It should be noted that the use of wood for the manufacture of information media had a key, decisive role in the formation of the entire paper industry. But this is in the future.
Starting from the 8th century AD, wooden planks were widely used in Ancient Russia. In the manufacture of materials for writing in Russia, birch bark was used . Hence the odious name that first comes to mind if one asks: "What was the medium of information in Ancient Russia?" Birch bark.
Manufacturing technology is strikingly simple. After boiling, the inner layer of the bark was scraped off from the birch bark blanks, then the edges were carefully cut. The result was either a ribbon (scroll) or a rectangle even at the edges.
Birch bark scrolls
As a rule, birch bark letters were folded into scrolls, and the written text turned out to be from its outside. The texts were squeezed out by a special stylo made of iron or bone. Birch bark letters were used everywhere in Russia. Due to the cheapness and ease of manufacture, they were available to different segments of the population.
Peasant elders compiled censuses of souls on them, merchants kept accounts, and politicians displayed their will on birch bark letters. Even small books were made from birch bark plates fastened together. The samples of birch bark letters that have reached us serve as clear evidence of how widely they were used. According to them, the history of Ancient Russia is traced. Education in Russia required the acquisition of literacy and writing skills, which only emphasized the importance of preserving and transmitting information.
Paper - The Final Stage
Historians claim that paper appeared in China in the 2nd century BC. Its appearance is due to the unreliability and high cost of existing means of transmitting information in the form of tablets, papyrus and parchment. The first samples of paper products were made from defective silkworm cocoons, a little later they began to use hemp.
In 105 BC. e. Chinese craftsman Cai Lun began making paper from bored fibers of mulberry, rags, wood ash and hemp. All this was mixed with water in a special form, and then exposed to the sun. After drying, the master very carefully smoothed the resulting substance with special stones. Cai Lun 's invention was the starting point for further paper improvements. New ingredients were added to its “branded” composition, making the ancient paper more durable and smooth, which subsequently led to in-line production. And the history of the media has stopped for a long time, it can be said, ended
At the beginning of the 7th century, paper production was mastered by Korea and Japan. And after another 150 years, the Arabs will know about it. Further, the spread of paper went rather slowly. This was due to a certain closeness of the Arab states from Europe. However, as a result of the conquests of Spain, the secret was revealed and distributed throughout Western Europe.