The first need that the deed covered was to register businesses, make accounts, write down debts and debtors. It was invented by the Sumerians by accident, in their ancient towns in what is now Iraq. They wrote on clay tablets, which were later eternalized in ovens. Cuneiform symbols – like wedges – that experts can now read.
Before these advances from Sumer came to martyr us with this obligatory exercise of reading and writing, and of marking the division between prehistory and history, the world was easier with schools of listeners; and the legends passed from mouth to mouth, no heavy and expensive 600-page books.
The narrators went through the towns with their song of deed, exaggerating the feats of fantastic heroes, impossible bandits and the misfortune of unknown cities; each time the story changed names and places, settled, vanished.
Those bards, who performed seven centuries before our era, had learned their art, knew how to emphasize and pause, cause suspense, gain attention, and even set their fantastic stories to music perhaps with a small zither and a pair of kettledrums.
Centuries and centuries later the Egyptians discovered that some reeds that were in the way of the Nile could be used for something else, and after a rudimentary and boring process with that reed they formed a sheet that they called papyrus; it was a big business for a long time.
In Pergamum they managed to tan calf and lamb skins to create canvases – the city called them parchments in Latin – which were used to write, document their history. Already in the year 105 of our era, the Chinese – who invented almost everything – created paper from the bark of trees and hemp remains.
It took 600 years for the West to find out about this incredible discovery, and that was when the Arabs -also very smart- attacked the Chinese towns and forced them to tell their secret: how paper was made in exchange for their lives.
In the year 1048, again the Chinese invented the printing press with movable types of bamboo and porcelain, something complicated. Centuries later, the German Gutenberg created his own machine with metal letters. It quickly spread across Europe, producing the print newspapers we now read and the priceless books Hondurans spurn.
Books transformed history, culture, thought, development, ways of life. The most educated societies had the opportunity to grow, to harmonize coexistence, the commercial, food, health and infrastructure boom.
That is why it is discouraging that more than 60% of Hondurans have never read a book, according to data from the Francisco Morazán Pedagogical University. Of course, illiteracy, low schooling and the prices of books have an impact, but in most cases it is negligence and mental laziness. That almost explains the country we have.
2023-04-28 09:00:36
#Hondurans #books #lazy
