it's hard to say. there are indigenous Australian stories that have been preserved over 10,000 years that apparently have an accurate correspondence to the geological changes that took place over that time period.
Gutenberg changed our social structures and mental practices enormously. His presses lead to an explosion of protestantism, colonialism, slavery, and ultimately democracy. More than that, it begat the widespread practice of scientific research, which requires the examination and cultural transmission of quantitative information in fine grained contexts.
We take Gutenberg's disruption for granted now, but it's a recent event.
For millennia before Gutenberg, history and culture were transmitted orally. Amazingly, we don't have any appreciation for how that was done, except when we see something on television that we can't explain.
Have you ever seen a memory champion memorise the order of two decks of cards in less than two minutes? How about the names of two dozen people from the audience in less than a minute, recalled perfectly at the end of the show? If so, you have glimpsed the technique that homo sapiens relied on for millennia.
Did you know it's possible for you to remember lists of thousands of detailed facts and stories, even if you don't consider that your memory is anything special? The reason you don't do this is that (a) you don't need to do it because you have a laptop and a phone; and (b) you never learned how.
But the Greeks and the Romans did it, and every culture before them. If they hadn't done it, you wouldn't have a laptop or a phone because you'd still be living on the savanna or in a cave.
I'm really skeptical of this kind of claim. Gutenberg's invention was undoubtedly critical to development of the West but the following "consequences" are anachronisms:
* Protestantism - Luther was the culmination of a series of heretical revolts against orthodox Catholicism that included the Cathari, Waldensians, Hussites, and many others. German nationalism and corruption of the Roman Church were important factors in his success.
* Colonialism -- Practiced by the Carthaginians and Greeks throughout the Mediterranean.
* Slavery -- A long and ugly story documented in texts like the Bible, Homer, and many others dating to the beginning of recorded history. It was pervasive in classical Mediterranean civilizations.
* Democracy -- Classical examples of full democracy: Athens, Corinth, Megara, Syracuse, Rome. Medieval examples of proto-democracies: Swiss Cantons, Venice, Hanseatic League cities, etc.
What Gutenberg did achieve was lay the foundation for widespread literacy by making books cheaper and more available than at any previous point in European history. That alone is a major accomplishment.
What might be the impact of this content on people's thoughts and practices?
Then think about how commerce works. Have you ever been part of a company that has raised funds on the stock market, or sold goods internationally? Can you imagine doing either of those things without the invention of the printing press?
Perhaps 'relevant' is a better word. Classical city states provided models to democratic movements of the 18th and 19th century. Cicero's example and writings were studied carefully, just to name one of many. [1] They obviously weren't the only sources; the English and Americans in particular offered a wealth of homegrown innovations for study.
What would be the causal link between the printing press and slavery? If anything it seems like they're just concurrent happenings in history.
Maybe a slippery slope style of argument where printing press led to X which led to Y, which opened the new world, which led to plantations, which led to slavery.
The problem with that is you can start at anything and end up there. The wheel. The loom. I could probably spin a convincing yarn starting from beer.
The GP's argument is that slavery was a given in many societies a long time before the printing press arrived. So, they're not even "concurrent happenings in history". We have references to slavery as far back as the Old Testament and Homer's Iliad.
I'd say the same thing about colonialism, the difference between the classical world (and earlier) and Europe post-1600 is the scale, not the practice.
Yes, an increase in the scale of slavery enabled by the commercial instruments (bonds and commercial insurance) that mitigated risk for the trade.
Whilst contracts had previously been written by hand, the standardisation and scale of reproduction enabled by Gutenberg meant that risk could be transacted in open markets by complete strangers.
> What would be the causal link between the printing press and slavery
Advertising, accountancy and international shipping, all enabled by Gutenbergs presses. Prior to that, slavery, which has been practised since ancient times, was a local phenomenon.
What printing did was enable capital markets and merchants to establish mercantile practices that could extend to an arbitrary N degrees of separation. That network expansion, more than any individual technological innovation, is responsible for the upscaling of all the enterprises which distinguish mass consumer society from any prior society.
The Atlantic slave trade was one important step on this journey.
Slave trade existed long before the printing press. My argument is that advances in naval technology enabled the transport of larges amounts of slaves very long distances, which was otherwise not previously feasible.
How many commercial and trade documents were printed with a press? Contracts, ledgers, etc. were still mostly handwritten.
Iberian sailing innovations were clearly advantageous, enabling the Portuguese to venture south along the coast of West Africa and establish trade with Brazil.
Once shipping had advanced to a point where commerce could be transacted over large distances and durations, amongst multitudes of parties from different demographic origins, the bottleneck for the expansion of international trade was exposed as finance and risk management.
The full importance of financial risk management is revealed by Portugal's decline as a maritime power from the 16th century. British bond traders and insurers used increasingly sophisticated financial instruments to ensure (and insure) British commercial fleets ruled the waves for the next 300 years.
I don't think capital markets relied on the printing press. The Hanseatic league, arguably the first free-trade organisation, was established well before Gutenberg built his press (1150 vs 1450 AD, roughly). Do you have a reference for that? I'm curious to explore it.
If you're referring to the availability of paper money, bank notes were already used in the 7th century AD in China and introduced in Europe by Marco Polo in the 13th century [1], and before that the Knights Templar issued hand-written notes to the same effect.
"New vehicles of credit were imported from Italy, where double-entry book-keeping was invented in 1492, and outpaced the Hansa economy, in which silver coins changed hands rather than bills of exchange."
Bond markets and insurance instruments arose to manage risk in the slave trade.
The relevance of the printing press is only that printed forms were required for conducting commerce between parties that were introduced at arms length i.e. from outside networks of direct personal trust (one or two degrees of separation i.e. someone trusted could vouch for an associate to introduce that associate to a capital merchant, who could document the arrangement with a "hand-written note", with the full knowledge that he had the means to extract revenge in the breach because the parties were known to each other).
With printed forms, the numerous detailed requirements stipulating the terms of guarantee could be mass produced in advance, thus enabling strangers to circumvent the need for personal assurances so they could operate in free and open markets, thus greatly expanding the pool of financiers, entrepreneurs, traders and customers.
See
How the shadow of slavery still hangs over global finance
This long article on the slave trade provides broad and detailed historical context for the evolution of the financial industry, without directly treating finance in depth.
> Prior to that, slavery, which has been practised since ancient times, was a local phenomenon.
Most of the slave trading cultures I’m aware of took their slaves from elsewhere. The Romans took most of their slaves from conquered peoples. The Vikings transported slaves all across Europe and the Mediterranean.
The transportation of slaves from African to America probably has more to do with the development of better sailing technology than writing.
Accountancy has also been around much longer than the printing press. The oldest known written records are in fact warehouse inventories.
Did you know that one of the first things printed on a Gutenberg printing press was a treatise by Luca Pacioli, one of the fathers of accounting and a mentor of Leonardo da Vinci? [0]
This study [1] examines the accounts of the Portuguese New Christian trader, Manoel Batista Peres. These private accounts, found in the Archivo General de la Nación in Lima, Peru, were associated with the trading of slaves on the Upper Guinea Coast in the early seventeenth century. The accounts take the double-entry format but, in the absence of a metallic currency, were kept in cloth money. Combining evidence from the accounts themselves, with the context in which Peres conducted his business, the study explores the reasons why he kept his accounts in this format. It shows how this system of accounting could be adapted to a non-monetised economy and contributes to the debate over the relationship between double-entry bookkeeping and the rise of capitalism.
The number of slaves carried off from Africa to the Americas increased fivefold between 1630 and 1770 [2]
Based on extensive archival research, this study [3] documents and analyses the accounting techniques that the Companhia Geral do Grão Pará e Maranhão applied to its slave trading operations during the second half of the eighteenth century. The surviving accounting records of this Portuguese chartered company reveal – in meticulous detail – the integral role that accounting technology played in enabling the slave trade to flourish.
Slavery thrived under colonial rule. British and Dutch settlers relied on enslaved people to help establish farms and build the new towns and cities that would eventually become the United States.
Enslaved people were brought to work on the cotton, sugar and tobacco plantations. The crops they grew were sent to Europe or to the northern colonies, to be turned into finished products. Those finished goods were used to fund trips to Africa to obtain more slaves who were then trafficked back to America.
This triangular trading route was profitable for investors.
To raise the money to start many future plantation owners turned to capital markets in London - selling debt that was used to purchase boats, goods and eventually people. [4]
The common narrative is that today’s modern management techniques were developed in the factories in England and the industrialized North of the United States, not the plantations of the Caribbean and the American South.
According to a new book by historian Caitlin Rosenthal, that narrative is wrong.
Rosenthal is an assistant professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley, and in her new book, “Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management,” she looks at the business side of slavery once it was well-established on plantations. Rosenthal argues that slaveholders in the American South and Caribbean were using advanced management and accounting techniques long before their northern counterparts. Techniques that are still used by businesses today. [5]
Only priests and nobles could read. The general population of Europe before the printing press couldn't read. Partly because there was no point - they couldn't afford the books even if they could read them.
And partly as control. Remember the Church vehemently opposed the translation of the Bible from Latin, because if the general population could read it they'd start making their own minds up about what it said.
Right. Then Gutenberg’s presses enabled the bible to be published in German, French, English, Belgian, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese and English. Bibles were distributed to individual parishes where priests could conduct their own sermons without reference to a central authority.
I also find this with code syntax. Because looking it up is so easy, I don't bother remembering it. Back in the 90's I remembered all this, no problem. Now I have to keep checking how to initialise an array in whatever language I'm in.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ancient-sea-rise-...
100,000 years does seem like a really long time though for a direct connection to present-day people.