Ancient Printing Press spreading throughout the world

I got thinking about the printing press and its impact on history, it is an extremely simple but important invention. So what if it had been invented at the earliest point possible. Say a ingenious Sumerian scribe in Ur invents it

Here is an earlier thread that I found by searching
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=93628&highlight=printing+press

That thread gets tied up too much in ancient Mesopotamia though. My question is what if the printing press spread, like the invention of writing itself, and other culture adopt it, creating versions for their own langauges. The printing press spreads out from Mesopotamia to Persia, Egypt, Phoenicia, Anatolia, Greece, India and China, so by say the 1500 BC the printing press was firmly attached with writing, in whatever langauge it was used for.

What would be the long term effects of this technology being present and available at such an early point in history? From a technological, economic and social point of view (e.g. Industrial Revolution in 200 BC? Enlightenment in AD 500? Atomic power by 1000? Or most extreme or moderate changes.)

This isn't about how its spread, that is largely irrelevent and it isn't attached to a specific language (though it may be if you see a specific power far more successful with it), what matters is the impact on human development.

I know this is an extremely early POD, so I guess a certain amount of creativity is necessary, don't hesitate to speculate as widely as you like. :cool:
 
Allow me to embark on a minor tirade, if you will.

I absolutely loathe the kind of attitude that goes "It doesn't matter how X happens; what are its effects?" It simply doesn't work like that. Reality is, for lack of a better word, complex. If we don't know how something happened, we cannot in any way, shape or fashion determine its effects.

Indeed, in addition to that, there are various tough-to-surmount challenges associated with this proposed change. First off, the printing press needs a market. Skilled metalworkers are a precious commodity, and they sure aren't going to be making printing presses if the darned things don't sell. Who need anything printed? The people can't read, the kings don't need the people to be able to read, and the scribes would much rather maintain their monopoly. Most writing systems aren't particularly well suited to it, either.

So I think your goal is a bit too flighty. How about having it appear in Ancient Greece? It's got reasonably wealthy urban centers, a solid need for easier information distribution, enough skilled metalworkers, and best of all, it's got a suitable alphabet.

Much easier to work with than Mesopotamia, honestly.
 

8day

Banned
Didn't the Sumerian use clay tablets? I think a wooden Printing Press would work for those.
 
Granted, then. But those are, if I may be so frank, even less effective than the metal ones. I just don't see why local powers would bother trying to carry it out.

Though, admittedly, most of the post may have been affected by the whole "I don't care about how it happens"-deal. I just don't get how one could have that attitude :(
 
Granted, then. But those are, if I may be so frank, even less effective than the metal ones. I just don't see why local powers would bother trying to carry it out.

Though, admittedly, most of the post may have been affected by the whole "I don't care about how it happens"-deal. I just don't get how one could have that attitude :(

I completely sympathize. Things like that don't happen in a vacuum.

But sometimes that's all the OP wants to know, so one can give the perspective and then proceed to answer the question in the given parameters. And I like the idea of the Poleis as the birthplace of printing. Especially since it's likely going to be the foreign population doing the working on it (low-prestige crafts) and thus have it spread across the Mediterranean much faster.
 
What are you going to print ON? Paper hasnt been invented, parchment is blasted expensive, and papyrus is basically only available in egypt.

Paper apparently doesnt reach the middle east until the 8th century, and europe until the 12 th or so.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
What are you going to print ON? Paper hasnt been invented, parchment is blasted expensive, and papyrus is basically only available in egypt.

Paper apparently doesnt reach the middle east until the 8th century, and europe until the 12 th or so.

Probably parchment or clay. We have existing evidence of someone using a moveable type printing press in either the Linear A or Linear B writing styles of very ancient Greece. So the technology existed and the technical hurdles had been overcome, it was just abandoned.

As to who does it, we have to look at what was written. The first writings were accounting records. We also have kings sending out decrees. So we now can construct they type of society that could have used it. You would need a large empire for the day with a centralized administration and reporting process. Ancient Egypt fits well. You would then need a Pharaoh who learns of the existing technology with Linear A or B and adapts the technology. The use would be fairly boring. One would be preprinted accounting forms. It would be records showing the harvest or population or tax collection for each district. Probably starts on parchment, and laters moves to papyrus. BTW, papyrus is growing in my back yard in Arkansas. It is really a tropical plant, so it will be limited to areas that don't have regular freeze, but it can do even colder places. It partially survived about -15 C last winter with nothing more than wet mulch on top. If the system catches on, the plant will be widely grown in many areas. Just takes a lot of water really. Another would be government decrees or laws. These could be on parchment or papyrus,but I would go with clay her. You setup a master template to mass produce clay tablets to be fired, maybe even small clay monuments. This way the kings decree can be seen in all villages and towns. Now all this may seem like a big expense, but it is trivial compared to the labor needed to build a pyramid. It is really just needs a major empire to see value in the technology. I can easily see a Roman emperor requiring each city have a Temple to house the tablets recording the great triumphs of Roman emperors.
 
Allow me to embark on a minor tirade, if you will.

I absolutely loathe the kind of attitude that goes "It doesn't matter how X happens; what are its effects?" It simply doesn't work like that. Reality is, for lack of a better word, complex. If we don't know how something happened, we cannot in any way, shape or fashion determine its effects.

Indeed, in addition to that, there are various tough-to-surmount challenges associated with this proposed change. First off, the printing press needs a market. Skilled metalworkers are a precious commodity, and they sure aren't going to be making printing presses if the darned things don't sell. Who need anything printed? The people can't read, the kings don't need the people to be able to read, and the scribes would much rather maintain their monopoly. Most writing systems aren't particularly well suited to it, either.

So I think your goal is a bit too flighty. How about having it appear in Ancient Greece? It's got reasonably wealthy urban centers, a solid need for easier information distribution, enough skilled metalworkers, and best of all, it's got a suitable alphabet.

Much easier to work with than Mesopotamia, honestly.

Not really, everyone wants to make their job easier, scribes make a device to make their job easier. Kings want people to be able to read their decrees. The Sumerian script is pretty basic and could easily be done using wood on clay as suggested below, and they even had something similar. There is nothing flighty about it, I'm not asking for a typewriter out of nowhere. You're throwing up barriers where there are none.

If you'd find it easier use ancient Egypt somewhere else in the Middle East or ancient China before 1000 BC, but not Greece. I find too many people live in their comfort zone of western centric ancient history. Believe it or not ancient Greece wasn't the centre of the universe.

I completely sympathize. Things like that don't happen in a vacuum.

But sometimes that's all the OP wants to know, so one can give the perspective and then proceed to answer the question in the given parameters. And I like the idea of the Poleis as the birthplace of printing. Especially since it's likely going to be the foreign population doing the working on it (low-prestige crafts) and thus have it spread across the Mediterranean much faster.

It's not a vacuum, there were lots of opportunities for certain technologies to be discovered far sooner or later, take steam power for example. All it takes is a creative mind to ask "what if?".

Probably parchment or clay. We have existing evidence of someone using a moveable type printing press in either the Linear A or Linear B writing styles of very ancient Greece. So the technology existed and the technical hurdles had been overcome, it was just abandoned.

As to who does it, we have to look at what was written. The first writings were accounting records. We also have kings sending out decrees. So we now can construct they type of society that could have used it. You would need a large empire for the day with a centralized administration and reporting process. Ancient Egypt fits well. You would then need a Pharaoh who learns of the existing technology with Linear A or B and adapts the technology. The use would be fairly boring. One would be preprinted accounting forms. It would be records showing the harvest or population or tax collection for each district. Probably starts on parchment, and laters moves to papyrus. BTW, papyrus is growing in my back yard in Arkansas. It is really a tropical plant, so it will be limited to areas that don't have regular freeze, but it can do even colder places. It partially survived about -15 C last winter with nothing more than wet mulch on top. If the system catches on, the plant will be widely grown in many areas. Just takes a lot of water really. Another would be government decrees or laws. These could be on parchment or papyrus,but I would go with clay her. You setup a master template to mass produce clay tablets to be fired, maybe even small clay monuments. This way the kings decree can be seen in all villages and towns. Now all this may seem like a big expense, but it is trivial compared to the labor needed to build a pyramid. It is really just needs a major empire to see value in the technology. I can easily see a Roman emperor requiring each city have a Temple to house the tablets recording the great triumphs of Roman emperors.

I think it's very easy to see how this would develop as a useful technology in the short term as you've outlined in the 4 major empires of the Middle East. It's a long way off from when it was really invented, but when paper is introduced it could lead to some major changes.

In a sense, the Sumerians DID have print:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cylinder_seal

Thanks for the link. Proof that this was possible as a starting point had it been embraced.
 
No, the cylinder seal was a seal. Each could only "print" one specific, and rather short, message. What is vital for a printing press to be viable is moveable type - Cylinder seals and other similar things are important, but not really all that related to this matter.

As for the Egypt proposition, I don't think it'd work. I disagree with the conclusion that printing would be most effective in a centralized administration - In fact, I'd say it's quite the opposite. What benefit is there to these pre-printed forms? If they wanted to cheat, they'd do so anyway, and actually enforcing it would be too much of a hassle. Laws, too - Just tell the local headmen how matters are, or send them a scribe-made clay tablet if needed. There just isn't a big enough need to cut it.

The real benefit of print is when you want to get information out to a very large amount of people for very little cost. A centralized administration already controls the land; what they need to do is keep it. In a more, say, chaotic state - like the Athenian democracy - where you need to actually sway people and make them agree with you, there's a far greater benefit. Of course, this does presume literacy, which is another reason why metropolitan societies are best - There are, quite simply, more literate people there.

As for the physical medium, that's a good point. Would imported papyrus perhaps suffice, if we're assuming a somewhat rich Greek polis?
 
I would be interested in thinking about what the effects would be on the roman republic, and/or Hellenistic egypt.
 
I absolutely loathe the kind of attitude that goes "It doesn't matter how X happens; what are its effects?" It simply doesn't work like that. Reality is, for lack of a better word, complex. If we don't know how something happened, we cannot in any way, shape or fashion determine its effects.

Oh, go back to posting on facebook about this.
 
Regarding the question of whether or not there would be a need for the technology, I thought of a factor that should probably be taken into consideration; ego. Given how many rulers were overly concerned with proclaiming their greatness to the world, I wouldn't be terribly suprised if there was at least one somewhere in the ancient world to whom the idea of their words being displayed in every corner of their empire would hold great appeal and who had the resources to make it happen if the technology was available.
 
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Moonstruck said:
No, the cylinder seal was a seal. Each could only "print" one specific, and rather short, message. What is vital for a printing press to be viable is moveable type - Cylinder seals and other similar things are important, but not really all that related to this matter.

I would like to point out that block printing developed out of chops in China by the T'ang Dynasty and that block printing was the dominant method of typography in East Asia long after the invention of movable type by Bi Sheng in the 1040s CE, even being the main form of printing well into the 1800s.

Movable type has some advantages in simple, block phonetic scripts - like Cyrillic, Latin, Cherokee or Hebrew - but not for any of the writing systems around during the Bronze Age (perhaps except Ugaritic) or even for that matter the pre-classical Iron Age for most of the world, such as Mesoamerica, Nigeria or, of course, China. Block printing would be the easiest and most obvious.

I would say the Indus Valley Civilization would be your best bet for developing printing: Despite the fact that we have yet to decipher the Indus Script, there are several things that we can tell about that Bronze Age civilization that set it apart from all others of its day quite starkly:

  • The Indus Script is found rather evenly spread across the main cities of Mohenjo-Daro, Harappa and Lothal.
  • Furthermore, a lack of public inscriptions, coupled with a wide array of items with the script on them, indicates that literacy was quite high, especially for the Bronze Age.
  • Due to the climate of the Indus Valley, biodegradable materials with inscriptions have long since been lost, including the cotton many scholars assumed the Indus People wrote on.
  • The OTL IVC's stamp seals could serve as the basis for printing in an ATL IVC, just as chops did for China in actual history
Have a look here for an example of an IVC stamp seal: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/49.40.1

Finally, I would like to point out that, even without paper, something like tapa/kapa could be a substitute for it.
 
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