Short history of the book

The invention of writing is quite important in terms of world history, but if there is something more important than that, it is the invention of literature. From prehistoric times, it was necessary to wait quite a long time until the emergence of a literary product. During this process, however, he did not even know that the writer who had written it would actually be a preliminary figure like Homer. So it had to wait thousands of years for the formation of a literary work. Although the writing was invented, its usage areas were "much different" in general. There were provincial exceptions, but there is no point in bringing in a non-existent one. Therefore, we will look at the trends of today's books starting from Ancient Greece, the basis of Western Civilization.

It is said that the ancient Greek society came from the Phoenicians. More precisely, the Greeks adapted the Phoenician alphabet to them, which is still used today by Greek society. Despite the existence of the writing before ancient Greece, the reading ability was not yet complete. As far as we know, reading a text began in Ancient Greece. As one of the reasons for this, we can show that the alphabet at that time is very important. In order to facilitate the learning of the alphabet, some methods were applied. For example; Each of the letters was intended to memorize and learn the alphabet by giving individual names like Zeta, Eta, Iota. This facilitated the memorization of the alphabet at that time. In fact, they were trying to maintain this educational period with their dramas. However, with these methods, the idiom, which can not be learned, was replaced by a "mindless" child and a different method for children. The rich segment of the tradition kept slaves in order to teach the children of alphabets, and each slave called with a letter, which corresponded to the children's ages of 10-13 upon Plato's request. The children who started training at this age range were taking reading and writing lessons at the same time because again Plato's reading and writing trainings had to be given at the same time, otherwise it would be dysfunctional. In today's educational system, the situation is not so different. It is still natural to begin training with methods from ancient Greece. But the trainings of that period were a little bit different today. Because of the importance of poetry in the period and because it is the most influential literary genre, education was realized through poetry, and children were mostly taught by Homer and other poets.

"He sent it to Lykia,
he gave the ominous signs,
a top-folding plate
wrote a lot of death writings "(Iliad).

In the Bittabi Antiquity, these writings were not written on the paper we used today. Although the use of early period writing was carried out on pottery and similar tools, a wide variety of materials emerged as expected in the following period. The earliest period of Greek writing is 8th century BC. In general, pottery and similar inorganic tools were written on this period, and these were generally single-sentences. These potteries occasionally include some sentences written in hexametron, which were sometimes called owners, or were generally used for tax billing and reporting. In this sense, there is no special material used for writing at that time. Because the name is more like a post, the place of the article was more. But when things started to use special objects for writing, things started to change a bit.

The active and effective use of the text has begun after the invention of papyrus. We can say that the invention of papyrus is equivalent to the printing press for this period. This paper, which is obtained from the papyrus tree, plays a very important role in the storage and use of materials. There was a tool used in ancient Greece for all the work of this gigantic ruler-era society in which the words byblion or kylindro were used. It even has its own methods of use and rules. For example; in general, literary texts were written on the inside of the papyrus and the outside was not used. Of course, there were also cases where two of them were used, but the use of papyrus in this way was not welcomed by the society or even blamed. The scroll written in this way was called opisthographos and was not sold. If you think that the length of a ruler is on average between 3 and 5 meters, you could fit a text of your choice into a writing material of this size. The papyrus, which gave great comfort and freedom to the tablets after the pottery, provided the precondition for the development of literary products.

The literary texts written during the period were highly valued and hiding very special. Even today, when we see a papyrus dating from the Ancient Ages, we can understand whether it is a literary product, because in the period literary texts have been tried to be as plain and beautiful as possible, unlike reports or taxa. If any person wishes to have a literary text, he should copy it by typing it himself or buy it from people who have now brought it into commerce. -Platon or Aristotle is known to pay a fairly high amount for some works and to build their own libraries. Of course, there are occasional misfortunes from time to time because of their value. Probably the worst of these misfortunes was the stolen of the rolls. It was a roll of literary text that was yet to be completed by a worse poet ...

On the other hand, the first step in today's book format is codecs. Although the papyrus provided great convenience in the form of rolls, from time to time it was difficult to move and read, and therefore the "books" obtained from the papyrus began to be produced in codex format, not as rolls. Here the most important competitor of the papyrus is parchmented. Because the papyrus planted on top was not closing after a while and it was very difficult to use. However, a codec made from parchment was much more readable and portable than papyrus in this sense. With this new book format we can say that a new era has begun. Because many items stored in the form of rolls were transferred to codex parchments and stored in private libraries. This process actually corresponds to the turn of the day when antique works reaching the day are identified. Because only valuable works were reproduced in the form of codex. If we can read works like Iliad today, it is because these works are accepted as very valuable.

Finally, the history of the text and the book; the tablets, the pottery, the papyrus and the parchment, and, of course, finally, the paper. Especially in the 8th century the invention of paper is still being used as the last invention for the time being. Although books are now being transmitted to digital media, printed books continue to falter as if the same papyrus had a parcel. It is not known if this resistance will succeed, but it seems that the books will be with us for many more years.