It is estimated that in the first century after Christ only around 20% of people could read and write. Today that percentage has radically improved to where approximately 83% of men and women in the world are able to read and write. In the USA and the UK the percentage reaches to 99%, while in […]
A while back a friend and I were discussing literacy in the ancient world. We were entertaining questions such as, two thousand years ago, how many people could read? Could write? Owned books? I never was able to find an answer online, or even a guess. Well, last weekend while on the TGV to Paris […]
If you’re not a regular listener of BBC Radio 4’s program(me) “In Our Time,” you may have missed the series of five episodes that just aired on the history of the writing and how it has shaped intellectual history. Of particular interest to my readers will be episode three, how the invention of writing influenced […]
