Before the advent of writing systems and the mass distribution of books, the only way to learn anything without experiencing it firsthand was through oral repetition. Memorable chants, songs, poems, legends, allegories, jokes. The average human might not have been beset by information overload, but being underinformed wasn’t ideal, either. For most of history, a community’s elites (priests, royals, eventually the privileged scribes who were taught to read and write) guarded knowledge like precious ore. The clandestine nature of information gave these gatekeepers immense power, more than any
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