Rather more than five thousand years ago came one of those periods of epochal change in human development, one of history’s hinge points when all of a sudden—in the matter of the transmission of knowledge—life changed, profoundly. In four quite separated places around the planet, and over an extended period of around two thousand years that began around 3400 BC, the craft of writing was invented. Until recording equipment came along, speech vanished into the air, lingering only in the fugitive vaults of memory and in the oral traditions of some indigenous peoples, but writing enabled the
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