Though the first known printed book—The Diamond Sutra—a book on Buddhism in Chinese was said to be printed in year 868 AD. History of manuscripts on leafs, barks, stone writings is further old.
Unlike now when, we only type a text, record a video or audio, or click a picture and put it on internet, it becomes available for everyone and may remain alive forever things were not the same when our journey on this planet started.
Same was not the case in ancient times. There was no way to preserve knowledge gained by experience than to convey it orally from generation to generation. Until the day we discovered symbols, then improved further to finer symbols, assigned symbols to prevalent oral nomenclature (names that our ancient ancestors gave to the things they were surrounded by in their oral language) and then gradually were able to develop scripts. Then started writing those scrips on stones or other such available articles, then gradually moved to barks, trees, clothes…. and finally on papers.
But giving a simple thought over the life that was, before we learned to write—rather learned to record our knowledge, emotions and messages—suppose a man learned how to make a spear of stones in his life and a few of his fellow tribesmen also learned the same from him. They also taught the same to their children. However, two years down the line an epidemic or calamity killed the entire village. The knowledge that was earned in the entire lifetime of a generation was lost. More importantly when it comes to passing knowledge orally there are several limitations like limited number of people who could be taught. As there were no means of travel, it was also difficult to export this knowledge to other parts of the country or say world.
Now, think about the same scene post the development of scripts. Even the person who is not skilled in making a spear, can carry the information or knowledge about the skills of making a spear to other parts of the country or world by merely carrying the written texts (books) to those areas.
Thus, books not only help in conservation of knowledge, it also helped in easier and quicker dissemination of knowledge and thus accelerated our development process.
Indeed discovery of fire and invention of wheels were the biggest revolution of our tribal ancestors but without books there were fair chances that these information would have been lost and the several generations or centuries later, we would have to re-discover fire and re-invent wheels.
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