Qing dynasty court lady reading a handwritten scroll (probably 1700s AD) Printing with movable type first began in China about 1000 AD. It caught on when European printers combined movable type with [...]
History of printing: Wong Jei's block-printed scroll, 868 AD Writing by hand For four thousand years after the invention of writing in Iraq, all writing was done by hand, a character at [...]
Pseudo-Apuleius, Herbarium (about 600 AD, now in Leiden) Papyrus came first Scribes carved the first writing on wet clay tablets, but soon after that, about 3000 BC, the Egyptians invented papyrus. By about 500 [...]
History of paper: Early Chinese paper Paper invented in China Since the invention of writing, people had been trying to come up with something easier to write on than papyrus or parchment, and also [...]
Cuneiform tablet from West Asia Most people in the ancient Mediterranean and West Asian areas spoke languages that divided into two groups. One language group is Indo-European and the other group is Semitic. In southern [...]
Early Japanese religion: Ujigami Shinto Shrine (Japan, 1300s AD) Where did the Shinto faith come from? The earliest people in Japan probably brought with them ancient religious ideas from Africa. [...]
Early Japanese literature: A copy of the Kojiki from the 1300s AD Printing and paper in Japan Just after 700 AD, the Japanese Empress Genmei ordered her staff to write and publish Japan's [...]
Yayoi pottery, ca. 100-200 AD By about 800 BC, most people in Japan were shifting from Stone Age hunting and gathering to farming rice for most of their food (but they were still also eating a lot of fish). People [...]
Yamato Japan: Haniwa seated woman from a kofun tomb, possibly a Shinto religious leader (ca. 500 AD) From Yayoi to Yamato By the end of the Yayoi period (Japan's Iron Age) in 250 [...]
Court attendants (Takamatsuzuka Tomb, ca. 600s AD) Now that Japan had declared independence from China, Empress Suiko and her successors built a new government for Japan. They wanted Japan's government to be just [...]
