[MUSIC] In this video and in the following ones, we will be dealing with several questions relating to the different sorts of materials that have been used as support for writing through history. As a matter of fact, one could state that any material able of offering a relatively flat surface has been utilized as a support for writing. But also that the degree of literacy in any given society determines what sort of writing materials that society will use. A scarcely literate society tends to write on durable and resilient supports, while a highly literate society uses materials cheap and abundant but also perishable. And as a consequence, it might happen that more written pieces have been preserved from a low literate society than from a highly literate one. Depending on the origin of the materials utilized to receive writing, we can divide them broadly in materials of mineral, vegetal, or animal origin. The first category includes stones and metals. Marble and bronze have been used in practically every culture for display writing. In the Greek and Roman world, documents such as laws, official decrees and international treaties were usually copied in this type of support because of their inalterable nature. In other video, we have also mentioned gold and lead as writing supports. Lead, as a matter of fact, is highly appropriate because it is very malleable. And it is quite easy to turn it into thin plates where one could write without difficulty by scratching the plates with a hard and pointy instrument like a knoll. Apart from the damnation tablets that we will see in another segment, we have, made of lead, a series of some 70 small codices of 7 or 8 leaden leaves. It's written in Greek and Hebrew, but were found not so long ago in the Jordan desert near the borders with Israel and Syria. It is possible that these small codices date from the first or second century AD. But their authenticity has been contested. From the Visigothic Kingdom of Spain in the sixth and seventh century, we have slate tablets written with a pointy and hard instrument. The exemplars preserved are not many, but some of them contain quite charming school exercises of writing and basic arithmetic. All sort of domestic objects were recycled to receive writing. Among them all, the ostraka deserve a special attention. They are small pottery fragments on which the citizens of Athens voted who should be exiled from the city? From ostraka, the present term, ostracism derives. Of course, walls have always been kind of a magnet for graffiti. From the first century BC to the fourth century AD of Rome have come imprecations, accounts, names and all sorts of messages written on walls. Probably you have heard of the graffiti of Pompeii since they are especially famous. From the animal kingdom, of course, the wax is the first substance we think of. Wax was used together with shellac for the wax tablets. In 1980, archaeologists found on the coast of present Turkey vessel. And in it, a diptych of wax tablets dating probably from the 14th century BC. And together with the wax, we must mention bone fragments, turtle shells and silk fabric among others. As a matter of fact, the oldest witnesses of a sort of protozymes have been found on ostrich egg shells. They come from South Africa and the age could reach up to 100,000 years. Animal hides are documented as writing support from 2700 to 2500 BC in Egypt. A very well known example of hides used for this purpose is the mathematical text now in the British Museum Manuscript 10250. From the vegetal kingdom, tree leaves and bark have been used as writing support. The palm leaf was used in old India for the Pothi books. And in China, bamboo was adapted for the same purpose. Pliny refers as well to palm leaves as writing supports previous to the invention of papyrus. As for tree bark, we have only some allusions, mostly referred to the linden tree whose inner layer called liber was thought to be very appropriate for receiving writing. From the word liber derives the word used for book in Old Latin vernaculars. Birch bark has served as support for writing in several cultures. The oldest witnesses are a collection of Buddhist manuscripts in the Kanahari language found in Afghanistan that were acquired by the British Library in 1994. From medieval times, we have more fragments, this time coming from Russia from the area of Novgorod. The most curious is the writing practice of a six or seven-year old child called Onfim. Wood has also been employed as writing support in many cultures. Plato mentions wooden tablets on where notes could be taken. We know that the Romans covered them with gypsum and then called them tabula dealbatae. And many centuries later Cennino Cennini described how to whiten thick tree wood boards with grounded bone. In 1996, two codices on wooden boards of some 2.5 millimeters thickness were found in the oasis of Dakhleh in Egypt. Also of wood are the so called tallies or tally sticks, which were used for bookkeeping from Sumerian times to the 18th century England. And finally, some textiles of vegetal origin were used as a support for writing. The Etruscans have the so called libri lintei, some of which are now preserved in the museum of Agram. Agram knew the libri lintei magistratuum, on which the names of the magistrates were registered year by year, and the mappae linteae that is referred to by the Codex Theodosianus. Regretfully, not even a fragment of these last ones has been preserved. [MUSIC]
