Widespread literacy in ancient times...?

[Stand_watie]

Here is a question/discussion topic for those who have any interest in history on the forum. A peculiar nexus of a sci-fi book I'm reading (by Orson Scott Card), a History channel production I saw recently about authorship of the Christian New Testament (where they stated that only 1% to 2% of middle eastern male adults were literate in the first several centuries a.d.), and a history book I'm reading about Saul of Tarsus (more commonly known amongst Christians as Paul the apostle), had gotten a question percolating in my head

I wonder what was the first culture to have widespread literacy?

I'll define the term first, to avoid confusion. I would call widespread literacy to be around 50% of the free, adult, male (not necessarily male, but the dominant sex of the population) being able to read/write on the most basic level (not expounding on Shakespeare, but the Daniel Boone level of 'I kilt a bar hear with my nife'.

I'm particularly interested in the thoughts of those who have studied up on eastern cultures, as that's an area that I lack in my history education. I had heard from several different sources that, at least at several points in their history the Jews were unique in having widespread literacy amongst western civilization - does anyone know of a culture that had it that preceded around 3 or 400 b.c.?

[Azrael256]

If you're looking before ~1500, you won't find much.  Jews were frequently more literate than anybody, and Muslims were largely literate, too.  If you're looking at European literacy 400-300BC, there isn't much.  Rome didn't yet own all of Italy, so there wouldn't be much Latin writing going on.  Athens was basically toast, having exhausted itself in the Peloponnesian quagmire, so the classical schools would have been lucky to have three walls.

East Asia is pretty much out.  Somebody there invented the printing press by the 13th Century where it collected dust until an archaeologist found it again.  Asian languages are not easy to print (not on a press, anyway), and you aren't going to achieve good literacy rates in a large population without lots of printing.  It's not that there weren't plenty of Chinese writers, it's just that they were waaaay outnumbered by peasants.

If you're going to find anything even approaching 50% (which is an enormous percentage 300 years after Gutenberg), you *might* (snowball's chance...) find it between ~700-400BC in Greece or India.

Otherwise, your answers are Jews for ancient civilisations, Muslims for CE pre-Gutenberg civilisations, and "The West" as a whole for 1500-present.

[Perd Hapley]

From East Asia: Tradition and Transformation by Fairbank, Reischauer and Craig, my East Asian Civ textbook:

Tokugawa Japan, AD 1600-1867 :
"Most townsmen of any standing were literate, as were the richer peasants....It has been estimated that by the middle of the nineteenth century roughly 45% of the male pupulation could read and write and perhaps 15% of the women."
"Numerous publishing houses flourished throughout the Tokugawa period, issuing a flood of printed books..."
[Woodblock printing was prefferred to movable type as it could also be used for illustrations.  I (fistful) also suspect that movable type was less practical with Chinese characters, though much of this literature was written in the kana syllabary.  I don't remember what precisely what a syllabary is, but I think it is like an alphabet in having far fewer characters than the Chinese system. ]

Curiously, the book has no similar index listings for China or Korea, except in the modern period.

[Sindawe]

syllabary : A set of written characters for a language, each character representing a syllable

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syllabary

[lee n. field]

I've read stuff (I'd have to dig for sources) that suggests much higher literacy rates than the quoted 1-2% in the Roman Era Europe and Middle East.  Widespread grafitti, for one.  We have grafitti that had to have been written by slaves.  It doesn't take 12 years of full time gov't provided conditioning to teach someone to read.

[The Rabbi]

I remember the issue coming up in my Classics grad program.  My recollection is that literacy was much higher than is usually assumed.

[mfree]

Sumeria?

[Stand_watie]

I've read stuff (I'd have to dig for sources) that suggests much higher literacy rates than the quoted 1-2% in the Roman Era Europe and Middle East.  Widespread grafitti, for one.  We have grafitti that had to have been written by slaves.  It doesn't take 12 years of full time gov't provided conditioning to teach someone to read.

I'm sorry but that brings to mind a scene from possibly the single funniest movie of the modern era, despite being utterly blasphemous to at least two religions and quite possibly anti-Semitic.


****
http://www.mwscomp.com/movies/brian/brian-08.htm



Scene 8


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Romanes Eunt Domus

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[scary music]
CENTURION:
What's this, then? 'Romanes Eunt Domus'? 'People called Romanes they go the house'?
BRIAN:
It-- it says, 'Romans, go home'.
 
CENTURION:
No, it doesn't. What's Latin for 'Roman'? Come on!
BRIAN:
Aah!
CENTURION:
Come on!
BRIAN:
'R-- Romanus'?
CENTURION:
Goes like...?
BRIAN:
'Annus'?
CENTURION:
Vocative plural of 'annus' is...?
BRIAN:
Eh. 'Anni'?
CENTURION:
'Romani'. 'Eunt'? What is 'eunt'?
BRIAN:
'Go'. Let--
CENTURION:
Conjugate the verb 'to go'.
BRIAN:
Uh. 'Ire'. Uh, 'eo'. 'Is'. 'It'. 'Imus'. 'Itis'. 'Eunt'.
CENTURION:
So 'eunt' is...?
BRIAN:
Ah, huh, third person plural, uh, present indicative. Uh, 'they go'.
CENTURION:
But 'Romans, go home' is an order, so you must use the...?
BRIAN:
The... imperative!
CENTURION:
Which is...?
BRIAN:
Umm! Oh. Oh. Um, 'i'. 'I'!
CENTURION:
How many Romans?
BRIAN:
Ah! 'I'-- Plural. Plural. 'Ite'. 'Ite'.
CENTURION:
'Ite'.
BRIAN:
Ah. Eh.
CENTURION:
'Domus'?
BRIAN:
Eh.
CENTURION:
Nominative?
BRIAN:
Oh.
CENTURION:
'Go home'? This is motion towards. Isn't it, boy?
BRIAN:
Ah. Ah, dative, sir! Ahh! No, not dative! Not the dative, sir! No! Ah! Oh, the... accusative! Accusative! Ah! 'Domum', sir! 'Ad domum'! Ah! Oooh! Ah!
CENTURION:
Except that 'domus' takes the...?
BRIAN:
The locative, sir!
CENTURION:
Which is...?!
BRIAN:
'Domum'.
CENTURION:
'Domum'.
BRIAN:
Aaah! Ah.
CENTURION:
'Um'. Understand?
BRIAN:
Yes, sir.
CENTURION:
Now, write it out a hundred times.
BRIAN:
Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. Hail Caesar, sir.
CENTURION:
Hail Caesar. If it's not done by sunrise, I'll cut your balls off.
BRIAN:
Oh, thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. Hail Caesar and everything, sir! Oh. Mmm!

Finished!
 
ROMAN SOLDIER STIG:
Right. Now don't do it again.
[CENTURIONS chase BRIAN]

[Perd Hapley]

Man, those guys are brilliant.  I don't even remember that scene, but I can never forget it now.

[Azrael256]

Yech, I remember that scene.  I didn't get to see it until a couple of years ago, but I had nightmares about Mrs. McGowan's Latin class for a week afterward.

From what I hear, all latin teachers are like that.

[Bemidjiblade]

1-2% seems awfully low for Roman Era.  My knee jerk response is a memory of regular business correspondance.  Even with about 40% of the society NOT being slaves, at least 5-10% seems more probable, or the habit of corresponding would be almost unknown.  Yet we have MSS of letters for quite mundane purposes, as opposed to the law/history/religion formula that seems to dominate most writing in illiterate societies.

Unfortunatley, there's a dearth of archeological evidence about the Phoenecians, but while I'm a Zionist, I'd have to give them a fair shot at matching the Jews for certain periods, since it was the Phoenecians, not the Jews, who seemed to have such a powerful influence on Mediteranean and Mesopotamean writing forms.

Also, it is an anachronysm to equate Greek and Roman slavery with the illiterate masses of North American slavery.  Several types of slaves would be highly educated, the pedagogue being only the most prominant example.  So the 60% of the population living in slavery cannot be discounted either.

But that digresses.  I'm with Azrael's overall assessment

[Perd Hapley]

Also, it is an anachronysm to equate Greek and Roman slavery with the illiterate masses of North American slavery.  Several types of slaves would be highly educated, the pedagogue being only the most prominant example.  So the 60% of the population living in slavery cannot be discounted either.

Correct.  Slavery in ancient times was much easier to move in and out of, and I don't think it bore the same amount of stigma that we see in North American, nineteenth-century slavery.  Even physicians and teachers (such as pedagogues) might be slaves.