Kingfisher School of Business and Finance

McArthur Highway, Lucao District, Dagupan City, Pangasinan

S.Y. 2022 – 2023

EVOLUTION OF TRADITIONAL MEDIA

“Pre-industrial Time”

Media Devices/Technologies used by people BEFORE 1700’S

GROUP 1
INTRODUCTION

The Prehistory Era of Traditional Media began more than a thousand years ago. Early

people, from nomads to cavemen up until the first civilization of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and

Babylon along the rivers of Tigris and Euprates. To provide a deeper comprehension of this era,

the researchers divided the timeline into four sub-eras.

The Quarters of Prehistory Times

I. Prehistory (- 600 B.C.)

II. Classical Era (600 B.C.- 476 A.D.)

III. The Middle Ages (476 A.D.- 1450 A.D.)

IV. Early Modern Era ( 1450 A.D. - 1750 A.D.)

To have this vast modernity of technology, is not something a Neanderthal was used to

seeing. To have something great, you have to start from scratch. People, from the common era,

do not have internet access or anything usual for today’s effortless living. No phones or cameras

to capture every tiny details on how were they living during this particular time, but it is no

wonder why we have an idea on how they might be living during those times.

I. Prehistory (- 600 B.C.)

Prehistory times relied to human communication that was initiated with the origin of

speech approximately on 500,000 B.C.E. This also led for symbols to be developed by early

men. These symbols became the pillar of prehistory media.

Group 1: Pre-industrial Era- Media Information Literacy 2

 a. Cave Paintings

The oldest known symbols created for communication were cave paintings, a form of

rock art, dating to the Upper Paleolithic age. The oldest known cave painting is located within

Chauvet Cave, dated to around 30,000 BC. These paintings contained increasing amounts of

information: people may have created the first calendar as far back as 15,000 years ago.

b. Clay Tablets (3200 B.C.E)

In early Mesopotamia, these tablets were used in order for writing in cuneiform. It was

their paper of sorts. This allowed people to record significant events known to man until today.

This was used for nearly 3000 years in 15 different language, that this actually introduced the

basics of communication.

c. Papyrus (2900 B.C.E.)

It was made in a thick material from a papyrus plant, that were commonly used during

the Prehistoric Era, especially in Egypt. This holds the documents that were important at the

time, and were rolled up like on scrolls for safe keeping. Documents like religious texts,

contracts, letters, and other information were the only source of “passing” information from

generation to another.

d. Alphabets

The first pure alphabets emerged around 2000 BC in Ancient Egypt, but by then

alphabetic principles had already been incorporated into Egyptian hieroglyphs for a millennium.

Group 1: Pre-industrial Era- Media Information Literacy 3

These glyphs were used as pronunciation guides for logograms, to write grammatical inflections,

and, later, to transcribe loan words and foreign names.

II. Classical Era (600 B.C.E - 476 A.D. )

The Classical Era is a continuation of an ongoing growth of intellect and civilization of

early men. This defines on how the people slowly cope up with the ongoing modernity brought

by the Prehistory Era. Important developments include the basic rules of geometry, the idea of a

formal mathematical proof, and discoveries in number theory, mathematical analysis, and applied

mathematics.

a. Acta Diurna (59 BC)

Acta Diurna is a document record of official business and matters of public interest. The Latin

word acta meant “things that have been done”. This was first used for minutes of official business or Acta

senatus, mainly for proceedings of the Senate which were not available to be shared with the public and

only with senators. Acta Diurna was considered the world’s first newspaper or a type of daily gazette,

wherein official enactments made by the emperor, announcements, and events were published here for the

public to know.

b. Paper (105 A. D.)

Tsai Lun, from ancient China, invented paper. This dates back to 105 A.D. when Tsai

Lun, an official at the court of Han Dynasty, made a sheet of paper from mulberry and other

coarse fibers as well as fishing nets, old rags, and hemp.

Group 1: Pre-industrial Era- Media Information Literacy 4

 c. Codex (300 AD)

Codex is the earliest prototype of the modern book. It is made of sheepskin and was invented in

Pergamon. This replaced the use of papyrus as a result of the suspension in papyrus exports from Europe

because of the rivalry between the Pergamene and Alexandrian libraries. Codex had several advantages

over the use of papyrus such as the convenience of writing long texts and writing on both sides of the

sheepskin. This was used in Western, European, and Asian countries where hieroglyphic script was

written.

III. The Middle Ages (476 A. D. - 1450 A.D.)

The Middle Ages is more than advanced than its predecessors. Ending the Prehistory Era

and the Classical Era with the Invention of the Alphabets and Symols, the classical era starts off

by completing everything you see on your desks.

a. Copper Plate Rolls (700)

Hindu-Malayan empires write legal documents on copper plate scrolls, and write other

documents on more perishable media.

b. Quill is used for writing. Quills were used for writing with ink before dip pen, fountain

pen, and ballpoint pen. (1250)

c. The Chinese had also developed wooden block type printing (1305), which were

IV. Early Modern Era

Group 1: Pre-industrial Era- Media Information Literacy 5

 The Early Modern Era summarizes how far human intellect and human invention can

reach. With limited resources from common era, we have come into an era were printing is

accessible and feasible.

Copy link for more information:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/early-modern-period#:~:text=Building%20

on%20inventions%2C%20such%20as,have%20 labeled%20a%20commercial%20 revolution.

a. Printing Press (1450)

The invention of metal printing press by Johannes Gutenberg is the highlight of Prehistory

Times. Though it was the pending end for Prehistory it made a whole point of possibility in

manufacturing a large sum of books for the first time. This led for low printing cost and that it

became available to a wide general group of audiences. This was the contribution of media to

Renaissance or the enlightenment of Literature. This helped transform a war driven world that

the printing press encouraged a lot of well known authors, playwrights, and artists, including

Shakespeare and Da Vinci, into a more visual and abstract perspective. At the same time that the

mechanical arts were becoming closer to a science, natural philosophy underwent some

significant transformations that brought it closer to the mechanical arts [Jacob, 1988]. Many of

the significant developments of the ancient Greeks in natural philosophy and mathematics had

not been available to the Latin West during the Middle Ages, but during the 15th and 16th

centuries new translations of the works of Plato, Euclid, Archimedes and the Greek atomists

began to appear in Europe and led to what some have called the Scientific Revolution.

This one little invention, led to other discoveries from every branch of fields, like for

example, Science, Literature, Music, and many more. This last stage of PREHISTORY TIMES is

Group 1: Pre-industrial Era- Media Information Literacy 6

actually the backbone of every little details known to man today. Before any social media or

smartphones were known, “out of this world intelligence and discoveries are what people

`wasting` their time on”.

Group 1: Pre-industrial Era- Media Information Literacy 7