3 But literacy was not a widespread phenomenon anywhere in this period. Some evidence suggests very early Meso-American writing may have existed at the beginning of the Common Era.
Literacy existed in small pockets, in local communities, and in a range of cultures in India, Asia, parts of Europe and North Africa. 2 The isolation of populations from each other created distinctly different conditions in various areas of the world. It is important to keep in mind that literate communities in the Indian sub-continent were well established at this time, as they were in China (where the Imperial Examination used in selection of royal appointments required knowledge of canonical Chinese texts). Knowledge of woodblock printing, paper production, and other technologies used for the printing of texts in China and India, was not transferred to Europe during this period. Scroll and print production flourished in the Far East in the production and copying of Buddhist prayers, Hindu manuscripts, and legal, administrative, and literary documents. But even in these domains, writing was not widespread or systematic. 1 Handwritten documents served administrative and bureaucratic functions in secular areas of culture-for legal purposes, official records, correspondence, and any other written communication. Literacy was limited, especially in the early centuries of this period, but continued to flourish among scholars, most of whom were associated with the study of Jewish, Christian, and then Islamic or other religious communities. The Middle Ages in the West and East Monasteries, courts, manuscripts, publishing Overviewįrom the origins of the codex in the 2-3 rd centuries of the Common Era until the invention of movable type in Germany in the mid-15 th century, manuscript production dominated literacy technologies in Europe and the Middle East.
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