The Media Evolution And Communication In Europe Before 17th Century: An Examination From The View Of The History Of Civilization

The communication of information is one of the fundamental demands of human survival and development. With the moving forward steps of human civilization, there has always been corresponding communication phenomenon in each specific historical moments.Medium is the carrier of information in communication, Our tongues are the media when we speak; rocks were the media when the primitive created cave arts; clay tablets were the media when Sumerians carved cuneiform characters; papyrus were the communication medium when ancient Egyptian, Greeks and Roman were writing; parchment were the medieval writing medium; In the later middle ages, paper were introduced from China and were widely spread in Europe, especially the invention of Gutenberg imprinter. Superficially, the evolution of media not only reflect the change of the physical state of the medium,accompanying the progression of human civilization from a deeper level.This doctoral dissertation takes the media evolution and communication in Europe before the 17 th century as the research target, and interprets and cards different phenomena of the media evolution and communication as well. Adopts a multi-disciplinary perspective that includes history, communication and advertising to uncover the relative few studied but play a key role in the evolution history of media and communication.This dissertationis composed of five chapters, the first one mainly focus on the theories problems, such as the multiple relationships among civilization, communication and advertising. I defined the related concepts, basic theories and history in these three fields,interprets and analyzes the key concepts such as “civilization”, “communication” and“generalized adverting” and brings up relevant theories in the field of “media ecology” to facilitate later discussions. The second chapter mainly discusses the naissance and development of characters and the evolution of the media from the period of petroglyph to hieroglyph from the outer-European scope. Research the shapes and characters by the perspective of semiotics are all symbols of human civilization both in mankind’s primitive and instinctive information communication and later rational induction and memorization,analyzing the relationship between remote ages and the European media communication. The third chapter examines the history of communication and media in ancient Greece and ancient Rome, focusing on a presentation of a vast amount of historical materials unearthed in Pompeii to show the advertising media and civilization in these two sources of Western civilization. In addition, I pay great attention to the using of papyrus as the main writing media in this class times.The fourth and five chapter surrounds the idea of “great change era,” in Europe and discusses the naissance and evolution of print. Gutenberg’s printing press started the Printing Revolution in medieval Europe. This great technological advancement gave birth to the print media and drastically increased the speed of human communication. Printing presses left theirmarks in many communication phenomena during events such as the spread of Christianity,the appearance of medieval heraldry and even during religious reforms. The great media evolution promote Europe into the age of modern civilization. Naturally, as the main writing media in medieval, I will give a great attentionto the study of parchment.The slow evolution medium essentially reflects the communication is the instinct of humanity. People utilize all the resources to invent the medium, transmitting information and varied communications(including advertising), even the power changes the world.There is fortuity and certainty as for specific media forms which appeared in specific historical periods. Fortuity is refereed to different human groups, geography, cultures all contribute to the appearance and formation of different media. This is exactly what this article is trying to address and study in depth. Yet, the evolution of media also exhibits historical certainty in a sense that human beings have an inevitable need to communicate information through their utilization of and confrontation with nature. It is also a certainty that man always tries to explain the patterns of the species and of nature and this certainty is a characteristic reflected in media’s evolutionary process, too. From the theme on “soul” in primitive men’s petroglyph to the formation of “modern spirit” brought about by printing presses from “great change era” in which we can glimpse mankind’s thinking and exploration of the world. The human pursuit of a spiritual world is the major driving forcewhich pushes our civilizations forward. With the continuous development of productive technologies and the accumulation of material, this pursuing spirit created the brilliant part of our civilization. Clay tablets in Mesopotamia, papyrus documents in ancient Egypt, advertisements painted on Pompeii’s walls, the Bible scrolls, printed books in medieval, which are all carriers of civilizations.From the evolution of media itself to the information recorded and presented through them,we can all see that man’s ever growing spiritual(truth, goodness and beauty)pursuit is the constant theme in human civilization. This is the real meaning behind the words “Soul” and“Spirit” in the title.