ABSTRACT
The clay tablets of Sumeria were put out of business by the greater convenience of the newer forms. In many societies the past has been a mortgage which really has crushed children, and the achievements of Greece did in some recent epochs result in a combined belittling of anything else and submission to classical rote learning. The rise of the newer media of communication has coincided with a certain loss of power by the older, print-oriented middle classes. The Zuni prayermonger, in his somewhat more individualized emotional make-up, seems to prefigure the monk of the Middle Ages, or the docile student who sometimes passes as the good student. The shift to a literate culture, historically decisive as it is, does not of course occur all at once: only a tiny minority could read prior to the age of print, and the reading of manuscripts altered styles of communication rather less than one might today think.
