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Originally Posted by Frost
Introducing paper early enough possibly gets you a home grown printing industry in the west at a very early date.
The Romans appear to have been aware of printing (or at least stamping) as a way of decorating cloth. Given a relatively cheap medium to print onto I can easily see the same processes being modified in order to duplicate written texts.
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That would be a great deal like what the Chinese did in the same period. Although the Roman alphabet would make moving to moble type far easier.
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The knock on effects of this are incalculable, aside from simply more texts surviving you potentially obtain a wider selection of surviving texts than ever existed in our history.
Unless there is some facet of Roman culture I am overlooking maturing print and paper making technologies are likely to have produced effects similar to maturing print technology in the 16th and 17th centuries. Historically this led to a significant rise in literacy and a corresponding increase in the distribution of ideas (at least amongst the middle classes) and a wider degree of public discourse on a number of subjects (ditto).
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Pretty much my thoughts too.