The newspaper

Hello and welcome to ChiosRadio.gr! For this weeks new episode of our quiz category Speak If I will present you a new story about something that could may be invent by the Greeks. Do you think the newspaper is originally Greek? Let’s hear!

The history of the newspapers like we know them today, for example New York Times and To Vima, started in Corinth. As you probably know Corinth was one of the most important and biggest cities in ancient Greece with 90,000 people living in this town in 400 BC. In this time, around 415 BC, the fast growing city was in need of an efficient tool to provide necessary information to its citizens. Therefore the leaders of Corinth developed governmental announcement bulletins called kathimerines praxis (καθημερινές πράξεις) which means daily acts. The Greeks carved official notices in stone plates or metal and placed them on public places like the springs so that everyone would read the message and can be informed about current actions of the city leaders. At first the content included results of legal proceedings and outcomes of trials at the court. But later it changed due to the big request of the citizens. On metal plates from the time after 380 BC archaeologist found also mentions of births, marriages, deaths, and religious events. Each of the texts ended with the sentence “make public and propagate” which got famous and encouraged the people to give important information to the government to publish. We know so much about these first newspapers because the bulletins were taken down and archived by the librarians of the schools of the philosophers when they got replaced by a new announcement. You probably didn’t know that most information we have about event in ancient Greece come from these bulletins and the texts of the philosophers. At the same time of the spread of these first newspapers, secret newspaper for communication inside the governmental organs and the military established. But unfortunately not many of them survived to the present times and we don’t know much about these. Long time later Chinese governments began to produce news sheets in 210 AD during the late Han dynasty. Following dynasties kept this tradition and developed it to a more general information paper. The newspaper is Greek invention but because of the size and influence to other countries the spread of the newspapers to the world began from China.

Do you believe that this story happened like this? Is it really a Greek invention or did I make it up? Check the solution under this article!