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06661_Field_TCUM T226.txt
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1996-04-10
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With the cutting-off of the supplies of papyrus by the
Mohammedans, the Mediterranean, long a Roman lake, became
a Muslim lake, and the Roman centre collapsed. What had been
the margins of this centre-margin structure became
independent centres on a new feudal, structural base. The
Roman centre collapsed by the fifth century A.D. as wheel,
road, and paper dwindled into a ghostly paradigm of former
power.
Papyrus never returned. Byzantium, like the medieval
centres, relied heavily on parchment, but this was too
expensive and scarce a material to speed commerce or even
education. It was paper from China, gradually making its way
through the Near East to Europe, that accelerated education
and commerce steadily from the eleventh century, and provided
the basis for “the Renaissance of the twelfth century,”