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06648_Field_TCUM T213.txt
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1996-04-10
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confectionaries, and to be cooks and to be bakers. And
he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your
oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his
servants.
Paradoxically, the effect of the wheel and of paper in
organizing new power structures was not to decentralize but to
centralize. A speed-up in communications always enables a
central authority to extend its operations to more distant
margins. The introduction of alphabet and papyrus meant that
many more people had to be trained as scribes and
administrators. However, the resulting extension of
homogenization and of uniform training did not come into play
in the ancient or medieval world to any great degree. It was not
really until the mechanization of writing in the Renaissance that
intensely unified and centralized power was possible. Since this