TECHNOLOGY × LANGUAGE

Printing's Eastern Millennium

868 CE

History · Middle Ages · Holocene · Meghalayan

Six centuries before Gutenberg, printing was an old industry in East Asia. Paper, official in China from 105 CE, met the carved woodblock; the Diamond Sutra, printed in 868 with a colophon giving its date, is the world's oldest dated printed book, and clearly not a first attempt. Bi Sheng devised movable type around 1041, and Korea took it into metal: a book of 1239, long taken for a woodblock print, is now identified as the oldest surviving metal-type imprint, well before the celebrated Jikji of 1377.

Why it matters

The history of printing usually starts in Mainz; it actually starts a millennium earlier and a continent east, and remembering that corrects a durable distortion in the story of who invented what. It also sharpens the real European question: not the idea of printing but its explosive alliance with the alphabet, cheap paper and commerce. Technologies have many birthplaces; revolutions depend on where they land.

Dating & uncertainty

Paper was reported to the Chinese court in 105 CE, and printing followed within centuries: the Diamond Sutra of 868 is the earliest dated printed book. Bi Sheng experimented with movable type from 1041, four centuries before Gutenberg. The Song of Enlightenment, argued over for fifty years, is now read as a metal-type printing of 1239, which puts Korean metal type more than a century before the Jikji of 1377.

Sources

1. Gunaratne (2001), Gazette: International Journal for Communication Studies · Paper, printing and the printing pressdoi:10.1177/0016549201063006001
2. Yoo (2022), Heritage · How was the world's oldest metal-type-printed book (The Song of Enlightenment, Korea, 1239) misidentified for nearly 50 years?doi:10.3390/heritage5030092
3. UNESCO Memory of the World · Baegun hwasang chorok buljo jikji simche yojeol (vol. II), the second volume of 'Anthology of Great Buddhist Priests' Zen Teachings' (Jikji). Institutional source: UNESCO Memory of the World register, accessed 2026-08-30.

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