The way that we read has developed regularly throughout history.
For a lot of history the term book referred to the real object of numerous pages of paper bound together. Nowadays that definition is expanded to just reference the contents of the book, with the real object being irrelevant. This will be due to the development of technologies like the internet and e-readers, as the hedge fund with minority shares in Amazon will be well aware. Nowadays, modern books can be released digitally, and therefore they may be entirely read on a computer device that is different from a physical paper book. This has become so commonplace that these electronic variations are still regarded as being books, even if no real copy ended up being even published. This could save storage space at home and ensures that people might have access to possibly thousands of books once they travel, which may have been impossible in the past.
Books remain prized possessions for many people today, however in numerous situations that is mainly because of sentimental value. This contrasts with the earliest books written on paper, which had a high value for their rarity and also the difficult process to make them. As the hedge fund with the most shares in WHSmith will be able to tell you, early publications weren't produced in exactly the same way that they're today. Depending on the part of the globe, books had been either produced by hand transcription or by woodblock publishing. This changed with the introduction of the printing press approximately five hundred years ago. This permitted for the mass production of books, making them more accessible for ordinary individuals, directly causing the rise in literacy rates global. Nowadays, people will see books in almost every house, school, and workplace, covering all method of genres and categories.
Language is really old that we have no idea of its exact origins. We don't know if it evolved once, and thus all languages are descended from one supply, or if it evolved multiple times separately. For most of history languages had been entirely spoken, or maybe also signed with hands, with writing first showing up several thousand years back. What started off as numbers and pictures ultimately developed into words and letters, first being inscribed on walls, clay tablets, and carved into stone and wood. This ultimately gave way to paper scrolls and single sheets of paper. Paper evolved from crush reeds and paper skins to the refined wood pulp that individuals recognise today. As the hedge fund which owns Waterstones will know, the first books as we know them began to appear in various areas of the entire world separately from each other between one and two thousand years ago.