The story of printing really begins with the earliest dawn of civilization. As soon as men developed a language, even of the simplest sort, they felt the necessity of a means of communication with those who were not present. This would be needed for the identification of property, the making of records, the sending of orders or information, the making of appointments, and many other purposes which would be developed by the needs of even the most rudimentary civilization. We accordingly find evidences of devices to accomplish these ends associated with the earliest human remains. While the cave man was disputing food and shelter with the cave bear, the sabre-tooth tiger, and the mammoth in those places which are now the seats of the most advanced civilizations, he scratched or painted outline sketches of the animals he fought, and perhaps worshipped, on the wall of a cave or on the flat surface of a spreading antler or a piece of bone. [Illustration: The oldest known attempt to carve a picture. It dates from the cave period and was found at Dordogne, France.] One of the greatest single steps in civilization was the advance from the use of rough stone implements and weapons to the use of chipped and finished stones for the same purpose, commonly referred to as the transition from the paleolithic to the neolithic age. Just how long ago that was no one knows and only geologists can guess. Among remains dating from this period of transition found in the little village of Mas d'Azil in France, there have been discovered a number of painted pebbles. Whether these were game counters, ownership tags, records, or what not, no one can guess. Whether the marks on them were purely mnemonic signs, numerals, or verbal signs of some sort, no one knows. That they were in some way, however, the ancestors of modern printed matter is unquestionable. [Illustration: Pebbles from Mas d'Azil.] Among the earliest methods of communicating ideas to the absent, pictures hold the largest place. Other methods were knots, ordinarily known by the name _quipus_ which they bear among the ancient Peruvians. The number and arrangements of the knots and the color of the cords made possible a considerable range of expression. Closely associated with these were tallies, or notched sticks, and wampum, or strings of colored shells or beads arranged in various designs. Here perhaps may also be classed the so-called Ogham inscriptions, made by arrangements of short lines in groups about a long central line. The short lines may be either perpendicular to the central line or at an angle to it. They may be above it, below it, or across it, thus providing a wide range of combinations with a corresponding variety of expression. These primitive methods survive in the rosary, the sailor's log line with its knots or the knotted handkerchief which serves as a simple memorandum. They may run all the way from purely mnemonic signs to a fairly well developed alphabet.