We know a surprising amount about life in those days, in part because this was a highly literate society that kept and preserved copious records.

That means transforming what only 80 years ago was a medieval kingdom into a technologically literate society.

An ecologically literate society would be a sustainable society which did not destroy the natural environment on which they depend.

It signals a belief that, in literate society, young childreneven one- and two-year oldsare in the process of becoming literate.

Nineteenth-century historians had been applying the techniques of philology to reconstruct the histories of, and relationships between, literate societies.