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The page is defined as a textual support, whether the text be present or virtual. This phenomenon is not specific to our book- and alphabet-based civilization. The very invention of writing rests on an original means of exploiting the space inaugurated by the image, and on the questions raised by that particular kind of space. By calibrating and structuring this space, soothsayers established the laws of a system of signs specific to visual communication – divine visual communication – which was also capable of transcribing human language. Far from being the origin of writing, counting, on the other hand, was only developed and refined by being integrated into the page's space.
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1. See a summary of this topic in Christin, A.-M. (1999) ‘Les Origines de l'écritaure: image, signe, trace,’ Le Débat, 106, 09–10, pp. 28–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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