Long before the e-book vs print book battle, there existed another upheaval in the ways readers got their information. BBC Culture explains how humans have been resistant throughout history to changing forms of the written word, going back thousands of years.

Scrolls, made from Egyptian papyrus, dominated ancient Rome. However, these scrolls were cumbersome to use, fragile, and had a short shelf life.

Around the first century CE, the codex started to appear. Codices were made from more durable parchment and were more space-efficient than scrolls. Fragments of discovered codices from this era show a new paged-book type of format. The majority of pagan Rome at this time greatly preferred the better known scroll. It wasn’t until the rise of the Christian church (and their heavy preference for codices) that caused usage of scrolls to finally diminish.

The pros and cons of using e-books vs. print books seem to echo the rise of codices over scrolls in ancient Rome. E-book sales may have started to level off or decline, at least allowing the print book a fighting chance for now.