Next time you hold a book in your hands, stop and think. Like most other things in the modern world, it is the result of thousands of years of human invention.

    First came the invention of writing, (probable) about 5,500 years ago. With writing, people did not have to remember everything in their heads. They could communicate with people that they never (see) and share their knowledge with future generations.

    Later, the Greeks were well-known for their literature (文学) and science, but their "books" looked very different f the books of today. They were called scrolls (卷轴).They were difficult to use and took a lot of space in a library. About 2,000 years ago, books with lots of pages (invent).

    For more than a thousand years, the pages of books were made from animal skin. That changed in t thirteenth century, when Europeans learned about a very (use) Chinese invention: paper.

    But the biggest change for books in Europe came in 1439, when Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press. Before that, books in Europe were copied by hand, so they were very expensive. Many more people could afford the books were produced on a printing press.

    These days it is difficult (imagine) a world without books. But human invention does not stop. Every year, more (story) are bought as e-books and read on a screen.

    Will anyone turn the pages of a traditional book in the future, will books, like scrolls soon disappear?