Comment by smokel

> Pre literate peole could memorise vast texts

It seems more likely that there were only a handful of people who could. There still are a handful of people who can, and they are probably even better than in the olden times [1] (for example because there are simply more people now than back then.)

[1] https://oberlinreview.org/35413/news/35413/ (random first link from Google)