Welcome to the TAM-TAM Audio guide, the Diffuse Museum of Communication

Timeline (from the origins to the Sistine Chapel)

In this space, you can listen to the description of some key points along the route and immerse yourself in their history and meaning.

Discover more

Rector Valentina Garavaglia

Welcome to TAM-TAM

Prof. Gianni Canova

We Are not Autarkists

Opere

The origin

The Tower of Babel

2000 BC

Smoke signals

Circa 1.000 BC

Carrier Pigeons

776 BC

The Olympics

7th BC

Libraries

6th BC

The minted coin

312 BC

The Appian Way and Roman roads

1st century AD

The postal service

3rd AD

Kamasutra

8th AD

Conflict between iconoclasm and iconophilism

950 AD

One Thousand and One Nights

From the year 1000

Architecture as a medium: the monastery, the castle, the cathedral

From the c. 10th

The pulpit and the square

11th

Purgatory

11th-12th

Fragmentation of Latin and spread of vernacular languages

12th-13th AD

Paper

1292-1296

Giotto paints the frescoes in the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

1321

The Divine Comedy

1435

Leon Battista Alberti and the invention of perspective

1455

Gutenberg and the invention of printing

12 ottobre 1492

The “discovery” of the Americas

The timeline, accessible from the entrance of the tower in IULM 6, is one of the works that make up TAM-TAM, he Diffuse Museum of Communication at IULM University in Milan.

Thanks to the audio guide, you can explore some of the key points along the route through content available both in audio and written form.

Next to each "station", you will find a number that identifies its content within the app, along with a QR code for immediate access to the information.

Rector Valentina Garavaglia

Welcome to TAM-TAM

IULM University focuses on Communication, Interpreting and Translation Studies, Arts, Fashion, and Tourism. Communication is at the core of our research, curriculum, and learning objectives. We believe that communication belongs to the deepest dimension of humanity, and it is our mission to explore the dynamic dialogue between words, languages, and knowledge. Our critical approach to reality is founded on clear principles and practices. We see communication as the human ability to understand one another and to share knowledge, skills, and emotions. We trust in reason as the main tool for building meaningful relationships. Enjoy your journey along the Timeline of TAM-TAM. It will guide you through the milestones, ways, and forms in which human beings and various cultures and civilizations have communicated with each other over the ages and across time.

Valentina Garavaglia
Rector
Milan, March 2025

Prof. Gianni Canova

We Are not Autarkists

We are social beings: we cannot help but seek connections, transmitting signals and messages that say something about us, our thoughts, our dreams. Humanity has always done this, using the tools and technologies available in each era. To reach others. To inform or influence them. To persuade. To ask. To pray. To explain. To seduce or frighten. Or to exorcise the fear of the unknown. This timeline attempts to briefly trace the most important phases in the history of communication, from its origins and the myth of the Tower of Babel to (for now) the mid-1500s. This trail is designed to include not only words, images and alphabets among the communicational devices, but also roads and architecture, smoke signals and currencies, carrier pigeons and postal services. Communication is a shapeshifting entity, deploying ever-new and surprising masks and strategies. But what remains, at the end of the trail, is the realization that our inexhaustible need to communicate stems from the acknowledgement of our finiteness, the fact that none of us is enough on our own, and the realization that only by stepping outside the boundaries of our own selves, only by creating networks, connections and bonds, we can hope to make up for the limitations of being human.
Gianni Canova
Milano, march 2025

The origin

The Tower of Babel

In the beginning, people all spoke the same language. They would easily communicate with one another. But one day they decided to build a Tower so high that it would touch the sky to reach God. According to a rather common interpretation, God did not like such an act of pride and arrogance and decided to wreak havoc and confusion among the peoples, causing them to speak different languages and no longer understand each other. But according to another interpretation, the confusion of languages decided by God was intended not to weaken humanity, but to create the conditions for widespread diversity and plurality. Thus, the history of communication begins with a myth that enshrines both the difficulty and the necessity of communicating and creating suitable tools to do so.

2000 BC

Conflict between iconoclasm and iconophilism

They are one of the oldest means of communication. Used by American Indians, Aboriginal Australians, and Yámanas of the Tierra del Fuego, they are a form of visual communication involving the formation of smoke clouds/puffs generated by a bonfire to which they would add grass or green branches, then uncover at more or less regular intervals by a cloth or blanket that acted as a beacon to form clouds of different sizes. They used the sky as a communication channel; therefore, they would only communicate during daytime, and the receiver was none other than the eyes of those who could decipher the message. In history, there are traces of this use even in China, where the guardians of the Great Wall communicated using this system by passing the message from tower to tower, reaching distances of 750 kilometres. Smoke signals (black or white) are the communication system still used in the Vatican to communicate the results of the decisions of the cardinals sitting in conclave to elect a new Pope.

Circa 1.000 BC

Carrier Pigeons

Known and used by the Egyptians and Persians as far back as 3000 years ago, carrier pigeons have long been the fastest means of communication available, thanks to their excellent ability to find their way back to their nests. To make their way home, pigeons can use various strategies: a kind of internal compass that senses the earth’s magnetic field, an orientation system based on the position of the sun, an olfactory mechanism to recognise the smells of their home nest, and the ability to detect certain features of the landscape. Capable of travelling very long distances (up to almost 2000 km, flying on average at 80 km per hour), they were an extremely effective means of communication until the advent of the telegraph. In the military sphere, however, their importance extended into the 20th century: during both world wars, thousands of pigeons were used to send strategic messages, written on light paper or microfilm, and inserted into a small tube tied to a leg.

776 BC

The Olympics

The Olympic Games were born in Greece, in the sacred city of Olympia, to pay tribute to the gods. They actually marked the beginning of a new form of communication that found in the athlete’s body (only male and free, women and slaves were not allowed) its alphabet and in the agonistic competition its goal. To allow athletes to participate in competitions, they instituted the ‘Olympic truce’, a period of suspension of all conflicts. Precisely from 776 BC, the Greeks began to count the years. From that date, the Olympic Games were held every four years until, in 393 AD, Emperor Theodosius decreed their end since it was a pagan event. They were reborn in modern times in 1896, in Athens, at the request of Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who wanted to reaffirm the educational value of sport and the values of brotherhood, love among young people and peace among peoples.

7th BC

Libraries

The first libraries were born: Ashurbanipal (c. 7th BC) in Nineveh and, in the following century, in Greece, Polycrates in Samos and Pisistratus in Athens. In the Hellenistic age, the grandest library was that of Alexandria of Egypt, founded in 284 BC, which was also a papyrus scriptorium, and soon grew to contain up to 400,000 volumes; in 47 BC, it was partly destroyed by a fire. In Rome, public libraries were numerous: during the reign of Constantine, there were just under 30.

6th BC

The minted coin

According to Herodotus, coins (made of an alloy of silver and gold) were first minted by the Lydians in the 6th century BC. The first coins were produced and used by merchants as tokens for commercial transactions. Unlike raw nuggets, the minted silver and gold pieces were uniform in size and quality. Thus, sellers and buyers did not have to check their weight and fineness (percentage of pure silver or gold contained) each time. That is how merchants began to ‘all speak the same language’, and trade expanded.

312 BC

Conflict between iconoclasm and iconophilism

Communication is made of connections that cannot happen without adequate infrastructure. Built beginning from 312 BC, the Appian Way ran 196 km, connecting Rome to Capua. Like modern motorways, it bypassed less important towns and geographical obstacles along its route. The Romans did not ‘invent roads’ (the Persian ‘Royal Road’ in the 5th century BC already connected Susa to Sardis for 2,669 km, while the Uttarapath in eastern India extended for 2,400 km), but they perfected them, enveloping the world of the time with a network of roads over 120,000 km long, over which not only armies but above all people, goods and ideas passed. The Roman road system was the first Internet in history.

1st century AD

The postal service

In Rome, Emperor Augustus extensively used horse-drawn couriers who carried messages throughout the Roman Empire. The couriers had service stations where they could change the horses, eat, and rest. That was the beginning of the postal service. It would take decades for the postmark to be introduced (in Great Britain, in 1661). The stamp, on the other hand, was born in 1837 with the postal reform wanted in Great Britain by Rowland Hill, who envisaged a prepaid postal service in which the postal rate would not be collected on receipt, but at the time of posting at the sender’s expense.

3rd AD

Kamasutra

Published in Sanskrit by Mallanaga Vatsyayana around the 3rd century AD, it is the oldest Indian treatise on ars amatoria. Only apparently a compendium of techniques for obtaining maximum pleasure from sexual intercourse, in its most authentic meaning, it is a socio-philosophical treatise: the Hindu conception of life, in fact, postulates the harmony between Dharma, Artha, and Kama, that is, between the spheres of righteousness, prosperity, and sex, respectively. The latter, therefore, is not only normal and necessary but even sacred. Written in a simple language accessible to all, Kamasutra (literally: ‘Principles of Love’) has remained the most popular manual for communicating eroticism and sexuality over the centuries.

8th AD

Conflict between iconoclasm and iconophilism

From the first half of the c. 8th, in the Byzantine Empire the iconoclast movement fought against image worship and the veneration of icons. After a hard conflict, in 787 AD the Council of Nicaea condemned iconoclasm and re-established the cult of sacred images, providing a solid iconophile basis for the subsequent development of Western civilisation (images as a narrative for the illiterate). But the hatred or rejection of images did not disappear. For example, Islam, which prohibits the use of the image of Mohammed, is iconoclastic, as well as Calvinism and Puritanism, which developed with the Protestant Reformation.

950 AD

One Thousand and One Nights

They come from Persia, Mesopotamia, India, and Egypt. They are by different authors and have different historical-geographical settings. But what unites the tales that make up the One Thousand and One Nights is the awareness that telling stories and listening to them is one of the primary needs of human beings. The beautiful Sherazade who, by telling stories to the Sultan for one thousand and one nights saves her life and that of many other women, is the first example of a narrative communication that knows how to be stronger than hatred, resentment, and death.

From the year 1000

Architecture as a medium: the monastery, the castle, the cathedral

These three architectural types dominated the landscape and imagination of medieval society. While the monastery inscribed the strict ritual rules of monastic life in stone and spatial organisation, the castle, especially after the year 1000, celebrated the power of the Lord who inhabited it, towering over the village and conveying an idea of strength and security, almost projecting a mysterious and bellicose aura. From 1163, with the start of the construction of Notre Dame in Paris, the Gothic cathedral became a popular architectural type. With its slender, frantic, vibrant vertical lines, its spires pointing to the sky, its refined play of contrasts between light and shade, its frescoes, its far-reaching symbolism associated with the Christian eschatological message, the cathedral ‘speaks’ of faith to a still largely illiterate audience of devotees. Built after Notre Dame, the other most important cathedrals are Chartes (with its splendid stained-glass windows dominated by the colour cobalt blue), Cologne Cathedral (1322), and Milan Cathedral (1386).

From the c. 10th

The pulpit and the square

The pulpit and the square. These are the two main places from which communication in medieval European society spread. The preach radiated from the pulpit - the homily and the sermon becoming actual oratorical genres - while in the square sacred representations, feasts of fools, carnivals, and all forms of spectacle in which actors and spectators participated took place. The body became the medium through which communication circulated, despite the hostility of the ecclesiastical hierarchies (“The body is the abominable garment of the soul”, claimed Gregory the Great). As Jacques Le Goff wrote, “The Middle Ages is a reservoir of symbols.”

11th

Purgatory

In the Catholic sphere, the idea of the existence of Purgatory was institutionalised on a theological level as a physical place where the souls of the dead linger, waiting for purification from sins that would allow them to ascend to Paradise. Theology and the Papacy insist on communication between the living and the dead through prayer (and the granting of indulgences), consolidating the role of ecclesiastical institutions as institutional mediators between the human and the divine. The recognition of Purgatory contributed to exacerbating the crisis between the Eastern and Western Churches, and it resumed during the Protestant Reformation as an element of criticism towards Papacy. According to the historian Jacques Le Goff, the invention of Purgatory introduced a temporal and human dimension between the two timeless and eternal absolutes based on the dualism of Hell/Paradise. Purgatory gave hope of salvation to a people of sinners otherwise led to despair of the possibility of otherworldly salvation.

11th-12th

Fragmentation of Latin and spread of vernacular languages

Starting with the fall of the Roman Empire in 476 AD, Latin as the universal language of the empire weakened and fragmented while the Neo-Latin languages, also known as vulgar languages because they were spoken mainly by ordinary people (vulgus), established themselves. The vernacular languages were Italian, French, Provençal, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Romanian, and Ladin.

12th-13th AD

Paper

Invented in China around the c. 1st AD, paper only reached Europe in the c. 12th, and a century later began to be produced locally. As early as the 15th century, the largest cities in Europe could boast at least one paper mill. By replacing parchment, paper contributed to the dissemination not only of vernacular texts but also of the new mathematics based on the Arabic numerical system. The copying process became less expensive. As a result, books became accessible even to the lower classes.

1292-1296

Giotto paints the frescoes in the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

28 scenes divided into three groups narrate the life of St Francis in the only nave of the Upper Church in Assisi. The dynamism of the scenes, the use of a rudimentary but effective form of perspective and the idea of using art to compose a narrative are the elements that make this cycle a revolutionary work. Giotto’s art aims to break the rules of a rigid, analytical, and austere style, transforming the paintbrush into a veritable means of communication. The images emphasise the mediatic role of the cathedral that hosts them: the purpose of the frescoes, in addition to exciting religious sentiments, is to instruct, excite and catechise. Architecture and painting are increasingly mass means of communication.

1321

The Divine Comedy

Composed beginning from 1304, during the years of exile in Lunigiana and Romagna, and first published in 1321, Dante’s Commedia is one of the most amazing cathedrals of words man has ever produced. A communicative artefact so complex that it combines poetry and the rules of metrics with the visionary nature of theology. An itinerarium mentis in Deum that manages to cross and communicate all the misery and, at the same time, all the sublime that emanates from the human being.

1435

Leon Battista Alberti and the invention of perspective

Creating the illusion of three-dimensionality. Representing three-dimensional spaces and objects on a flat surface. Perspective is the representation technique that makes this optical illusion possible by constructing a visual pyramid whose vertex is the eye of the observer. From the Latin perspicere (i.e. “to see clearly”), pursued since the 14th century by Giotto and intuited empirically by Brunelleschi, perspective was first theorised and systematised by Leon Battista Alberti in his treatise De Pictura (1435), originally published in Latin and then, the following year, in the vernacular to make it accessible to artists. From then on, this ‘geometric artifice’ would become indispensable to enable the language of painting to communicate a verisimilar visualisation of objects and spaces. To make the painted world believable.

1455

Gutenberg and the invention of printing

In 1455, the German printer Johannes Gutenberg published an edition of the Bible destined to change history: it was the first book to be printed using movable type. The publication of this book is conventionally regarded as the birth of printing. The consequences of this invention were enormous: books gradually became a less elitist commodity and accessible to a wider public, the book market became more profitable, new forms of literature began to emerge, and printing ended up changing even the way human beings think.

12th October 1942

The “discovery” of the Americas

71 days after the departure of the first voyage to the Indies along the western route, Christopher Columbus’s three caravels landed on a Caribbean Island inhabited by Taino peoples, renamed San Salvador. The ‘discovery’ of what was to be called the Americas would soon change the forms of communication (economically, socially, food-wise, and culturally) along the Atlantic routes. Thirty years later, on 8th September 1522, the first circumnavigation of the globe was completed thanks to a Spanish expedition undertaken by the Portuguese Fernando Magellan (who had died the previous year in the Philippines).