People gossiped long before the appearance of written language. They spread the news orally at intersections, by the fires, at marketplaces. The messengers returned from fields of battles with messages about victory or defeat. The heralds went to the villages, preaching on births, deaths, weddings and divorces. Stories about all sorts of miracles were distributed in дописьменных companies, in the words of one of the anthropologist, as «fire in the forest.» Printed newspaper quickly spread to Europe. Printed weekly appeared in Basel (1610), in Frankfurt and Vienna (1615), in Hamburg (1616), Berlin (1617) and Amsterdam (1618). Some English officer of the time complained that his country «blame in foreign countries for the lack of publications with «weekly statement of the events.» The first printed newspaper in England appeared in 1621. France received their own newspaper in 1631. However, the printers of Amsterdam, the former in the beginning of the 17th century, the center of world trade and political and religious tolerance, already in 1620 exported weekly Newspapers in French and English. The first weekly newspaper in Italy is printed with at least 1639, in Spain - not later than 1641.
The oldest extant English-language newspaper was printed in Amsterdam in 1620 Peter van de Кеере, Dutch printer-engraver, a few years had lived in London.