[Harmless Teddy Bear]

The Romans used wax tablets for things that were not important like jotting note to yourself or a child's lessons.

They even had paper menus which often were recycled by writing on the other side.

While an phonetic alphabet is important there are a number of civilizations who did just fine without it. China being one, Egypt being another.

But when you had paper was when you had wide spread literacy.

If there is nothing interesting to read there is no reason for people to care to learn. And while parchment has it's good points, it was way to expensive to use for writing the latest thriller on.

Expensive writing material, a very select few read or write and mostly only on religious or practical subject. Cheap writing material, lots of people read and there are all kinds of books including a great deal of fiction and poetry.

[NativeSon]

The fact that boring, regular writing were found, is demonstrative of use of The language.

China, Egypt, Aztecs, Myans - did not create a lasting empire to dominate the world.

Not saying that paper was/is not important but if what you put on it are glyphs & icons whose meaning are transient at times and difficult to effectively learn, it's still not that much of an advantage.

How about a manual typewriter with 50k keys for Chinese?