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Most people think of the constitution and the Declaration of Independence when they think of freedom of speech and the first amendment, but the concept dates much further back than the 1700s. The truth is that freedom of speech and of expression have a long history that goes much further back than even the international human rights laws.
The beginning of free speech was actually done in Athens in the late sixth or early fifth century. There was also the idea in Islamic ethics that freedom of speech was all right and allowed in the Rashidun period.
But the rules of free speech didn’t just apply to the things said. It also applied to the things that were being written. Before there was ever a printing press, anything that was written took painstaking effort to be re-created. This meant that there were lots of copies of things that were prone to error, and this also meant that the scribes who were recopying these writings by hand were in an advantageous position to re-write or alter the original copies. For this reason they set up very strict laws that censored what they were doing and put major control over the scribes themselves. This also started the idea of copyright laws which were present in most countries in Europe because churches and governments wanted to control what printers were putting out.
However, this didn’t mean it was a free speech heaven. Just as printing could allow pro church and government publications, it could also bring in unwanted criticism of those parties. This did not sit well with the European governments, and they gained major control over printers all over the country. They made them have to have licenses to reproduce and print the books. The problem with the freedom of speech or press is that there is always someone around to try and censor it. It’s the ongoing battle for free speech.