Parchment had great advantages, but it was expensive. A single large volume might require the skins of an entire herd, and preparing the skins demanded skilled labor and a great deal of time.
In China, before paper, writing was done on slips of bamboo and on strips of wood. Each slip held a single line of characters written from top to bottom, and the slips were bound together with cord to make a scroll that could be rolled up. Bamboo was strong and widely available, but a long text written on bamboo was bulky and heavy. Silk was also used as a writing surface. It was light, flexible, and beautiful, but it was costly, and its use was limited to important documents and to those who could afford it.
Other regions used other materials. In parts of South and Southeast Asia, scribes wrote on prepared palm leaves, which were cut to a uniform size, inscribed with a stylus, and rubbed with a dark mixture to make the lines visible. The leaves were then threaded together on cords between wooden covers. In Mesoamerica, people made a bark paper by soaking and beating the inner bark of certain trees until the fibers spread into a thin sheet. These bark sheets were used for books, records, and ceremonial purposes. Although bark paper was made by beating rather than by forming a sheet from separated fibers, it was a remarkable material in its own right.
Wax tablets offered yet another solution for short-term writing. A shallow wooden frame was filled with a layer of wax, and a pointed stylus was used to scratch letters into the surface. The other end of the stylus was flat and could smooth the wax for reuse. Wax tablets were common in the Roman world for notes, accounts, school exercises, and drafts. They were convenient but impermanent, and important matters were copied onto more lasting materials.
Each of these materials met real needs, and several remained in use long after paper arrived. Parchment, in particular, continued to be preferred for legal documents and formal volumes in Europe for centuries, because it was believed to last longer than early paper. The gradual shift to paper was driven less by any single advantage than by cost. As paper became cheaper and more plentiful, the range of things that could be written down, copied, and kept grew steadily wider.
III. The Beginnings in China
According to the traditional account, paper was invented in China in the year 105 of the Common Era by Cai Lun, an official of the imperial court under the Eastern Han dynasty. The official history of the period records that he presented to the emperor a new writing material made from the bark of trees, remnants of hemp, old rags, and worn-out fishing nets. The account praises the material as an improvement on the costly silk and the heavy bamboo then in use, and it credits Cai Lun with bringing the new material into general use.
Archaeological discoveries have complicated this story. Fragments of a paper-like material found at several sites in northwestern China appear to be older than the date given for Cai Lun’s presentation, in some cases by a century or more. Some of these early fragments seem to have been used for wrapping rather than for writing, and some are coarse and uneven. Many historians now suggest that paper developed gradually from earlier practices, and that Cai Lun’s contribution was to refine the process and to promote the material for writing at the court. Whatever the exact origin, it is clear that papermaking was established in China by the second century and that it improved steadily over the following centuries.