The Evolution of Paper and Writing

Books are an incredible part of our lives, bringing joy and happiness to all. Books can bring one joy and sadness, anger and sympathy, but how has paper and writing itself evolved over time? 

The earliest writings known to man were recorded using a clay tablet. First used in Mesopotamia around the 3rd millennium BCE, the calamus, an instrument with a triangular point, was used to inscribe letters onto moist clay. Then, the clay would be cooked over fire so it would solidify. At Nineveh, over 20,000 tablets have been found, dating from the 7th century BCE; this was the archive and library of the kings of Assyria, who had workshops of copyists and conservationists at their disposal. Such tablets continued to be used until the 19th century in various parts of the world, including Germany, Chile, Philippines, and the Sahara Desert. 

Then around 2400 BCE in Egypt, papyrus was known to be used to record events and stories. The making of the papyrus was a complicated process. First, you need to extract the marrow from the stems of papyrus reed, then enact a series of steps that include humidification, pressing, drying, gluing, and cutting which produced media of variable quality, the best being used for sacred writing.  

All papyrus books were in the form of a scroll of several sheets pasted together, for a total length of 10 meters or more. Some books, such as the history of the reign of Ramses III, were over 40 meters long! Books rolled out horizontally, the text occupied one side, and was divided into columns. The title was shown by a label attached to the cylinder containing the book. Many papyrus texts that were found came from tombs, where prayers and sacred texts were deposited. 

Several millennia later, parchment progressively replaced papyrus. Legend attributes its invention to Eumenes II, the king of Pergamon, from which comes the name "pergamineum," which became "parchment”. The production of parchment began around the 3rd century BCE. It was made using the skins of animals, sheep, cattle, donkey and antelope as parchment proved to be easier to conserve over time. It was more solid and allowed one to erase text. Moreover, parchment was a very expensive medium because of the rarity of the material and the time required to produce a document. Vellum, in particular, is a fine quality parchment, made from calf hide. 

In China, before the introduction of books, writing on bones, shells, wood and silk was common long before the 2nd century BCE, until paper was invented in China around the 1st century CE. China's first recognizable books called jiance or jiandu, were made of rolls of thin split and dried bamboo bound together with hemp, silk, or leather. The discovery of the process using the bark of the mulberry to create paper is attributed to Cai Lun.  

Although there is no exact date known, between 618 and 907 CE —the period of the Tang Dynasty— the first printing of books started in China. The oldest extant printed book is a work of the Diamond Sutra and dates back to 868 CE, during the Tang Dynasty. The Diamond Sutra was printed by method of woodblock printing, a demanding method in which the text to be printed would be carved into a woodblock's surface, essentially to be used to stamp the words onto the writing surface medium. Woodblock printing was a common process for the reproduction of already handwritten texts during the earliest stages of book printing.  

Due to the cautious and time-consuming process that woodblock printing was, Bi Sheng, a key contributor to the history of printing, invented the process of Movable type printing (1041–1048 CE). Bi Sheng developed a printing process in which written text could be copied with the use of formed character types, the earliest types being made of ceramic or clay material. The method of movable type printing would later be independently invented and improved by Johannes Gutenberg. 

Nowadays, we record things on paper or on electrical devices and we can print things out easily by using a printer. However, for many centuries the instruments we used for writing were very different. The evolution of paper and writing is a very fascinating subject since it has evolved differently in a myriad of different locations over the past few millennia. From clay tablets to paper, people came up with many brilliant ways to record events and stories, as well as their efforts and work to never be forgotten.