Paper was made from plant fibre, and it was cheap, easy to carry and could be made in quantity. It became a material for writing and changed how writing and knowledge spread.
An early Western Han tomb at Fangmatan in Tianshui, Gansu, yielded fragments of a map on paper, which shows that plant-fibre paper already existed in the Western Han.
In the first year of Yuanxing of the Eastern Han (105), Cai Lun improved papermaking with tree bark, hemp waste, rags and old fishing nets and presented it to Emperor He of Han, and paper could then be made at scale.
After the Battle of Talas in the tenth year of Tianbao of the Tang, captured Tang craftsmen are said to have carried papermaking to Samarkand. But paper had been in use in Central Asia before this, and the account is mostly regarded as a later tale.
Paper Invention is the class in the chapter on Sciences on papermaking from plant fibre. Paper made this way was cheap, easy to carry and could be made in quantity, and it changed how writing and knowledge spread; paper already existed in the Western Han, and Cai Lun of the Eastern Han improved the method so that paper could be made at scale.
