History's marching papers

Otago Daily Times

30-05-2025

The oldest known fragment of paper, over 2000 years old, shows part of a map. It is just 5cm wide and comes from a Chinese grave.
As digital communication takes over, so letters are now few and far between.
This is going to create an unfortunate void for future historians, for so much is to be found in personal letters and diaries.
Take, for example, the Roman fort of Vindolanda, just south of Hadrian's Wall in northern England. In 1973, a student excavator digging in swampy layers extracted what he thought were wood shavings.
Prising two of these apart, he recognised writing. Under infrared, this archive of wafer thin wooden letters has revealed what life was like for those garrisoning the wall — there was an invitation to a party, and a request for more beer.
Then consider earliest messages from the civilization of Sumer, pressed into clay tablets, or the papyrus records, made from the pith of the plant of the same name, that date back to 2560BC and which describe the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
In Europe, records were kept on parchment, that is curated animal skins. The best vellum comes from foetal calfskin. Angkorian temples included libraries for royal archives, but they stand empty because records were kept on palm leaves that have not survived the tropical climate.
In China, early texts were written on strips of bamboo that were strung together with silk.
So, consider what you are holding: a newspaper. Even in the digital age, paper remains central to our lives in so many ways.
Tradition has it that paper was invented by a Chinese eunuch Cai Lun, who submitted his discovery to the Han emperor in 109AD.
Early Chinese paper was made from the bark of the mulberry tree or sandalwood. However, archaeology has rejected this story, for the earliest fragment of paper found in a Chinese grave and bearing a map, has been dated to the first century BC.
Paper documents soon became the norm in China, but how did expertise in paper making spread further? There is an intriguing story that it reached the Middle East and further west following the Battle of the Talas River in 751AD.
Located on the border of Kazakhstan and Kyrgystan, the forces of the Abbasid Caliphate defeated the Tang Dynasty army, and in doing so, captured some Chinese paper makers.
Be that as it may, paper was soon replacing papyrus in Baghdad and the inexorable spread of paper made its way west.
The Magna Carta was written on parchment in 1309, the oldest paper document from England.
However, the Treaty of Waitangi is written on a long sheet of paper.