Auther：2023-06-13
Among the starry scientific and technological achievements, the four great inventions of ancient China have made great contributions to the evolution of civilization in the entire world. China was the first country in the world to invent paper, and as one of the four great inventions of ancient China, papermaking technology has a history of more than 2,000 years.
Before the invention of papermaking, our ancestors used tortoise shells, animal bones and bronze artifacts called oracle bones and golden scripts. Later, bamboo and wood chips were used instead, called simple mu. At about the same time, people used silk woven silk, called boshu. However, these writing materials are extremely inconvenient, and they all affect the storage and exchange of information. In the early Western Han Dynasty, people used silk and hemp to make relatively rough paper. Unfortunately, this kind of floc paper cannot be manufactured in large quantities due to limited raw materials, but people were inspired to look for fiber in plants, so they invented plant fiber paper.
In the Eastern Han Dynasty, Cai Lun on the basis of summarizing the experience of his predecessors, using bark hemp head, rags, old fish nets and other plant fibers to make high-quality paper, because Cai Lun was once named Longting Marquis, so people called the paper he made Cai Hou paper. Cai Hou paper is inexpensive and suitable for calligraphy and painting, and its emergence marks the beginning of paper replacing simple handwriting.
Chinese papermaking spread to the Korean Peninsula, Vietnam and Japan in the late Sui and early Tang dynasties, to Arabia in the 8th century, and to Europe by the Arabs in the 12th century. The invention and promotion of papermaking technology has greatly facilitated the storage, dissemination and cultural exchange of information, and has epoch-making significance for promoting the development of human civilization.
