Our human race has always been searching for methods to preserve the products of its imagination.
Bones, ivory, parchments, clay, metal, bark, stone, palm leafs, wooden blocks rubbed with wax, silk, papyrus.
Using bamboo was too rigid, too heavy, and using pure silk was too fragile and too expensive.

Around the year 100 Cai Lun – an official at the Chinese imperial administration – experimented with soaking pure silk flocks, and mixing them up with flax, hemp, bamboo, laurel, reed and Chinese spice.

After this mixture was sieved and dried, he disposed of sheet of paper he could write on.
(The word paper is mentioned in the first Chinese vocabulary of the year 65.)
During the next several centuries the mixture was brought to perfection.