Scripts Workshop Home THE HISTORY OF PAPER AND THE SPREAD OF WRITING

By Carol Murphey CaMup@aol.com
© Bay Area Global Education Program, January 25, 2002
RATIONALE: In the beginning writing was cut with a stylus into tablets of soft clay and allowed to harden. To retain these writings, it involved the storage of cumbersome clay tablets. Mesopotamia had libraries that stored these clay tablets. The tablets were heavy, breakable, and therefore not accessible by the ordinary person. Scholars were trained to inscribe business transactions, religious material, laws, care of crops, and other useful things.

Egypt had scrolls made out of papyrus. Papyrus, from the Latin, papyrus, is the source of our word paper. Papyrus was made from a sedge growing in Egyptian marshes along the Nile. It is made from the stems of the plant that can vary a lot in size. Away from the Nile, the plant rarely grows stems thick enough to produce papyrus. This made its production strictly an Egyptian enterprise. It was glued together in scrolls that usually contained 20 sheets that were then rolled up and tied shut. This form took up a lot of space, but at least was not breakable. A major draw back to its use in legal documents was that ink did not penetrate its surface, therefore documents could be erased.

In the second century BC, the Greeks were using parchment made from goat or sheep- skin. The skins were wetted, stretched on a frame and repeatedly scraped. This was a labor- intensive process that did not produce many sheets of writing material, quickly.

We see the real explosion of writing when the Chinese, in the second century BC, invent a paper from pounded Mulberry bark. This produced thin sheets that could be produced quickly and that ink penetrated. Because of the latter property, ink could not be erased from this paper. The spread of this technology was transmitted by Silk Road traders throughout Central Asia, pre Islam, and by Muslim traders throughout the Middle East and North Africa later. Samarkand, after the battle of Talus in 751, becomes a major manufacturing center for paper in the Arab world. The process for paper making was introduced by captured Chinese prisoners. Paper was cheaply produced and widely used.

In the eleventh century paper mills were set up in Spain. There were 400 paper mills by the end of the 12th century. The rest is history. The sheets of Chinese paper allowed books to be produced and caused an incredible amount of knowledge from the Arab world in mathematics, the sciences and literature to spread. With the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century, there was an explosion in the use of paper. The word ream, the standard 500 count, comes from antiquity and the Arabic word, rizma, the Spanish word, resma, the old French word, rayme, and this became the English word, ream, meaning bale or bundle.

The source of the information above, and further information about the history of paper, may be found in the ARAMCO WORLD May/June 1999 issue in the article titled: "Revolution by the Ream, A History of Paper," by Jonathan M. Bloom, and in his subsequently published book: The History and Impact of Paper in the Islamic World (Yale University Press, 2001)
OBJECTIVES:

The student will:

  • learn about the importance of the invention of paper.
  • become aware of the countries that contributed to the invention of and the spread of writing and paper.
  • work cooperatively to produce a product.
  • practice critical thinking skills.
TOTAL MATERIALS NEEDED:
TIME: One class period.
PROCEDURE:
 Divide the class into cooperative groups. Give each group a task card. The group appoints one person to get their necessary supplies from the teacher. Each group completes their task in the time allotted and reassembles to share their information and product with the rest of the class. Ask each group to be sure each member of the group has a part in its presentation.
EVALUATION:

Ask each student to write a short essay on the importance of paper as it is related to the spread of writing.