The Origin of Paper

In China, sometime during the third century, paper was first created out of “mulberry bark, hemp, and rags” (Suarez, Woudhuysen 131). Due to its easy production procedures, paper became more popular and replaced the remaining competition. Its primary purpose back in third-century China was to be used to write documents. The use of paper stayed steady in the east in the following centuries, but it took some time before this innovation reached the west. The first known paper mills in Europe were set up in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a millennium after paper was first created. It is still uncertain as to when the technology from the east made its way over between the third and thirteenth centuries. (Suarez, Woudhuysen 131). 

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