14 DAY TRIAL // Paper is something evanescent and durable at the same time. It is a milestone for the human civilization in the last two millennia. From high quality to ordinary packing paper, toilet paper, pampers, carnival paper clothes or printing paper, all comes from a Chinese idea. People always sought for ideal surfaces for recording their thoughts, from cave walls to bones (in ancient China), skin scrolls (ancient Greeks), mulberry bark (Mayans), papyrus (ancient Egyptians, later Romans, Greeks and the whole early medieval Europe). But paper proved the best material, cheaper than skins and easier to process and print than papyrus or tree bark.
The story says the first paper producer was Ts'ai Lun (China), who made paper from hemp, tree bark, textile rags and fishing nets around 105 BC, probably as an answer to the request of the Chinese calligraphs for a more practical material than silk or bamboo stripes. Chinese invented the money paper, toilet paper and printing paper. It was forbidden to step onto a paper piece having something written on it.
The process of paper fabrication remained a secret until the 8th century, when the Chinese who were made prisoners during the Mongol raids into inner China revealed the paper processing method. Through Mongols, this knowledge spread to the west, to Persia, and around the year 750 AD, Samarkand was already an important center of paper production. From here, the Arabs took the procedure and spread it to the Middle East, the main paper processing centers being Damask and Baghdad.
Despite the fact that the Mediterranean was by those time an "Arabian lake", the Europeans found about this technology only during the first crusades. The conquest of Jerusalem enabled the Italian and Provencal cities to trade with paper.
This paper, called "charta damascina" (Damask paper) or bombacina, used hemp and flax as raw matter. By 1250, the Italians of Fabriano (near Ancona) were the first Europeans to produce European paper. During the 14th century, France started to produce paper as well. During the Gutenberg era, when the typograph was invented, paper was made of hemp and flax rags, too. Until the beginning of the 20th century, paper was made of flax, hemp and cotton rags.
Still, this paper was more qualitative than today's paper, being more resistant to degradation. Why? That's because today paper is made mainly of wood, due to the high demand, and wood contains, besides cellulose, also lignin, which breaks down in time, forming acids, the main cause of paper degradation. Presently, the US uses a non-acid paper for a longer preservation of the printings.
In some places, like Japan, paper is still made traditionally and the ancient art "washi" still survives. In Japan, paper is also used for making origami, shoji fences, windows (the paper replaces the glass) and even kimonos. During mortuary rites, furniture, cars, planes, various objects are made of paper and burned to ensure the comfort of the dead in the other world. Shinto priests say demons hate the noise caused by paper fizzing, that's why they use a mop made of folded paper stripes to purify a new car, to chase away its demons and remove the bad luck.