Cai Lun Standardizes Papermaking, on Top of an Older Craft

Cai Lun, a eunuch official at the Han court, presented Emperor He with a papermaking method around 105 CE: soaking and pounding tree bark, hemp waste, old rags, and fishing nets into a pulp, then drying thin, even sheets on bamboo screens. Archaeologists have since found earlier evidence: in 1986, a paper fragment excavated at Fangmatan, in Gansu province, was dated to roughly 179-141 BCE, more than two centuries before Cai Lun's report. The material was cheaper than silk, lighter than bamboo strips, and more consistent than earlier attempts, and the emperor praised it. Cai Lun is traditionally credited as paper's inventor, though the Fangmatan fragment shows he refined and standardized an existing craft rather than creating an entirely new one from scratch.