Science and Technology of The Han Dynasty - Writing Materials

Writing Materials

Further information: History of the Han Dynasty, History of paper, Papyrus, and Traditional Chinese bookbinding

The most common writing mediums found in archaeological digs from ancient sites predating the Han period are shells and bones as well as bronzewares. In the beginning of the Han period, the chief writing mediums were bamboo (Chinese: 竹簡) and clay tablets, silk cloth, and rolled scrolls made of strips of bamboo sewn together with hempen string passed through drilled holes (册) and secured with clay stamps. The written characters on these narrow flat strips of bamboo were arranged into vertical columns.

While maps drawn in ink on flat silk cloths have been found in the tomb of the Marquess of Dai (interred in 168 BCE at Mawangdui, Hunan province), the earliest known paper map found in China, dated 179–41 BCE and located at Fangmatan (near Tianshui, Gansu province), is incidentally the oldest known piece of paper. Yet Chinese hempen paper of the Western Han and early Eastern Han eras was of a coarse quality and used primarily as wrapping paper. The papermaking process was not formally introduced until the Eastern Han court eunuch Cai Lun (50–121 CE) created a process in 105 CE where mulberry tree bark, hemp, old linens, and fish nets were boiled together to make a pulp that was pounded, stirred in water, and then dunked with a wooden sieve containing a reed mat that was shaken, dried, and bleached into sheets of paper. The oldest known piece of paper with writing on it comes from the ruins of a Chinese watchtower at Tsakhortei, Alxa League, Inner Mongolia, dated precisely 110 CE when the Han garrison abandoned the area following a nomadic Xiongnu attack. By the 3rd century, paper became one of China's chief writing mediums.