“It seems highly improbable that some lone genius stumbled upon the idea by him- or herself,” Kurlansky writes. Contemporary scholars suspect the Chinese invented the general papermaking process of breaking down cellulose fibers and randomly weaving them together, but the finer points of this story are murky. Perhaps because great stories work better with a central hero, Chinese schoolchildren are told that paper was invented in 105 C.E. by a eunuch in the Han court named Cai Lun. Demand for writing material surged during the Han era, which is when China’s first comprehensive national histories were produced, when classic works that had been destroyed by previous dynasties were reissued, and when the first official version of Confucius’s teachings were recorded.
Over time, various Chinese innovations helped paper become stronger, thinner, and cheaper to produce. These innovations spread, particularly to an Islamic world enjoying its own great cultural ferment by the ninth century. “The Qur’an says that good Muslims should seek knowledge,” Kurlansky writes, “and they did so passionately and with a great deal of ink and paper.” (Arab words for paper, such as kaghid and qirtas—a word used in the Qur’an—are thought to be of Chinese origin.) Paper-loving Muslims helped spread mathematics, astronomy, medicine, engineering, agriculture, and literature to other parts of the world, including the West.
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