The story of real paper happened in South East Asia. Like the people of Egypt, the Chinese had, nearly 50 centuries ago, invented a type of pictographic writing. The Egyptians also had been using several types of things to scribe upon, most usually lengths of bamboo and silk woven into a fine fabric and it is possible that the barkcloth they were using for other purposes derived from the Paper. Mulberry was made use of also.
Legend leads us to believe that in 105AD a member of the government going by the name of Tsai Lung, developed papyrus, although it is clear from archaeological digs that it was in fact being used in China for at least two hundred years before him.
Way back during ancient times setting down words or pictograms was usually on bamboo or occasionally on strips of silk, which were known as Ji in those days. Nevertheless the great price of silk and bamboo being weighty, these materials were inconvenient. Then Tsai Lun thought of utilizing bark, rags, hemp, and fish nets. In 105 years after the birth of Christ he put an idea to the emperor regarding the process of paper manufacture and got high accolade for his idea. Consequently, since those distant days paper has been used in almost every place on earth and is called the "paper of Marquis Tsai".
If the above title is relevant, will very likely never be known! Nonetheless the important thing is that they found that if they ground some substances taken from plant matter into a grume, extract unwanted materials, put the grume in water, screen it out onto textile sheets giving it time to dry. When it dried, it dried into a firm, tough sheet that was particularly light, and provided that it was not allowed to get damp, turned out to be really robust.
It's a fact that this very simple of paper making technologies is still in use in precisely the same way within Tibet and Nepal, the first areas to learn the technolgies from what is now the People's Republic of China. A basic frame makes use of a type of cotton cloth pulled and held over a single side, thin mush is put in to the other end and spread around until it is even. It is then left suspended somewhere to let the liquid to drain and the mache to dry into a sheet of paper which may be removed.
At some stage a very clever individual realized that constructing a frame with ribbing and placing a fine replaceable bamboo mat over this, would allow the process to be accelerated enormously. Rather than utilizing a single mould for every parchment sheet, therefore severely limiting the amount of sheets that are able to be produced at the same time, a stack of sieved mash could be built up a layer at a time, with only a strip of cotton thread between them to enable separation at a later time. The stack would then be squeezed very gently, and each layer of paste moved to a board to dry.