The history of real paper happened in South East Asia. Like the Egyptians, the Chinese had, nearly fifty centuries in the past, invented a style of pictographic writing. They too had been using various kinds of things to write upon, notably lengths of bamboo and silk woven into a fine fabric and it is possible that the barkcloth they were making for other reasons derived from the Paper. Mulberry was used also.
History tells us that in 105 years after the birth of Christ a member of the government named Tsai Lung, created paper, although it seems from archaeological digs that in fact it was being used in China for at least two centuries before Tsai Lung.
Back during ancient times gone by scribing was usually on some form of bamboo or sometimes on pieces of silk, which were then called ji. But the prohibitive cost of silk and bamboo being very weighty, these materials were not of great use. Then Tsai Lun thought of utilizing the bark from trees, fish nets, rags, and hemp. In 105AD he put an idea to the emperor with regard to the process of making paper and was endowed with much praise for his inventions. Since those distant days paper has been in use globally and is called the "paper of Marquis Tsai".
If indeed this historical reference is correct or not, will very likely never be known! However, the main consideration has to be that it was discovered that if they ground particular substances taken from plant matter into a pulp, take out impure substances, put the pulp in liquid, screen it out onto textile sheets and give it time to dry out. After drying, it calcified into a firm, durable sheet that turned out to be astonishingly light, and providing it did not get damp, turned out to be remarkably tenacious.
It's a fact that this very straightforward of papermaking technologies is even now still being used in precisely a similar way in and around Nepal and Tibet, the initial places to make use of the technolgies from what is now the People's Republic of China. A basic frame has a cloth made from cotton pulled and held over a single side, thin paste is emptied in to the other end and spread about until it has become even. It is then left suspended in order for it to let the water to leave it and the mache to dry in to a sheet of paper which will be able to be removed by peeling.
At some stage a talented developer came to realize that constructing a frame with ribbing and placing a delicate bamboo mat that is replaceable across this, would allow the process to be accelerated incredibly. Instead of tying up a single mold for every paper sheet, severely restricting the amount of sheets that could be manufactured at the same time, a stack of sieved grume was able to be built up a layer at a time, with only a piece of cotton thread between them which would help with separation at a later time. The stack would then be pressed very slightly, and each sheet of mash transferred to a place to dry.