The story of true paper started in China. Like the indigenous people of Egypt, the Chinese had, nearly 50 centuries ago, created a kind of writing that used images. They also had been utilizing several kinds of things to write on, most notably lengths of bamboo and woven silk and possibly the barkcloth they were making for other purposes derived out of the Paper. Mulberry was used also.
Historical documentation leads us to believe that in 105 years after the birth of Christ a government worker by the name of Tsai Lung, invented paper, although it is almost certain from archaeological finds that actually it was around in what is now the People's Republic of China for probably two centuries prior to Tsai Lung.
In times gone by writing was mainly on bamboo or on pieces of silk, which were then called ji. Nonetheless silk being expensive and bamboo being too heavy, these two materials were not convenient. About this time Tsai Lun came up with the idea of using bark, fish nets, rags, and hemp. In 105AD he delivered a report to the emperor regarding the production of paper and got high accolade for his abilities. From this time paper has been used all over the world and is called the "paper of Marquis Tsai".
If the above historical tag is Tsai's entitlement or not, will probably never be known! However, the important thing is that they discovered that they could grind particular compounds derived from plant matter into a pulp, purge impure materials, put the pulp in liquid, screen it onto fabric sheets allowing it to dry. After the drying process was complete, it caked into a hard, firm sheet that was extraordinarily light, and as long as it did not come into contact with water, turned out to be incredibly resilient.
It's a fact that this very easy of paper making technologies is still practised in precisely a similar way in and around Nepal and Tibet, the initial places to take the technolgies from South East Asia. A basic frame has a cotton cloth stretched over a single side, diluted grume is emptied in to the other end and spread around until it has reached a level. Then it is left somewhere to enable the water to drain out of it and the paste to dry in to a sheet of parchment which can be removed by stripping off.
At some stage a talented developer came to realize that building a frame with ribs and putting a fine replaceable bamboo mat over it, would allow the process to be speeded up enormously. Rather than utilizing one mould for each paper sheet, therefore severely limiting the amount of sheets that may be made at one time, a stack of sieved mash could be built up a layer at a time, with only a piece of cotton thread between them in order to facilitate later separation. The stack would then be squeezed gently, and every layer of mush moved to a dry board.