The history of real paper started in South East Asia. Like the people of Egypt, the Chinese had, almost fifty centuries ago, developed a kind of writing that used images. The Egyptians too had been making use of several types of objects to scribe on, most notably pieces of bamboo and processed silk and it is possible that the barkcloth they utilized for other reasons derived out of the Paper. Mulberry was also used.
Legend leads us to believe that in 105AD an official called Tsai Lung, brought out papyrus, though it seems from archaeological digs that it was actually being used in what is now the People's Republic of China for at least two hundred years prior to Tsai Lung.
Back during times gone by writing was generally done on some form of bamboo or on lengths of silk, which were then called ji. But the great price of silk and bamboo being too heavy, these materials were inconvenient. Due to this Tsai Lun came up with the idea of utilizing bark from trees, fish nets, hemp, and rags. In 105 years after the birth of Christ he made a report to the emperor with regard to the production of paper and got many accolades for his ideas. Consequently, since that time paper has been in use all over the world and is called the "paper of Marquis Tsai".
If indeed this accolade is relevant or not, will very likely not ever be known! Nevertheless what is important has to be that they discovered that they could grind certain substances taken from plant material into a mash, purge spume, float the mash in water, filter it onto fabric sheets allowing it to dry. When it dried, it congealed into a firm, tough sheet that turned out to be astonishingly light, and as long as it was not allowed to get wet, proved surprisingly resilient.
It's a fact that this very simple of papermaking technologies is even now still being used in exactly a similar way within Tibet and Nepal, the very first countries to make use of the technolgies from China. A simple frame makes use of a cloth made from cotton pulled and held over one side, watery mache is emptied in to the far side and spread about until it has reached a level. Then it is left hanging that will allow the liquid to drain and the paste to dry into a sheet of paper which may be peeled off.
By and by a very talented individual came to the conclusion that building a frame with ribs and placing a fine replaceable bamboo mat over this, would enable the procedure to be speeded up to a much greater degree. Rather than tying up a single mold for every sheet of parchment, therefore severely restricting the amount of sheets that are able to be produced at one time, a stack of sieved pulp was able to be built up a layer at a time, with only a strip of cotton thread between them to help with later separation. The stack would then be squeezed gently, and each layer of mush transferred to a dry board.