The story of true paper happened in South East Asia. Similar to the Egyptians, the Chinese had, virtually fifty centuries in the past, brought out a pictographic style of writing. The Egyptians also had been making use of many different things to write upon, most notably lengths of bamboo and processed silk and possibly the barkcloth they used for other unconnected purposes derived from the Paper. Mulberry was used also.
Historical documentation leads us to believe that in 105AD an official named Tsai Lung, created usable paper, though it appears from archaeological digs that actually it was being used in what is now the People's Republic of China for more than likely two hundred years before him.
Back during olden times setting down words was generally done on some form of bamboo or sometimes on pieces of silk, which were known as Ji then. But the cost of silk and bamboo being very weighty, these two materials were not convenient. About this time Tsai Lun came up with the idea of utilizing the bark from trees, fish nets, hemp, and rags. In 105 years after the birth of Christ he submitted a report to the emperor on the production of paper and received much praise for his creativity. Consequently, since that time paper has been in use universally and is known as the "paper of Marquis Tsai".
Whether this particular claim is Marquis Tsai's entitlement, will probably never be known! Nevertheless the important consideration is that they found that if they ground some substances derived from plants into a mash, withdraw spume, float the mash in liquid, screen it out onto fabric sheets and give it time to dry out. When it dried, it calcified into a hard, robust sheet that turned out to be extremely light, and provided that it did not get damp, turned out to be remarkably durable.
It's a fact that this simple of papermaking techniques is even now in use in exactly a similar way around Nepal and Tibet, the very first places to take the technolgies from China. A simple frame utilizes a cotton cloth pulled and held over one side, thin mush is put in to the far side and moved around until it has become even. After which it is left hanging in order for it to let the water to leave it and the paste to dry in to a parchment sheet which can be removed by peeling.
Eventually an extremely talented developer figured that constructing a frame with ribs and putting in place a fine removable bamboo mat across it, would allow the process to be speeded up to a great degree. Instead of tying up a single mold for each sheet of parchment, consequently severely restricting the number of sheets that can be made at the same time, a stack of sieved mache could be built up layer upon layer, with just a strip of cotton thread between them in order to enable later separation. The stack would then be squeezed very lightly, and every sheet of grume shifted to a dry place.