Thread by @XiranJayZhao

SO APPARENTLY THE INVENTOR OF PAPER ISN'T COMMON KNOWLEDGE??

WELL, it's Cai Lun 蔡伦, palace eunuch during the Han dynasty!! Around the year 105, he improved and perfected a formula of tree bark, hemp, rags, and fishing nets

REMEMBER THAT NAME WE ALL OWE HIM ROYALTIES

before our boy Cai Lun, uh, INVENTED PAPER, Chinese people wrote on silk (very expensive) or scrolls of bamboo slips stringed together (very HEAVY)

but paper didn't become widespread for a few centuries so even in c-dramas about the 3 Kingdoms, bamboo scrolls still pop up

these are actual 2200-year-old relics of such bamboo slips, dug up from a well of Qin dynasty administrative documents

before you ask...yes, before paper, these are what people wiped their asses with.....

according to legend, papermaking spread to the Islamic world after the Battle of Talas in 751, when the Abbasid Caliphate defeated the Tang dynasty and captured 2 papermakers

then it spread on to Europe by the 13th century

(map: strathmoreartist.com/blog-reader/th…)

the consensus now is that Cai Lun probably didn't come up with papermaking out of nowhere, but he definitely improved the technique so much that he got sole credit for it even during his lifetime

anyway you have this eunuch to thank for being able to wipe ya ass in peace say thx

every time you wipe your ass cai lun smiles lovingly down at you from chinese heaven