Agriculture and Environment: Commodities

Overview: Wood Pulp (Eucalyptus species, Acacia species, Casuarina species, Gmelina arborea, and Pinus species)

Writing has long been associated with civilization. It is the basis for how we learn from others. The first known forms of written communication were petroglyphs and cave paintings from tens of thousands of years ago. Such communication, however, was not mobile.

The Sumerians were the first to resolve this problem in about 4000 B.C. with the creation of clay tablets that, although heavy, could be transported. Since then wood, waxed boards, stone, ceramics, cloth, bark, bronze, silk, bamboo and tree leaves have all been used to preserve the written word.

While there have been many other ways to write and communicate, paper has dominated the meteoric rise in communication and learning around the globe. The word paper is derived from papyrus (Cyperus papyrus), a plant found in African wetlands and particularly along the Nile River. Some 5,000 years ago the Egyptians created sheets of papyrus by peeling and then slicing papyrus stems into strips and laying them at right angles to form more sturdy mats.

The strips were then pounded together and left in the sun to dry. The Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans used papyrus for record keeping, spiritual texts, and works of art. The ancient Greeks also used a kind of parchment made from animal skins to crate sheets for writing, but this proved to be expensive as it took many sheep skins to produce a single copy of any major work.

Similar materials were invented independently around the world. During the second century A.D., the Mayans fashioned a similar pounded bark product for book making in Central America. In the Pacific, Islanders made a paper-like bark cloth that was decorated and used for clothing and ritual objects.

The invention of paper as we know it today did not come for another three thousand years, and even then it was slow to spread around the world. Ts'ai Lin is generally credited with inventing paper in China in 104 A.D. The first paper was made by pounding the inner bark of the mulberry tree and hemp, rags, or bamboo fibres in water until they formed a fibrous, watery paste.

The solution was then poured over a flat piece of coarsely woven cloth to let the water drain through. This left a thin layer of fibres on the cloth which, when dry, became sheets of paper. This substance was relatively cheap to make, lightweight, and portable, and it had a surface that was very god for writing. With the invention of paper, literature and the arts flourished in China. Equally important, paper allowed the kind of ongoing communication that made possible the governance of larger areas.

Papermaking was common in China before it spread to Vietnam, Tibet, Korea, Japan, Nepal, present-day Uzbekistan (the centre of Tamerlaine's empire), Iraq, and Syria. By the tenth century Arabs had begun to substitute linen fibre for wood and bamboo. This created an even higher quality of paper. The first paper mill in Europe was built in Xativa, Spain, by the Moors.

When the European armies drove the Moors from the city in 1233, they captured the paper mill and learned the secrets of papermaking, which spread throughout Europe. Because of the Catholic Church's demand for paper, Italy quickly became the largest paper producer and exported the product throughout Europe. France and Germany followed suit, with Germany greatly improving the process and making the finest paper of the time.