Paper

Assembled from 15 blocks · 1 evidence · 7 related

1. Story
2. Sheet material of macerated plant fibre, invented in China and traded as a commodity long before the technique for making it moved. The Sogdian Ancient Letters, abandoned west of Dunhuang around 313 CE, are themselves written on paper, which shows the material had reached the far western Chinese frontier within two centuries of its documented appearance. Paper was cheap, light and durable, and it displaced bamboo slips, silk, papyrus and parchment as a writing surface everywhere it reached. Its arrival in the Islamic world in the eighth century and in Europe from the twelfth transformed record-keeping, administration and eventually printing. A traded commodity, not a place.
3. Knowledge
4. Paper
5. Papermaking
6. Connections
7. Sogdian merchant networks
8. Papermaking
9. The Sogdian Ancient Letters are abandoned west of Dunhuang
10. The Dunhuang Diamond Sutra is printed
11. Paper
12. Samarkand
13. Battle of Talas
14. Evidence
15. Five substantially surviving letters of Sogdian merchants, undelivered, showing how the eastern routes actually operated: resident family colonies in a chain of cities from Sogdiana to the Hexi Corridor, goods moved between them in relays, business conducted by correspondence and credit rather than by single long journeys. Letter 2 reports the sack of Luoyang, which anchors the conventional dating to around 313 CE. The letters are written on paper, establishing that the material had reached the far western Chinese frontier by that date.