Ancient Chinese writing materials what are their advantages and disadvantages

In the course of human history, people need a medium to inherit their ancestors' knowledge of the world, their experiences and various inventions. In the era when writing was not invented, it was only possible to remember by word of mouth. Although people also invented the method of knotting ropes to remember things, mistakes were often made due to the inability to recognize the things represented by the knots. After the invention of writing, mankind tried various natural objects to record words. According to historical speculation, the earliest written records appeared in China about 6,000 years ago. Initially, people recorded writing on animal bones, tortoise shells, or stones, which evolved into the use of silk and, more commonly, bamboo slips and wooden documents.

[Bamboo slips]

Sketches

The oldest books in China were made of bamboo slips or wooden scrolls threaded together. However, due to the heavy weight and volume of books made of this material, they were very inconvenient to read and carry. It is said that Dongfang Shuo of the Western Han Dynasty once submitted to the emperor a Jinshi book consisting of 3,000 bamboo slips, which had to be carried to the main hall by two strong guards. At that time, the so-called "learning rich five car" book of great scholars, in fact, did not read many books, only to see five cars of bamboo slips, wooden documents only. The amount of information it contains is hardly comparable to a thicker book nowadays. Jin Dynasty people excavated the tomb of King Xiang of Wei during the Warring States period, from which they got 15 ancient bamboo slips, about 100,000 words, loaded with dozens of carts. This shows how bulky such books were.

[Palindrome]

Palindrome

In order to reduce the weight of the writing material, people began to use silk as a new writing material again. However, the high price of silk itself made it difficult to be popularized. In the Han Dynasty, a thick silk (2.2 Han feet wide, 4.0 Han feet long) was worth six stones (720 Han pounds) of rice, which was only available to a small number of royalty, and was unaffordable to the general public. In the Western Han Dynasty, the new type of school education prospered as never before, and both schools and students needed cheaper and more convenient writing utensils. As a result, a better writing material, paper, came into being.