The first forms of writing were pictures scratched on rocks and trees. Later, clay tablets were used. But around 3000 BC, people in Egypt 
found that they could make an excellent writing material from papyrus plants.Papyrus is a plant that grows by the river Nile. Papyrus sheets are made from the stem of the plant, but making it is quite a lengthy process. Scribes would make the papyrus sheets into long rolls, and write the text in narrow columns that could be easily read. In ancient China, thin bamboo strips were used as writing material. The Chinese also used silk for important documents. In many parts of the ancient world people used small tablets with a waxed surface. After being written on, the wax can be warmed and smoothed over for use on another occasion. So they had a kind of renewable notebook! Later on, people started using parchment which is made from animal skins. Parchment was usually made from the skin of a goat, sheep or calf, but it was treated to make it soft and smooth for writing. In fact, until the invention of paper, parchment was the most important writing material. Parchment had the great advantage in that it was strong and flexible enough for separate pages of a manuscript to be sewn together to make a book.
