This reminded me of an article I read ages ago (National Geographic? In the 80s?) of Roman writing found on "wood shavings" during the excavation of a Roman for

This reminded me of an article I read ages ago (National Geographic? In the 80s?) of Roman writing found on "wood shavings" during the excavation of a Roman fort in the UK. This article was most likely about the "Vindolanda tablets" [1]. The thing that stuck with me was that the Romans were using wood shavings instead of paper. And they were doing this because they didn't have paper! How can you run an empire without paper? The Wikipedia article mentions that papyrus was used in other parts of the Roman empire, but presumably it wasn't available everywhere, and I'm under the impression that it's quite a bit more fragile than other forms of paper. It would certainly be more fragile than wood shavings! Parchment would also have been available as well, but it's always been expensive. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vindolanda_tablets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vindolanda_tablets