Link: [](http://www.china.org.cn/english/2003/Jun/66332.htm "
The Age of the Bamboo Slip
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The Age of the Bamboo Slip
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(...)from the Shang and Zhou right through to the Wei (220-265) and Jin (265-420), bamboo and wood were to remain the main writing materials. This prolonged period of some 2,000 years has come to be known in Chinese history as the Age of the Bamboo Slip.
Sadly bamboo and wood fall easy prey to decay and their use in antiquity was not recognized until the early years of the 20th century. By the 1930s bamboo slips were being brought to light in significant numbers. Discoveries were made in turn at the Loulan townsite in Lop Nor and the Niya site in Minfeng, both located in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, Dunhuang in Gansu Province and then at alarm signal sites in Juyan where Gansu borders on the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region.
Since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, outstanding progress has been made in paleography (the study of ancient writing). (...)
The 1970s saw a series of sensational bamboo slip discoveries. The grave of Marquis Ruyin of the Western Han (206 BC-AD 25) in Fuyang, Anhui Province produced The Book of Songs (China's earliest collection of poetry) written on bamboo slips.
The earliest environmental protection statutes ever discovered in China were written on wooden slips found in a tomb excavated in Qingchuan, Sichuan Province...
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