Papyrus is very long-lasting in a dry climate, but quickly deteriorates in a more humid climate. Vellum or dried animal skins also came to be used in the West early in our era. With paper-making, invented by the Chinese two millennia or more ago, and transmitted to the West by the Arabs a thousand years later, the papyrus technique for making writing materials died out, though there have been some recent attempts to revive it.
