Bamboo Tablet
Was bamboo the first tablet? While attending the 10th World Bamboo Congress in Damyang, South Korea, we visited one of the beautiful forested groves of bamboo. Most of the bamboo forest was left untouched, however there was a section where the public was encouraged to interact with the culms and immediately I was surprised to see how many people had left graffiti on the nodes and how the vertical text and characters stood out so visibly on the culms.
A quick wikipedia search confirmed, traditionally, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean are written vertically in columns going from top to bottom and ordered from right to left. Horizontal and vertical writing in East Asian scripts
I think Bamboo was the first tablet in these parts. I was impressed by how easily the calligraphy is written and read vertically compared to western horizontal calligraphy that wraps around the the culm, out of sight.
I think writing would likely have developed on bamboo culms long before paper was invented. Without ink, characters can simply be scratched onto the young bamboo shoots. Simply by cutting and keeping the node of bamboo preserved the inscription like a tablet of clay.
