Monday Answer
Before they invented durable paper the Chinese used strips of bamboo for records. They wrote up and down in the manner the bamboo existed in nature. I know that bamboo is a grass and not wood but I couldn't resist. They wrote top down, with additional strips right to left. Many records exist today of very old bamboo text. Incidentally, a person named Cai Lun thought of adding thin fishnets to previously invented paper pulp and in practise turned out the first rip stop paper. Oddly to me, silk and cast bronze were used to preserve writing before the use of bamboo.
