From China to Eastern Asia
Archaeological evidence of paper making predates the traditional attribution given to Cai Lun, an imperial eunuch official of the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE), thus the exact date or inventor of paper cannot be deduced. The earliest extant paper fragment was unearthed at Fangmatan in Gansu province, and was likely part of a map, dated to 179–141 BCE. Fragments of paper have also been found at Dunhuang dated to 65 BCE and at Yumen pass, dated to 8 BCE.
The invention traditionally attributed to Cai Lun, recorded hundreds of years after it took place, is dated to 105 CE. The innovation is a type of paper made of mulberry and other bast fibers along with fishing nets, old rags, and hemp waste which reduced the cost of paper production, which prior to this, and later, in the West, depended solely on rags.
After its origin in central China, the production and use of paper spread steadily, first to Vietnam in the 3rd century, to Korea in the 4th century, and to Japan in the 5th century. The paper of Korea was famed for being glossy white and was especially prized for painting and calligraphy. It was among the items commonly sent to China as tribute. The Koreans spread paper to Japan possibly as early as the 5th century.

Islamic world
Paper was used in Central Asia by the 8th century but its origin is not clear. According to the 11th century Persian historian Al-Tha´alibi, Chinese prisoners captured at the Battle of Talas in 751 introduced paper manufacturing to Samarkand. But according to Jonathan Bloom, a scholar of Islamic and Asian Art, archaeological evidence shows that paper was already known and used in Samarkand decades before 751 CE. Bloom argues that based on differences in Chinese and Central Asian paper making techniques and materials, the story of Chinese paper makers directly introducing paper to Central Asia is probably metaphorical.
The Islamic civilization helped spread paper and paper making into the Middle East after the 8th-century, from where it arrived into Europe centuries later, and then to many other parts of the world.

Indian subcontinent
The evidence of paper use on the Indian subcontinent appears first in the second half of the 7th century. Yijing, a Tang-era Chinese Buddhist monk famed as a traveler and translator, wrote about the practice of priests and laypeople in India printing Buddha image on silk or paper, and worshipping these images. Indians were also using paper to make hats, to reinforce their umbrellas and for sanitation.
The earliest Sanskrit paper manuscript found is a paper copy of the Shatapatha Brahmana in Kashmir, dated to 1089, while the earliest Sanskrit paper manuscripts in Gujarat are dated between 1180 and 1224. Some of oldest surviving paper manuscripts have been found in Jain temples of Gujarat and Rajasthan, and paper use by Jain scribes is traceable to around 12th-century.
In the 15th century, Chinese traveler Ma Huan praised the quality of paper in Bengal, describing it as white paper that is made from “bark of a tree” and is as “glossy and smooth as deer’s skin”. Paper technology likely arrived in India from China through Tibet and Nepal around mid-7th century, when Buddhist monks freely traveled, exchanged ideas and goods between Tibet and Buddhist centers in India. This exchange is evidenced by the Indian talapatra binding methods that were adopted by Chinese monasteries such as at Tunhuang for preparing sutra books from paper. Most of the earliest surviving sutra books in Tibetan monasteries are on Chinese paper strips held together with Indian manuscript binding methods.

Europe
The oldest known paper document in Europe is the Mozarab Missal of Silos from the 11th century, probably using paper made in the Islamic part of the Iberian Peninsula. They used hemp and linen rags as a source of fiber. The first recorded paper mill in the Iberian Peninsula was in Xativa in 1056. Paper making reached Europe as early as 1085 in Toledo and was firmly established in Xativa, Spain by 1150. It is clear that France had a paper mill by 1190, and by 1276 mills were established in Fabriano, Italy and in Treviso and other northern Italian towns by 1340. Paper making then spread further northwards, with evidence of paper being made in Troyes, France by 1348, in Holland sometime around 1340–1350, in Mainz, Germany in 1320, and in Nuremberg by 1390.

Americas
In the Americas, archaeological evidence indicates that a similar bark-paper writing material was used by the Maya no later than the 5th century CE. Called amatl or amate, it was in widespread use among Mesoamerican cultures until the Spanish conquest.
The production of amate is much more similar to paper than papyrus. The bark material is soaked in water, or in modern methods boiled, so that it breaks down into a mass of fibers. They are then laid out in a frame and pressed into sheets. It is a true paper product in that the material is not in its original form, but the base material has much larger fibers than those used in modern papers. As a result, amate has a rougher surface than modern paper, and may dry into a sheet with hills and valleys as the different length fibers shrink.
European paper making spread to the Americas first in Mexico by 1575 and then in Philadelphia by 1690.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paper edited on 22 March 2021