Answer:
Many studies assert that origami was invented by the Japanese about a thousand years ago.
It is also highly probable that the process of folding was applied to other materials before paper was invented, so the origins of recreational folding may lie with cloth or leather.
However, paper has proved to be the ideal material to fold, and so it is logical to assume that paper folding followed the discovery of the papermaking process.
Making paper from the macerated bark of trees, hemp waste, old rags, and fishnets, he discovered a far superior and cheaper way of creating a writing surface, compared with the cloth made of silk that was commonly used.
One of the earliest known paper-folding instruction books was Akisato Rito’s Sembazuru orikata (1797), and it showed how to fold linked cranes cut and folded from a square of paper.
