Parchment and vellum were used more than 2000 years as writing media, are made of untanned skin of animals such as sheep, calf and goat, Vellum is the finest one made from young animals.

Animal skin had a long history of writing media. Then, in the 3rd century B.C., Egypt banned on the export of papyrus, main writing media at that time, to Pergamon. To cope with it, Pergamon developed mass production of parchment. The most laborious work in manufacturing is scraping skin, which is comparative to beating in paper and papyrus productions.

Compared to papyrus, parchment is thin, strong and written on both sides of a sheet, and can be formed to codex, though unstable to humidity change.

Parchment codices steadily substituted papyrus scrolls in Roman society. In medieval Europe, though paper spread in the region by way of Islam, variable books were still of parchment. Then, the Reformation turned Europe to society of paper.