Humans and domesticated animals have lived together for millennia, and this relationship has shaped their destinies in countless ways. Animals offered people food, companionship, traction (pulling ploughs), clothing and transport.

They also provided something less obvious but extraordinarily important: parchment to write on. This robust, plentiful and portable material enabled many people to record and store their histories in the days before mass-produced paper.

Parchment was made with the skins of a range of animals. From first-hand experience in a workshop in Malta, one of us (Kevin) saw how quickly these skins can be transformed into parchment suitable for writing.

After soaking them in vats of water containing quicklime, the flesh and hair tissue is removed using hefty blades and elbow grease. The skins are then stretched on frames overnight or longer – leaving a taut membrane that just needs smoothing and light treatment to be ready for use. Within a matter of days, a biological tissue is processed into a remarkably durable historical material.

Parchment has another fascinating quality. It preserves DNA from the animal killed in its making. From our latest study, it is clear that DNA can survive in parchment (even if fragmented) for well over a thousand years – although the precise time depends on how well the parchment has been archived and stored.

As researchers of how livestock was used in early societies, this raised other intriguing questions. Could biological traces of infection also survive the skin’s transformation into parchment, if the animal was infected........

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