cave drawings of animals and people are at least 25,000 years old.Making

your mark with pen, ink, and paper is much more  21  , though. The first

pens were probably  22   sticks or bones. But it wasn't until about 700 AD

that a particularly  23  writing tool came to be used. It was such a great

tool, in fact, that it dominated the _ 24 _ word for more than a thousand years

after that: the quill (羽茎) pen.

Our word "pen", in fact, comes from the Latin word "penna", which

means"wing". Feathers from any   25  bird were uses: geese, peacocks, eagles and turkeys. Crow quills were used for very  26  work,such as accounting books.

The best quill pens were, and still are, made from the five largest  27  feathers of domesticated geese. Right-handed people prefer pens made of feathers from a goose's left wing. That way, the natural curve of the feather won't cause it to poke them as they write. Left-handed people prefer  28  feathers.

Why feathers? Didn't they have metal? Actually, pens made of silver, iron and steel were         29   , too. But the ink used at the time contained acid. The ink ate away pens made of the only steel produced at the time. When better steel ― and mass production of steel pen nibs(笔头) ― was developed in the mid-1800s, steel pens began _ 30 _ quills.