• The kite was first invented and popularized approximately 2,800 years ago in China, where materials ideal for kite building were readily available: silk fabric for sail material, fine, high-tensile-strength silk for flying line, and resilient bamboo for a strong, lightweight framework

• Alternatively, kite author Clive Hart and kite big league Tal Streeter hold that kites existed far before that time. The kite was said to be the genius of the famous 5th century BC Chinese philosophers Mozi and Lu Ban
• By at least 549 AD essay kites were being flown, as it was recorded in that year a paper kite was used as a message for a rescue mission.

Kite flying began much later in Europe than in Asia. While unambiguous drawings http://www.pictureprettykites.com/garden-art/wind-spinners/cat_27.html of kites first appeared in lithograph in the Netherlands and England in the 17th century, pennon-type kites that evolved from military banners dating final to Roman times and earlier were flown during the Midmost Ages. Joseph Needham says that the earliest European description of a kite comes from the Magia Naturalis written in 1589 by the Italian polymath Giambattista della Porta (1535–1615).