Paper airplanes

With my creaky bones and rusty attitudes, I may seem to be a couple of hundred years old, when in truth I am not.

So pardon me if I fail to understand how paper airplanes, as an entity, could have been around since the 1600s when actual airplanes/gliders have not.

Who was the wizard who first folded some parchment into a gravity-defying wedge and then said "Nope. That's good enough. This thing floats on the breeze, that's enough thought on lighter-than-air transportation for me. Grazi mille!"?

I've been wondering about this disconnect for many years. I had already thought about it, I know for sure, when I saw Planet of the Apes at age 9 at the old Cinema South (in Oakwood!) as part of their Free Summer Movies for Kids or whatever, because I can remember Chuck H making one and blowing Cornelius and Zera(sp?)'s collective monkey mind. "It's a toy that floats on the air!" she tells the canny Zaius, who crushes the suspect objet without checking out her story. I remember seeing that and thinking, yes!, someone else has spent lonely hours a-tree dithering about when paper airplane origins! and also wondering: now, seriously, what the hell? When did paper airplanes arrive on the scene? Like, two years after the Wright Brothers? Or what? Did such aeronautics just spontaneously generate at some point, like the horse collar?