Flax domestication and linen
Domesticación del lino y tejido de lino
- Date
- c. 7000 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Tell Halula and Tell Ramad, Syria
- Credited to
- PPNB communities of the middle Euphrates
- Field
- Tools
What it is
Selection of flax with large seeds and long stems to obtain fibre and oil; the earliest linen cloths appear at Nahal Hemar and Çatalhöyük. The first plant cultivated for clothing rather than food.
What it led to
- Woven clothing replacing hide: fashion, status and decorum
- Domestic spinning industry, the principal female occupation for millennia
- Flax as a trade good and, in Egypt, the basis of the textile and funerary economy