Sericulture and silk weaving
Sericultura y tejido de seda
- Date
- c. 2700 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Qianshanyang (Huzhou, Zhejiang) and Jiahu (Henan), China
- Credited to
- Yangshao and Liangzhu cultures (tradition: Empress Leizu)
- Field
- Tools
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
Rearing of the Bombyx mori silkworm on mulberry, reeling of the cocoon into a continuous thread, and weaving of a fibre of unrivalled sheen and strength. Silk fragments from Qianshanyang (c. 2700 BCE) and fibroin remains at Jiahu (c. 3600 BCE) document a Chinese monopoly that lasted three millennia.
Woven silk fragments from Qianshanyang (c. 2700 BCE) are the oldest evidence of fabric; fibroin residues in tombs at Jiahu, dated to about 8,500 years ago (c. 6500 BCE, not c. 3600 BCE), are far earlier but disputed because they are only chemical, not textile, evidence. Wild (tussah) silk was also exploited independently in the Indus (Harappa, c. 2450 BCE).
What it led to
- A luxury good that sustained the transcontinental trade of the Silk Road and gave China its Latin name (Seres)
- A technological secret guarded by the state on pain of death, the first 'industrial property'
- Lightweight fabrics that drove the complex heddle loom and brocades
- Silk as currency and tribute in imperial China
Built on
- Warp-weighted vertical loomc. 3000 BCE
- Domestication of the mulberry
- Spindle and reel
Made possible
- Kitec. 400 BCE
- Laoguanshan multi-shaft pattern loomc. 150 BCE
- Opening of the Silk Roadc. 130 BCE
- Silk-reeling machine with traversing guidec. 1090
- Tomioka Silk Mill (Japan's first mechanised factory)1872
- Zeglen's silk bulletproof vestc. 1897
- Bacillus thuringiensis (the “sotto” bacillus of silkworms)1901
- Draw loom (Chinese jacquard)
- Paper (from silk waste, according to tradition)