Plant Portraits 14. The Fabrics of Cvilization

  (Note images in this series were generated with the assistance of modern AI tools. No actual human individuals are portrayed here. See the first installment of the series for further explanation)

The first humans feeling the need for clothing used bark cloth or perhaps grass skirts. The dawn of civilization brought the weaving of fibers from both animals (wool) and plants into fabric. Looms were among the earliest inventions as people turned to agriculture and the building of permanent settlements. There were the cruder fabrics derived from Cannabis, Agave (see Gifts from Mesoamerica), and others, but the more refined fabrics came with more organized farming cultures. 

 

In the ancient Yangshao culture along the Yellow River in China, fibers of hemp 

(Cannabis sativa) were used for crude fabrics and ropes as early as 7000 years ago. A particular 

use was for decorating pottery. Fresh, soft pottery was wrapped by hemp rope to make 

a distinctive pattern.

Fabric produced from the flax plant, Linum usatissimum, first appeared in Egypt around 

10,000 BCE, and remained the favored fabric throughout Egypt's history. It had been used 

for thread and cords even longer, since at least 30,000 BCE. Today, linen is still valued 

as one of the finer materials for tablecloths, bed sheets, etc. The fiber is extracted from the 

stems of the plant, and then woven into fabric, as in this imagined scene from ancient Egypt.

A cultivated field of flax plants is blooming in the foreground. 

Cotton was first cultivated and used for fabric independently in several parts of the world, 

around 5000 BCE. The fiber is produced on the surface of developing seeds of the cotton 

plant, Gossypium spp, and naturally functions as a parachute for wind-dispersal. Shown 

here is a family harvesting cotton in prehistoric India. It appeared

roughly at the same time in Africa and in Peru. Fabric produced from 

cotton was traditionally the least expensive, and so the common man's choice for clothing.

Silk comes only indirectly from plants, via the silkworm. The larvae feed on the leaves of the 

Mulberry tree (Morus alba), and then wrap themselves in the fine fibers they produce from glands 

in their posterior, as they enter the pupal stage.  Shown here are prehistoric people of China, 

some 8500 years ago harvesting cocoons, soaking them in hot water to separate the fibers, which 

are then spun and woven into fabric on a loom. 

During historical times, silk production was a major industry in China, as shown here during 

the Tang Dynasty. The famous Silk Road developed to export silk from China to western Asia 

and Europe in medieval times. The Chinese managed to keep the silk technology secret for over 

1000 years before it was finally leaked to Japan and Korea around 200 BCE, and much later

 to Europe. 

Silk has always been considered the most luxurious of fabrics,

both in the Orient, and later throughout the world, and so was used primarily by the 

upper classes. Here, the Empress Wu Zitian, the only official female monarch 

in Chinese history, is decked out in her heavily embroidered, royal silk gowns.