THE CLOTHING RESTORATION PROJECT
BLOG 003
03.07.2024
COTTON EXPLORATION: THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE COTTON PLANT (PART 1)
The first blog in this series explores the history of cotton in five different regions of the world. In part 1 we focus on India and the Islamic Empire and in part 2 we examine West Africa along with Central and South America.
While cotton is important to many more cultures than what we have explored here, we chose to investigate the four areas where the cotton plant was domesticated, as well as West Africa for its historical impact on our present lives. In these ancient societies, everyday life was dominated by spinning and weaving. Because of the amount of time, effort, and expertise it took to make, cloth was one of the most valuable items for many societies in ancient times.
The World of Fabric
Ancient Greek terracotta oil flask depicting the process of textile production, from processing of fiber into thread to weaving | Credit: Met Museum
Clothing is unique to humans. No other animal on earth has the appetite, obsession, and mastery of the art of making clothing and fabric that humans do. We wear clothes for protection for survival in harsh environments, but also, and maybe more importantly, to express ourselves and let other people know our values, beliefs and identities.
Until very recently in human history, all cloth had to be constructed from what we could make ourselves from our local surroundings. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, early humans wore garments made from animal hides or large pieces of plant fiber (Toups et al., 2010). Possibly as far back as 20,000 years ago, humans invented woven fabric, a multi-step and complex technology, all without modern machinery (Minturn, 1996). We invented spinning tools to spin thread out of fibers from plants and animals. With string, we could catch, hold, carry, and tie together things to make increasingly complex objects. Some researchers theorize that this “string revolution” was what enabled humans to spread throughout all corners of the globe (Wayland Barber, 1996). We created looms and needles to weave, sew, and knit this thread into clothing and other textile items like blankets, tapestries, and rugs, and tools like fishing nets and sails.
“String became the unseen weapon that allowed the human race to conquer the earth.” (Barber, 1996)
Over the millennia, an enormous amount of skill and knowledge developed around the transformation of raw plant and animal material into fabric. Every step of textile creation had to be done by hand, with what was available in our local environments. Because of the sheer amount of time and skill it would take to create even one simple shirt before modern machinery, in many cultures textiles could be even more valuable than precious metals like gold or silver. Norwegian researchers reconstructed an excavated Nordic tunic from the 3rd or 4th century using all traditional methods of preparing, spinning, weaving, and sewing. Just this one tunic which would have fit a person who is five foot seven inches tall, took the modern researchers 804 hours to recreate from preparation of fiber to final sewing, all by hand by local craftspeople (Vedeler and Hammarlund, 2017).
Cotton plant shown spun and woven | Credit: Smithsonian
Communities and households would grow fiber plants (or raise fiber producing animals) alongside their food crops and spend much of their time spinning, weaving, and sewing their own textiles for everyday use or trade. An important economic aspect of each community was the creation of valuable, beautiful fabrics that could be traded or sold for whatever food or other items they could not make themselves. Textiles do not spoil or get eaten like food crops and are therefore much easier to store and transport. They are also highly desired for qualities such as their complex beauty, softness, and functionality, and can be passed down for generations as precious heirlooms. All over the world, different cultures have their own rich textile histories and traditions, each as complex as the next.
Ancient people developed long, treacherous trade routes in order to exchange highly sought-after fabrics for other valuable goods. In fact, the legendary Silk Route in China was developed in large part because of the Roman Empire’s appetite for Chinese silk (Peters, 2019). But it was cotton that changed the world, built empires, and led to the modern economic system as we know it today (Sven Beckert, 2014).
Thousands of years ago, four separate species of cotton were domesticated by four different cultures in four different places in the world: Central America; the Andes; Arabia and Syria; and the Indus Valley (Lacape, 2014). The people living in these areas independently recognized that the wild cotton plants in their areas yielded fibers that could be spun into durable, soft, lightweight clothing that was also easy to dye. In each of these regions, cotton textiles came to form an important part of everyday as well as religious and spiritual life. Because cotton could only be grown in the climates of these areas, these regions also became major hubs of ancient cotton textile manufacturing and trade. The following sections will cover the ancient world’s relationship to cotton and the importance of this staple crop in the places where it was domesticated.
Indian Cotton: World Fame
Gujarat weavers, attributed to a painter from Tanjore circa 1840 | Credit: Wellcome Collection
From ancient times, weavers living in the Indian subcontinent mastered the art of creating extraordinary fabrics out of cotton.
Indian farmers domesticated cotton and developed the technology to weave it at least seven thousand years ago— cotton thread dating from 5,000 BCE was found in modern Pakistan, in Mehrgarh (Moulherat et al., 2002).
The development of cotton and other textile technology took place on a household level, and subsistence farmers developed hundreds or even thousands of varieties of cotton, each suited to its local environment and desired end product (Menon and Uzramma, 2017). Weavers from every family perfected their skills over the centuries, and certain communities became known for different styles of fine cloths. Today, many regions of India are still known for their textiles.
Cotton textiles formed the basis of ancient India’s thriving export market. Indian cotton fabric was of such high quality that it was highly desired all over the ancient world. Ancient Greek philosophers from the 1st century AD wrote about cotton’s beauty as a cloth and the skill with which the cloths were printed by Indian masters (Beckert, 2015). Cotton exports from India were so widespread that examples of Indian fabric have been found in archaeological sites at Egyptian sea ports from the 11th century, and throughout the Roman Empire. Romans from this time period were especially impressed with the fineness of Indian cotton, and described it using the words mist or wind (Menon and Uzramma, 2017). Europeans were used to clothing made from wool and linen, which was usually rougher and heavier.
The development of extraordinary fabrics and their export led to the wealth of the Kingdom of India and its position as one of the richest empires in the world until the 18th century (Dayalan, 2021). The global appetite for Indian cottons was so huge that they were the largest manufactured product traded from the Roman Empire until the 19th century (Beckert, 2015). One fabric that the Europeans desired was Dhaka muslin, a legendary cotton fabric that was so fine it was see-through. It was made from a local breed of cotton that was so delicate that it required a complex sixteen-step process to turn into fabric, each step only known by one village around Dhaka. By the 19th century, it was the most expensive fabric in the entire world— just one yard of Dhaka muslin could cost between $9,000 and $71,000 in today’s money (Gorvett, 2021). When the British colonized India, they destroyed many of India’s local textile industries and the process for making Dhaka muslin was lost.
Woman warping cotton thread for a hand-operated loom in Ahmedabad, circa 1915. | Credit: University of Toronto
The Islamic Empire And The Spread Of Cotton Cultivation In The Middle Ages
Replica painting of artwork depicting weavers found in tomb of Khnumhotep, circa 1897-1878 BC. | Credit: Met Museum
Cotton was also domesticated in East Africa likely around 500 BCE in the area around the Nile river. This cotton species, unique to this area, grows well even in times of drought. However, cotton fabric and clothing was not popular in this region until the rise of the Islamic empire, which lasted from around the 9th century to around the 14th century and spanned an area from modern Spain in the west to modern northern India in the east. Previously, cotton textiles were mostly considered a luxury imported good from India, reserved for the ruling class. With the rise of Islam, cotton clothing became popular for lower classes as well as it enabled people to conform to modesty requirements comfortably.
During this time, the use of cotton for everyday clothing and the development of a strong textile tradition around cotton in Africa and the Middle East came to be. Islamic traders spread high quality and innovative cotton fabrics across the empire, which even found their way to Medieval Europe.
In fact, the modern word “cotton” comes from the Arabic word “qutn”, and so do many English words for cotton cloths. For instance, “muslin” comes from the city Mosul in Iraq, and “gauze” is named after Gaza in Palestine where it originated.
Farmers also developed breeds of cotton that could grow in the temperate climates of Europe and Central Asia, and cotton cultivation spread out from the tropical areas where it had been confined to for thousands of years (Brite and Marston, 2013). By the late 11th century, merchants brought cotton technology to West Africa, and over the next few hundred years, cotton mastery was found in African kingdoms from east to west.
Talismanic Shirt; Cotton, ink, gold; plain weave, painted 15th–early 16th century | Credit: Met Museum
In part 2, we cover West Africa’s historical and contemporary relationship to textile, and cotton in particular. Textile was central to cultural expression, served as a form of currency and an important medium for story telling. In the Americas, we discovered a similar relationship to textile and cotton that existed for centuries before colonization.
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