history of silk

The history of silk begins, according to Chinese myths, in the 27th century BC. But recent excavations have found the oldest evidences of silk production in Korea between 41st~44th century B.C. The art of silk making slowly spread to other civilizations via merchants, looters, and spies. Having arrived in Europe at the end of the Middle Ages, the production of silk climaxed during the phase of industrialization at the beginning of the nineteenth century. After that, silk production experienced a rapid decline due to improvements in manufacturing in certain Asian countries and to epidemics that affected the silk worms in France.


Myths and legends

The writings of Confucius and Chinese tradition recount that in the 27th century BC a silk worm's cocoon fell into the tea cup of the empress Leizu.[1] Wanting to extract it from her drink, the young girl of fourteen began to unroll the thread of the cocoon. She then had the idea to weave it. Having observed the life of the silk worm on the recommendation of her husband, the Yellow Emperor, she began to instruct her entourage the art of raising silk worms, sericulture. From this point on, the girl became the goddess of silk in Chinese mythology. Silk would eventually leave China in the hair of a princess promised to a prince of Khotan. The princess, refusing to go without the fabric she loved, would finally break the imperial ban on silk worm exportation.
Silk was a mystery for such a long time that civilizations who discovered it, thanks primarily to the Silk Road that crossed Eurasia, invented numerous legends on the subject. Persian legends state that the first silk worm couple was born on the body of Job, and subsequently attacked by vermin.[citation needed]
Though silk was exported to foreign countries in great amounts, sericulture remained a secret that the Chinese guarded carefully. Consequently, other peoples invented wildly varying accounts of the source of the incredible fabric. In classical antiquity most Romans, great admirers of the cloth, were convinced that the Chinese took the fabric from tree leaves.[2] This belief was affirmed by Seneca the Younger in his Hippolytus and by Virgil in his Georgics. Notably, Pliny the Elder knew better. Speaking of the bombyx or silk moth, he wrote in his Natural Histories "They weave webs, like spiders, that become a luxurious clothing material for women, called silk."


The appearance of silk

The silk worm cocoon
It is not possible to precisely date when silk first appeared. Fragments have been recovered from royal tombs in the Shang Dynasty (ca. 1600 BC - ca. 1046 BC),[4] but daily usage only seemed to have taken off beginning in the Han Dynasty, during 2nd century BC.
Recently even older evidence of human knowledge of silkworms have been found in Korea. The first chinese written characters related to silk production appeared in oracle texts no older than 3500B.C. These are: 糸(Silk or Cloth) 帛(Silk) 巾(Cloth) 桑(white mulberry tree, which its leaves are the only food for silkworms) 虫(bug, but in ancient chinese, may specifically refer to silkworms) However, Secondary Digsite of Jitap-ri, Bongsan County, HwanghaeDo Province, North Korea has unearthed Earthware with carved pictures of silkworms with 10 segments, unseen in usual chinese silkworms. Another artifact in MagaJeomJin of the Ablok River in North Korea consisted of several small clay figures of silkworms with 10 segments and 10 legs each sizing 2.6cm long and 0.4cm in diameter. Carbon dating has found these to date 6055~6325 years ago, around 41st~44th century B.C. The 10 segmented silkworms are known as 高麗三眠蠶 or 韓三眠蠶(Korean 3 Sleeping Silkworm, in reference to how many times the silkworm sheds itself before becoming a pupa) and are silkworms indigenous and exclusive to Korea. They have 28 chromosomes compared to 27 of the common chinese worm. [5]
During this epoch, the Chinese had already lost their secret as the Koreans, the Japanese, and later the Indians succeeded in discovering how to make silk. Allusions to the fabric in the Old Testament show that it was known in western Asia in biblical times.[6] Scholars believe that since the 2nd century BC the Chinese established a commercial network aimed at exporting silk to the West.[6] Silk was used, for example, by the Persian court and its king, Darius III, when Alexander the Great conquered the empire.[6] Even though silk rapidly spread across Eurasia, its production remained for three millennia exclusively Chinese (with the exception of Japan).