Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - A History of Textiles, Fabrics, and Cloth

Starting point is 00:00:00 I would say that there's a good chance that almost everyone listening to the sound of my voice right now is wearing something made of cloth. Cloth, textiles, and fabrics go back a very long way, but despite their ancient origins, not every culture had them. Yet where they existed, they were some of the most valuable commodities, and they were in some fashion used by everyone from rich to the poor. Learn more about cloth, textiles, and fabrics, their origin and how they've changed throughout history on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may

Starting point is 00:00:55 have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. I'm going to have to start this episode by defining some terms. because the words cloth, textile, and fabric are usually used interchangeably, but they actually mean slightly different things. The reason why there is so much confusion is because there is so much overlap between the categories. If you were to identify any piece of cloth that you use in your daily

Starting point is 00:01:33 life, it is probably both a fabric and a textile, which is why we use them interchangeably. A textile is usually defined as any product that is woven or knitted. The dictionary definition of a fabric is a cloth made by weaving or knitting, and then the definition of cloth is a fabric or material form by weaving, knitting, pressing, or felting. And you'll notice that the definitions are very similar and a little bit circular. But here's a good way to think of it, although some people might disagree with how I'm defining it. Not all textiles are fabrics. The best example that you're probably familiar with is carpets.

Starting point is 00:02:15 Carpets are woven materials, but they're not fabrics. You wouldn't go to a fabric store to buy a carpet or use a carpet to make clothing. All fabrics are textiles, and all fabrics, at least the ones I can think of, are cloth. Fabrics can be thought of as woven or knitted cloth. However, not all cloth are fabrics, although the vast majority of them are. The best example of a cloth that is not a fabric would be felt. which is not woven or knitted. So with all that knit-picky stuff out of the way,

Starting point is 00:02:51 for the rest of this episode, I'm going to be talking about the overlap of all three of those things, woven materials that are used for clothing. I am explicitly not talking about leather or animal skins, as those would be for an entirely separate episode. The origin of cloth starts out with fibers. A fiber is defined as anything that's significantly longer than it is wide. There are plant fibers, animal fibers, and even synthetic fibers.

Starting point is 00:03:20 Determining the origin of the use of fibers and cloth is difficult because both animal and plant fibers are organic and don't preserve very well over long periods of time. Estimates for when humans began to weave cloth from fibers has an extremely wide range, but the standard estimate places it about 30 to 50,000 years ago. We don't have any samples of cloth or clothing dating back that far, but there are reasons for that estimate. For example, a sewing needle has been found in a Denisovan cave in Siberia, which has been dated back about 50,000 years. A possible 60,000-year-old needle has been found in South Africa, but it's broken so it can't be positively identified as such. A 40,000-year-old piece of bone was found in Spain that has regular indentations. While there have been many theories put forward as to what it was for, one of the simplest theories is that it was just a punching board for sewing.

Starting point is 00:04:18 Died flax fibers have been found in the Republic of Georgia that have been dated back 34,000 years. These are only fibers and not part of a piece of cloth, but it shows that dyeing was used in conjunction with fibers tens of thousands of years before the advent of agriculture. There's a 25,000-year-old figurine that's been found in southern France. that shows a person wearing a skirt, and there are many other figurines that show people wearing articles of clothing. So while there isn't any direct evidence of cloth from prehistory, there's plenty of circumstantial evidence

Starting point is 00:04:52 far beyond what I've mentioned here. Moreover, the use of fiber seems to have been something that was independently discovered all over the world. There are 12,000-year-old fibers and textile fragments found in a cave in Peru, indicating that it was also in the new world as well as the old. The oldest known garment that is clearly identifiable as a garment is the tarcan dress. It's a 5,000-year-old blouse or shirt that was found in a tomb in Egypt.

Starting point is 00:05:22 The primary material used for cloth in Egypt at that time was flax, not cotton, as most people would expect, given the popularity of Egyptian cotton today. Wovean flax is simply known as linen. Wool and other animal fibers were also used for making cloths. in some parts of the world. However, the evidence suggests that wool cloth came thousands of years after the adoption of plant fibers. Sheep were only domesticated about 10,000 years ago, and the early sheep weren't woolly so much as they were just hairy. Over time, there was a process of selectively breeding sheep for wool. The oldest known wool cloth dates back about 3,500 years, but it's likely that it goes back much further than that. One of the big limiting factors in the

Starting point is 00:06:08 adoption of wool was the difficulty in collecting it, and this was eventually solved with the invention of shears during the Iron Age. Cotton originally came from India. The earliest evidence of cotton as a material for cloth dates back about 7,500 years ago. However, cotton wasn't only grown in the old world. There were different varieties of cotton that were found in the new world as well, such as in Peru. When the Spanish arrived in Peru, they found people who were wearing cotton clothing and we're using cotton for the creation of fish nets. I should of course also note the use of silk in China. I've previously done an entire episode on silk, but silk fibers come from the silk worm and silk became one of the most valued products in the ancient world.

Starting point is 00:06:55 One of the first challenges was getting fibers into something useful in the form of thread or yarn. The first tool used for making thread was known as a drop spindle. A drop spindle. A drop The drop spindle consists of a shaft with a circular warrel attached near one end to provide momentum and to maintain the spindle's rotating speed. The spinner attaches fibers to a hook or notch at the top of the spindle and then spins it to twist the fibers together, gradually winding the newly formed yarn or thread into the shaft as more fibers are spun. The spinning motion of the drop spindle was eventually improved upon with the spinning wheel, which was a much larger wheel that allowed for the faster creation of a more uniformed quality thread. Once you have thread, no matter if it's flax, wool, cotton, or silk, what makes that thread into cloth or fabric

Starting point is 00:07:49 is the act of weaving. Weaving was probably one of the most difficult and time-consuming things that ancient people did. Every piece of cloth had to be woven one strand at a time. It was a laborious process, that, depending on the size and complexity of the cloth being made, could take weeks or even months. The time that went into weaving was one of the reasons why even the simplest garments were prized and almost never thrown away. The earliest weaving tool was known as the warp-weighted loom. The warp-weighted loom is one of the simplest weaving methods, and it dates back to at least the Neolithic period and probably predates that by many thousand years. The loom consists of a simple, simple, upright, wooden rectangular frame.

Starting point is 00:08:38 The top horizontal beam is called the warp beam, while the vertical posts provide support for the structure. Warp threads are the vertical threads attached to the warp beam at the top. They hang down freely and are kept taught by weights that are attached at the bottom. The stone or clay weights, known as loom weights, are tied to the ends of the warp threads. These weights keep the warp threads under tension and allow them to hang straight. A rod or stick known as a shed rod is inserted inside the warp threads to separate it into two layers, creating an opening through which the weft or the horizontal thread can then pass.

Starting point is 00:09:17 The weft thread is then usually passed through the warp threads, usually what's known as a shuttle. If the warp threads are in place, moving the shuttle can be done relatively quickly. After passing the horizontal weft thread through the vertical shed thread, a beater is then used to push it tightly in place against the previous rows of weaving. This compacts the fabric and ensures evenness. Just rinse and repeat this process several hundred or several thousand times, and the end result will be a piece of woven cloth. Ancient weaving systems may have been a bit different from place to place,

Starting point is 00:09:52 but the basics of weaving involving a thread in and out of other threads, the warp and the weft, have been the basis of weaving up to the present day. While the warp-weighted loom was the earliest known loom, and is still used in parts of the world today, it was hardly the end of loom technology. The horizontal ground loom was one of the earliest technical advancements in weaving. It involved a frame laid on the ground or slightly elevated, where warp threads were stretched horizontally. It was easier to manage tension and allowed for larger pieces of fabric. The vertical loom looks similar to the warp-weighted loom, but more advanced.

Starting point is 00:10:29 It included vertical frames and improved mechanisms for controlling warp tension. It allowed for more stability and the ability to produce larger and more complex textiles. One of the biggest advancements in weaving technology was the draw loom. The draw loom probably originated in ancient China during the Tang Dynasty around the 6th or 7th century. A draw loom allows for the creation of complex patterns by enabling the weaver to lift specific groups of warp threads during the weaving process. A draw loom has a foot pedal which allows the weaver to lift specific warp threads without having to use their hands. The technology spread along the Silk Road, reaching the Middle East and eventually Europe by the Middle Ages. In medieval Europe, particularly in France and Italy, the draw loom became essential for producing intricate silk fabrics.

Starting point is 00:11:20 It's used persisted until the 18th century when more automated looms largely supplanted it. This is not the end of the story of cloth and weaving by a large. long shot. The spinning wheel and the draw loom were close to the state of the art at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century. A great deal of the Industrial Revolution and the development of steam-powered machines involved running looms to speed up the process of making cloth. In addition to improved weaving techniques, new synthetic fibers were eventually developed to make new fabrics, and this included everything from nylon to Kevlar, and textiles and woven fabrics found their way into almost every part of our world.

Starting point is 00:12:01 The industrialization of textile production will be the story for another episode, however. Cloth and weaving have been one of the fundamental technologies that humans have used since before the rise of agriculture. Not only have we been creating cloth and weaving for as long as history has been recorded, but it has also been a constant in most civilizations around the world, no matter how separated they were.

Starting point is 00:12:26 And that just might make the show, shirt on your back now seem a little more special. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Benji Long and Cameron Kiever. I want to give a big shout out to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon, including the show's producers. Your support helps me put out a show every single day. And also, Patreon is currently the only place where Everything Everywhere Daily merchandise

Starting point is 00:12:54 is available to the top tier of supporters. If you'd like to talk to other listeners of the show and members of the Completionist Club, you can join the Everything Everywhere Daily Facebook group or Discord server. Links to everything are in the show notes.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - A History of Textiles, Fabrics, and Cloth

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