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Early silk in China
silk production The history of sericulture in China is a long one. The oldest silk found in China has been dated to about 3630 BC, which means that it is from the Chinese Neolithic period. This silk was found in the Henan Province, a region widely regarded as the cradle of Chinese civilization.
Another example of very old silk in China is a group of silk threads, a braided silk belt and a woven silk cloth fragment dated to circa 2570 BC. These items were excavated from the Liangzhu culture site at Qianshanyang, in the Zhejiang Province. The Liangzhu was the last Neolithic jade culture in the Yangtze River Delta.
The oldest known written reference to silk is on a bronze fragment found at the Shang Dynast site at Anyang. The Shang Dynasty existed from circa 1600 to circa 1050 BC.
A small ivory cup adorned with a carved silkworm design found in China is thought to be between 6000 and 7000 years old.
The legend of Hsi-Ling-Shih
silk history According to Chinese myth, sericulture and the weaving of silk cloth was invented by Lady Hsi-Ling-Shih, the wife of the mythical Yellow Emperor who is said to have ruled China in about 3,000 BC. Hsi-Ling-Shi is credited with both introducing sericulture and inventing the loom upon which silk is woven. In Chinese texts, she is sometimes referred to as The Goddess of Silk.
Only for a select few
For a long time, silk was a material reserved for the Emperor of China and those very close to him, such as important family members and very high-ranking dignitaries. Some very old and possibly semi-legendary sources write about how the Emperor always wore white silk within his imperial palace, and yellow silk when venturing outside. The principal wife to the Emperor and the heir to the imperial throne are also described as wearing yellow silk when showing themselves outside the palace.
The use of silk spreads
Gradually, the restrictions on who could wear and use silk in China began to vanish, and more and more people – who could afford the precious material – could be seen sporting silk clothing and decorating with silk ornaments.
Eventually, silk production grew to become quite a large industry in China. Silk was used for a variety of things, from fishing-lines and bowstrings to musical instruments. Earlier, documents had been written on silk cloth. Now, Chinese paper makers developed techniques for making more affordable, yet still luxurious, paper where silk rags were mixed with other naturally occuring fibers to make the pulp.
Soon, silk was present in so many aspects of Chinese life that it began altering the language. Even today, well over 200 of the 5,000 most commonly used characters in Mandarin texts have silk as their “key”.
Silk as a currency / commodity
During the Han Dynasty, silk became somewhat of a currency. There are for instance documents from this era telling us about farmers who paid their taxes in grain and silk. When taxes were paid in silk, it also ment that the state would make its payments in silk, and civil servents could for instance get their salary in the form of silk. The cost of something could be described using lenghts of silk as the unit of measurment, just like many other societies would use weight units of gold or silver.
Since silk was highly valued and appriciated outside China as well, lenghts of silk became a well-established trading commodity between China and foreign countries. It remain an important commodity to this day and you can buy a number of different silk based securities and financial instruments including futures, binary or over/under options, and ETFs.
The Chinese monopoly begins to faulter
The Chinese autorities worked hard to keep everything pertaining to silk production a secret to retain the nation’s monopoly, but eventually information began to slip out – partly through Chinese migrants that settled abroad and made a living there from silk making.
Silkworm cultivation for silk production, also known as sericulture, reached Korea around the year 200 BC, but it would take until after 300 AD before the practice was established as far away as India.