Question

We know the fact that cotton was grown and used about 7000 years ago in Mehrgarh. What
archeological evidence do we have that helped historians establish the above? (Give any two
pieces of evidence).

Answer 1

Explanation:

the evidence

Mehrgarh is the gift that keeps on giving to archaeologists, this time as the location with the oldest known cotton in the Indian subcontinent. Pushing back the origin of major crops, like rice recently, or silk previously, suggests that while some agricultural practices may have spread east to the Indus valley, others, like rice and perhaps cotton and crops that could rotate with other crops may have spread westwards from the Indus region. The many river eco-systems would have allowed ample time for experimentation and the perfection of different crop strains.

In this study, several threads preserved by mineralization in a copper bead from a Neolithic burial (6th millennium) at Mehrgarh, Pakistan, were subject to rigorous metallurgical analysis. Under this new microscopic procedure, the fibres were identified as cotton (genus Gossypium).

This article encapsulates several unique aspects with regard to this discovery:

- First, an explanation of the exceptional preservation of cotton fibres which represent a unique find. The preservation "results exclusively from the corrosion process of copper in which metallic salts are liberated and can thus impregnate the organic material. This type of conservation is rare, especially for periods before the ‘‘true’’ metal ages, for which metal objects are extremely scarce."