The export of textiles was one of the sources of wealth for Meroe. Cotton was grown upriver, made into nets, and traded with fishing villages along the coast for large supplies of fish. 4200 BC,[15] and was the backbone of the development of coastal cultures such as the Norte Chico, Moche, and Nazca. The use of cotton for fabric is known to date to prehistoric times; fragments of cotton fabric dated to the fifth millennium BC have been found in the Indus Valley Civilization, as well as fabric remnants dated back to 6000 BC in Peru. The word entered the Romance languages in the mid-12th century,[5] and English a century later. The Spanish who came to Mexico and Peru in the early 16th century found the people growing cotton and wearing clothing made of it.
Arabia
The Greeks and the Arabs were not familiar with cotton until the Wars of Alexander the Great, as his contemporary Megatheres told Seleucids I Nicator of "there being trees on which wool grows" in "Indica".[citation needed] This may be a reference to "tree cotton", Gossypium arboretum, which is a native of the Indian subcontinent.
According to the Columbia Encyclopedia:[16]
Cotton has been spun, woven, and dyed since prehistoric times. The fiber is almost pure cellulose, and can contain minor percentages of waxes, fats, pectin's, and water. Aksumite King Zana boasted in his inscription that he destroyed large cotton plantations in Meroe during his conquest of the region.[19]
China
During the Han dynasty (207 BC - 220 AD), cotton was grown by Chinese peoples in the southern Chinese province of Yunnan.[20]
. John Chardin, a French traveler of the 17th century who visited Safavid Persia, spoke approvingly of the vast cotton farms of Persia.[17]
Kingdom of Kush
Cotton (Gossypium herbaceous Linnaeus) may have been domesticated 5000 BC in eastern Sudan near the Middle Nile Basin region, where cotton cloth was being produced.[18] Around the 4th century BC, the cultivation of cotton and the knowledge of its spinning and weaving in Meroe reached a high level. Marco Polo (13th century) refers to the major products of Persia, including cotton. What they didn't use themselves, they sent to their Aztec rulers as tribute, on the scale of ~116 million pounds annually.[14]
In Peru, cultivation of the indigenous cotton species Gossypium barbadense has been dated, from a find in Ancon, to c. While cotton fibers occur naturally in colors of white, brown, pink and green, fears of contaminating the genetics of white cotton have led many cotton-growing locations to ban the growing of colored cotton varieties.
Etymology
The word "cotton" has Arabic origins, derived from the Arabic word . Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus Gossypium in the mallow family Malvaceous. The United States has been the largest exporter for many years.[2]
Types
There are four commercially grown species of cotton, all domesticated in antiquity:
Gossypium hirsutism – upland cotton, native to Central America, Mexico, the Caribbean and southern Florida (90% of world production)
Gossypium barbadense – known as extra-long staple cotton, native to tropical South America (8% of world production)
Gossypium arboretum – tree cotton, native to India and Pakistan (less than 2%)
Gossypium herbaceous – Levant cotton, native to southern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula (less than 2%)
Hybrid varieties are also cultivated.[3] The two New World cotton species account for the vast majority of modern cotton production, but the two Old World species were widely used before the 1900s. Although cultivated since antiquity, it was the invention of the cotton gin that lowered the cost of production that led to its widespread use, and it is the most widely used natural fiber cloth in clothing today.
Current estimates for world production are about 25 million tones or 110 million bales annually, accounting for 2.5% of the world's arable land. It clothed the people of ancient India, Egypt, and China. Under natural conditions, the cotton bolls will increase the dispersal of the seeds.
The plant is a shrub native to tropical and subtropical regions around the world, including the Americas, Africa, Egypt and India. This was the usual word for cotton in medieval Arabic.[4] Marco Polo in chapter 2 in his book, describes a province he calls Khotan in Turkestan, today's Xinjiang, where cotton was grown in abundance. In Persian poems, especially Ferdowsi's Shah name, there are references to cotton . The greatest diversity of wild cotton species is found in Mexico, followed by Australia and Africa.[1] Cotton was independently domesticated in the Old and New Worlds.
The fiber is most often spun into yarn or thread and used to make a soft, breathable, and durable textile. India is the world's largest producer of cotton. Cotton cultivation was common in Marv, Ray and Pars. Cotton fabric was known to the ancient Romans as an import but cotton was rare in the Romance-speaking lands until imports from the Arabic-speaking lands in the later medieval era at trans formatively lower prices.[6][7]
History
Main article: History of cotton
Early history
South Asia
Further information: Tree cotton
Merger shown in a physical map of the surrounding region
The earliest evidence of the use of cotton in the Old World, dated to 5500 BC and preserved in copper beads, has been found at the Neolithic site of Merger, at the foot of the Bolan Pass in ancient India, today in Baluchistan Pakistan.[8][9][10] Fragments of cotton textiles have been found at Mohenjo-Daro and other sites of the Bronze Age Indus Valley Civilization, and cotton may have been an important export from it.[11]
Americas
Cotton bolls discovered in a cave near Tehuacana, Mexico, have been dated to as early as 5500 BC, but this date has been challenged.[12] More securely dated is the domestication of Gossypium hirsutism in Mexico between around 3400 and 2300 BC.[13] During this time, people between the Río Santiago and the Río Balsas grew, spun, wove, dyed, and sewed cotton. Hundreds of years before the Christian era, cotton textiles were woven in India with matchless skill, and their use spread to the Mediterranean countries.
Iran
In Iran (Persia), the history of cotton dates back to the Achaemenid era (5th century BC); however, there are few sources about the planting of cotton in pre-Islamic Iran.
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