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Podcast transcript
I would say that almost everyone who hears my voice right now is wearing clothing made of cloth.
The history of cloth, textiles and fabrics is very old, but despite their ancient origins, not every culture has them.
Yet where these items are available, they are often the most valuable commodities and are used in some way by everyone, from the rich to the poor.
In this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily, you’ll learn more about cloth, textiles and fabrics, including their origins and how they have changed throughout history.
I have to start this episode by defining some terms because the words cloth, textile, and fabric are often used interchangeably, but they actually mean different things.
The reason so much confusion arises is because there is so much overlap between the categories. If you were to identify any piece of cloth used in everyday life, it would probably be both a fabric and a textile, which is why we use them interchangeably.
Textiles are generally defined as any woven or knitted product.
The dictionary definition of fabric is cloth made by weaving or knitting
… The definition of cloth is fabric or material formed by weaving, knitting, pressing, or felting.
You’ll notice that these definitions are rather circular.
That’s a good way to think about it, although some people might disagree with my definition.
Not all textiles are fabrics. The best example that you are most familiar with is a rug. Rugs are woven materials, but they are not fabrics. You wouldn’t go to a fabric store and buy a rug or make clothing out of a rug.
All fabrics are textiles, and all fabrics I can think of are cloth. Fabric can be thought of as either woven or knitted.
However, not all cloth is woven, although the vast majority is. The best example of a non-woven cloth is felt, which is neither woven nor knitted.
With that nitpicking out of the way, for the rest of this episode I’m going to talk about the overlap between these three things. Woven materials used for clothing. I’m specifically not talking about leather or animal skins.
That would be a completely separate episode.
The origin of cloth is fiber. A fiber is defined as any material that is significantly longer than it is wide.
There are plant fibers, animal fibers, and synthetic fibers.
Determining the origin of fibers and fabrics is difficult because both animal and plant fibers are organic and do not easily survive for long periods of time.
Estimates of when humans began to weave cloth from fibers range widely, but the standard estimate is about 30,000 to 50,000 years ago.
We have no samples of fabric or clothing from that far back, but there are reasons for such an estimate.
A sewing needle was found in Denisova Cave in Siberia and dated to 50,000 years ago. A needle that may be 60,000 years old was found in South Africa, but it was broken so it could not be confirmed whether it was a sewing needle.
A 40,000-year-old bone with regular indentations was found in Spain, and while there are many theories as to its purpose, one of the simplest is that it was a punch board for sewing.
Dyed linen fibers have been found in Georgia dating back 34,000 years. They are just fibers, not parts of whole cloth, but it shows that dye was used in conjunction with fibers tens of thousands of years before the advent of agriculture.
A 25,000-year-old figurine was found in southern France that depicts a person wearing a skirt, and there are many other figurines that depict scenes of people wearing clothes.
So while there isn’t any direct evidence for the existence of cloth in prehistory, there is a great deal of indirect evidence, far more than I have mentioned here.
Furthermore, the use of fiber seems to have been discovered independently in various parts of the world. Fiber and textile fragments dating back 12,000 years have been found in a cave in Peru, suggesting that it also existed in the New World.
The oldest known, clearly identifiable garment is the Tarhan, a 5,000-year-old shirt found in an ancient tomb.
The main material of Egyptian cloth was linen, not cotton, which most people think it was because Egyptian cotton is so popular today. Woven linen is called linen cloth.
Wool and other animal fibers were also used to make cloth in some parts of the world. However, there is evidence that wool cloth emerged thousands of years later than plant fibers.
Sheep were domesticated only about 10,000 years ago, and early sheep had no hair on their bodies. Over time, people began to selectively breed sheep for their wool.
The oldest known woolen cloth dates back to about 3,500 years ago, but it may date back much earlier. One factor that limited the adoption of wool was the difficulty of collecting it. This problem was eventually solved with the invention of scissors during the Iron Age.
Cotton is native to India – the earliest evidence of cotton as a cloth material dates back about 7,500 years.
However, cotton wasn’t grown only in the Old World. Different varieties of cotton were grown in the New World and in Peru. When the Spanish arrived in Peru, they found people wearing cotton clothing and using it to make fishing nets.
Of course, I should also mention the use of silk in China. I’ve done a whole episode on silk before, but silk fiber comes from silkworms, and silk was one of the most valuable products of the ancient world.
The first challenge was to make the fibers into something useful, such as thread or yarn. The first tool used to make thread was called a spindle.
The spindle consists of a shaft with a circular thread near one end to provide momentum and maintain the spindle’s rotational speed. The spinner attaches the fibers to a hook or groove on the top of the spindle and then rotates the spindle to twist the fibers together, with the newly formed yarn gradually winding around the shaft as more fibers are spun.
Eventually, the spinning motion of the spindle was improved by the spinning wheel, which had a larger wheel that could spin a more uniform quality thread faster.
Once you have thread, whether it is linen, wool, cotton or silk, the process of turning the thread into cloth or fabric is weaving.
Weaving was probably one of the most difficult and time-consuming tasks for ancient people. Each piece of cloth had to be woven strand by strand. It was a laborious process that could take weeks or even months, depending on the size and complexity of the cloth being woven.
The time spent weaving is one reason why even the simplest garments are cherished and almost never thrown away.
The earliest weaving tools were called warp-weighted looms.
The warp-weighted loom is one of the simplest methods of weaving, dating back at least to the Neolithic period and possibly thousands of years earlier.
The loom consists of a simple upright wooden rectangular frame. A horizontal beam at the top is called the “warp beam,” while vertical columns support the entire structure.
The warp threads are the threads that run perpendicular to the top of the warp beam. They hang freely and are held taut by weights attached to the bottom.
Weights made of stone or clay, called loom weights, are tied to the ends of the warp threads. These weights keep tension on the warp threads and keep them hanging vertically.
A rod or stick called a shed bar is inserted into the warp threads, separating them into two layers and creating an opening through which the weft or horizontal threads can pass.
The weft is then usually passed through the warp using a shuttle. If the warp is in place, the shuttle can pass through the warp relatively quickly.
After the weft yarn is passed through the shed, a beater is used to press it tightly against the previous weaving row. This tightens the fabric and ensures uniformity.
Simply rinse and repeat the process hundreds or thousands of times and the end result will be a woven textile.
Ancient weaving systems may have differed slightly from place to place, but the basic method of weaving one thread together with other threads, the warp and weft, remains the basis of weaving to this day.
While the warp-weighted loom is the earliest known loom and is still used around the world today, it did not mean the end of loom technology.
The horizontal loom was one of the earliest technological advances in textiles. It consisted of a frame, either flat on the ground or slightly elevated, in which the warp threads were stretched horizontally. It was easier to control the tension and allowed the weaving of larger fabrics.
The vertical loom looks similar to the warp weighted loom, but is more advanced. It includes a vertical frame and an improved warp tension control mechanism. It has greater stability and is capable of producing larger, more complex textiles.
One of the greatest advances in weaving technology was the Jacquard loom.
The loom probably originated in ancient China during the Tang Dynasty, around the 6th or 7th century AD.
The Jacquard loom allows the weaver to lift specific groups of warp threads during the weaving process, thus creating intricate patterns.
Jacquard looms are equipped with a presser foot that allows the weaver to lift specific warp threads without using their hands.
The technology spread along the Silk Road, reaching the Middle East and eventually Europe in the early Middle Ages. In medieval Europe, especially Italy and France, looms became essential for producing complex silk fabrics. The use of looms continued until the 18th century, when more automated looms largely replaced them.
This is by no means the end of the history of cloth and weaving. Spinning wheels and looms were already close to state-of-the-art at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century.
The Industrial Revolution and the development of steam-powered machines largely involved the operation of looms to speed up the process of producing cloth.
In addition to improved weaving techniques, new synthetic fibers were gradually developed for making new fabrics. From nylon to Kevlar, textiles and woven fabrics can be found in almost every corner of the world.
The industrialization of textile production will be a story for another episode.
Cloth and weaving are one of the fundamental technologies used by humans before the rise of agriculture. Not only have we been making cloth and weaving since the beginning of recorded history, but cloth and weaving are also a constant part of most civilizations around the world, no matter how far apart they are.
This might make the shirt on your back look a little more special.
