Wild Silk - History

History

Wild silk threads have been found and identified from two Indus River sites, Harappa and Chanhu-daro, dating to c. 2450-2000 BCE. This is roughly the same period as the earliest evidence of silk use in China, which is generally thought to have had the oldest silk industry in the world. The specimens of threads from Harappa appear on Scanning electron microscope analysis to be from two different species of silk moth, Antheraea mylitta and A. assamensis, while the silk from Chanhu-daro may be from a Philosamia species, (Eri silk), and this silk appears to have been reeled.

Wild silks were in use in China from early times. Moreover, the Chinese were aware of their use in the Roman Empire and apparently imported goods made from them by the time of the Later Han Dynasty in the 1st to 3rd centuries CE.

There are significant indications in the literature that wild silks were in use in Persia and in Greece by the late 5th century BCE, apparently referred to as "Amorgina" or "Amorgian garments" in Greece.

Pliny the Elder, in the 1st century CE, obviously had some knowledge of how wild silkworms' cocoons were produced and utilised on the island of Kos for coa vestis, even though his account included some fanciful ideas.