Early Carpets
The knotted pile carpet probably originated in the 3rd or 2nd millennium BC in West Asia, perhaps the Caspian Sea area or the Armenian Highland, although there is evidence of goats and sheep being sheared for wool and hair which was spun and woven as far back at the 7th millennium.
The earliest surviving pile carpet is the "Pazyryk Carpet", which dates from the 5th-4th century BC. It was excavated by Sergei Ivanovich Rudenko in 1949 from a Pazyryk burial mound in the Altai Mountains in Siberia. This richly colored carpet is 200 x 183 cm (6'6" x 6'0") and framed by a border of griffins. Many experts in oriental carpets hypothesize that it is of Armenian workmanship.
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