Evidence of the use of silk by Bronze Age civilization
nature.com
nature.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_National_Silk_Museum
https://web.archive.org/web/20170907005855/http://en.chinasi...
It has complete royal robes ~1,000 years old, and a few damaged garments more than 2,000 years old IIRC.
That last bit seemed to jump out of nowhere. Maybe I'm missing some implications of the grid-like oval bronze thing? Very mysterious.
If you are buying a 'silk' garment it is common to ask the shop-keeper to hold it to a cigarette lighter to prove it does not contain a synthetic petroleum-based fabric, such as polyester.
Do other philosophical positions, like atheism or panpsychism?
I suspect though that it's not the author's beliefs, just an ambiguously written way of saying that it was done by those people with that belief - in the same way that an atheist or follower of some other religion may say that Christians pray in order to communicate their wishes to God. Of course there is the rude and angry for no clear reason brand of atheist who could never bring themselves to say such a thing, but to the rest of us there is no problem in describing someone else's actions by their own reasons for doing them, even if we don't share that motivation. I have colleagues who run for pleasure; though I do not for mine.
I can't actually find other English uses of that name, and while I can guess that they're referring to one of a small set of documents discussing the (possibly mythological) abdication of Yao, those documents were written thousands of years after the events. I'm not wholly opposed to the argument, but you should explicitly justify it in cases like this instead of accepting the symbolism uncritically.
> Similarly, silk was also used as a sacrificial object, such as in the form of silk books or paintings on silk, with the silk serving as a carrier to convey the content of the calligraphy and painting upon it to Heaven.
But it does seem that there is some context that would be helpful here, at least for this Western reader.
They got a bit of the history of the Silk Roads incomplete. The Silk Roads, as it is understood now, isn't just about trading in silk, but the idea that the ancient world was connected and globalized through an extensive trade network. It isn't just overland routes, but also maritime routes for spice trade with India, and connections from North Africa deep into the interior of the African continent. Paper was worth more than silk along the Silk Roads. However, from the lens of Chinese history, silk was something that the Chinese monopolized for a while and was sought after by other cultures and civilizations connected through the Silk Roads.
A chunk of it is about the nature of the lack of good harbors along the coast that would be able to shelter trading ships from the open ocean.
Zanzibar is the noted example of a port https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanzibar#Before_1498
> From the 9th century, Swahili merchants on Zanzibar operated as brokers for long-distance traders from both the hinterland and Indian Ocean world. Persian, Indian, and Arab traders frequented Zanzibar to acquire East African goods like gold, ivory, and ambergris and then shipped them overseas to Asia. Similarly, caravan traders from the African Great Lakes and Zambezian Region came to the coast to trade for imported goods, especially Indian cloth. Before the Portuguese arrival, the southern towns of Unguja Ukuu and Kizimkazi and the northern town of Tumbatu were the dominant centres of exchange.
Even the large rivers that do empty into the ocean, they have significant portions of rapids that make it impractical to use as a trading route.
It is actually common in other cultures as well.
Critical background is that silk takes a lot of labour to prepare. First you must have the right kind of insects (various species of moth in the larval stage are commonly known as "silkworm"), then you must have the right kind of trees to feed them (commonly mulberries), then you add a lot of labour for capture, harvesting, spinning, dyeing, weaving. In modern times I have only really seen it prepared commercial scale in Jiangsu province (near Xuzhou). If you head too far north the insects probably suffer from the cold, and if you head too far south any artificial farming monoculture is probably readily outcompeted by other flowering plants and predatory insects which are more suited to the tropics (on account of higher moisture, food availability and temperature).
Relative to existing fabrics such as hemp, silk has at least in other contexts been of value militarily because of its relative strength to weight ratio and dense weave when applied to important tasks such as resisting arrows, although I'm uncertain if this use had emerged yet. Any military use would tend to reinforce a cultural link between life and death owing to its spatiotemporal proximity to mortality events.
The fact that it is soft and labour-intensive (expensive / in short supply) means it was probably reserved for the wealthier or higher ranking figures.
Although the paper doesn't state it clearly, it actually deals with the archaeological findings of a non-Han Chinese civilization in the area of Sichuan which was illiterate and was based around what appeared to be a bird and tree cult (the Shu kingdom of the Sichuan basin[1]). It is therefore possible that a kind of soft, reflective-refractive, feather-like, readily dyed textile with a fine weave may have contributed to some sort of ritual purpose in line with these beliefs. Later this civilization was destroyed by the Han Chinese.
The wicking properties of silk are fair (I was unable to find a quantitative reference) as was the major early textile of hemp (which is also tough and therefore long-lasting) which is significant as we know that Sichuan in the Shu kingdom period was a vast, tropical inland basin criss-crossed by regularly flooding rivers descending from the Himalayas, thickly forested and with crocodiles, elephants, rhinos, giant cats, colourful birds, etc. Both silk and hemp textiles would help to cool anyone wearing them, relative to other options (animal skins, etc.). Furthermore, in the absence of modern medicine, fine-weave capable wicking fabrics would assist with resisting potentially lethal bacterial and fungal infections in the tropical environment and may therefore have been used as wound dressings or undergarments.
Silk's just easier in general. Unlike vegetable fibers, silk can be reeled to yarn/thread directly. With cotton (or wool), there are about 4-6 other processes before you can even get to spinning. Hemp's worse still, I think there's a retting process in there like with linen.
Or perhaps, it's more true that the labor-intensive portions are up front... you're feeding the dumb little worms up to 4 times a day early on, transferring them off of the eaten leaves (so as to avoid disease), and this only lightens up to twice a day later in the lifecycle. And this isn't tapping out a little pinch of food like for a goldfish bowl, they'll often do 10,000 worms at a time just to have some modest quantity of fiber (perhaps enough for 5 or 6 yards of fabric). This ends up being like 60+ lbs of mulberry leaves there at the end.
All told though, I'd much rather raise the worms than sit there for six months trying to card cotton by hand.
From TFA: Huang Di Yuan Concubine Leizu Xiling taught others to raise silkworms, and the legend Leizu is from the people of Chengdu in Sichuan
Huang Di was regarded the ancester of every Han Chinese, and Sichuan was the birth place of Han. The literal meaning of "Han" traces back to LiuBang, the Great King of Han, founder and first emperor of the Han dynasty, literally established his fief over Sichuan (Ba, Shu, Hanzhong and its 41 counties). Liubang spent his next 5 years elimilated all his enemies and began the first Pax Sinica of 300 years.
If you mean the pre-Qin history of Sichuan, the Shu state was one of the "8 partners of Oath" that together with the Zhou state rebeled against the Shang, forming the foundation of Chinese civilization over its 800 years course.
The Ba & Shu kingdom were conquered by Lord Hui-wen, the great-grandparent of Qin-Shi-Huang the first emperor of China. Do you call this a "civilization was destroyed by the Han Chinese" or am I missing something?
So how do you define "non-Han"?
Or you just like to spin a narrative here?
More generally, the response references later Chinese written legends dealing with other geographies which are tangential if not irrelevant whereas the thread and original article were discussing archaeologically evidenced prehistory and the Shu. So who is "spinning a narrative" here is clear, which accords with the presumed nature of the aspersion-casting post - ie. a 10c brigade-esque fanciful reinterpretation based upon modern Chinese nationalism (and one assumes the poster is Chinese as evidenced by their misspelling of English words).
In short, the Confucian parent may be safely ignored.
Ad hominem and wrong logic. Evidenced by your correct English spelling so you must be white English people?
> distinct beliefs
Like what? The belief was exactly repeated by Chinese mythology, the Di's of 5 Color, the 10 suns, the birdie thing. All Chinese rulers inherited the "Di" title from Shu. Yellow Emperor had a Shu wife, his son had a Shu wife, I'd argue it's been Shu all along.
> bronze casting ... which China did not
Please do more research. Some of the major bronze casting set were replicas found in other parts of Yangtze river
> because they were illiterate
> Confucian parent
funny you mentioned Confucian. Did you know (one of) Confucius's teacher came from Shu? During Zhou dynasty, several early "teacher of the king", including (quite possibly) the incredible Jiang Ziya "Esteemed Father", were from the Shu & Qiang clans, to be specific, Jiang and Qiang are basically the same character on bronze inscriptions, literally meaning the shepherd people, which lives in western China.
> based upon modern Chinese nationalism
Hey bro I thought you were calling Han vs non-Han bullshit? Why change the subject to "Chinese"? Are you suggesting Han == China or something? Mind you, Han is a nationalism invention during the 1910s.
Overall I think "China/Chinese" is a messed up umbrella term, so sorry I am more like Basuria/Shu-ism.
If you want to show off your online racial supremacy you have won, but if you want to discuss about some East Asian history or archaeological findings, I don't like your arrogance and bigotry.
Love that the work was strong enough that they could slip a line like this into their abstract.
In fact, I think the main point of the linked article is actually not that silk was being used at all in the bronze age by the Yangtze River civilization, but that the silk is being used for sacrificial purposes, but the title on HN does not reflect that.
Someone will always find a way, and then everyone will copy them
source: every public internet thing ever
Useful information.
Wasn’t most of the silk used in Europe produced in Italy and France, though? Added together they weren’t that far off from China (which also had a huge domestic market). India was also a major exporter so clearly Britain had the option to expand “domestic” production or buy more silk from Italy (importing from China was presumably just cheaper).
European silk production collapsed in 1849 due to some still not well understood disease but that was quite some time after the first Opium War.
Burning silk (and other organics) makes cyanide. I have no idea if this can be weaponised.
Silk is a defensive weapon. Or, maybe silk cords power bows or Ballista?