A Re-look into the History of

Cotton
By
 A Re-look into the History of Cotton

In recent times cotton has successfully withstood the onslaught of man-

made fibres. Today, wrinkle-free, shrink-resist and soil-resistant cotton has
competitive edge over synthetics. Archaeologists have traced the origin of
cotton to Indus Valley of India about 5000 years ago. This presumption is
based on the discovery of several spindles, and a piece of cotton stuck to a
silver vase, at the Harappan sites of the Indus Valley Civilizations.
Harrappan civilization was the first to turn cotton into yarn and weaving the
yarn into cloth.
According to history so far, the Indus Valley is
the earliest known civilization in India, the
starting point in its history, dates back to about
3000 BC (i.e. about 5000 years ago). The Indus-
site was discovered in the 1920s. Archaeologists
believe that Muslin of the finest weave found
from the excavated sites was produced during
the Indus Valley Civilization. Since the cotton
pieces found in the pre-historic Harappan City
were very delicately woven from very fine yarns,
it is safe to presume that the art of manual
spinning and weaving was highly skillful at that
time. The development of such an art and skill
could be through years of evolution and should date much earlier than its
discovery of about 5000 years before.

Many historians and scholars have exploded the myth that Aryans invaded
the Indus Civilisation. They are of the opinion that Vedic civilisation evolved
on the bank of the Sarasvati River (which existed At least about 6000 BC)
and Aryans (meaning noble people) were the original habitants of Indus
Valley since the Vedic Age. Between 2000 and 1500 BC the Saraswati River
dried up completely causing ‘Aryan’ movement from India to Middle East
and western Asian Countries as also
eastwards to Indian terrains. The chief
occupation of Vedic Aryans, the 'natives'
of Indus Valley Civilization, was
agriculture and cattle rearing. Cotton
seems to be one of the major crops of
Aryans cultivated for millennia. Acording
to Wikipedia, cotton was first cultivated
seven thousand years ago, (5th
millennium BC - 4th millennium BC ), by
the inhabitants of the Indus Valley
Civilization, a civilization that covered a
huge space of the north-western part of
the Indian subcontinent, comprising today of parts of Eastern Pakistan and
Northwestern India. According to The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition,
hundreds of years before the Christian era cotton textiles were woven in
India with matchless skill, and their use spread to the western Asian
countries.

When Aryans migrated to the Southeast and

Northwest of the Globe, they carried this tradition of
cotton cultivation to these places. Even the name
cotton, seems to have been derived from ancient
Indian languages. The word, "Katna" (meaning to
spin), and "Katn" (the material to spin) are commonly
used words even today. In the middle Ages, the
Arabs took the cotton plant from India and Spain. They called it qutun, a
name that could easily be derived from katn. With the development of
Afrikaans as a spoken language it became "katoen" and eventually "cotton".

Aryans not only carried the tradition of cotton cultivating, but also the skill
of spinning and weaving of cotton to Southeast and Northeast countries.
Later the fine plain-woven cotton cloth, first woven in the Indus Valley
Civilization, adopted its name as Muslin from Mosul (now a city of Iraq). In
the following century Alexander the Great introduced cotton from India into
Greece. In the New World, the Mexicans used cotton for weaving in the pre-
Columbian period. Cotton textiles were found in the West Indies and in
South America by explorers in the 15th and 16th centuries. The early
American colonists cultivated Cotton, and after the introduction of the
cotton gin, invented in 1793 by the American inventor Eli Whitney, cotton
became the most important staple fiber in the world for quantity, economy,
and utility.

Note; Pictures in this article are from www.harappa.com/ and wikipedia