A summary of natural fibre cotton and silk respectively.

2. Origin Of the name ‘Cotton’ - COTTON has a very long
and interesting history in the world and is one of the
oldest known fabric. The word cotton comes from the
Arabic word ‘Qutun’ or ‘Kutun’ used to describe any fine
textile and some of the earliest fabric relics found in
excavations of ancient civilization were cotton.

4. Have you ever asked yourself how old is
cotton?
 I can easily imagine our ancestors walking along, foraging for food and coming
across wild cotton. They would have rolled in between their fingers, put it in
their ears in a cold wind, their footwear when winter drew in, padded their
hide skins with it, cleaned themselves with it, even stored food in it.
 Cotton has a thousand uses but how long was it before one of our ancestors
rolled it into lengths and roughly wove it together to form a pad. And then
how long before they teased it into threads and wove it into fabric. The
history of cotton is really the history of the human race.
 We know that our earliest ancestors used animal skins, cotton, hemp(fiber of
the plant) and hessian(strong fabric made from hemp) to cover themselves
and as new archaeological evidence comes to light it is showing us that even
80,000 years ago humans had covered their bodies. We may find that it goes
even further back! So let us look at this fabulous natural fiber, cotton.

5. Raw Cotton Buds

6.  Scientists in Mexico found pieces of fabric made from cotton cloth that were at
least 7,000 years old. They also found that the cotton all those years ago was very
similar to that grown today.
 In Pakistan, cotton was being woven into cloth over 5,000 years ago.
 Cleopatra (pharaoh of Egypt) wore the finest cotton grown in the Egyptian’s Nile
valley, not while soaking in asses milk though!
 The first spinning wheel was thought to have originated in India about 500 years
before Jesus was born. from that point on cloth was available to all who could
afford it.
 Thread in various forms soon followed which allowed the fabric to be joined.
 Arab merchants brought cotton to Europe about 800 A.D.
 By the 1450's, cotton was known throughout the world.
 When Columbus bumped into a big lump of land and called it America in 1492,
he found cotton already growing.
 Cotton seeds are believed to have been planted in Florida around 1556 and in
Virginia in 1607.
 By 1616, colonists were growing cotton along the James River in Virginia.

7.  Cotton was first spun by machinery in England in 1730.
 Cotton played an important part in the American Civil war and was a
precious resource.
 A Massachusetts man, Eli Whitney, secured a patent on the cotton gin in
1793. Though patent records show that the first cotton gin could have been
built by Noah Homes two years before Whitney’s patent.
 The cotton gin, where we get the abbreviation of en--gine, could work 10
times faster than hand. The modern world had arrived.
 The mechanized gin, made it possible to supply large quantities of cotton
fiber to the expanding textile industry.
 That in turn made it possible to obtain cheaper clothing. Now we could all
wear different clothes instead of the same dirty ones.
 Today cotton is still one of the finest, natural and most durable of materials,
even though it does crease like crazy.

9. Silk Road
-History of finest fabric

10. The production of silk originates in China in the Neolithic (Yangshao culture,
4th millennium BCE). Silk remained confined to China until the Silk
Road opened at some point during the later half of the first millennium
BCE. China maintained its virtual monopoly over silk production for
another thousand years. Not confined to clothing, silk was also used for a
number of other applications, including writing, and the color of silk worn
was an important guide of social class during the Tang Dynasty.
Women preparing silk in early 12th century

11. Silk cultivation spread to Japan around 300 CE, and, by 522
CE, the Byzantines managed to obtain silkworm eggs and
were able to begin silkworm cultivation. The Arabs also
began to manufacture silk during this same time. As a result
of the spread of sericulture, Chinese silk exports became less
important, although they still maintained dominance over
the luxury silk market. The Crusades brought silk production
to Western Europe, in particular to many Italian states,
which saw an economic boom exporting silk to the rest of
Europe. Changes in manufacturing techniques also began to
take place during the Middle Ages, with devices such as
the spinning wheel first appearing. During the 16th century
France joined Italy in developing a successful silk trade,
though the efforts of most other nations to develop a silk
industry of their own were unsuccessful.

12. The Industrial Revolution changed much of Europe’s silk
industry. Due to innovations in spinning cotton, cotton
became much cheaper to manufacture and therefore
caused more expensive silk production to become less
mainstream. New weaving technologies, however, increased
the efficiency of production. Among these was the Jacquard
loom, developed for silk embroidery. An epidemic of several
silkworm diseases caused production to fall, especially in
France, where the industry never recovered. In the 20th
century Japan and China regained their earlier role in silk
production, and China is now once again the world’s largest
producer of silk. The rise of new fabrics such
as nylon reduced the prevalence of silk throughout the
world, and silk is now once again a rare luxury good, much
less important than in its heyday.

13. The main silk road between 500 BC and 500 AD

14. Some old glimpse of product made
from silk

17. Chinese painting on silk,
with playing children
wearing silk clothes, by Su
Hanchen (active 1130s–
1160s), Song Dynasty.

18. Thank You 