105 Patrick Zeidler of Egypt in the 7th century CE that cotton was introduced on a large scale in the region, gradually replacing linen as the main fibre. This example shows that the use of different resources has always also depended to a certain degree on the prevailing cultural character and political power relations. Silk was introduced in the Andean region as a new fibre after the Spanish conquest – a resource that only became available with the change in the global balance of power and the colonization of the New World. Silk production enabled the Chinese empire to extend its influence across the Eurasian continent, including Japan and certain regions of the northwest coast of Africa, by establishing the Silk Road as a trade route and economic engine.3 Today, the global power China is using the symbolic power of silk as the namesake for its ‘Silk Road 2.0’ project, a programmatic initiative involving considerable financial investment that aims to strengthen China’s influence in the global marketplace for many years to come. We all use textiles in our daily lives as clothing and for interior decoration. But they also have an important function as status symbols. For many thousands of years, both the raw materials – cotton, linen, wool and silk – and the production of textiles played an important role in various social and global processes, which were often linked to the emergence of human dependencies, and they continue to do so today.1 In ancient Mediterranean societies, tribute and taxes could be paid in textiles. People abducted from Africa and taken to the Americas in the transatlantic slave trade were exploited as labourers on the cotton plantations. Dependent wage labourers stood at the beginning of industrialization in the European textile factories of the 18th century. Even today, exploitation and forced labour still occur in the production of textiles in some world regions – such as in South and Southeast Asia – connected to the need of Western societies for cheap ‘fast fashion’. Different varieties of cotton have been grown independently in different parts of the world for thousands of years.2 Some of the earliest evidence for the domestication of cotton comes from what is now India and Pakistan, particularly the Indus Valley, dating back to around 6000 BCE. The domestication and systematic processing of cotton can also be traced back to the 6th millennium BCE in some regions of Africa, the Arab world and Syria. There is also remarkable evidence for the domestication of cotton on the north coast of Peru beginning with the 5th millennium BCE. Recent research indicates that harnessing this raw material for the systematic production of nets for fishing was crucial for the emergence of sedentary, complex societies (see pp. 66 and 129), rather than – as is often assumed – for the production of food through agriculture. In the Mesoamerican region, the use of cotton for the production of clothing and other textiles was prevalent from the 3rd to the 2nd millennia BCE. In contrast, cotton was largely unknown in the ancient Mediterranean region. Instead, fibres for textile production were obtained through the domestication of sheep (for wool) and the cultivation of flax. It was not until the Arab conquest
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