Cotton cultivation and cloth
AI-drafted · awaiting admin review
Was cotton first grown and spun in the Indian subcontinent?
Independent discoveriesTechnology & engineering
Indian claim
Cotton threads preserved inside a copper bead from a Neolithic grave at Mehrgarh (in the Indus region, today Pakistan) are dated to the early 6th millennium BCE. Harappans grew and wove cotton, and Greek writers such as Herodotus described Indian 'wool from trees'.
Evidence for the Indian claim
- The 2002 study by Christophe Moulherat and colleagues (Journal of Archaeological Science) identified the Mehrgarh fibres as cotton (Gossypium) — the oldest in the Old World by more than a millennium.
- A madder-dyed cotton fragment was found at Mohenjo-daro.
Commonly credited to
Different cotton species were domesticated separately in the Americas (Peru and Mexico) and in Africa/Arabia.
Evidence for the other claim
- New World cottons (G. hirsutum and G. barbadense) were domesticated separately in the Americas a few thousand years later.
- It is not certain whether the Mehrgarh fibres were from a wild or domesticated plant.
What historians and scientists say
The Indian subcontinent has the oldest known evidence of cotton use in the world, and was the Old World's centre of cotton textiles. Cotton was domesticated independently in the Americas.