How it began
Britannica states that the silk industry undoubtedly began in China, where according to native record it existed from sometime before the middle of the 3rd millennium BCE. Wikipedia's history of silk places the origin of production in the Neolithic Yangshao culture, in the 4th millennium BCE. At that time it was discovered that the roughly 1 km of thread that makes up the cocoon of the silkworm could be reeled off, spun and woven. A Chinese legend says that the wife of the mythological Yellow Emperor, Huangdi, taught the Chinese people the art.
How it works
The domesticated silkworm, Bombyx mori, is fed mulberry leaves until it is ready to spin a cocoon. It builds the cocoon from a long continuous fiber of a protein called fibroin, held together by a gum called sericin. Because an emerging moth would break the filament, the silkworm is killed in the cocoon using steam or hot air. The sericin is softened and the filament is unwound, and several filaments are combined and twisted into a single strand. Removing the remaining gum reduces the weight by up to 30 percent and brings out the sheen.
How it spread
Silk weaving became a major industry and one of China's chief exports in the Han dynasty. The caravan route across Central Asia known as the Silk Road took Chinese silk to Syria and on to Rome. According to legend, sericulture had spread overland from China to India about 140 BCE. About 550 CE the Byzantine emperor Justinian I persuaded two Persian monks who had lived in China to smuggle silkworms to Constantinople in the hollows of their bamboo canes. Those silkworms were the beginning of all the varieties that supplied European sericulture until the 19th century.
What changed first
Sericulture early became an important feature of the Chinese rural economy, and throughout history the empress was ceremonially associated with it. The weaving of damask probably existed in the Shang dynasty. Tombs of the 4th to 3rd centuries BCE at Mashan in Hubei province, excavated in 1982, contained brocade, gauze and embroidery with pictorial designs as well as the first complete garments. Han rulers used silk as diplomatic gifts.
Where it stands today
Silk culture flourished in Europe for centuries until a silkworm plague appeared in 1854. During and after World War II, man-made fibers such as nylon greatly reduced the silk industry. Britannica notes that silk has nonetheless remained an important luxury material and an important product of China, Japan, South Korea and Thailand, and that genetically modified silkworms now produce stronger and more elastic silk.
