> [!info] Metadata > - Real Title:: The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History > - Author:: Kassia St. Clair > - Via:: Liveright Publishing > - Publication Date:: 2019 > - ISBN:: 1631496360 / 9781631496363 > [!summary] 2020-12-29 Reflections > The main thrust of the section I read was centered around the importance of the ritual of linen wrapping to ancient Egyptologists, but I finished the [[Egypt]] section and got to the chapter relevant to [[how spidersilk is harvested]]; it talks about how silk is created and the relevant mythology of [[China]]. > [!summary] 2020-12-25 Reflections > > The main takeaway for the sections I read today had to do with how Egyptoligists disdain linen and cloth, probably because they're men and care more about metal. There was a nice thought about how gender is probably responsible for the fact that we call them "[[Bronze Age]]" and "Iron Age" instead of "Pottery Age" and "Loom Age" that I really liked from a thinking sideways about worldbuilding perspective. > > There was also some interesting stuff in there about how linen is superior to wool in the hot, wet climate of [[Egypt]] that might be useful for fleshing out the culture of [[Oena]], particularly with regards to trading (or not) with the [[Monche Nomads]] and their silk. ## ch00 Preface ### ch00pXI > Four principal sources of natural fibers — cotton, silk, linen, wool. Not tree bark? Not leather? - [?] Can you make fibers from leather? - [?] tree bark is a fiber, people use it — why don't _more_ people use it? #pkm/synthesize [[All the Things That Trees Can Be]] ## ch00 Introduction ### ch00p01 There are lots of phrases that have to do with thread, "hanging by a thread" "part of the social fabric" — what kinds of linguistic changes would a culture have if they didn't have any fiber/thread based technology? What would that look like? #fic/storyStem ### ch00p02 > We use clothing, for example, to signal to those we meet who we are and how we want to be perceived. Distinct uniforms exist for those working on London hedge funds, Silicon Valley start-up, and media companies, for example, even though most of these people will actually spend the majority of their days in offices and behind desks. - [?] cotton was the first global commodity? Or sugar? #pkm/synthesize with [[Sugar Changed the World]] ### ch00p05 > Spindles give spinners an advantage, since they also provide a place on which to wind the thread as it is made, preventing it from getting knotted. - #pkm/synthesize reference with [[Spindle Whorls of British Columbia]] ### ch00p08 > Transfiguring flax, wool, cotton, silk, hemp, or ramie into thread was a technological feat, requiring skill and tools — spindles and distaffs. [...] These threads could then be used to create rope, nets, and — when woven together on looms, felted, or knitted — textiles. Such technologies allowed our early ancestors to gather food more quickly, transport it over greater distances, and more easily, and venture farther afield to less temperate regions to seek out new habitats. Historically women did a lot of this very important work. Don't get tempted to have this be something temples do! It's because: ### ch00p13 > The making of thread and textiles has for centuries been seen as women's work, perhaps because it was the form of work most compatible with child-rearing: it could be done at home with only half an eye by those with experience, and could also usually be interrupted at will. Am parent, can confirm, this makes sense. ### ch00p16 > A law passed in Amsterdam in 1629 commanded 'all poor girls .... who are unable to do any lacework" to report to a couple of locations in the city where they would be taught to ply a needle to earn their keep. Just over a century later in the southern French city of Toulouse, the municipal dignitaries found so many poorer local women were engaged in lace production that there was a dearth of domestic servants. Here too a law was passed, this time forbidding lacemaking." - OK 1 this is awful. - It reminds me of what's going on now politically with low-wage employers unable to find employees because of the pandemic (people died) and also because people would rather do work in the creator economy of have found alternatives to terrible jobs. - #nonfic/addendum ## ch01 Fibers in the Cave: The Origins of Weaving > YBP = years before present - [?] is this the dating system that is based off of carbon dating not being reliable after like 1950 or is that a different one? ### ch01p23 <blockquote class=paraphrase>Scientists found plants fibers from roughly 20,000 years ago. They were made from bast (flexible fibers made from the innards of plants), which require sophisticated processing. Some were spun, others were twisted, but more importantly they were dyed: mostly gray black and turquoise, but also yellow, red, blue violet, green, khaki, and even pink. </blockquote> - #addmoc [[dyes]] - #twitterfodder [[2021.03.15 Dye]] ### ch01p24 > Many peoples, including the 5th century Huns, bandaged children's skulls to flatten them, making the heads of adults sweep backwards and up, for example. - #pkm/synthesize with [[pinchiDentalRitualMutilations2015.pdf]] - #nonfic/addendum for [[2021.09.20 Dentition]] - similar to bound feet, circumcision, neck elongation, etc. [[Newsletter Ideas]] for just mutilations. Ritual scarification? ### ch01p26 > Woven fabrics are more breatahble than fur and, when specially tailored to the body, make excellent internal layers, preventing cold air from getting direct access to the skin's surface. Thus the ability to create woven clothing would have offered material advantages to our early ancestors once tey had left Africa for cooler climes. ### ch01p27 - [?] What is a retting pond? ### ch01p28 <blockquote class=paraphase>Flax has a bunch of layers, and need to be uprooted instead of cut when it's the right age for processing: as it ages it gets stronger and more coarse so different ages are useful for different things. They have to be dried, then left to gently rot, then beaten and combed to get rid of the stalk. But despite this all the early fibers we've found are bast not wool.</blockquote> it makes sense that wool would be more popular with nomads — who has time to do all that processing to make linen? ### ch01p29 > Archaeologists—predominantly male—gave ancient ages names like "Iron" and "Bronze" rather than "Pottery" or "Flax." This implies that metal objects were the principal features of these times, when they are simply often the most visible and long-lasting remnants. Use that for the naming schema of a worldbuilding era, it's a nice subversion. ### ch01p31 > The original buttons were probably about 35,000 years old and were small, pierced circular pieces of stone and bone — occasionally decorated, may have originally functioned as buttons. A nice piece of corroboration for this theory has been found at an Upper Paleolithic site in France called Montastruc, where an engraved human figure was found, with a row of neat circles down its front from chest to mid-thigh. - Origin of buttons! - accessories as [[Newsletter Ideas]]? - Tag shabogem on this #nonfic/addendum ### ch01p33 <blockquote class=paraphase>Catal Huyuk in Turkey was a Neolithic settlement around 7400 BCE to 6200 BCE: they went from hunter-gatherer to settled, and had neat new home design. Rectangular mud-brick structures had hearths and sleeping platforms, were entered through holes in the roof instead of doors, and were painted with geometric designs in crimson and burnt orange using ochre and cinnabar. </blockquote> <blockquote class=paraphase>Neanderthals made string 90,000 years ago</blockquote>