ShmoopTube

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If it were up to us, humans would never have left the tropical zones. [Man drinking from a coconut]

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We would just hang out in hula skirts, strum a ukulele, and sip drinks out of coconuts. [Woman drinks out of a coconut]

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…That's what all tropical zones are like, right?

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Tragically, the course of history isn't up to Shmoop. [Snake falls on a man]

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If it were, history would have a lot less human misery and depressing stuff, and a lot

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more burritos and movie nights. [Woman on a sofa eating popcorn]

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Anyway…as lovely as it would've been to stay in a tropical paradise, humans did leave

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the equator and start wearing clothes. [Topless people running into the forest]

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And if that doesn't sound like a good thing to you, you try going outside to grab your

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paper and seeing your seventy-two year old neighbor doing naked yoga. [Naked neighbor on the lawn]

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Then we'll see how you feel about clothing.

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Anyway, let's leave Larry to his yoga…because it's time to study the hows, whys, and whens

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of textile history.

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So, if ever sat down at a loom to weave clothes and thought, "gee, this is a pain in the butt?" [Woman sat at a loom]

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Yes?

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Then might we suggest a padding loom chair? How about that...

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Okay, the real answer is (laughs) you've probably never thought about that.

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That's because almost all the weaving in the world is done by gigantic industrial looms [Big looms in an industrial mill]

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now, instead of the painstaking labor of a single human. [Woman working on a loom]

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And when we say "a single human," we mean women. [Woman working on a loom in the desert]

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In places like medieval Europe, women spent all the live-long day weaving.

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But, let's take a step back. [Footage of people walking around in reverse]

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How do we get from plant or animal…to fancy cocktail dress? [Woman turns a plant into a dress]

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We can't exactly ask a sheep to remove his fleece and… [Sheep throws fleece onto a man and it turns into a shirt]

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Bam!…

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We have a pea coat.

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So what kinds of raw materials were people using to make cloth?

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Y'know, other than the hides of dead animals, which is kind of icky. [Prehistoric man with smelly armpits]

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Well, four of the biggest, oldest, and most important sources of fiber were…

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Wool…

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In other words, sheep.

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Sheep were domesticated forever ago, but they were only bred for maximum fluffiness about [Sheep in a field]

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10,000 years ago.

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That's when people started pulling out chunks of their fur and wearing it. [Farmer sheering a sheep]

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One advantage of wool was that it was fairly easy to make into thread.

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It was also plentiful because people already had sheep for milk and meat. [Man milking a sheep]

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Also, it was super warm even when it got wet.

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Plus, we got to wear lovely animal hides without having to deal with the, uh, flesh factor. [Woman wearing a wool jumper]

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Linen is probably one of the oldest plant-based fibers used to make clothes.

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It involves domesticating the flax plant, then harvesting the fine fibers to weave into [Harvesters in a field]

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linen cloth.

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Folks have found fibers that are 36,000 years old, but perhaps the most famous old fibers [Neatly folded piles of linen]

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were used around 8,000 BCE.

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Egyptian mummies were wrapped in linen… [Someone wrapping a mummy]

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…not toilet paper as many Halloween costumes falsely advertise. [Kid wrapped up in toilet paper]

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Silk was a major step up.

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Ooh, we love us some silk.

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So nice and soft, right? [Woman rubbing a piece of silk on her face]

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Where could such a heavenly fabric come from?

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…Worms.

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Well, larvae, really…which somehow sounds grosser… [Woman is grossed out and chucks the silk away]

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Anyway, silk is made by the larvae of silk moths.

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They form a cocoon of silk protein around themselves for protection… [Larvae weaving silk]

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…then humans come along, snatch the cocoon, and boil a few million of them together to

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get silk fiber.

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Maybe they should've tried chainmail. [Worker boiling down cocoons]

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The Chinese were the first to figure that out, around 4,000 BCE. [Chinese workers picking out silk cocoons]

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We're pretty sure there are still "Wanted" posters up in silk moth homes nationwide. [Angry looking silk moth]

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And last but certainly not least, cotton was and is a biggie.

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Cotton probably originated in several different places around the world… [Countries lighting up green on a map]

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But the basic idea was the same: take the fluffy part of a cotton plant, spin it into

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thread, and it makes much softer, nicer fabric than wool. [Man chucks away wool jumper and puts on a cotton jacket]

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It's also a lot cheaper to grow vast fields of cotton plants rather than vast herds of [Cotton crop appears in a field]

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sheep.

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So yup, cotton became one of the most popular textiles in the world by the modern age. [Cotton hung in a factory]

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Maybe we can show 72 year old Larry this video and convince him to give it a shot. [Naked neighbour out on the lawn again]

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