The tale of silk
The mysterious characteristics of silk were observed in China as early as 5000 years ago. According to legend, Empress Si Lingchi, wife of the mythical Emperor Huangdi, was amazed at how the silkworm wove a cocoon from thin threads. At the same time, she was imagining how wonderful the cloth made from such fibers must feel against the skin.
The story continues that the cocoon accidentally fell into the Empress' teacup, where it unraveled into a long, continuous fiber. The Empress began to study the silkworms' activities in earnest, and by learning how to weave the silken fibers into thread, discovered sericulture, or the production of raw silk by raising silkworms.
For comparison, at about the same time, Europe was just about to come out of the Stone Age and enter the Bronze Age. Europeans were dressed, if not in reindeer skin, at least in clothing made from a fabric much coarser than silk.
Silkworms eat only the leaves of the white mulberry tree, severely limiting the area where it can be cultivated. When silkworms hatch from eggs, they are only about 3mm long. In 30 days, they shed their skin four times. Eating mulberry leaves without a break, they grow to 10 cm and multiply their weight 10,000 times.
When the worms have eaten their fill, they seek shelter in the leaves and start weaving a cocoon around themselves. They use their salivary glands to create two long fibers during their 60-hour long weaving. A substance called sericin holds the fibers together. The silkworm creates a warm and strong cocoon, where in two weeks, they could develop into moths.
It is at this point that silkworm raisers interfere with Mother Nature. When the silkworms have woven their cocoons, they are gathered and soaked in warm water. The fibers unravel, the glue that holds them together dissolves and the raw silk is collected. One cocoon can produce as much as 3 kilometers of raw silk. Only the best silkworms are allowed to mature so that they can reproduce.
Collecting silkworm cocoons is an exacting task. An old saying goes that those who collect silkworm cocoons are not allowed to smoke, use makeup or scent, eat onions, dress in loud colors or make noise as the just-hatched silkworms are shocked by strange smells and sounds.
Raising silkworms has been guarded as a state secret in China for centuries. Taking silkworms or their cocoon out of the country was a crime punishable by death. Finished silk cloths were given as gifts to important guests of the state. In the beginning, only the imperial class wore silk, but already hundreds of years before the common era, the common Chinese people were already dressed in silk.
It was only after the Silk Road was built, when the Roman Empire came in contact with Chinese culture, that sericulture spread to other parts of the world. At first, only silk cloths were brought by the camel caravans, and if the wildest rumors are to be believed, they were literally worth their weight in gold in ancient Rome.
At around the year 550, two monks smuggled silkworm eggs from China to Constantinople and the Emperor Justinius made silk production part of the empire's business. From then on, Italy has become the frontrunner in silk production in Europe, and nowadays, it is almost the only place where silkworms are raised in the continent. On the other hand, the demanding work of weaving silk into cloth is still done in the East -- in China, Pakistan, India and Japan.
