Long before the Silk Road, silkworm cocoons already existed in Uzbekistan

In 138BC, Chinese diplomat and explorer Zhang Qian was sent as an envoy to the western regions. The Han dynasty envoy failed to achieve his emperor’s goal of launching a pincer attack against the Xiongnu nomadic confederation, but he unexpectedly discovered a route. The land route started from Changan, present-day Xian, and passed through Gansu province and the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, reaching Central and West Asia, and connecting various countries along the Mediterranean. Among the goods traded along this long route, Chinese silk was the most representative, which was how the Silk Road got its name. Traditional historical scholarship holds that sericulture and silk-reeling technology originated in China 8,500 to 5,000 years ago and spread outward along the Silk Road in the 2nd century BC. However, a recent archaeological discovery by Chinese scientists in Uzbekistan has revealed that silkworm cocoons and mulberry trees already appeared in the region more than 2,000 years before the Silk Road opened. The discovery pushes back the earliest recorded evidence by nearly 2,000 years. The findings were published in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances on Friday. “This multidisciplinary research rewrites the enigmatic history of early sericulture and its globalisation,” wrote Zhou Xinying, the study’s author. Zhou is a researcher at the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). In recent years, Zhou has conducted multiple archaeological excavations with an international team in Central Asia. Between 2017 and 2019, he took part in the China-Uzbekistan joint archaeological team’s excavation of three Bronze Age sites along the Surkhan River in Uzbekistan. The archaeologists analysed soil samples from the Sapallitepa site using a water-filtering technique to uncover three ancient silkworm cocoons. The cocoons closely resembled the East Asian wild silkworm (Bombyx mandarina) and were much smaller than those produced by modern farm-raised silkworms. The ancient cocoon silk’s fibre structure was also consistent with that of the Bombyx cocoon shell, yet the fibre’s diameter was finer than that of modern domestic silkworms and wild mulberry silkworms. The three ancient silkworm cocoons were identified as domestic silkworms (Bombyx mori), rather than wild silkworms. Radiocarbon dating determined that they dated back to 1940-1765BC, making them the earliest known domestic silkworm cocoon remains unearthed outside China. In the stratum where the silkworm cocoons were unearthed, a large amount of mulberry charcoal was also found. The anatomical characteristics of the mulberry charcoal were closer to those of the Chinese white mulberry (Morus alba) rather than the black mulberry (Morus nigra) native to western Asia. Because the mulberry tree is the only essential food for the domestic silkworm, this discovery proved that a stable integrated mulberry-silkworm rearing system already existed in the region, predating previous documentary records by nearly 2,000 years. In the 1970s, fragments of silk fabric were unearthed at the Sapallitepa relic site during excavations. Conservation restrictions imposed by Uzbekistan’s State Museum of History of Tashkent prohibit the artefact from undergoing modern testing. However, archival records indicated that the silk fabric was produced using a plain-weave spinning technique, and its weaving style aligns with traditional Chinese silk-weaving technology. The silkworm, the Chinese white mulberry, and Chinese-style silk textiles all point to a clear conclusion: around 2,000 BC, the Central Asian region that today includes Uzbekistan had already fully mastered the complete set of sericulture, silk reeling and textile techniques transmitted from China. The findings are the earliest integrated mulberry and silkworm cultivation remains found outside China, placing the westward transmission of sericulture technology within the context of the early globalisation process of prehistoric Eurasia. But how it arrived in Central Asia before the Silk Road’s establishment remains a mystery. As the excavated strata also contained plant remains such as citrus and citron, archaeologists now believe they have close ties to South Asia. Citrus fruits originated in the southeastern foothills of the Himalayas and southern China, while citron was also cultivated in the Indus Valley Civilisation of the Indus River basin. “We highlight a plausible dispersal route following the southern slope of the Himalayas before reaching Central Asia, potentially fostered by cultural connections with the Indus during the 2nd millennium BC, although other possibilities remain,” Zhou wrote. “Future research will no doubt deepen our understanding by clarifying the continuity of the mulberry-Bombyx knowledge in Central Asia after its initial introduction, the potential routes of its dispersal and the regional diversities of silk production practices in deep antiquity.”

Long before the Silk Road, silkworm cocoons already existed in Uzbekistan

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Some 4,000 years ago, ancient people brought the production technique for the precious luxury from China to Central Asia via India

Some 4,000 years ago, ancient people brought the production technique for the precious luxury from China to Central Asia via India