Archaeologists and paleobiologists have discovered flax fibres in Georgia, the country not the state, that are more than 34000 years old. The flax was apparently not part of a domestically grown crop, but was harvested from the wild and is the oldest example of humanly worked fibres yet found.
While there seems to be much argument and heated discussion about which came first in the textile world, vegetable fibres or stray hair fibres from wild animals such as early sheep and goats, it seems likely that it would have been the vegetable fibres. The technique of twisting braiding and rudimentary spinning would lend itself much more obviously to the immediate versatility and plentiful supply of vegetable fibres as opposed to that of the less convincing occasional nature of matted stray animal fibres.
Flax for example, is extremely versatile and even in its roughened state can be used in various thicknesses for rope, string and fine thread. Some of the flax fibres found in Georgia were indeed twisted which gives strong evidence that some form of string and thread was present 34000 years ago.
String might appear to us to be a minor element in the history of the human use of textiles, but it helped to revolutionise human survival and development. It was this technological invention that was creatively used by adept nomadic peoples for a whole range of practical purposes such as traps, nets, shoes, binding together bulky items for transportation purposes, and perhaps more importantly, for rudimentary basketry which was the great forerunner of both woven textiles and ceramics.
Interestingly, some of the fibres had also been artificially dyed, which leads on to ideas about the early decoration and ornamentation of humans and their accessories. What is perhaps more important, regards the history of the collection of plants for dying purposes. It is still not known how old the technology of textile dying is, but because there was such a wide range of dyed fibres found in Georgia, ranging from black, through turquoise to pink, it gives the impression that the technology was relatively advanced and so could go back much further than 34000 years. It would be interesting to know how long this relationship between worked fibres and dying techniques has existed.
Although there is much supposition and very little hard evidence for textile techniques at the site in Georgia, the evidence of twisted and dyed natural fibres does pose the question as to how far back our relationship with textiles really does go and at what stage the technology of braiding, basketry and ultimately weaving appeared.
Further reading links:
Science magazine
Stone Pages
Science Daily
National Public Radio
EurekAlert!
Prehistoric Textiles: The Development of Cloth in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages with Special Reference to the Aegean
Prehistoric Textile Fabrics Of The United States, Derived From Impressions On Pottery Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary ... Office, Washington, 1884, pages 393-425
Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times
Prehistoric Textile Art of Eastern United States Thirteenth Annual Report of the Beaurau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution1891-1892, ... Printing Office, Washington, 1896 pages 3-46
Prehistoric Textiles of the Southwest (Southwest Indian arts series)
Hallstatt Textiles BAR S 1351
Isotope sourcing of prehistoric willow and tule textiles recovered from [An article from: Journal of Archaeological Science]
Stepping Through Time: Archaeological Footwear from Prehistoric Times Until 1800
