It’s hard for me to comprehend that for millennia, humans used either fur or leather, or plant based fiber. Animal based fiber came later in our history, with the domestication of animals. Wool and silk seem like such basic fibers it’s hard for me to believe they are relatively modern.

While sheep were domesticated around 13-11,000 years ago, they were used for their milk, meat and skins. They weren’t used for their wool until 8 thousand years ago. The earliest woven sheep wool garments are from 6-5000 years ago. The earliest woven plant based textile evidence dates to about 34 thousand years ago. Goats were domesticated even later than sheep, and their wool less selected for.

Llamas and Alpacas were domesticated even later than sheep and goats, but followed the same trajectory of being used for meat, skins, and milk for a millennium or two before people started to use their wool. It’s believed that instead of cutting off the whole fleece in one go, early shepherds would comb their animals hair and use that for spinning and weaving. This is extremely believable. But it’s also possible that they simply picked up the wool.

Very old breeds of sheep do not shed over the course of the year, as many other animals and modern sheep do. They ‘roo’, which means as the weather gets hotter, they shed their entire coat in sheets, much like a snake sheds its skin.

As we’ve already seen, spinning and weaving took an extremely long time to make fabric. A large hunk of sheep wool, messy and clumpy and dirty, could easily become felt, especially since the wool would probably be cleaned after being collected off the sheep. Working wool while cleaning it would mat the wool into itself and form a dense thick cloth. This would save so much time from having to spin and weave the wool and would create a dense warm and water resistant material for shoes, outerwear and bedding.

More on animal fibers later.