As we talked about last time, the earliest sheep ‘rooed’ their wool, so early farmers could collect the wool fibers easily. And the cleaning of the fibers makes the understanding that felt was an obvious first step on the way to using wool.
Shearing a sheep would not have been an easy task for the early herders. Stone tools were still being used when animals were being used for their wool. Tools made of stone are extremely sharp and using a scraping blade on a struggling sheep could easily lead to accidents for either the person or the animal. Scraping the wool off a hide alone would be much easier, but defeats the idea of harvesting from a sheep and keeping it alive.
We do have records of the Egyptians using bronze tools to shear sheep. As humans began working with iron, tools to shear animals were made with iron. These tools would make it far easier for people to clip the wool off their animals instead of combing it out or collecting it when it fell.
Next time, we’ll talk about the other animal fiber, silk.
Well, that was a long week.
Right now in our little study of fabrics we’re looking at the gap between the discovery of how to twist fibers into thread/ the invention of spinning and the technology of the loom.
The understanding of simple weaving can’t be too far behind string. Weaving string or grasses or anything around fingers is a common pastime for fidgeters. It would not take much more to tie a few strings together and then knot and weave them to make a strap to use as is, or to attach to other things. Imitating a spider web and creating a web of thread in a forked branch to weave around is also fairly simple to see happening. Setting supports in the ground to use as the edges of a loom would also work. And people today still use ‘stick weaving’, which to me seems an extension of the finger weaving. Multiple long thin sticks with eyes (like needles) could be threaded and laid close together. Weaving is then done over the sticks, which are them drawn through the woven work to allow for the strap to grow longer and larger. This would also leave no signs of a loom in the archaeological record.
Many grasses and sturdier fibers can also be ‘self loomed’, building a frame of the material in the shape of the item you wanted – a bowl, a basket, a mat- and then weaving around it. It’s easy to see that the technology of looms probably existed long before we have any remaining evidence of it, as the materials to use them were likely broken down for other uses or simply didn’t last in the record.
and buy hyacinths to feed my soul…
