Cotton

A plant cultivated for its hairy flowering heads, from which come fibers widely used in textiles. The earliest cotton yet found comes from the site of Mehrgarh in Pakistan, where it was probably being cultivated before 4000 BC. The earliest records of cotton in the New World come from the Tehuacan Valley of central Mexico, c 4300 BC, and pre-ceramic villages on the Peruvian coast from 3300 BC. It was grown in northeast Mexico by c 2000, and was introduced into the southwestern United States in the 1st millennium BC. In the Old World, the first known occurrence is in the Indus Valley civilization where cotton was used for both string and textiles at Mohenjo-Daro by 2750 BC. The first record in African archaeology goes back only to the culture of Meroë in the fifth century BC. Actual cotton fabrics appeared at Mohenjodaro around 2500 BC.

Plants of the genus Gossypium, cultivated for their hairy flowering heads, from which come fibres widely used in textiles. There are some 30 diploid (with two sets of chromosones) members of the genus — all of which originated in the Old World — and 4 tetrapioid (four sets of chromosones) species, originating in the New World. Most of today’s cotton is produced from the cultivated tetra-ploid species G. hirsutum and G. barbadense, very little is grown of the cultivated diploids G. herbaceum and G. arboreum. The earliest cotton yet found comes from the site of Mehr-garh in Pakistan, where it was probably being cultivated before 4000 bc. Actual cotton fabrics appear in the same area at Mohenjo-Daro at about 2500 bc. The earliest finds of cotton in the New World are from Mexico and Peru, at about 3500 bc. The Mexican finds are of domestic G. hirsutum, already considerably different from the wild hirsutum which is found today through Mexico and the Caribbean. The Peruvian finds are intermediate between the wild and domestic forms of G. barbadense found in the area today.