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A moving legend that records the birth of Chinese silk. One day more than 4,700 years ago, the wife of the Yellow Emperor Xuanyuandi, the wife of the Xiling clan (or the daughter of the Xiling clan), Leizu, was walking outside when he saw a fairy floating up, leaping up a tree, and turning into a head. Horse-faced, slender-bodied worms, spewing shiny filaments, forming white fruits. Lei Lai ordered a maid to climb the tree and throw the fruit. Coincidentally, a fruit was thrown into the hot water prepared for Lei Zu. When people took it out, they fished out a slender thread, which was light, smooth, and wispy. Incessantly.
Leizu thought it was interesting, so he picked all the fruits from the tree and brought them back, put them in hot water to extract the silk, and tried to weave the silk into fabrics to make clothes, which were both beautiful and comfortable to wear. Huangdi was very happy to see it, so he called the fruit "miao", the worm that formed the cocoon was called "silkworm", the leaf that the silkworm ate was called "mulberry leaf", and the fiber extracted from the cocoon was called "silk". They also organized some people to teach them the techniques of silkworm rearing, silk reeling and silk weaving. Since then, beautiful silk weaving was born.

Leizu raised silkworms
Don't think this is a myth made up, "Lei Zu raised silkworms" is also recorded in Chinese historical records. Liu Shu's "Tongjian Wai Ji" in the Northern Song Dynasty recorded: "The daughter of the Xiling clan, the concubine of Emperor Yuan, was the first to teach the people to breed silkworms and manage silk cocoons for clothing... Later generations sacrificed to be the first silkworms." Luo Mi was also there. His "History of the Road" confirmed that "Lei Zu was the first to raise silkworms". The "Sui Shu", which was created earlier than the above two books, also mentioned the silkworm god Xiling when it recorded sacrifices in the Southern and Northern Dynasties.
Did Leizu invent silk production?
So, did Lei Zu invented silk production? Modern people think this is impossible. From wild silkworms to artificial breeding, from silk reeling to silk weaving, there are many production links, which require long-term human research and experimentation, and finally breakthroughs will be made. This is the crystallization of the wisdom of generations of working people, and it is definitely not something that one person can create out of thin air at a certain period of time. In history, it is understandable to attribute the invention of sericulture to Leizu. Fan Wenlan said in the "Compendium of General History of China" that the Chinese believed that the Yellow Emperor was the ancestor of the Chinese nation, and he formulated many civilization systems. The origin of silk production was early. It is the work of women again, so it is logical to transfer the right to invent it from the Yellow Emperor to his wife.
Thus, the beginning of silk production becomes a problem.

Archaeological team discovers Neolithic site

In 1926, an archaeological team organized by the Research Institute of Tsinghua University unearthed a Neolithic site in Xiyin Village, Xia County, Shanxi Province. When excavating the bottom of the pit, they found most of the cocoon shell fossils, and also unearthed textile-related fossils. Stone spinning wheel, spinning key and bone needle, bone cone, etc. The surface of the cocoon shell is still shiny, and the cut part is extremely straight. It will not be accidentally spit out by wild silkworms, but artificially cut. This shows that incense cocoons existed in our country more than 6,000 years ago and have been used by people.
However, some experienced archaeologists express their opposition. Their reason is that the production technology in the Neolithic Age is extremely primitive, and it is absolutely impossible to raise silkworms and weave silk. Moreover, it is impossible for organic objects such as silkworm seedlings to be preserved for thousands of years in the Loess Plateau with loose soil and poor sealing. Besides, there were only stoneware and pottery at that time, and it was impossible to cut the silkworm cocoon so straight. It was concluded that the half-cocoon was not a Neolithic relic, but was mixed in later. The two opinions are diametrically opposed.

Silk Slips Found in Huzhou, Zhejiang

Half a century later, archaeological excavations have provided many new materials about silk, the most significant of which is a piece of silk found in the Qianshanyang site in Wuxing County (now Wuxing District, Huzhou City) in 1958. The silk piece has not yet been carbonized and is yellowish-brown. After repeated identification by textile workers, it was confirmed that it was mulberry silk, which was woven from filaments processed by reeling, and the warp and weft threads were straight and uniform.
This is my country and the earliest and most complete silk fabric unearthed in the world. People made the radiocarbon determination of the silk piece together with the rice unearthed in the same batch, and concluded that its absolute age is about 4,700 years ago, which is equivalent to the legendary Yellow Emperor era. It can also be said that the theory of "Lei Zu raised silkworms" seems to have a case to test.
However, this piece of silk shows that not only the silk reeling process had been mastered at that time, but also very good silk weaving tools, which is very disproportionate compared with other cultural relics of the same time. So some people raised doubts: Qianshanyang is a swampy area, is it possible to preserve silk pieces soaked in sewage for thousands of years? In such an early age, can such advanced silk fabrics be woven? Has the Qianshanyang cultural layer been partially disrupted? The conclusion is again: whether the silk piece belongs to the Neolithic Age is temporarily doubtful.
Fragments of silk fabrics found at the Yangshao period primitive village site in Zhengzhou, Henan
In recent years, the original village site of Yangshao period was excavated 40 kilometers northwest of Zhengzhou, Henan Province. Archaeologists found in the unearthed pottery coffins of infants and young children that some bones were adhered with fragments and remnants of gray-white and gray-brown carbonized silk fabrics, as well as a small amount of gray-white. Miliary carbide. These silk remnants, despite their age, still have the luster of silk fibers.
By the end of 1998, archaeologists confirmed that this is the oldest silk fabric found in China so far, with a history of 5,500 years, and it clearly belongs to the sericulture fabric of the Neolithic Age. Its discovery pushed the Chinese people's manufacturing and use of silk fabrics forward by a thousand years.
Based on this, people can optimistically assert that the light of silk in China was ignited in the Neolithic Age of mankind. However, it is still cautiously believed that an anomalous artefact in archaeology is not yet proof of a major problem. In this way, the birth of silk still has to be regarded as a chain, and people are looking forward to new archaeological discoveries to provide more valuable cultural relics, so that the truth of this issue will be revealed as soon as possible.