Who Invented Cotton?

The earliest evidence of use of cotton among humans takes us 7000 years back in ancient Mexico. No written records survive from that period which shed some light on who was the first person to cultivate cotton. It is a historical fact the Harrapans, the people living in the Indus Valley, grew and used cotton a lot. Present day North-western parts of India and Western Pakistan constitute the Indus Valley. It is believed that the knowledge of this new kind of cloth spread first from the Indus Valley to Arabia and then to Europe. The Rig Veda, the oldest surviving text in Sanskrit, mentions the production of cotton. Carvings in the caves of Ajanta also suggest the Indians were the first to invent roller machines. Roller machines are used to sieve seeds out of cotton. Cotton remained a mystery to the outside world. It was a luxurious item like silk. In a Roman encyclopedia, a writer Pliny wrote of trees in India which bore wool! Similar phrases were used by the Greek writers. After some early resistance, the Arabs finally learnt the art of producing cotton and gave the substance its modern name ‘qutun’. The English word ‘cotton’ comes from the Arabic word ‘qutun’.

The Arabs conquered far off lands after accepting Islam. At their zenith, the Arab Empire was ruling Spain and Portugal in the west and Western parts of India in the East. The Arabs stressed on the production of cotton and soon the people in Northern Africa and West Asia were wearing cotton clothes. To Europeans, it was still a luxury which was imported from the Arabs! The Chinese used to import cotton from India but in the 12th century, the Mongol emperors encouraged the cultivation of cotton and it wasn’t long before cotton became the first choice of the poor. It was only in the 15th century that the Italian farmers in Europe began to grow cotton.

Currently, there are a number of varieties of cotton in the market. Genetically modified cotton has been grabbing the attention of the farmers because of its high yields and better pest resisting nature. It has become so popular that the term ‘organic cotton’ has been introduced to refer to cotton which is not genetically modified. Although a luxury in the early days, today it is the preferred choice of the poor around the world.

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