From which time period did silk become a popular textile?

               It is certain that it was the Chinese who discovered silk. The tale about the origin of silk goes like this – the mythical Chinese emperor Huang Ti once asked his wife Xi Lingshi to see what was eating the leaves of the mulberry trees in the palace garden. She saw a silkworm cocoon, which accidentally fell into hot water. When she picked it up, and pulled it out, she realized that it turned into a thin soft thread.

               Around 3000 BC, the Chinese found that a silkworm could wrap itself in a cocoon made from a single, continuous silk filament some 600-900 m long. The Chinese were very secretive about this valuable commodity they had discovered themselves.

               Silk was introduced in the Mediterranean only around 500 BC. East and West were linked by trade. The route along which the material was exported was known as the Silk Road. By 206 BC, Chinese silk was being exported to the Middle East. The European silk industry began functioning around AD 552, when two Persians smuggled mulberry seeds and silkworm eggs out of Persia, and passed it into the Byzantine Empire.

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