5000 BCE–Present: (The Mechanical Line of Technological Descent: Loom Weaving of Textiles, the Second Important Technological Trajectory Tracing from Ancient…

5000 BCE–Present: (The Mechanical Line of Technological Descent: Loom Weaving of Textiles, the Second Important Technological Trajectory Tracing from Ancient Forms of Production to Strategies Still Employed Today, Cotton Textiles Independently Invented in at Least Three and Possibly Four Separate Parts of the World Using Different Domesticated Cotton Species Indigenous to Each Region, and the Pattern of Multiple Independent Origins Repeating the Same Story as Ceramics and Metallurgy): Ehret now turns from the chemical line of technological descent to the mechanical line. His particular focus is the loom weaving of textiles. Modern textile producers rely on machine looms and mass production, fashioning textiles from a variety of later-invented materials. But the methods of later ages evolved out of developments that began as early as the middle of the Holocene epoch. In the global context, cotton textiles stand out as having particularly wide early historical importance. What is especially noteworthy is that people independently invented the weaving of cotton textiles in at least three, and possibly four, separate parts of the world. The pattern by now should be familiar: peoples living far apart in distant regions independently set out on parallel trajectories of technological innovation, and they set these histories of invention in motion thousands of years ago. In keeping with the several independent origins of cotton textile production, the inventors in each region domesticated a different species of cotton indigenous to their area. In the Americas, two species: Gossypium barbadense in Peru and Gossypium hirsutum in Central America and Mexico. In India and Africa, two species documented across a wide region: Gossypium herbaceum and Gossypium arboretum. The same polycentric pattern that characterized ceramics and metallurgy characterizes textiles. Peoples on different continents, working with different plants, arrived independently at the same transformative technology.