6000–5000 BCE: (Still Another African First: the Earliest Evidence of Cotton Processing in the World, Spindle Whorls from the Khartoum Culture of Sudan Datin…

6000–5000 BCE: (Still Another African First: the Earliest Evidence of Cotton Processing in the World, Spindle Whorls from the Khartoum Culture of Sudan Dating to the Sixth Millennium BCE, About a Thousand Years Before the Earliest Dated Indian Cotton and a Thousand to Two Thousand Years Before the Earliest American Cotton in Peru, the Evidence Indirect but Compelling in the Form of Classic Flat Round Spindle Whorls for Spinning Thread): So which of these parallel developments was the earliest? We have in this case, it appears, still another African first. The earliest evidence of the processing of cotton in the world comes from today’s country of Sudan, although the evidence thus far is indirect rather than direct. The finds consist not yet of cotton textile fragments but rather of the spindle whorls used for spinning cotton thread. These spindle whorls occur in sites of the Khartoum culture of Sudan, with a calibrated dating of the sixth millennium BCE. Each has the classic flat, round shape typical of African versions of this item. This evidence dates about a thousand years before the earliest Indian cotton that has been dated with certainty, and a thousand to two thousand years before the earliest American cotton, in Peru. Ceramics: African first. Iron smelting: African first. And now cotton processing: African first. At some point the accumulation of firsts stops looking like a series of coincidences and starts looking like what it is, which is the technological record of a continent whose peoples were among the most innovative in ancient world history. The peoples of the Khartoum culture were spinning cotton thread eight thousand years ago, at a time when the standard world history curriculum has nothing to say about Africa at all. The silence is not because nothing was happening. The silence is because no one was listening.