Timeline of clothing and textiles technology

This timeline of clothing and textiles technology covers events relating to fiber and flexible woven material worn on the body. This includes the making, modification, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, and manufacturing systems (technology). Research remains ongoing as to when people started wearing clothes c. 50,000 BC – A discovered twisted fibre (a 3-ply cord fragment) indicates the likely use of clothing, bags, nets and similar technology by Neanderthals in southeastern France. c. 27000 BC – Impressions of textiles and basketry and nets left on small pieces of hard clay in Europe. c. 25000 BC – Venus figurines depicted with clothing. c. 8000 BC – Evidence of flax cultivation in the Near East. c. 6000 BC – Evidence of woven textiles used to wrap the dead at Çatalhöyük in Anatolia. c. 3000 BC – Breeding of domesticated sheep with a wooly fleece rather than hair in the Near East. c. 2500 BC – The Indus Valley civilisation cultivates cotton in the Indian subcontinent. c. 1988 BC – Production of linen cloth in Ancient Egypt, along with other bast fibers including rush, reed, palm, and papyrus. c. 1000 BC – Cherchen Man was laid to rest with a twill tunic and the earliest known sample of tartan fabric. c. 200 AD – Earliest woodblock printing from China. Flowers in three colors on silk. 247 AD – Dura-Europos, a Roman outpost, is destroyed. Excavations of the city discovered early examples of naalebinding fabric. 11th century – Broadcloth first produced in the Duchy of Brabant (now Flanders). 1275 – Approximate date of a silk burial cushion knit in two colors found in the tomb of Spanish royalty. 1493 – The first available reference to lace is in a will by one of the ruling Milanese Sforza family. 1550-1600 – Armazine and Bombazine introduced for the first time in United Kingdom. 1590 – First reference to Cambric fabric. 1840 – Barathea developed as a cloth for mourning clothes. 1892 – Cross, Bevan & Beadle invent Viscose. 1938 – First commercial nylon fiber production by DuPont.