Silkworm Sericulture

Timeline

1. c. -3000–-200Yellow and Yangtze River basins · ChinaArchaeological finds show silkworm cocoon silk remains in late Neolithic China; by the Zhou and Han periods official and private sericulture and reeling systems had formed, with mulberry cultivation and silkworm egg preservation techniques maturing.
2. c. 200–600Constantinople and Syria · ConstantinopleSilk spread west via overland and maritime routes; Byzantine writers such as Procopius record the secret import of eastern silkworm eggs, and the empire established imperial silk workshops in Syria and Constantinople, breaking the Persian monopoly on raw silk and forming a sericulture and weaving tradition on the eastern Mediterranean coast.
3. 1031–1040Huzhou–Chengdu and Byzacena · JiangnanSericulture households in the Northern Song's Liangzhe and Yizhou circuits combined sideline farming with polder-field mulberry orchards, producing large quantities of raw silk and damasks for the capital and maritime trade; in the late Macedonian dynasty Byzantium still maintained silkworm and mulberry production in Asia Minor and Byzacena in North Africa, with silk circulating as diplomatic gifts and trade goods in the Islamic world and Western Europe.
4. c. 1200–1500Quanzhou port and Venice · FujianThe Southern Song and Yuan exported silk from ports such as Quanzhou to Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean; after Byzantium's decline, Italian city-states obtained silkworm stock from the Middle East and developed local silk weaving, completing multiple transfers and localizations of sericulture from East Asia to Europe.