Oldest textile fibres
- Who
- Dzudzuana Cave fibres
- What
- 34,000 year(s)
- Where
- Georgia
- When
- 34,000 BC
The oldest textile fibres in the world are remnants of woven flax thread that are more than 34,000 years old. The microscopic threads were found in 2009 during an archaeological dig at the Dzudzuana Cave, located near the town of Chiatura in the Imereti region of Georgia. In a paper published in Science on 11 September 2009, lead authors Eliso Kvavadze (Georgia) and Ofer Bar-Yosef (Israel) described 787 fibre fragments of various lengths, including some spun threads and many with evidence of having been dyed.
The fibres are evidence of textile production among early humans who likely used fibres harvest from wild flax to create clothing, ropes or baskets.