Cover photo: “Silk: A World History”
Pegasus
What does the future hold for silk, a material that humans have coveted for thousands of years? What is silk’s past?
Silk is a fiber made by spiders, some moths, and even certain mollusks. Archaeological evidence suggests that silk fiber has fascinated humans since at least about 5,000 years ago, when Neolithic farmers in China successfully farmed wild silkworms (they may have begun the endeavor about 2,500 years ago). Molecular geneticist Aarathi Prasad’s three-part book, Silk: A Global History (William Morrow/HarperCollins), tells the sometimes fascinating story of how silk became an object of wonder and use around the world.
Bombyx mori larvae spin silk threads to create cocoons from which they eventually emerge as adults. The cocoons are then unraveled and woven into parachutes, parasails, and clothing for the glamorous and ordinary alike. Part 1 of Silk features the stories of the diverse men and women who cultivated, studied, reared, and used the silkworm over the centuries. Bombyx mandarina (wild silk moth) eventually evolved into Bombyx mori (whose larvae are about 10 times heavier than B. mandarina and can produce silk threads up to about a kilometer). The beauty and utility of fabrics woven from such threads has piqued the curiosity of many scientists and opportunists; some of them are staid, others downright strange. Dr. Prasad combs through the biographies of all human beings, looking for all the strange things she can find. In the process, she carefully examines the scientific evidence on silkworms and silk.
Arati Prasad
Tara Lumley Saville
The second half of the book is about sea silk and the mollusc that produces it, Pinna nobilis. Pinna nobilis, also known as the noble penshell or fan mussel, lives in the waters around the Mediterranean. P. nobilis is huge, about a meter long, and is hermaphroditic. Unlike corals, it does not court when it wants to mate. Adults are immobile and are permanently anchored to rocks with silk threads. It is hermaphroditic. It releases male or female gametes as needed, when the sea is at its warmest. Fragments of shells from P. nobilis have been found in archaeological excavations along the Mediterranean coast, along with ancient thread-winding machines and weaving tools. Still, as Dr. Prasad pointed out in a phone interview, the shells could be the remains of mollusks harvested for food, not as a source of silk. Just how much sea silk was produced in ancient times may forever remain a mystery. Only one piece of cloth is thought to have survived from an early Mediterranean culture. For centuries it was buried in a sealed tomb with a mummified woman. It was last photographed in 1935 and was moved to a museum before disappearing in the turmoil of World War II. Since the 1980s, the population of P. nobilis has plummeted; the once abundant species is now critically endangered. Today, weavers who want to make sea silk must use lower-quality yarn from other mollusc species.
The second part of the book also explores spider silk and its various uses in manufacturing, automotive and aviation. For example, it has been used in bulletproof vests for over a century. In Silk, Dr. Prasad tells the story of how Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria may have had a silk vest in his wardrobe to protect him from assassination attempts. Even if the Archduke had one, he did not wear it on June 28, 1914, when World War I broke out.
In the third part of his book, Dr Prasad outlines the future of silk and its potential applications in vaccines, artificial organs and even implantable or ingestible brain sensors.
In less skilled hands, Silk’s epic tale might have been little more than a tale of thread and fabric. Thankfully, Dr. Prasad has an eye for drama; she uses it to illuminate global history and its major and minor figures. Intelligent and brilliant, Silk brilliantly illuminates a tapestry of stories from around the world that were once lost.
HarperCollins/William Morrow
Page 293
Publisher: Akita Publishing
April 2024
Hardcover $32.50
