World’s oldest indigo fabric found in Peru – 2,000 years before Egypt!

Posted On: Sep 16th, 2016 at 13:12

Peru
The world’s oldest indigo fabric has been found at the Huaca Prieta site, just north of Trujillo in northern Peru, and dates to 6,200 years ago (4200 BC).
In Egypt similar colours only date back 4,400 years (2400 BC) , and the oldest know use is in the Middle East around 5,000 years ago.
This finding is quite a revelation since indigo is not a simple dye to make, and requires the mixing of many plant substances, fermenting, and even adding urine to produce white indigo, which then requires yarn to produce the final blue colour. In ancient Rome, only two thousand years ago, the colour purple was so rare and so expensive it was only available to the elite – only the emperor himself wore purple robes which distinguished him as such. Purple was made by crushing up shells, but four thousand years earlier the ancient Peruvians were using ‘colour technology’ that was far more advanced than anything the Romans were doing.
The fascinating point about this finding is summed up perfectly in the text, and I am pleased that such a fair assessment has been made by the team involved:
“The people of the Americas were making scientific and technological contributions as early and in this case even earlier than people were in other parts of the world,” Splitstoser told Live Science. “We always leave them out. I think this finding just shows that that’s a mistake.”
We do have a rather “Eurocentric” view on history and historical findings. Still we continue to be told repeatedly that civilisation started in Mesopotamia. It did not. End of story. India was without doubt the birthplace of civilisation and in places like South America and China there were many technological advances that were way ahead of the rest of the world.
Thank you to Michael White for sending me this link:

http://www.livescience.com/56099-oldest-indigo-dyed-fabric-discovered-peru.html