In ancient times, the two basic needs that people urgently needed to solve were "food and clothing". On the road of ancient human development, the topic of "resisting the cold" could not be avoided, but in ancient times, there was no effective means to resist the cold, so "cold" and "hunger", like the serious restrictions on the development of population. As a result, areas with suitable natural temperatures have shown their advantages, and advanced ancient civilizations have emerged in places with lower latitudes and higher temperatures, such as: ancient Egyptian civilization, Two River Basin civilization, ancient Indian civilization and so on. These areas do not need to face the onset of severe cold, but only need to solve the problem of hunger, which is an important reason for their early and rapid development.
Early people's way of keeping warm
In the face of the cold, people continue to explore and try, they try to make a "counterattack" against the cold. Early people chose to build crypt buildings and semi-crypt buildings to fight the cold, which were generally built in high and dry places. Such a site was found at the site of the western slope of Lingbao in Henan, and this semi-crypt building played a role in the room temperature increase in winter. In fact, such a semi-crypt building was also found at the site of Xiadu Erlitou, and it seems that the "city people" who were xiadu also had an urgent need to resist the cold, and the problem of keeping warm could be said to be the most important problem for people at that time.
Gradually, people began to find that building heating was important, but more importantly, clothing was warm, because humans had to move around and could not always live in buildings. However, the clothing of ancient Chinese was mainly kudzu, hemp and silk, wool, as well as animal skin coats, felt, etc. Among them, the upper-class people wear silk, silk, ordinary people can only wear ge, hemp, as for animal skin fur coats, felt, although anyone can wear, but china is after all an agrarian society, it is not easy to obtain animal skins, in time occasionally obtained, you are reluctant to wear ah, but also think of selling money to subsidize the family is not? Therefore, the problem of ancient people dressing for warmth has not been able to really solve.
Cotton is coming
Cotton was not introduced to China overnight, but first into Xinjiang and the southwest region, and then experienced a process of observation, acceptance, and adaptation, and finally introduced to the interior around the 10th century, becoming the main measure of the Chinese ancestors at that time to resist the cold.
Cotton's hometown dates back more than 5,000 years to ancient India, and was introduced to China around the 2nd to 1st centuries BC, when it was during The Western Han Dynasty in China, and cotton cloth and pole wood spinning wheels were unearthed in the Eastern Han cemetery in Minfeng, Xinjiang. It shows that cotton is constantly pushing infiltration from the periphery to the inland, and with the passage of time, the application of cotton has also been expanding.
The way cotton was introduced to China
Through the continuous search for historical materials on cotton, the last historical material found to record cotton is the "History of History" in the Wei and Jin dynasties. The historical record of cotton is in the "Chronicle of The Chronicle of Commodity Breeding", there is such a sentence: "Its fine cloth is thousands of jun, literary collection is thousands of horses, and the tatami leather is a thousand stones..." The tatami mentioned in this is considered by Pei Xiao of the Southern and Northern Dynasties to be cotton, that is, white stack. The "Hanshu Yinyi" is called "tatami, white stack also". But as long as you carefully look at the records of the historical records, you will find that in the "tatami leather Sengoku", the two words "tatami" and "leather" are connected together, which makes people wonder, is "tatami" and "leather" a category, not the "white stack" that Pei Xiao said?
The southern route of cotton
The Wu Lu records: "[The tatami] is thought to be a thick cloth, weighed in stone with leather, and not a white laminated cloth." Zhang Bo of the early Jin Dynasty advocated the view that the tatami was coarse cloth, and "weighed with stone" with leather, not cotton; Zhang Shoujie of the Tang Dynasty had a similar view to Zhang Bo, and he also believed that this tatami cloth was coarse cloth rather than "white stack". "Justice" quotes Yan Shi Gu: "Thick cloth." Its price is cheap, so it is the same weight as leather, and it is not white stacked". From this point of view, it is wrong to think that "tatami" is "white stack", when cotton has not yet reached the interior. There is also a record in the "WuLu": "There are nine true county cloths, known as white stacks". "White Stack" refers to cotton, so where is "Jiuzhen County"? During the Western Han Dynasty, Jiuzhen County was in the northwestern north of present-day Thanh Hoa, Vietnam.
In the early Han Dynasty, although cotton was not introduced to the inland, but see the "Hanshu Yinyi" record, although the inland do not know the cotton cloth, but already know the existence of cotton, this may be because at that time has been introduced to Vietnam, through the border trade, inland merchants will be "white stack" into the inland, so there is this record. In the Tang Dynasty, Zhang Shoujie's "Justice" clearly recorded, "White stacks, woven of kapok, are not chinese." This proves that during the Tang Dynasty, the "White Stack" was widely regarded as a non-Central Plains inland product. This is also enough to prove that one of the ways of cotton into China came through the Vietnamese route, which is the southern transmission route.
The Westward Journey of Cotton
Cotton is planted in the southwest, and there are many historical records, for example, the "Book of the Later Han Dynasty, The Tale of the Southwest Yi of the Southern Barbarians" records that "there are sycamore woods, the achievements are considered cloth, the width is five feet, and the white is not stained"; for example, the "Foreign Biography" says: "Women of the books and countries weave white folded flower cloth" and many other documents, all of which have records and descriptions of cotton in the southwest.
Among the westward passages of cotton, there is a road that is well known to everyone, and that road is at the western end of the Silk Road. Cotton came to China through this road, and there are also documentary records as the basis, among which the "Gaochang" article in the "Liangshu Zhuyi , Northwest Zhurong" is known as: its land is "more grass and trees, grass is solid like a cocoon, the cocoon is like a fine silk, named white stack, the Chinese people take many achievements as cloth." The cloth is very soft and white, and it is used for the market." The "Liangshu Zhuyi And Northwest Zhurong" is a document specifically recording the exchanges between the countries of the Western Regions and the Central Plains regime, which proves that in the exchanges between the Western Regions and the Central Plains, cotton entered the interior of the Central Plains from this line.
It is also recorded in the Book of Liang that in today's Turpan region of Xinjiang, a plant was once seen, which gave birth to something similar to a "silkworm cocoon", which can extract something similar to silk wool, called the white stack. As mentioned earlier, "white stack" means cotton, and this "white stack" refers to cotton.
Thus, we can know that during the Han Dynasty to the Tang Dynasty, cotton was planted in Xinjiang and spread to the Central Plains through the Silk Road. This passage is the westward passage of cotton.
Cotton planting and use in the interior
During the Tang and Song dynasties, although the resources were limited, clothing and cotton were still scarce materials, but there were also some areas that began to plant cotton. For example, Long Right. By the time of the Yuan Dynasty, there were already documents documenting the experience of planting cotton.
"Nongsang Jijiao" is an agricultural work compiled by the Yuanchu Si Agricultural Division, of which "Nongsang Jiyao Kapok" records the complete process of cotton preparation, seedling raising, growth management, picking, drying and so on. There are even methods of processing cotton in the later stages, such as teaching the people how to take out cottonseeds to make "clean cotton." Twist yarn, or cotton clothes, especially for light warmth" and so on. It can be seen that in the Western Han Dynasty, cotton spread to today's Xinjiang, Vietnam, southwest land, etc., in the Song Dynasty began to introduce to the inland attempts, these paving, by the Yuan and Ming Dynasties, cotton has been widely planted and used, the use and development of cotton is also gradually improving.
Although it spread to the Central Plains, there are still certain differences in the acceptance and utilization of cotton in various places, including two Guangzhou, Fujian and Fujian
The production and processing of cotton in Hainan and other places was relatively advanced at that time, and this view comes from Tao Zongyi's "Nancun Dropout Farming Record • Zodiac Po" record. The book records the story of The Zodiac, who learned advanced cotton production techniques in Hainan and other places, and returned to benefit others, who today looks more like a student who went out to study, returning to his hometown with advanced technology. This also proves the urgent need for cotton cultivation and production at that time.
After cotton was introduced to the interior, because it had the characteristics of clothing, it could withstand the cold and solve one of the "warm" items in the "food and clothing" of the people's livelihood, which was rapidly developed and also received strong support from those in power.
Cotton is more readily available than silk and cotton, and the output is much larger, which can meet the basic needs of the people to resist the cold, and the production of cotton clothes is more light and warm, much more comfortable than the cloth clothes made of ramie. Just as the Yuanren Wang Zhen's "Book of Agriculture" said: "Compared with the mulberry silkworm, there is no labor to be harvested, and it will have the effect of harvesting; 埒之枲, 苎, the work of the performance series, get the benefit of the cold: it can be said that it is not numb and clothed, not cocooned and silky. ”
In the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang was born into poverty, and naturally knew the hunger and cold of the common people, so he vigorously developed agriculture and devoted himself to the people's food and clothing, "and ordered those who fielded five mu to ten mu to plant mulberry and numb cotton for half an mu, more than ten mu more than doubled." With the support of Zhu Yuanzhang, the cultivation of cotton has developed rapidly, and with it, cotton clothing has gradually become the main measure for the people to resist the cold.
The role of cotton in promoting the population
Cotton in the introduction of Chinese mainland, widely used, corn, sweet potatoes have not yet been introduced to China, and at this time there are hundreds of millions of people in China, this population base is in the cotton to solve the people's heating problems, on the basis of further improvement. Of course, the role of corn and sweet potatoes in population growth is undeniable, but during the time lag and promotion period of corn and sweet potatoes introduced to China, cotton played a certain role in population growth at that time.
epilogue
Although corn and sweet potatoes have solved the "fullness", cotton has solved the "temperature", and together they have solved the "food and clothing" and achieved the increase in the number of people. After a long introduction process, cotton was finally widely planted and used in the Central Plains, and played an important and positive role in solving the problem of cold and warmth, physical improvement, population increase, etc., and naturally had a lot of help for the improvement of population.