Researchers find 7,000-year-old cotton fibers in NE Israel

JERUSALEM, Dec. 18 — Israeli researchers have discovered ancient cotton fibers dating back 7,000 years, the northern University of Haifa (UH) said on Sunday.
The fibers were found in Tel Tsaf, a prehistoric village located in the Beit She’an Valley near the Jordanian border and north of the West Bank.
It was a large village in the Chalcolithic period, which flourished during the transition period between small agricultural societies and large urban state cities.
An investigation conducted by UH, in collaboration with Stanford University in the United States and the Lower Saxony State Museum in Hannover, Germany revealed that it is the earliest evidence in the ancient Near East for the use of cotton fibers.
Prior to this discovery, the earliest known evidence of cotton fibers used by humans in the ancient Near East was collected in eastern Jordan.
The researchers estimated that the origin of the fibers found at Tel Tsaf is in the Indus Valley, today’s Pakistan, one of the first places where cotton was domesticated.
They noted that the villagers had trade relations with Egypt, Iraq, and Anatolia areas, and it now appears to have reached the Indus Valley, thousands of kilometers away.
The cotton fibers, which were found together with wool and flax ones, were brought to the village as part of fabrics or clothes from ancient textiles, the team concluded. (Xinhua)