Wild silk

Wild silks have been known and used in many countries from early times, although the scale of production is far smaller than that from cultivated silkworms.

Spider webs were used as a wound dressing in ancient Greece and Rome,[2] and as a base for painting from the 16th century.

The cocoon shells of wild silk moths are toughened or stabilized either by tanning (cross-linking) or by mineral reinforcements (e.g. calcium oxalate).

Silkworms are also found wild on forest trees, e.g Antheraea paphia which produces the tasar silk (Tussah).

[9] In 2015, the complete sequence and the protein structure of Muga Silk Fibroin was analyzed and published.

Wild silk threads have been found and identified from two Indus River sites, Harappa and Chanhu-daro, dating to c. 2450–2000 BCE.

Moreover, the Chinese were aware of their use in the Roman Empire and apparently imported goods made from them by the time of the Later Han Dynasty in the 1st to 3rd centuries CE.

[16] Pliny the Elder, in the 1st century CE, obviously had some knowledge of how wild silkworms' cocoons were produced and utilised on the island of Kos for coa vestis, even though his account included some fanciful ideas.

[vague][17] Wild silk was used and traded by the Aztecs, Mixtecs and Zapotecs at the time of Moctezuma (early 16th century CE).