Natural fibers: used to weave cloth in ancient times and now used to make cars

As people's material life becomes more abundant, modern life concepts such as natural environmental protection have become the pursuit of more consumers, and natural fiber products have gradually become popular. Recent studies have shown that human use of natural fibers can be traced back to tens of thousands of years ago.

According to a research paper published in the British journal Scientific Reports, archaeologists discovered a 6mm long string about 41,000 to 52,000 years ago at a site near the Ardèche River in south-central France. This is the oldest known direct evidence of fiber technology - the use of natural fibers to make yarn.

So, what are the types of natural fibers, how did people first discover them? Now, have the applications of natural plant fibers expanded to new application areas?

How the Ancients Used Fiber

Tao Lizhen, a professor at Changzhou Vocational College of Textile and Garment, introduced that various fibers taken from nature can be called natural fibers. From their sources, they can be divided into two types: plant fibers and animal fibers. Common natural fibers include cotton, linen, silk, and wool fibers, among which linen fibers are the most numerous.

Qiu Hua, a professor at the School of Textile Science and Engineering of Jiangnan University, told reporters that the earliest evidence of the use of wild flax fiber found so far came from the Republic of Georgia, where researchers have found traces of the use of wild flax fiber in the late Paleolithic period 30,000 years ago, and these flax fibers have been processed by spinning, dyeing and knotting. In China and India, domesticated flax has been planted as a crop 5,000 years ago.

"Cotton is native to tropical and subtropical regions, including the Americas, Africa, Egypt and India. People knew how to use cotton to make cloth in prehistoric times." Qiu Hua said that although cotton has been cultivated since ancient times, it was not until the advent of cotton gins that reduced production costs that cotton was widely used.

After entering the feudal society, silk products began to be highly praised. Qiu Hua introduced that silk is a natural protein fiber, mainly composed of fibroin, which is one of the earliest animal fibers used by humans. In addition, according to data, the use of bird feathers in textiles began in the Spring and Autumn Period, and the use of goat wool, yak hair, camel hair and other fibers in ancient Chinese textiles can be traced back to the Xia Dynasty or even earlier.

"In ancient times, the initial processing of cotton was to remove the cotton seeds by hand. This process was called cotton ginning. Later, it developed to using iron bars or iron rods to rub the cotton to remove the cotton seeds. Later, stirring wheels or ginning wheels appeared, which greatly improved the production efficiency of cotton ginning." Tao Lizhen said that the cotton after the seeds have been ginned needs to be fluffed before it can be used for spinning.

Tao Lizhen introduced that to extract fibers from hemp raw materials, the first step is to peel off the thin layer of paste-like glue in the hemp plant, a process called degumming. The earliest method of degumming hemp was natural retting, which then developed into boiling hemp skin in lime water, so that the glue impurities were continuously removed during bleaching and washing, and finally the fibers appeared white. The original hemp spinning was to first split the degummed fiber pieces into thin strands with fingers, and then twist them one by one, so as to connect the hemp yarn into thin hemp yarn. This process is also called hemp spinning, and the word "achievement" comes from the hemp spinning process.

Before wool and other animal fibers are used for textiles, they need to go through preliminary processing, including plucking, washing, and fluffing. The Qi Min Yao Shu (Essential Techniques for the People) from the Northern Wei Dynasty recorded that the wool was washed in river water after being cut. In water-scarce areas, some people also rubbed the wool in yellow sand to remove grease. After the wool was washed and dried, the ancients used leather strips or bowstrings to fluff the wool for spinning.

New technology brings new application areas

In modern times, natural fiber products extracted and processed purely by hand have been treated more as handicrafts. With the continuous improvement of industrialization, natural fibers have not only improved their production efficiency, but also found more application areas.

Tao Lizhen said that currently, natural fibers are being applied and promoted in many fields such as medical care, environmental protection, transportation, aerospace, and new energy.

For example, using natural plant fibers as reinforcement materials to prepare organic composite materials can effectively reduce the weight of automotive parts and can serve as a sustainable alternative to lightweight car bodies. In addition, the natural growth structure of natural plant fibers can effectively reduce the debris generated during collisions. And from an economic point of view, natural fibers are cheaper, require less energy to manufacture, and are more environmentally friendly and practical.

The use of natural plant fibers to develop soil reinforcement materials can meet the needs of environmentally sensitive land and soil development, and has broad application space in construction and road construction; and hemp non-woven composite materials are increasingly favored in automotive textiles due to their low production cost, biodegradability, renewability, and environmental friendliness.