Saturday, March 29, 2008

Medieval African Timeline

-700 A.D.- northern africans start using cotton in clothing
-800 A.D.- local grasses are found by Archaeologists and woven into cloth like linen
-1100 A.D.- people were using looms (tools) in Mauretania.
people made their own cloth- soon a lot of perfessionals made alot of North African cloth- men and women wove or dyed cloth all day if they did not farm- they sold the cloth to other people to buy their own food- in North Africa there were organized guilds of weavers and dyers- the production of linen, wool, and cotton for sale were controlled and ruled by them- professional weavers and dyers made most of the cloth too along the coast of East Africa
-1400 A.D.- The famous professional dyers all the way across the Sahara were in West Africa-the powerful people, such as the king, courts, etc., would wear the luxury cloth and fabrics made by these dyers- in West Africa, ordinary and regular people still made a lot of their own cloth.

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