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Prehistoric · East Asia · Before 3000 BCE
Prehistoric clothing in China, Japan, and Korea, from Ice Age eyed needles to Neolithic silk, hemp, and ramie cloth, Jomon weaving, Korean spindles, and Shang silk and jade, with the evidence for each.
By Dan Schnau · Last updated
Prehistoric East Asians dressed in animal hides and furs long before they wove cloth.10 By the Neolithic, people in China were spinning hemp, ramie, and kudzu fibers and making silk, and Jomon people in Japan wove fabric from plant fibers such as ramie.6,1,12 Most of the evidence from China, Japan, and Korea is indirect: eyed bone needles in East Asia by about 33,000 cal BP (calibrated years before the present), spindle whorls, scraps of cloth in graves, and silk protein in soil from tombs at Jiahu, in Henan, that are about 8,500 years old.10,6,5,1
Cloth, hide, and fur rot. The team that studied the Jiahu tombs notes that it is very difficult for textiles or silk to be preserved for 8,000 years.1 Archaeologists therefore work from indirect evidence:
The origins of silk production in China reach far deeper into prehistory than once believed.1,2 Archaeological evidence from the Yangshao culture (c. 5000–3000 BCE) and related Neolithic sites along the Yellow River suggests that silk was being produced by the fourth millennium BCE, and traces of silk protein in graves at Jiahu, in Henan, are about 8,500 years old — though whether the earliest silk came from domesticated silkworms (Bombyx mori) or wild moths is still uncertain.5,2,1,4 A silk cocoon cut with a sharp blade, found in 1926 at Xiyin village in Shanxi province, is among the earliest archaeological evidence of sericulture.3 Carbonized silk fabric wrapped around children's burials at Qingtai and Wanggou in Henan, dated to roughly 3500–3300 BCE, is among the oldest surviving woven silk, and parts of a primitive loom from the Hemudu culture in Zhejiang show how early weaving developed in the south — evidence of a sophisticated understanding of sericulture even in this remote period.2,3
Alongside silk, most prehistoric East Asian clothing likely relied on plant fibers such as hemp (Cannabis sativa), which was first domesticated in East Asia in early Neolithic times and has long been an important source of fiber.9 Hemp, ramie, and the kudzu vine (ge) were all spun, and the earliest textile fragment then known from China, from about 4000 BCE at Caoxieshan in Jiangsu, is cloth woven from kudzu fiber.6 The Yangshao people of Banpo left fragments of woven cloth on human remains in graves, and spindle whorls — small weighted discs used in hand spinning — are common finds at Neolithic Chinese sites, showing how widespread spinning was.5,6
In the colder northern reaches of East Asia, clothing of animal hides and furs is far older than woven cloth. Across Eurasia, people used stone hide-scrapers to prepare animal skins for warmth long before the Neolithic, and in northeastern China eyed bone needles appear by about 33,000 cal BP, at Xiaogushan cave in Liaoning; needles are also reported from the Upper Cave at Zhoukoudian near Beijing, but their dating is open to question.10 The earliest Chinese needles are large and sturdy, which suggests they were used to make thick, tailored clothing and leather goods.10
As Neolithic communities grew more complex, evidence suggests that clothing began to carry social meaning. Burial sites from the Hongshan culture (c. 4700–2900 BCE) in northeastern China reveal differences in grave goods and personal adornment that imply distinctions of status.7,8 At Niuheliang in Liaoning, the central, highest-ranking grave held burial goods made entirely of jade.8 Jade ornaments were also worn on the body: one Hongshan jade figure is drilled with holes for suspension and was probably worn as a pendant, perhaps by a shaman — an early link between adornment and rank that foreshadows the costume hierarchies of later Chinese dynasties.7 The prehistoric foundations of East Asian textile culture — silk, hemp, and a deep association between dress and social order — were firmly in place before the Bronze Age began.
A 2024 review of eyed needles by Ian Gilligan, Francesco d'Errico, and colleagues lists several East Asian sites among the early finds.10 Eyed needles appear at Xiaogushan by about 33,000 cal BP, and a needle fragment from Shuidonggou 2 has a reported date of 32,000 cal BP.10 The review lists a reported date of 35,000 to 33,000 cal BP for the Zhoukoudian Upper Cave, but notes that the dating of the needles there is open to question.10
The difference in size between the early Siberian and Chinese needles suggests that eyed needles may have been invented independently in the two regions.10 Smaller and flatter needles began to appear in China between 26,000 and 23,000 cal BP.10 Other finds point to clothing as well: at Shiyu, where modern humans were present as early as 45,000 cal BP, a perforated graphite disc may have been a button on a cloak or a bag, and at Shuidonggou 2, use-wear suggests that beads may have been sewn onto clothes about 34,000 cal BP.10
Neolithic spinners in China used bast fibers such as hemp, ramie, and kudzu as well as silk.6 The Yangshao finds are described in Silk and the Yangshao Culture above; the sites below add the south and the chemical evidence for silk at Jiahu.
South of Hangzhou Bay in northern Zhejiang, the Hemudu culture (c. 5000–4000 BCE) is a significant early textile site.6 As of Jean Green's 1993 study, the earliest known bone weaving shuttle came from Hemudu, and researchers had reconstructed a standing loom from artifacts found there.6 Remains associated with cloth manufacture at Hemudu, dated to 4460–4260 BCE, included 70 spindle whorls, 50 of them flat discs 5.8 to 6.5 centimeters across.6
In 2016, Gong and colleagues reported silk fibroin in soil from tombs at Jiahu, an early Neolithic settlement in central Henan whose radiocarbon dates fall between 9,000 and 7,500 BP; they describe the tombs as 8,500 years old.1 Silk was identified in one tomb, probably present in a second, and not detected in a third.1 Rough weaving tools and bone needles were also excavated, and the authors suggest that the people of Jiahu may have had basic weaving and sewing skills.1
In Zhejiang, the Qianshanyang site yielded pieces of silk in a bamboo basket, from a layer radiocarbon dated between 2850 and 2650 BCE; the filaments came from the domesticated silkworm, Bombyx mori.6 Gerard Tsang of the Hong Kong Museum of Art notes that parts of a machine for reeling silk were also found there, about 2750 BCE, while a 2019 report from Henan dates the Qianshanyang silk to 4,200 to 4,400 years ago.3,2
Japan's Jomon period is named after the cord marking (jomon) pressed into clay pots before firing.12 The Fujioka Historical Museum dates it to 10,000–300 BCE, and the Japan Tourism Agency's text on Torihama to approximately 13,000–400 BCE.12,11 According to the Fujioka museum, the Jomon people made rope out of hemp and wove fabric from plant fibers such as ramie and cherry bark.12
At the Torihama shell midden, in the town of Wakasa in Fukui Prefecture, cold groundwater and calcium from shells protected the remains from oxidation.11 Finds from the first half of the Jomon period include twisted and braided rope, fragments of woven plant-fiber baskets, animal-bone needles, and a mallet that may have been used to soften fiber.11
A text from Tokamachi in the Japan Tourism Agency's database states that weaving in Japan began in the early Jomon period (7,200 to 5,400 years ago) with a simple cloth of woven ramie fibers, and that the kind produced in Tokamachi was called Echigo angin.13 The earliest weavers used a horizontal proto-loom: comb-like notches carved into a wooden beam held the warp threads, which were weighed down with wooden cylinders.13
At the Sannai Maruyama site in Aomori, the North Valley was a garbage pit in the early Jomon period (approximately 5,900 to 5,300 years ago), and its moisture-rich soil preserved lacquerware, wooden artifacts, and woven objects.14 The site has also yielded a bark basket from the early Jomon period, commonly known as a "Jomon pochette," woven from the inner bark of a tree of the cypress family.15 Late Jomon clay figurines, or dogu, frequently have detailed patterns etched on their arms and legs, which have led scholars to suggest that Jomon people may have elaborately tattooed themselves.12
Korea's Neolithic period began in about 7000 BCE, with small settlements of hunters, fishers, and foragers near rivers or coastal areas; their sites have yielded pottery, stone tools, and bone needles and fishhooks.16 The most typical Neolithic pottery is comb-pattern ware, in Korean jeulmun.16,18 At Amsa-dong in Seoul, people lived in pit dwellings about 6,000 years ago; finds there include comb-pattern pottery, fishing-net weights, and a jade pendant found in 2016.18,19
Korea's culture ministry notes that digs on the peninsula have uncovered stone and bone sewing needles and crude spindles of stone and earth, and that these tools became more sophisticated as Korea entered the Bronze Age.20 In about the 10th century BCE, according to the Metropolitan Museum's timeline, comb-pattern ware was replaced by plain coarse pottery (mumun), and bronze technology reached the peninsula.17 A 2016 study of Bronze Age spindle whorls found that forms from northern Korea had spread south around or before 3200 BP: earthen forms mainly to Gyeonggi and northern Chungnam, and stone plate forms to the upper Geum and Namhan rivers.21
By about 1600 BCE the Shang dynasty controlled a large area in northeast and north central China, and Anyang was its capital from about 1300 to 1046 BCE.25 Some Shang silk survives as mineral copies: on a bronze halberd of about 1300 BCE, microscope analysis found several layers of mineralized fabric with the filament shapes of silk.23
At Sanxingdui in Sichuan, a site of the Shu culture, a study published in Antiquity in 2026 found silk residue on 101 objects from sacrificial pits, dated to the Late Shang period (1300 to 1046 BCE).24 Most of the cloth is plain weave, and some thread counts match or exceed those from Yinxu and Taixicun, two Shang sites in the Central Plains.24 Spindle whorls from the site point to local textile work, though there is no direct proof of silk production there yet.24
The Metropolitan Museum of Art calls jade, along with bronze, the highest achievement of Bronze Age material culture, and says that in many respects the Shang dynasty can be regarded as the culmination of 2,000 years of jade carving.22 Bronze Age jades were used in sacrifices, burial rites, treaties, and court ceremonies.22 For Shang garments, including a jade figure from the tomb of Lady Fu Hao, see ancient East Asian clothing.
Ornament marked the body long before any written dress rule. A pierced badger canine tooth from the Zhoukoudian Upper Cave has use-wear consistent with attachment to clothes.10
At Jiahu, the tomb with clear silk evidence was a "mother and child" burial with more grave goods than the others and a bone needle. The tomb with probable silk belonged to a woman with few grave goods, and the tomb without silk belonged to a man buried with two objects.1 Graves of the Liangzhu culture, to which Qianshanyang most probably belonged, held jade arched pendants (huang), rings, and carved trapezoidal crowns or hat ornaments.6
In Early Jomon Japan, cuff-like earrings and round stone earrings with a slit were common; later, spool-like fired-clay earrings were inserted into pierced and enlarged ear lobes.12 Torihama produced combs, hair ornaments, earrings, bracelets, and pendants of wood, stone, tusk, antler, shell, and clay.11 In Korea, burial practices became more elaborate in about 900 BCE, and the bronze objects, pottery, and jade ornaments recovered from dolmens and stone cists indicate that such tombs were reserved for the elite class.17
Myth: the first clothing in East Asia was silk. Hide and fur came first. Eyed needles appear in East Asia by about 33,000 cal BP, and the earliest Chinese needles are large and sturdy, which suggests thick, tailored clothing and leather goods.10 Silk protein from the tombs at Jiahu is about 8,500 years old.1
Myth: Jomon people dressed only in furs and skins. The Fujioka Historical Museum states that the Jomon people wove fabric from plant fibers such as ramie and cherry bark, and the Tokamachi text dates the start of weaving in Japan to the early Jomon period.12,13
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