Denim jeans may have origins in ancient Peru as indigo dye found in 6200-year-old cotton - Daily Mail

It is probably one of the most enduring fashion trends in the world, but it appears jeans may have far older roots than many could have imagined.

Archaeologists have discovered a fragment of cotton fabric that was dyed 6,200 years ago with the distinctive indigo-blue colour used today in denim.

Found at the ancient site of Huaca Prieta in Peru, it is the oldest known textile to be decorated with the colour, which is thought to be tricky to produce.

The 6,200-year-old fabric (pictured) was found at the site of an ancient temple in the settlement of Huaca Prieta in Peru. Analysis has revealed traces of a pigment that was identified as indigo-blue, the colour that was later used in denim jeans

WHAT WAS HUACA PRIETA

Huaca Prieta is an important ancient settlement linked to the Moche culture that flourshed in northern Peru.

The site is thought to have been occupied from as early as 4,700BC, long before ceramics were introduced.

Research has suggested the inhabitants there fished and gathered shellfish from the nearby coast but also appear to have grown fruit, peppers, squash and cotton.

Many complex texitiles have been found at the site that used complex twining techniques. Some carry designs of animals like condors, snakes and crabs.

Ceramics linked to the Guañape, Early Cupisnique and Cupisnique cultures, which flourished along Peru’s northern Pacific coast from around 1500BC, have been found at the site.

 

Dr Jeffrey Splitstoser, lead author of a paper on the discovery and an anthropologist at George Washington University, said it shows how sophisticated the textile industries of the ancient civilisations that lived in Peru before the arrival of Europeans were.

'The cotton used in Huaca Prieta fabrics, Gossypium barbadense, is the same species grown today known as Egyptian cotton,' he said.

'That's not the only cotton connection we made in this excavation – we may well not have had blue jeans if it weren't for the ancient South Americans.'

Huaca Prieta is a prehistoric settlement found in the desert of Chicama Valley, just north of Trujillo in Peru.

It is thought to have been occupied as early as 4,700BC and was home to some of the earliest members of the ancient Cupisnique culture. 

The dyed cotton cloth was found during excavations of the site in 2009 at what experts believe was a temple where a variety of textiles and other offerings were placed.

Analysis of the cotton fabric revealed traces of blue pigment that was identified as the indigo dye indigotin. The results are published in the journal Science Advances, where the researchers say it predates the use of the dye by the ancient Egyptians by around 1,500 years.

Dr Splitstoser said the offerings provide a glimpse into what life in these ancient civilisations were like but also the impact they have had on our modern way of life.

He said that indigo is one of the most valued and widespread dyes in the world.

Jeans were first developed in 1871 by Jacob W Davis and Levi Strauss & Co to be used by cowboys and miners, using a faded indigo colour.

However, in the 1950s they became more popular among teenagers.

Over the decades, different styles of jeans from the tight skinny jeans of punk rock to the baggy jeans of hip hop, but the material used to make them has remained largely the same.

The distinctive denim cotton fabric used to make jeans was first thought to have been developed in the Italian city of Genoa and Nimes in France during the 17th Century as work clothes. 

The fabric was found at Huaca Prieta, a prehistoric settlement in the desert of Chicama Valley, just north of Trujillo in Peru (shown on map)

The ancient fabric may be the world's oldest example of the use of indigo-blue, a colour that has become one of the most popular in the world and is used to dye denim jeans (pictured)

But the new results suggest its history may be traced back far further.

'Some of the world's most significant technological achievements were developed first in the New World,' Dr Splitstoser said. 

'Many people, however, remain mostly unaware of the important technological contributions made by Native Americans, perhaps because so many of these technologies were replaced by European systems during the conquest.

'However, the fine fibers and sophisticated dyeing, spinning and weaving practices developed by ancient South Americans were quickly co-opted by Europeans.'

The cloth is now on display in the Cao Museum in Peru.

The site at Huaca Prieta (pictured) is thought to date back to as far back as 4,700BC

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