Two monks stole China's silk secret in hollow walking sticks
Justinian's eastern Roman court loved silk but had to buy it through its Persian rivals, until two monks offered to carry the secret west.
The Rest Is Science · Are There More Raindrops In Clouds Or Data In THE Cloud?The two men set out on foot for a journey of two years across thousands of miles, carrying bamboo canes that looked like ordinary walking sticks.
Inside the canes, which they had hollowed out, were silkworm eggs packed alongside mulberry seeds. The seeds mattered because mulberry leaves are the only food that silkworms eat.
The men were monks who had lived in Central Asia, and they were headed to the Byzantine court of Justinian, the emperor who ruled the eastern Roman Empire. They told him they knew how silk was made, and that they could bring that knowledge to his lands. If they succeeded, silk could be produced outside China.
The prize mattered because Byzantium was obsessed with silk. All of it came from China along the Silk Road, and that trade was controlled by the Persians, the bitter rivals of the Byzantines. Every purchase meant paying a premium to an enemy.
Many buyers still believed the rumor that silk grew on trees. The monks knew it came from worms, and they knew how to carry that secret out.
The journey was fragile. If the eggs had hatched along the way, or had frozen, the mission would have failed. The men arrived with the eggs intact, and the result was plain. The mulberry seeds were planted and the trees flourished, the eggs hatched, and silk production became possible outside China.
Questions people ask
How do worms actually make silk cloth?
A silkworm is the caterpillar of a moth, and it spins a cocoon from a single continuous strand of silk that can be more than half a mile long. Workers boil or steam the cocoons to soften them, then unwind the strands and twist several together to make silk thread.
Do silkworms really eat only mulberry leaves?
Yes. Silkworm caterpillars feed almost exclusively on white mulberry leaves, and those leaves affect their growth and the quality of the silk. That is why a smuggler needed both the eggs and the seeds, not just the eggs alone.
How did China keep silk a monopoly for so long?
For centuries China kept sericulture secret, and exporting eggs or revealing the process could be punished. The monopoly held because few outsiders knew worms made silk, and because moving live eggs and fresh mulberry plants over long distances was very difficult.