China: A Uighur family picking cotton in the fields around Kashgar, Xinjiang Province

Cotton was independently domesticated in the Old and New Worlds. It was first cultivated in the Old World 7,000 years ago (5th–4th millennia BCE), by the inhabitants of the Indus Valley Civilization, which covered a huge swath of the northwestern part of the South Asia, comprising today parts of eastern Pakistan and northwestern India. Cotton has always been an important crop along many sections of the old Silk Road.

Copyright:

CPA Media Co. Ltd.

Photographer:

David Henley

Credit:

Pictures From Asia