Silk was made from various breeds of lepidopterans, both wild and domestic. Though the wild silks were produced in many countries, such India and Greek, there is no doubt that the China was the first to domesticate the Bombyx mandarina into its descendent B. mori. on such a large scale, having the most effective species for silk production. The earliest evidence of silk was found at the sites of Yangshao culture in Xiyinchun, Shanxi, where a silk cocoon was found cut in half by a sharp knife, and Qingtaichun, Henan, both located in northern China and dating back to between 4000 and 3000 BCE. Another important find was from the Qingshanyang site, Zhejiang, in the southern China, dated back to 2000 BCE. The species from the north was identified as Bombyx mori, the domesticated silkworm, while the one from the south is more similar to the wild species from the shape of the cross section.

After the opening of Silk Road, the sericulture was introduced from inland China to Central Asia, via Xinjiang. A number of archaeological discoveries along the Silk Road, such as Yingpan, Xinjiang and Munchak-tepe, Uzbekistan, showed the long-term and frequent intercourses. We have done a number of silk fibre studies, and found both domestic and wild silks used on the Silk Road, meaning that not only domestic silk was traded along the Silk Road, but also some different species of wild silk, though we do not know which species it is nor where it was from. So our future study will focus on different silks along the Silk Road and find more interesting exchanges between the east and the west.