Over 5 600 years ago people were weaving flax in Egypt. About 4 000 years ago they started using wool. The earliest loom was a horizontal ground loom. The weaver decided what size cloth he wanted to produce and then stuck sticks into the ground to make a loom the size of the material he needed. The warp (vertical) threads were wound onto the sticks and tied in place. Then the weaver works the weft (horizontal) threads in by hand. This type of loom is still used by Bedouins

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