Asbestos occurs naturally on every continent in the world. Archeologists uncovered
asbestos fibers in debris dating back to the Stone Age, some 750,000 years ago. It is believed that as early as 4000 B.C., asbestos’ long hair-like fibers were used for wicks in lamps and candles.
Between 2000-3000 B.C., embalmed bodies of Egyptian pharaohs were wrapped in
asbestos cloth to protect the bodies from deterioration. In Finland, clay pots dating back to 2500 B.C. contained asbestos fibers, which are believed to strengthen the pots and make them resistant to fire. Around 456 B.C., Herodotus, the classical Greek historian, referred to the use of asbestos shrouds wrapped around the dead before their bodies were tossed onto the funeral pyre to prevent their ashes from being mixed with those of the fire itself.
Around 755, King Charlemagne of France had a tablecloth made of asbestos to prevent it from burning during the accidental fires that frequently occurred during feasts and celebrations. Like the ancient Greeks, he also wrapped the bodies of his dead generals in asbestos shrouds. By the end of the first millennium, cremation cloths, mats and wicks for temple lamps were fashioned from chrysotile asbestos from Cyprus and tremolite asbestos from northern Italy.
In 1095, the French, German and Italian knights who fought in the First Crusade used a catapult, called a trebuchet, to fling flaming bags of pitch and tar wrapped in asbestos bags over city walls during their sieges. In 1280, Marco Polo wrote about clothing made by the Mongolians from a “fabric which would not burn.” Polo visited an asbestos mine in China to disprove the myth that asbestos came from the hair of a wooly lizard.
Chrysotile asbestos was mined during the reign of Peter the Great, Russia’s tsar from 1682 to 1725. A purse made of fireproof asbestos, now part of London’s Natural History Museum collection, was brought to England by Benjamin Franklin during his first visit there as a young man in 1725. Paper made from asbestos was discovered in Italy in the early 1700s. By the 1800s, the Italian government was utilizing asbestos fibers in its bank notes. The Parisian Fire Brigade in the mid-1850s wore jackets and helmets made from asbestos.
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