Bob Walther.. age 10, of Peterborough, Ont.

Where did the cotton plant originate?

In the rich Indus Valley of India, cotton was grown and woven into cloth at least 5,000 years ago. At about the same time, it also was grown and used in ancient Egypt. Much later, far across the world, the Spaniards found cotton growing in the West Indies and the Indians of Central America had learned to spin, weave and dye their cotton long before Columbus crossed the Atlantic. Much later, the archeologists discovered that the Incas of Peru had grown and used cotton in ancient times, no one knows how long ago.

No one knows either, where the first cotton was cultivated in the Old World or the New. It is a member of the mallow family and maybe different strains were developed by widely separated peoples, but science needs more information before we can name the place where useful cotton originated.