There is no single commonly recognized explanation as to when or who developed cloths, although estimates from diverse specialists range from 40,000 to 3 million years ago.
It appears that Neanderthals, a human-like but different species who thrived throughout the ice ages in Europe, were the first to develop and use suitable clothes to protect themselves and withstand extreme cold.
#FACT - Tasmanians (original Australians) could sleep naked in the winter and be just fine! Even the Amazonian tribes went naked in general.
But, if we accept the neanderthal idea, a new question arises:
Were clothes designed only to keep people warm in colder climates?
Surprisingly, the answer tells a lot more about the human history...
Clothing was common among early Neanderthal humans, as evidenced by eyed needles and other sewing instruments, as well as other archaeological artifacts.
However, this does not suggest that clothing was not previously worn. This is only the beginning of our proof.
While Neanderthals may have been among the first to wear clothing,
how did people move over Africa and Asia's hot tropical areas begin to wear clothing?
We did not create clothing only to keep warm!
It is probable that people began wearing clothes before they left Africa, long before they arrived in Europe.
#FACT - Dyed flax fibers discovered in an ancient cave in Georgia that might have been used to make clothes date back to 34,000 BC.
Wearing clothing was one of the possible reasons they may have fled Africa in the first place.
We may have invented clothes as a replacement for our body hair after gradually losing most of our body fur as it helped us survive in the hot climates of Africa, as being out in nature without any sort of skin protection can be and is damaging to the body, especially sensitive areas, such as reproductive organs, which can easily get Urinary tract infections.
If humans lost their hair while living in Africa's hot tropical conditions,
why haven't all other animals in Africa shed their body hair like humans?
Because we were a hunter-gatherer community at the time, no other primates engaged in the type of endurance exercise that we did, and our body fur didn't benefit us in any way but rather fatigued us in hot temperatures.
Okay, we got rid of our body hair since we didn't need it anymore.
But how did the skin tone change?
Before humans began migrating to much colder northern regions where it became necessary for them to wear clothes, our ancestors were almost certainly dark-skinned, which was more useful in tropical climates of Africa where skin melanin (a natural skin pigment that gives skin it's color) content increased, which may not have been efficient in absorbing UV rays to produce vitamin D but helped in protecting our skin from sun damage and skin cancer.
Over thousands of years of adaptation in colder climates, people developed paler skin because UV rays are considerably less intense, therefore melanin levels decreased and skin became lighter, as it aids in the far more effective conversion of UV radiation to vitamin D.
While clothing is required for chilly locations outside of Africa, it also helps to protect us from the sun's heat, harsh weather, and even some plants and deadly insects.
Lice Theory - The DNA of lice may hold the key to solving the problem.
According to anthropologists from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, the solution may be found in the louse, a small six-legged bug.
Lice (plural) are parasites that live on the human body's head, body, and pubic regions and feed on human blood.
Head lice are still the most prevalent, and they may spread fast and be difficult to get rid of completely.
When these head lice developed into what we now call body lice 170,000 years ago, people began covering themselves with garments to protect their skin and bodies from lice infestation.
This might explain why humans created clothes after losing their fur.
But how did we determine the date?
Scientists estimated when head lice began to develop and genetically divide from body/clothing lice by analyzing the lice's DNA sequence.
This revealed the historical period during which humans may have evolved to wear clothing.
The 'Nude Ape' Theory — There is a downside to being naked!
Desmond Morris thinks humans to be just another animal species in his book The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human-Animal.
He argues that when a female wishes to express sexual receptivity in animals, she turns her rear end towards the males.
This behavior is seen as a clear indicator of sexual receptivity.
Humans, on the other hand, developed to have sexual organs pointing forward as a result of bipedalism, which may transmit unintentional sexual signals and is especially troublesome in groups bigger than tribes made up of strangers.
A thin layer of clothes that allows us to go about our business without unwittingly communicating sexual desire is a straightforward answer to this dilemma. Clothes eventually came to signify a variety of things, including culture and independence.
Your estimate is as valid as everyone else's! Because there are no historical records or archaeological shreds of evidence of early clothes, it's all speculation and informed guesswork.
Common hypotheses include:
- Reasons of utility (warmth, cover, and protection),
- Religious and cultural causes (rituals that may require clothing)
- For social considerations (makes you part of a group)
- For purely aesthetic grounds (clothes improve our overall look).
While it is hard to be positive, clothing was developed as a survival requirement.
What was the first piece of clothing ever worn?
Because clothing materials decay quickly, unlike other prehistoric finds such as bones, stone, and metal objects, we cannot be certain of the type of clothing worn by early people; we can only speculate on the materials they may have used.
We (archaeologists) have had our hands on certain prehistoric costume and garment collections, but they are only the important or noteworthy sections of fabric rather than a whole set piece with which we could have learned a lot more about our primate ancestors' everyday clothes.
#FACT - Archeologists discovered bone and ivory sewing needles from about 30,000 BC in Russia in 1988.
Archeological research suggests that the oldest clothing was most likely composed of animal skin, fur, leather, grass, and leaves, all of which were evidently readily accessible in the environment and were worn by wrapping or tying it around the body.
We've gone a long way from merely covering up with leaves and fur to wearing jeans every day, or have we? because people began stitching the garments they wear far earlier than we would have thought.
Technological Innovations
Later, as civilization and technology grew, people began tanning leathers and making garments from plant-based textile fibers such as cotton, jute, linen, and animal-based materials such as sheep wool, silk, lamb fur, and so on.
Later, clothing was created from both natural and synthetic fibers such as nylon, polyester, and so on.
For a long time, clothes were mostly made by hand, but the invention of the sewing machine in the nineteenth century changed the game.
It not only increased the speed at which we sewed clothes, but it also greatly contributed to the first industrial revolution, which largely shaped the world we live in today.
Cloths have always been a key commodity exchanged between countries, dating back to prehistoric times.
Conclusion
Human nature has always included the wearing of clothing. It is a fundamental aspect of human civilization, and it is what distinguishes us from all other species.
As with astronauts, a spacesuit is required to survive in space (and, one day, on other planets). On Earth, when early humans evolved from monkeys with less fur and more brains, our forefathers, with their limited knowledge and resources, created clothes that protected them from heat, cold, rashes, adverse climate, and harsh environments.
We don't know who developed clothing first, whether it was early hominids who traveled from Africa to colder locations or early humans who invented garments to avoid illnesses and resist bad temperature conditions, but we don't know.
References:
Here are some good research papers to read on when humans might have started wearing clothes that I found helpful:
"Origin of Clothing Lice Indicates Early Clothing Use by Anatomically Modern Humans in Africa"
Link: https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article-abstract/28/1/29/984822
“A review of clothing microbiology: the history of clothing and the role of microbes in textiles”
Link: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rsbl.2020.0700
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