Dressed to Infest
When did we start wearing clothing?
A question you never knew you had: when did we start wearing clothes? I mean, some books will tell you that it was about 6,000 years ago, when the universe was created. More modern sources estimate between 83,000 and 170,000 years ago.[1]
How did we figure this out?
Clothing wouldn’t last that long, which makes dating it impossible.[2]
We see cave art depicting clothed humans around 15,000 years ago.[3] Some clothing-related tools, such as needles made from bone, are dated to between 40,000 and 50,000 years ago.[4] Some hide scrapers appear older.[5]
The oldest evidence we have, however, comes in the form of genetic evidence. Not from humans, mind you, but from lice.[6] In fact, it looks like genetically, human body lice diverged from human head lice up to 170,000 years ago. Since we never really had a significant amount of body hair, and body lice live on clothing, we can deduce that this divergent evolution came from our desire to cover up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistory_of_nakedness_and_clothing. ↩︎
At least, until we made them all out of plastic. Ironic that a $2 top from Shein will probably outlast humanity, while at the same time falling apart after a couple of wears. ↩︎
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/evidence-of-fur-and-leather-clothing-among-worlds-oldest-found-in-moroccan-cave-180978689/. ↩︎
