Clothing

[lpetrich]

Our species has many oddities, and one of them is clothing. Only a few species use anything that is structurally and functionally like human clothing.

As broader context, note that nearly every organism has a well-defined surface layer. Every virus, every cell, and nearly every multicellular organism with differentiated cells. Some organisms grow loose outer structures, like bark and shells and scales and hairs and feathers. Mammalian hair goes back as far as the late Permian (coprolites), while feathers go back to the Jurassic (Archaeopteryx, a pigeon-sized feathered birdlike dinosaur).

Back to clothing.

 Hermit crab (Paguroidea) - hermit crabs live inside of seashells that they find.

 Caddisfly (Trichoptera) - some caddisfly larvae (some 30 families in Integripalpia) make cases for themselves, tubes that they live inside of.

When our ancestors started making clothes for themselves is a difficult problem, but one clue is from when head lice and clothing lice diverged.

Origin of Clothing Lice Indicates Early Clothing Use by Anatomically Modern Humans in Africa - PMC

Clothing use is an important modern behavior that contributed to the successful expansion of humans into higher latitudes and cold climates. Previous research suggests that clothing use originated anywhere between 40,000 and 3 Ma, though there is little direct archaeological, fossil, or genetic evidence to support more specific estimates. Since clothing lice evolved from head louse ancestors once humans adopted clothing, dating the emergence of clothing lice may provide more specific estimates of the origin of clothing use. Here, we use a Bayesian coalescent modeling approach to estimate that clothing lice diverged from head louse ancestors at least by 83,000 and possibly as early as 170,000 years ago. Our analysis suggests that the use of clothing likely originated with anatomically modern humans in Africa and reinforces a broad trend of modern human developments in Africa during the Middle to Late Pleistocene.

That article mentions

• Estimated time for loss of body hair ~ 1.2 Mya
• First evidence for hide scrapers ~ 780 kya
• Median head-clothing louse divergence ~ 170 kya
• First evidence for tailored clothing ~ 40 kya

During the latter part of the Middle Pleistocene (e.g., 83–170 Ka), archaic hominins lived in cold climates in Eurasia, whereas H. sapiens was still in Africa. Whether these archaic hominins had clothing is unknown because they left no clothing louse descendents that we can sample among living humans. All modern clothing lice are confined to a single mitochondrial clade that shows a contemporaneous population expansion with modern humans ∼100 Ka (Reed et al. 2004, 2007). Therefore, we are left to conclude that regular clothing use must have occurred in H. sapiens at least by 83 Ka and possibly as early as 170 Ka. Whether archaic hominins used clothing cannot be assessed from these lice and may require the collection of lice from archaic human remains, which is unlikely.

Over the last half millennium, European explorers discovered numerous people who still used Paleolithic or Neolithic technology ("primitive people"). In warm climates, Paleolithic-tech people tended to wear very little clothing, and that's likely how the first members of our present species dressed. But making clothing enabled living in very cold climates, even with Paleolithic technology. That clothing was made from animal skins, something that we still do today: fur coats and leather.

With Neolithic-level technology came evidence of looms in several places: loom weights. Looms are for making cloth by weaving, and we soon ended up making a *lot* of it. So in warm climates, we wear more clothing than our Paleolithic ancestors did, sometimes much more, and something that we have been doing for several centuries in several places. The first fibers for weaving were stems of flax plants and the like, going back to the Paleolithic, and in the Neolithic and later, additional fibers were added, like cotton (seed parachute) and wool (sheep hair), fibers that require spinning to make threads. Also added was silk, threads made by caterpillars for their cocoons, and over the last century, plastic. Also over the last century was plastic-sheet clothing like surgical gloves and fake leather.

So why did we start wearing lots of clothing where we seemingly didn't need to?

Some clothing has obvious purposes of protection, like warm clothing for cold weather, and also footwear. The oldest known footwear is sandals found in Fort Rock Cave in Oregon, dating back to 8000 - 7000 BCE. Their makers had Paleolithic-level technology, so footwear likely goes back a long way. Animal-skin shoes and boots also likely go back very far.

Modesty is another reason. We don't like to reveal our genitals. But one does not need much clothing for that.

Aside from all that, it's hard to say. Do we like the feel of clothing against our skin?

 

[lpetrich]

Another feature of clothing is that it is can be much more colorful than our bodies, especially with recent technology. Not just solid colors, but also patterns and prints.

We are not a very colorful species, it must be noted. We have one color of hair for all our body, and our skins are likewise monotone, though dark-skinned people have light-skinned palms and soles. Our skin color varies dark brown - light brown - yellow - light orange - light pink, and our hair color covers the full range of mammalian fur colors, which isn't very much: black - gray - white, brown - orange, yellow. Our eyes range dark brown - light brown - green - blue.

Our skin color doesn't have the multiple colors of a mandrill face -- such multicolored skin is rare among mammals. Fur-color variations are more common, often producing stripes or spots. But we don't have that either.

Skin-color variations are adaptations to solar ultraviolet light, with the more UV, the darker the skin. But most human populations usually have black or dark brown hair and dark brown eyes. Western Eurasians are exceptional there.

Birds, however, can be much more colorful, sometimes with more colors in a single feather than across our entire species. But our clothing can make us as colorful as birds.

 

[lpetrich]

Related to clothing is body painting. Common among "primitive" people, it is less common among people with more advanced technology, though some subsets of it continues to be common: makeup and nail polish.

Related to body painting is tattooing, injection of pigments into the skin. That also has a long history, from "primitive" people to the present day.

 

[bilby]

Clothing is just a subset of tool making and use; Clothes are a tool that enables humans to use a wider range of environments without injury or death.

Because they are visually obvious, they also immediately fall into having a secondary function of display; They are potentially expensive, so they advertise wealth, which is an excellent proxy for evolutionary fitness; and likely trigger some Fisherian runaway, whereby both the desirability of (more expensive) clothing, and the attractiveness of that clothing to potential sexual partners, become complimentary traits that generate large selection pressures for each other.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Clothing is of substantial protective value. There are few environments in which a human is always comfortable without clothing.

 

[lpetrich]

Bilby mentions clothing as protection and conspicuous consumption. There seems to be more, like wearing lots of clothing in warm temperatures, like warm weather or indoors, clothing that is not obviously protective or status-symbolish.

So far, I've thought of liking the feel of clothing on one's body, and wanting to look pretty.

 

[skepticalbip]

...

Bilby mentions clothing as protection and conspicuous consumption. There seems to be more, like wearing lots of clothing in warm temperatures, like warm weather or indoors, clothing that is not obviously protective or status-symbolish.

Modern times (at a minimum since the Victorian era) modesty and social pressure can be added to the reasons people wear clothes in western cultures and cultures influenced by the west.

So far, I've thought of liking the feel of clothing on one's body, and wanting to look pretty.

AAW, you'll always look pretty to me.

 

[lpetrich]

skepticalbip, it's not just the Victorian Era. Look at previous centuries and millennia. Look at places without any Western influence until recent centuries - India, China, Korea, Japan, ... It should be easy to find stuff on people's clothing in past centuries with some online searching.

 

[lpetrich]

 History of hide materials - scrapers go back some 400,000 years at least. These would be used for scraping fur and subcutaneous fat off of skin. Further processing is  Tanning (leather) though it's hard to say how far back that goes.

Animal skins are useful not only for clothing but also for bags. These were sometimes used for liquids:  Wineskin We still sometimes use animal skins for bags, like leather handbags and alligator-skin ones.

These Vintage Threads Are 30,000 Years Old : NPR
30,000 Years Old Wild Flax Fibers - Testimony for Fabricating Prehistoric Linen
These flax fibers were likely braided together to make cords and the like. Flax fibers are in the plants' stems.

Flax was domesticated in the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East, and it was likely soon woven into cloth.

Cotton also goes back to the Neolithic, and it was domesticated both in Eurasia and in the Americas. It does not come in convenient strands, as flax does, but instead as a lump of fibers attached to the seed, so that the seed can be carried by wind. To make a usable fiber, one has to spin that fiber from these fiber lumps.

Wool is Late Neolithic, though a few millennia after the domestication of its source, sheep. Their wild relatives have typical mammalian fur -- short hair -- and the first domestic sheep likely did also. Dogs and cats have long-haired breeds, though most of these animals continue to have short hair, and there was once this dog breed:  Salish Wool Dog bred by Pacific Northwest people.

Wool, like cotton, needs to be spun to make usable fibers.

Silkworm moths were domesticated in China in the Late Neolithic there, and silk is extracted from the moths' cocoons. The moths' caterpillars make their cocoons by secreting silk strands and surrounding themselves with those strands. They then go into their pupal phase, protected by their cocoons.

 List of domesticated plants and  List of domesticated animals

 

[lpetrich]

So we have three kinds of clothing aside from clothing made by our species and recent ancestors:

• Hermit crabs' shells
• Caddisfly cases
• Moth cocoons

All found or made by arthropods.

It's also rather evident that by the time that we invented writing, we had several sources of fiber for weaving into clothing -- fiber utilized separately in several places. Flax (Middle East), wool (Middle East, Pacific Northwest), cotton (North Africa, India, Central and South America), silk (China), ...

With the development of plastics in the 20th cy. came several kinds of  Synthetic fiber like nylon and polyester and aramids (Nomex, Kevlar).

We have also made artificial leather out of plastic and rubber.

 

[lpetrich]

Another use for skins is shelter: tents and huts.

2.2: The Paleolithic Period - Humanities LibreTexts

Caves

Caves are the most famous example of Paleolithic shelters, though the number of caves used by Paleolithic people is drastically small relative to the number of hominids thought to have lived on Earth at the time. Most hominids probably never entered a cave, much less lived in one. Nonetheless, the remains of hominid settlements show interesting patterns. In one cave, a tribe of Neanderthals kept a hearth fire burning for a thousand years, leaving behind an accumulation of coals and ash. In another cave, post holes in the dirt floor reveal that the residents built some sort of shelter or enclosure with a roof to protect themselves from water dripping on them from the cave ceiling. They often used the rear portions of the cave as middens, depositing their garbage there.

In the Upper Paleolithic (the latest part of the Paleolithic), caves ceased to act as houses. Instead, they likely became places for early people to gather for ritual and religious purposes.

Tents and Huts

Modern archaeologists know of few types of shelter used by ancient peoples other than caves. Some examples do exist, but they are quite rare. In Siberia, a group of Russian scientists uncovered a house or tent with a frame constructed of mammoth bones. The great tusks supported the roof, while the skulls and thighbones formed the walls of the tent. Several families could live inside, where three small hearths, little more than rings of stones, kept people warm during the winter. Around 50,000 years ago, a group of Paleolithic humans camped on a lakeshore in southern France. At Terra Amata, these hunter-gatherers built a long and narrow house. The foundation was a ring of stones, with a flat threshold stone for a door at either end. Vertical posts down the middle of the house supported roofs and walls of sticks and twigs, probably covered over with a layer of straw. A hearth outside served as the kitchen, while a smaller hearth inside kept people warm. Their residents could easily abandon both dwellings. This is why they are not considered true houses, which was a development of the Neolithic period rather than the Paleolithic period.

 

[Jarhyn]

An interesting aspect of clothing comes from the social stratification signals that exist in the expression of color.

For a very long time, access to attire with strong purples and blues was associated with leadership and wealth. One thing that I find interesting is that I only very rarely even now see clothing with a good mix of blues, purples, magentas, and cyans.

 

[starwater]

Humans are explorers. In order for our ancestors to move through a cooler climate they needed clothes. Clothes offer protection from the elements. Once we lost hair, UV light burned us, so we invented hats and other items to protect us in warmer climes. It became culture and as Jarhyn said, colors - mates are attracted by bright colors.

 

[Jarhyn]

Humans are explorers. In order for our ancestors to move through a cooler climate they needed clothes. Clothes offer protection from the elements. Once we lost hair, UV light burned us, so we invented hats and other items to protect us in warmer climes. It became culture and as Jarhyn said, colors - mates are attracted by bright colors.

Mates are attracted by... Well, it takes finer magic than colors.

Finding a mate is a matter of doing a dance that says "see all that this can do and know and learn, and assume that it can breed true and teach!"

Clothing is just one aspect. It says "see my good eyes, and my mind, for singing a good song with light!"

And it also says "see my money, I have the power and security to maintain something so luxurious and expensive."

 

[SIB]

Function can a lot of things. It started as "we can be more independent of weather." and move to dual or more purposes. Keeps us dry and she looks great kind of thing.

 

[lpetrich]

Most Paleolithic constructed housing does not survive, housing like animal-skin tents and huts, and this stereotype of our ancestors living in caves is pure preservation bias. But there are some surviving examples, though constructed from relatively durable materials.
A Mysterious 25,000-Year-Old Structure Built of the Bones of 60 Mammoths | Science| Smithsonian Magazine

A jaw-dropping example of Ice Age architecture has been unearthed on Russia’s forest steppe: a huge, circular structure built with the bones of at least 60 woolly mammoths. But exactly why hunter-gatherers enduring the frigid realities of life 25,000 years ago would construct the 40-foot diameter building is a fascinating question.

Clothing also survives very poorly, though some jewelry survives: beads. 82,000-year-old shell beads from North Africa and implications for the origins of modern human behavior | PNAS

More:
Paleolithic jewellery: still eye-catching after 50,000 years
Ornaments of the earliest Upper Paleolithic: New insights from the Levant | PNAS

 

[steve_bank]

Ötzi - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Ötzi, also called the Iceman, is the natural mummy of a man who lived some time between 3350 and 3105 BC, discovered in September 1991 in the Ötztal Alps (hence the nickname "Ötzi") on the border between Austria and Italy.

Ötzi is believed to have been murdered, due to the discovery of an arrowhead embedded in his left shoulder and various other wounds. The nature of his life and the circumstances of his death are the subject of much investigation and speculation.

He is Europe's oldest known natural human mummy, offering an unprecedented view of Chalcolithic (Copper Age) Europeans. His body and belongings are displayed in the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, South Tyrol, Italy.


Ötzi wore a cloak made of woven grass[37] and a coat, a belt, a pair of leggings, a loincloth and shoes, all made of leather of different skins. He also wore a bearskin cap with a leather chin strap. The shoes were waterproof and wide, seemingly designed for walking across the snow; they were constructed using bearskin for the soles, deer hide for the top panels, and a netting made of tree bark. Soft grass went around the foot and in the shoe and functioned like modern socks. The coat, belt, leggings and loincloth were constructed of vertical strips of leather sewn together with sinew. His belt had a pouch sewn to it that contained a cache of useful items: a scraper, drill, flint flake, bone awl and a dried fungus.[38]

The shoes have since been reproduced by a Czech academic, who said that "because the shoes are actually quite complex, I'm convinced that even 5,300 years ago, people had the equivalent of a cobbler who made shoes for other people". The reproductions were found to constitute such excellent footwear that it was reported that a Czech company offered to purchase the rights to sell them.[39] However, a more recent hypothesis by British archaeologist Jacqui Wood says that Ötzi's shoes were actually the upper part of snowshoes. According to this theory, the item currently interpreted as part of a backpack is actually the wood frame and netting of one snowshoe and animal hide to cover the face.[40]
The leather loincloth and hide coat were made from sheepskin. Genetic analysis showed that the sheep species was nearer to modern domestic European sheep than to wild sheep; the items were made from the skins of at least four animals. Part of the coat was made from domesticated goat belonging to a mitochondrial haplogroup (a common female ancestor) that inhabits central Europe today. The coat was made from several animals from two different species and was stitched together using hides. The leggings were made from domesticated goat leather. A similar set of 6,500-year-old leggings discovered in Switzerland were made from goat leather which may indicate the goat leather was specifically chosen.[citation needed]

Shoelaces were made from the European genetic population of cattle. The quiver was made from wild roe deer, the fur hat was made from a genetic lineage of brown bear which lives in the region today. Writing in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers from Ireland and Italy reported their analysis of his clothing's mitochondrial DNA, which was extracted from nine fragments from six of his garments, including his loin cloth and fur cap.[41][42][43]

Thes is a picture of what the clothes looked like.

 

[lpetrich]

DNA Analysis Reveals What Ötzi the Iceman Wore to His Grave | Smart News| Smithsonian Magazine

In order to learn more about Ötzi’s fashion choices, Maixner and his colleagues at the European Academy of Bozen/Bolzano (EURAC) used a form of DNA analysis that relies on markers found in mitochondrial DNA. While most DNA is stored in chromosomes within cells, mitochondria contain a tiny piece of their own DNA. It’s a small fraction of the total human genome, but for the scientists, it was enough to pinpoint several animals that Ötzi turned into specific pieces of clothes.

Ötzi’s shoes are made from cattle leather, which Maixner believes may have been chosen because it is hardier than other materials. Meanwhile, the mummy’s black-and-white-striped coat is made from sheep, which would have provided Ötzi with the most warmth compared to other available types of leather. His attire is also crafted from non-domesticated animals, including a deerskin quiver and a bearskin hat. Not only does it appear that the different materials were chosen with a specific purpose in mind, but they were also repaired using the same kind of materials instead of whatever leathers Ötzi had lying around.

A whole mitochondria analysis of the Tyrolean Iceman’s leather provides insights into the animal sources of Copper Age clothing | Scientific Reports

Identifications:

• Bovine: shoelace
• Sheep: coat, loincloth
• Goat: coat, leggings

"There was sufficient mitochondrial genetic diversity observed to show that the materials derived from both sheep and goat came from multiple individuals, there were at least four sheep and two goats used in the manufacture" Though that seems like a lot of sheep, but sheep were eaten before they were raised for wool. Also, the genes fell within the range of domesticated ones, consistent with utilizing domestic animals instead of hunting wild ones. Likewise, the deerskin and bearskin fell within the range of roe deer and brown bear from the area.

 

[lpetrich]

Clothing | Museo Archeologico dell’Alto Adige

The clothing was practical and functional. Ötzi’s clothing was made from hide, leather and braided grass, affording him protection from the cold and wet.

...
His clothing was made solely from leather, hide and braided grass. It was stitched together with animal sinews, grass fibres and tree bast. No wool or woven textile was found.

This is rather curious, given the dates of fiber sources.

• Flax domesticated: Fertile Crescent: 7,000 BCE
• Cotton domesticated: Upper Nile, Indus Valley: 5,000 BCE
• Sheep bred for wool: Iran: 6,000 BCE

Ötzi’s hide coat reached almost down to his knees, covering his upper body and thighs. The coat was made from light and dark strips of goat and sheep hide stitched together with animal sinews. Ötzi wore the coat with the fur on the outside. Unfortunately, the sleeves did not survive. Since no recognisable fasteners were found, the coat was probably held closed with a belt. The coat had been in use for a long time, because the inside was very dirty, and some torn seams had been repaired with grass fibres – probably by Ötzi himself.

...
Ötzi’s “trousers” consisted of two separate leggings approx. 65 cm in length. They were made from strips of domestic goat and sheep hide. The tops of the leggings were reinforced with leather strips and were knotted onto the belt with an additional leather strip. At the bottom of the leggings were loops that were fastened to the shoes. The leggings had been worn for some time and had been repaired in several places.

...
Ötzi wore a loincloth made from narrow strips of sheep hide stitched together. It was originally a 100 x 33 cm piece of hide worn between the legs and fastened with the belt.

...
The belt consisted of a calfskin strip 4 to 5 cm wide.

...
This belt pouch contained tinder fungus, a scraper, a boring tool, a bone awl and a flint flake.

...
The shoes are made up of several layers. The inner shoe consists of string netting made from lime tree bast. Dry grass was stuffed under the netting for insulation. The outer shoe was made from deer hide and was stitched onto the sole like the netting. The sole was worn with the fur on the inside. The shoe was tied onto the foot with bast string.

...
A bearskin cap was uncovered during the archaeologic excavation. Pieces of bearskin had been stitched together to form a hemispherical shape. A chin strap held the cap in place.

He seems very well-dressed.

 

[lpetrich]

the Egtved Girl - from around 1370 BCE in Denmark

Of the girl herself only hair, brain, teeth, nails and a little skin remain. Her teeth reveal that she was 16-18 years old when she died. On her body she wore a short tunic and a knee-length skirt made of cords. A belt plate of bronze decorated with spirals lay on her stomach. She also had a comb made of horn with her in the grave, attached to her belt. Around each arm was a ring of bronze and she had a slender ring in her ear. By her face lay a small box of bark with a bronze awl and the remains of a hair net. At the feet of the Egtved Girl a small bucket of bark had been placed, which once contained a type of beer. There was also a small bundle of clothing with the cremated bones of a 5-6-year-old child. A few bones from the same child were found in the bark box.

She was from the Black Forest in S Germany: A famous Danish Bronze Age icon turns out not to be Danish after all

Modern recreation of Egtved Girl clothing.