When Did Ancient Humans Start Wearing Clothes?

Leather and fur rot, so nobody will dig up the first coat. Our best clue to when humans started wearing clothes is a louse that lives nowhere else. It starts with a 5,300-year-old man in the Alps whose coat was sewn from at least four animals. Then the evidence gets thinner: pink string in a cave in Georgia, a bird-bone needle from Siberia, bone awls in South Africa, and Neanderthals who must have covered up to 80 percent of their bodies to survive the ice ages, without leaving a single scrap behind. So scientists turned to body lice, which live in your clothes, and to the molecular clock in their DNA. Add your own skin, a gorilla's nest and a cave of skinned animal bones in Morocco, and the story of human evolution gets a surprisingly specific date. It ends in a mass grave of Napoleon's soldiers. CHAPTERS 0:00 A 5,300-year-old outfit 0:36 The oldest thread 1:51 Needles older than the thread 2:55 Neanderthals in the cold 3:48 The louse that lives in clothes 4:46 Counting tiny mistakes 5:43 A very different number 6:45 The answer is in your skin 7:59 Sweat, hides and seams 8:59 A cave in Morocco 10:21 What clothes made possible 11:13 Napoleon's army and the louse SOURCES The man in the Alps - O'Sullivan, N. et al. (2016). Scientific Reports: DNA from the iceman's clothing. Coverage: National Geographic: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/otzi-iceman-european-alps-mummy-clothing-dna-leather-fur-archaeology The oldest thread and needles - Kvavadze, E. et al. (2009). 30,000-Year-Old Wild Flax Fibers. Science 325: 1359. Harvard DASH: https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/4270521 - The Denisova Cave needle, Archaeology magazine: https://archaeology.org/news/2016/08/23/160823-denisova-cave-needle/ - Backwell, L., d'Errico, F. & Wadley, L. (2008), the Sibudu bone point. Summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sewing_needle Neanderthals and the cold - Wales, N. (2012), Neanderthal body coverage. National Geographic: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/130911-neanderthal-fashion-week-clothes - BBC Science Focus: https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/when-did-humans-first-start-wearing-clothes/ Body lice and the molecular clock - Kittler, R., Kayser, M. & Stoneking, M. (2003). Molecular Evolution of Pediculus humanus and the Origin of Clothing. Current Biology: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(03)00507-4 - Toups, M.A., Kitchen, A., Light, J.E. & Reed, D.L. (2011). Origin of Clothing Lice Indicates Early Clothing Use by Anatomically Modern Humans in Africa. Molecular Biology and Evolution 28(1): https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article-pdf/28/1/29/13649116/msq234.pdf - Florida Museum of Natural History: https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/lice-study-dates-first-clothing-at-170000-years/ - NBC News (Reed, and Gilligan on simple and complex clothes): https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna40965564 - Science, the debate over the lice dates: https://www.science.org/content/article/lousy-study-has-humans-baring-all Skin, hair loss and pubic lice - Rogers, A.R., Iltis, D. & Wooding, S. (2004). Genetic Variation at the MC1R Locus and the Time since Loss of Human Body Hair. Current Anthropology 45(1): https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/381006 - Reed, D.L., Light, J.E., Allen, J.M. & Kirchman, J.J. (2007). Pair of lice lost or parasites regained. BMC Biology 5:7. University of Florida: https://archive.news.ufl.edu/articles/2007/03/human-pubic-lice-acquired-from-gorillas-gives-evolutionary-clues.html Contrebandiers Cave, Morocco - Hallett, E.Y. et al. (2021). A worked bone assemblage from 120,000–90,000 year old deposits at Contrebandiers Cave, Atlantic Coast, Morocco. iScience: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589004221009561 - Arizona State University: https://news.asu.edu/20210916-bone-tools-morocco-indicate-production-clothing-120000-90000-years-ago Napoleon's soldiers in Vilnius - Raoult, D. et al. (2006). Evidence for Louse-Transmitted Diseases in Soldiers of Napoleon's Grand Army in Vilnius. Journal of Infectious Diseases. HAL: https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00008119 A note on accuracy: the Denisova needle's age of about 50,000 years hasn't been independently published yet, the 2003 lice date is sometimes reported as 107,000 rather than 72,000 (both fall inside its 30,000 to 110,000 range), and the link between pubic lice and losing our body hair is a hypothesis. If you got something out of this one, subscribe to Brain Scribbles for more strange stories about how we know what we know. #HumanEvolution #Archaeology #History