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Actual clothing is more difficult to find because clothing is primarily made up of biologically degradable, perishable materials. But they can be more precisely dated through Carbon 14 techniques. The earliest examples found , however, can not be taken as a actual chronological beginning point, but they provide useful chronological information. Often what we have are examples found in certain favorable conditions like arid deserts were clothing materiel does not. While the garments may have appeared earlier, at least we have some idea as to the point where the garments were being worn. these example were mostly of adult clothing. Most garments today have very modern orgins, but it is fascuinating ti see histioric origins of these garmebnts.
The first clothing must have been animal skins. This tchnology had to be developed before humans could move outb of Africa. Abthroopologists have looked at of all things to track this develoopment. Humans developed and sucessfully survived in Africa for without clothing and without havy body hair. One reseracher explains that "Because they are so well adapted to clothing, we know that body lice or clothing lice almost certainly didn’t exist until clothing came about in humans." 【Reed】 Based on data collected on the genetics clothing lice, DNA sequencing alllowed researchers to calculate when clothing lice first began to diverge genetically from human head lice. 【Stoneking】 This has allowed reserachers to estimate humans first began wearing clothes about 170,000 years ago. New data and calculation methods have allowed researchers to refine this assessment. 【Reed】 This all suggets that modern humans started wearing clothes around 70,000 years before leaving Africa. This allowed them to migrate to colder regions and higher latitudes. This began around 100,000 BP. This means that humans began wearing clothes about 170,000 BP.
The creation of garments beyond animal skins required he development of fibers. They at first could be used to sew animal skins and furs together and thus make increasingly complex garments. But only when weaving techniques could be mastered could textiles be created and used to manufacture what we would today recognized as modern garments. Neanderthals appear to be using twisted fibers in southeastern France (50,000 BC). We see the oldest known man-made fifers (32,000 BC). While ancient fibers ad textiles rarely survive, researchers have found Impressions of textiles and basketry and nets left on small pieces of hard clay in Europe (27,000 BC). Early clay sculptures (Venus figurines) have been found depicted clothing (25,000 BC). Flax cultivation begins in the Near East (25,000 BC). Flax is evidence of increasingly sophisticated clothing production (8,000 BC). Soon after evidence of weaving begins. Woven textiles were found being used to wrap the dead at Çatalhöyük in Anatolia (6,000 BC). We begin to see the breeding of domesticated sheep with a woolly fleece rather than hair in the Near East (3,000 BC). We begin to see the spread of cotton in the Indian subcontinent (2,500 BC). Cotton like flax was a plant fiber used for making textiles. Linen cloth in being produced in ancient Egypt, along with other bast fibers including rush, reed, palm, and papyrus (2000 BC). Cherchen Man was buried with twill tunic and the earliest known tartan fabric (1,000 BC).
There is a major chronological divide between ancient ans modern garments. Ancient people tended to war reap garments while modern people tend to wear more practical fitted garments. Ancient people commonly wore wrap rather than fitted garments. This was because it was much less complicated to weave a single piece of clothing that the wearer wrapped around g=his or her body. Fitted garment required weaving different pieces that wee then stitched together. This was much more expensive to produce. And in ancient times when most of the population was poor, cost was a huge issue. Clothing was much more expensive in real terms than is the case today. The best known wrap garment was the Roman toga which came to have huge status implication, but many Romans wore togas, although not the long ones done in fine material like the elite wore. Wrap garments are still worn today and some have national significance such as the kimono and sari. They are usually worn by women. There are, however, wrap garments still worn by poor people such as the lungi in Bangladesh and India--in this case worn by men. It is interesting to look at some of the earliest appearances of modern garment types. While we see very early version of garments, but that does not mean that they were very common. Pants and trousers, for example, did not become common beyond the vast Eurasian Steppe until the 17th century and only in Europe/Western World until the 20th century. A factor here is that until the American Revolution (1776-83), the great bulk of the world population even in Europe was a landless peasantry with very few rights and only limited earnings. Owning land was vital in a world economy dominated by agriculture. Fashion was the prerogative of a narrow strata of the population. The fledgling United States was the first country in history in which the average Joe could own the land he farmed as well as chose the people who governed him.
Reed, David. Universuty of Florida. Molecular Biology and Evolution (January 2011).
Stoneking, Mark. Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany, (2003)
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