Study of Lice DNA: Humans First Wore Clothes 170,000 Years Ago

[eShirl]

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/213069.php

"We wanted to find another method for pinpointing when humans might have first started wearing clothing," Reed said. "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."

The data shows modern humans started wearing clothes about 70,000 years before migrating into colder climates and higher latitudes, which began about 100,000 years ago. This date would be virtually impossible to determine using archaeological data because early clothing would not survive in archaeological sites.

The study also shows humans started wearing clothes well after they lost body hair, which genetic skin-coloration research pinpoints at about 1 million years ago, meaning humans spent a considerable amount of time without body hair and without clothing, Reed said.

"It's interesting to think humans were able to survive in Africa for hundreds of thousands of years without clothing and without body hair, and that it wasn't until they had clothing that modern humans were then moving out of Africa into other parts of the world," Reed said.

[meow mix]

1. those pleistocene fashions were fabulous nt

[RandomThoughts]

2. Thats a great comment as an add to the 'brain box' doctrine.

Not sure that 'clothing' matches when they started to move out, but that fits the doctrine that people haveing sentience, or ability to think and dream is 'the knowledge' in the way that some think of as bad. I think that is about judging good and bad without perfect knowledge.

But the point is that article works well adding to the doctrine of the big mind being the reason for women having pain in childbirth, and for men having to work as they no longer just lived without dreams or thoughts.


Also this song here talks about big minds being part of that also. It also was in the movie beatle juice where the guys mind was shrunk at the end of that movie, although that movie has lots of bad ideas in it also.

Sunshine Superman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_4DsNFQS98


'Bee mine' is about something else, (as in dragging mines) Not a claim of ownership in my view, nor a desire for that as I see it.

[Warren DeMontague]

3. No wonder some people have stinky socks. nt

[Occulus]

4. Well... this is kind of obvious, and more in the way of confirmation.

Think about it. If the ambient temperature were such that any clothing were usefully worn only as a convenience, our species would be nude virtually all the time. We wouldn't be too hot or too cold, and thus, clothing (used here as a tool) would never develop.

So the question becomes, "was clothing a tool only, for the purposes of early man?", and I think the answer must be 'yes'. It would likely have begun as a bag- perhaps a crudely-tied, handheld skin (a purse) for carrying various items- and gone from there as humans migrated to colder climates.

Imagine that; the purse, as mankind's earliest example of clothing or accessory. Not too hard to imagine, is it?

You have to have something to build upon; I seriously doubt early humans created togas from skins on the spur of the moment, no matter the necessity. I think their clothing evolved even as they themselves did.

Now that's actually a serious angle for research in fashion. I had no idea.

[KittyWampus]

7. as an anthropologist my proposition is jewelry developed before clothing.

[Ian David]

8. IIRC, the first tool was a bag for women to carry their baby in as they gathered food.

The second tool was something to masturbate with.

[lonestarnot]

13. What did that second one look like?

[slackmaster]

5. Still no word on when the first double-breasted suitcoats were produced

Or when they'll come back.

[DCKit]

6. Next up: The Evolution of the Codpiece - It's Older Than You Think nt

[Cirque du So-What]

9. I'll just take my chances where contracting lice is concerned!

Even if nudity was socially acceptable and I lived in a climate warm enough for going everywhere in the buff, I can't imagine a life without clothing. It's a buffer against some of the random mayhem that nature and human technology throw at us. Consider, for example, the hazards inherent to frying bacon in the nude! I'll take my chances with the lice, thank you.

[olegramps]

10. That is what aprons are for and discarded when not required.

[WolverineDG]

12. that's how you know you're cooking bacon at the right temp

if you get splattered, the pan is too hot.

Or so said my dad, & I really didn't press him on how he knew that.

dg

[xchrom]

11. interesting. nt