30,000 Year Old Flax and the Antiquity of Needles--

Though complex attire is usually associated with Neolithic humans, the Stone Age gave rise to many of the tools and practices associated with comprehensive costume production. Thousands of years before agriculture and "modernity," dyes, needles, and plant domestication appear in the archaeological record. This might suggest that the beautiful attire of the Holocene arose from gradual processes. However, many of these sites also indicate that the cold climates could have accelerated these trends.


One of the earliest needles discovered is associated with Sibudu Cave, and it is assumed to have pierced animal hides. It is dated at about 61,000 BP. Many sites in Europe and Asia have shown needles (and therefore sewing) to be a essential part to prehistoric living for many, especially in places of environmental extremes. (Blackwell 2008)

Bone and Ivory needles of Xiaogushan, Liaoning Province, China
Source: http://www.historyofinformation.com/expanded.php

Researchers report on old sites containing modified plant fibers, finding:

       wild flax fibers from a series of Upper Paleo- lithic layers at Dzudzuana cave... indicating that prehistoric hunter-gatherers were making cords for hafting stone tools, weaving baskets, or sewing garments. Other early reports of the use of plant fibers include Dolni Vestonice (Czech Republic) at ca. 29-32 ka cal BP(probably nettle...) and uni- dentified species in Ohalo II (Israel) at ca. 21 ka cal BP (Kvavadze 2010)

The site of early dyes at Dzudzuana was found to have been occupied sporadically between 32,000-6,000 cal BP. Flax fibers are found throughout this stretch of time, some older samples with odd coloring while others are naturally shaded:

      A wide range of natural pigments was available to the Upper Paleolithic occupants of the cave including roots and other plant parts from the flora of the Caucasus where 224 plant species used as natural pigments for dying strings and textiles were recorded (11). The colors range includes yellow, red, blue, violet, black, brown, green and khaki. (Kvavadze, 2010)

Dzudzuana Cave
Source:http://archaeology.huji.ac.il/depart/prehistoric/annab/photo.asp

Flax fibers from Dzudzuana Cave
Source: http://archaeology.about.com/od/middlepaleolithic/ss/textile_dzudzuana.htm

The antiquity of these findings gives us tantalizing glimpses into what could be early apparel. The agedness of sewing and clothing paraphernalia make the effort to domesticate for the sake textile materials a persuasive approach to the popular puzzle of agriculture's origin. The difficulty the human body has in processing most plant fibers adds to the perplexing issue of a food-based motivation. Conveniently, the wild flax samples of Dzudzuana and the plethora of pigments connected with the plant material could corroborate tentative ideas being offered to explain humans' move towards farming and sedentary life. Cloth and cord production (rather than subsistence) may have led to the domestication of plants instead. This would explain the impetus to cultivate wild breeds, given the nutritional payoff early vegetation would struggle provide.


Kvavadze, Eliso, Ofer Bar-Yosef, Anna Belfer-Cohen, Elisabetta Boaretto, Nino Jakeli, Zinovi Matskevich, and Tengiz Meshveliani.
2009.     30,000 Years old wild flax fibers - Testimony for fabricating prehistoric linen. Science. 325(5946): 1359.

Backwell L, d'Errico F, Wadley L.
2008.    Middle Stone Age bone tools from the Howiesons Poort layers, Sibudu Cave, South Africa. Journal of Archaeological Science, 35:1566-1580.

In 2007, Nike released a shoe designed specifically for Native Americans. It is unavailable to other people and has a notably reduced sale price to promote its adoption by the target audience . Obesity has been a particular problem for this demographic (among many) in America, and Nike's unique line was constructed in the hopes that having shoes that fit might inspire more exercise.

Source: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-09-26-nike-shoe_N.htm

"Nike is aware of the growing health issues facing Native Americans," said Sam McCracken, a manager of Nike's Native American Business program. "We are stepping up our commitment ... to elevate the issue of Native American health and wellness." This makes a person wonder where standard shoes fall short, and how many people might actually need shoe shapes beyond those that are mass produced...

What some of us may not think about is the diversity in the human foot--or perhaps at least the degree of it. Nike's Air Native N7 was constructed after its designers and researchers examined over 200 feet from more than 70 tribes across the nation. What they found were much wider and taller feet with a larger toe box. On average, the feet of both men and women were three units of width above that of a standard Nike shoe. (Nike 2007) These differences aren't insignificant, and while they unfortunately represent a massive inconvenience for many Native Americans who struggle to fit the narrow range of generic shoes, foot variation gives archaeologists insight about feet and shoes of antiquity.

A pairs of feet from the Philippines and then Europe
Source:http://freegrowthblog.com/438/reprint-natures-magic-bullet/

According to many, the natural use of bare feet over a lifetime would produce a ostensibly different-looking foot shape, with more widely spread toes. The ergonomics of barefoot walking might even ensure the wear and stress of locomotion on the body is better deflected.

Dr. William A. Rossi explains in the Journal of the American Podiatry Association:

         Most shoes do not properly fit the foot, simply because the shape of most shoes does not conform to            the shape of most feet. Under no circumstances is this because of any ‘conspiracy’ or neglect by                   designers and manufacturers. Most people just do not want their shoes to look like their feet. Like all             items of fashion, shoes are an illusion—the illusion of how people would like their feet to look... The               foot is not a slender stem, but shoes are so designed to make them appear so because it lends a look of         ‘elegance’ to the foot. (Koeringer 2003)

The Great toe axes of unshod feet make regular shoes a difficult fit
Source: http://freegrowthblog.com/438/reprint-natures-magic-bullet/

One of the effects of the modern shoe: bad posture
Source: http://freegrowthblog.com/438/reprint-natures-magic-bullet/

All this concerns the impact of shoes on a short term scale, but the effects tens of thousands years in shoes might account for the distinctive (and less avoidable) differences seen between European and Native American feet. Archaeologists Erik Trinkaus and Hong Sheng use this diversity to frame their research into the emergence and regularity of shoes. Native Americans tend to have wider feet.  They also show a high level of robusticity in their middle three toes. Inuits have these characteristics to lesser degree, and then European feet have some of the slimmest phalanges. This creates a spectrum of footwear habituation against which prehistoric feet might be compared (Trinkaus 2008).

By looking in the archaeological record, Trinkaus and Sheng found that nearly 30,000 year old human remains from sites in Tianyuan and Sunghir did not only have footwear, but their feet indicated a prolonged relationship with shoes, likely far before the middle of the Upper Paleolithic. Their middle toes had become more gracile, a result of the regular, artificial impact reductions of heel- and toe-off walking (Trinkaus 2008).


For more details on the impact of shoes on feet, Professor Daniel Lieberman gives a little history of modern shoes and details an experiment with barefoot running:

An though prehistoric shoes weren't adopted everywhere for various reasons, it was an essential article of clothing for some people of that time. Now, it is the probable bane of shopping for people with a rich history of bare feet in a world of standardized shoes. Although Nike has performed a well-intentioned gesture, it seems more appropriate that footwear become less "shoe-shaped" on the whole, if current styles are less ergonomically grounded.

Karl Knoeringer
2003     Reprint: Nature’s Magic Bullet. The Free Growth Blog

Trinkaus, Erik and Hong Shang
2008     Anatomical evidence for the antiquity of human footwear: Tianyuan and Sunghir. Journal of                          Archaeological Science 35(7):1928-1933.


2007 Nike unveils shoe designed for Native Americans. USA TODAY

With vampires and zombies being all the rage these days, portrayals of prehistory and early man--commonly referred to as "Stone Age" settings--seem to have taken the backseat in today's mainstream media. That doesn't mean, however, that the general public has escaped the influence of their Hollywood aesthetics. Some of the most famous and widely rewatched films in cinema history detail life before "modernity": for example, persistent classics like Mel Brook's History of the World Part 1 and The Flintstones each deploy imagery that has embedded itself into our cultural understanding of the stone age. More recently, films like 10,000 B.C. present the clash between early and modern living with thrilling special effects and CGI. The problem with these representations is that they are based only on the dearth of information we have about what living in it actually looked like while also dealing with the expectations set by earlier films. 

 Mel Brook's History of the World: furs, furs, and more waist-furs
Source: http://kumquatwriter.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/mel-brooks-stone-age.png

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2bgeq6hAlU

What I like about a lot of these early works was the effort to resolve the lack of knowledge about specific dress with the prevailing conservative sensibilities of the time. Even if some story settings technically wouldn't call for clothes, costume designers would nonetheless be hired onto sets to fashion outfits based on as much intuition as semi-educated estimations. Invariably, romanticism finds its way into the direction of the costumes, props, or story and the technical accuracy is foregone in favor of contemporary appeal. While this is more often informative about the time in which a work is made, it can also highlight what prehistoric information is common knowledge, and to what extent far-fetched or dubious ideas are taken for granted in the culture at large. 

Two well-coiffed actors in One Million Years B. C. and the creation of the fur bikini
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/jun/18/one-million-years-bc-reel-history

This is more modest inspiration, One Million B. C.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carole_Landis,_Victor_Mature_-_One_Million_B.C..jpg

Glamorous and unabashedly misleading films such as One Million Years B.C. live on as campy fun, with fur bikinis and heinously anachronistic Allosaurus attackers. A dash of science fiction softens the absurdity, but its prehistoric foundation is half-heartedly constructed. A slightly older, less sexy version of the film features mostly the same story but is told from the point-of-view of a narrator interpreting murals on a cave wall. Either way, the ideals and values of the times seep into movie direction and style, and how Neanderthals or archaic humans dress.

As is evident in the pictures above, some effort, however short-lived, was made to be faithful to the archaeological record. As archaeologists understand it, fur was probably worn in many regions, and chert was discovered at some sites fashioned into useful forms (so assuming that is what the woman in the final picture is wearing on her necklace, they did at least a LITTLE research). A multitude of shells, bones, and ivory have been found at some sites which could have been incorporated into clothes. There is also evidence of sewing in many tool repertoires in the later Paleolithic, whose existence would be needed to make a lot of Hollywood's caveman-fashions make sense. Overall, though, the audience sees something that is not nearly as alienating, and is instead culturally familiar--in addition to being, much to the hopes of the designers, quite stylish.

Stone Age clothes tend to be among the most immediately recognizable of any iconography in popular culture;  draw a bunch of belted furs on a person holding a spear and anyone playing Pictionary with you will have the gist of how your cue card reads. Yet of the aspects of prehistoric life with which Westerners are best familiar, dress is perhaps one of the least conclusive, and in turn least certain, of its facets because of the lack of direct information we have about it. Certain aspects exaggerated in film become staples in our conception of prehistoric adornments and, consequently, of prehistoric peoples themselves.  

Heavy bangles, sensuous straps of leather, and modesty furs look right in movies but the formula usually leaves out significant elements. Early prehistoric dress would have likely started as rectangularly cut hides of prey with a hole for the head and ties at the side, according to some people's studies. Cro-magnon groups developed needles, awls, and blades that would soon assist in the production of warm, close-fitting shirts and pants to combat the harsh, Eurasian climates (2012).

Sunghir remains and reconstruction
Source: http://donsmaps.com/sungaea.html

Sourcehttp://donsmaps.com/sungaea.html

The Sunghir archaeological site is close to 30,000 years years old. Thousands of painstakingly carved ivory beads were sewn into the leather outfits of several individuals buried here (Trinkaus 2008). While the remains may not be considered too old relative to Homo's history. I doubt most people today could imagine that such intricate, complex clothes could have been established so early.  

So it sort of looks like leather tunics would have been more popular (and convenient) than waist furs, and early humans and Neanderthals alike were probably pretty good with a needle. If it's cold, dressing in layers is necessary. Films with prehistoric protagonists that lived in warm regions might have barely worn anything at all, and probably not thick waist-pelts at that. In movies we are likely to see glistening, exposed chests paired with  sweaty fur-shorts. The clothes (if any) would need to be lightweight and functional to be comfortable at all...

This leads me to another point: wearable vegetation! It's not just for the tropics, and you wouldn't necessarily be wearing a leaf skirt, either. Evidence points to very early use of plants for cordage and weaving. Because plants aren't so durable a lot of evidence is indirect, bur we know textiles are at least older than 34,000 years. (2009)

Source: http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1751554/scientists_find_oldest_known_humanmade_fibers/

Though the early romanticized settings of most movies and shows leaves some of these developments for the distant future, their gradual formation is much longer than is often assumed. It doesn't necessarily mean some costumes are impossible, but maybe less realistic.

Trinkaus, Erik and Hong Shang
2008     Anatomical evidence for the antiquity of human footwear: Tianyuan and Sunghir. Journal of                            Archaeological Science 35(7):1928-1933.

2009     Scientists Find Oldest Known Human-Made Fibers. RedOrbit

2012     Fashion Encyclopedia: The Ancient World - Prehistoric

A Lousy Companion

When it comes to making an educated guess about when early human populations took to dressing themselves, there are many different and valuable approaches. Some lines of evidence are more obvious than others, like inspecting human burials for durable clothing remnants. Other lines are more subtle, such as tracing the gradual change from robust to gracile phalanges on prehistoric feet in places where shoes became commonplace.
While these sorts of methods that look to archaeological excavations yield vast stores of data, the drawbacks of their source still remain: the sites and objects may be dated, but they are only a small sample  in time, and not all types of material survive long enough to be found. Another way to bolster and frame the information we collect comes from the discreet, yet ubiquitous louse.

A fossil specimen alongside a modern Pediculus humanus humanus (head louse)
Source: http://jameselassiter.blogspot.com/2011_04_01_archive.html

Head and body lice as well as pubic lice provide a few hints about human behavior, having thrived alongside humans since the early years of our divergence. Pediculus humanus of the head and body are distinct creatures unto themselves; head lice live primarily on the scalp, while body lice nest in clothes rather than on skin. These varieties of lice comprise a sister species of the chimpanzee's, while pubic lice is actually one that was once shared with early gorillas. Primate lice is extremely dependent on their hosts, so their evolutionary history is entwined with their hosts. Newly analyzed genomes illuminate an adaptive past as lice were forced to migrate and evolve within their human environment.

As the technology to sequence genomes was opening up a wealth of possible analysis, Dr. David Reed of the University of Florida started requesting samples of gorilla lice from various sources to analyze its DNA. What he discovered helps focus the chronology of early human hair reduction, supporting conventional theories on when pre-humans left the forests and where bipedalism may have begun.

The divergence of pubic from gorilla lice likely happened 3.3 million years ago, using the degree of distinction between the two sets of DNA. This general time is also where researchers predict our ancestors lost their bodily hair (Toupe 2010). The bare skin would have been ideal for regulating heat in savanna-like areas, and our bipedal activities would only really require the tops of out head to be protected by hair. This would result in the isolation of our parasitic visitors, left with only head and pubic hair available for habitation (Wade 2007).

This diagram illustrates the movement of lice as humans diverged as a species
Source: http://scienceblogs.com/loom/2007/03/07/question-of-the-day-how-do-you/

As gorilla's lice seem to have invaded the groin area, and the chimpanzee-related lice would have found their refuge on the scalp. According to its evolution, P. humanus spent quite a while on our crowns, letting us assume there were no tailored clothes to move into until a little more than 100,000 years ago. Furs and informal drapery might have been used by people beforehand, but nothing particularly or consistently close to the skin to provide nesting areas. Geneticist Mark Stoneking's analysis of body lice finds the minimum date of it's divergence to be about 107,000 years before the present. From this finding he suggests that sewn clothes would have emerged shortly before (Wade 2007).

Other researchers have published much earlier dates for man's employment of dress as well as the split from chimpanzee ancestors. Entomologists and other geneticists have pegged our emergence (coinciding with the separation of chimpanzee and human lice) between five and seven million years ago. Their estimates of the habituated clothing show it to be a bit older than 190,000 years, though other dates are not entirely discounted. Other experts still place the date for dress before, claiming it came about 650,000 years ago (Harmon 2010). At what times and places clothing transitioned from loose coverings to purposefully crafted articles remains unknown.

This graph presents a possible chronology based on various evidence
Source: http://leherensuge.blogspot.com/2010/09/louse-tmrca-provides-estimate-for-human.html

While it's good to employ a variety of perspectives to tackle such a complex and telling behavior, it's also good to keep in mind that results are prone to vary along with their differing lines of evidence. Dating doesn't often show absolute maximums or minimums of actual trends, but the different analysis between experts here provides a very wide range of possibility. While body lice offer a lot of compelling data, only a couple gene samples have been sequenced. Where does it fit in next to the archaeological record? It does not provide direct evidence of human activities, but can intimate many potentials and confirm many suspicions.

How close are these estimates? How much can lice tell us? Because actual hair and clothing cannot preserve for thousands of years, this is both a highly debatable and very significant source of information.

Sources:

Harmon, K
2010   Full Genome Sequence Shows Body Lice Have Lousy Sense of Smell. Scientific American

 Wade, N.
2007   Head-scratching Puzzle: What Lice Have to Say about Human Evolution. New York Times

Toups, Melissa A., Andrew Kitchen, Jessica E. Light, and David L. Reed.
2010   Origin of Clothing Lice Indicates Early Clothing Use by Anatomically Modern Humans in                              Africa. National Center for Biotechnology Information. U.S. National Library of Medicine

Where Clothing Wasn't

When we analyze prehistoric man's trajectory from basic to complex behaviors and lifestyles, we must take into account a wide variety of different cultural factors. Technology, domestication, creative expression, subsistence and social organization are perhaps among the more prominent of these, but a common issue is that, despite whatever amount of data we have that tells us about early societies, it's difficult to determine which came first for any one particular group. Agriculturalization is a frequent benchmark for modernity, but even as far as a few centuries ago many cultures did not follow this route at all.

What, then, would lead early humans into the laborious and enslaving practice of pastoral living in the first place?

There are heaps upon heaps of different, and quite often directly conflicting, hypotheses concerning the matter. For example, plant domestication and cultivation is sometimes attributed to things like food scarcity, where other times a food abundance is cited as a chief motivator. It is known that many sites arrived at agriculture independently, and at similar times, which even further complicates such determinations.

Depicted here is a sample of a Native population from Tasmania, who along with several other independent groups manifest a compelling correlation between clothing and farming.

 Source: http://www.duckdigital.net/FOD/images/photos1933/P6-25.gif

The image, from a journal published in 1933, portrays a number of people among whom, as in all the other photographs from the collection, clothing is deemed optional, and where it is worn it is more decorative than functional.

In the accounts of many early Western ethnographers, we can observe a rather consistent, peculiar attention placed upon the regular, habituated nudity of Australian aboriginals. It was exotic and very alien, as far as European colonials were concerned. After all, most cultures that had been in contact with the West showed clothing as something very commonplace. Native Australians, along with Andaman Islanders, are two almost unique cases where clothes never caught on. And why would they? It's been known to get cold occasionally [in the Australian outback], but not far past the threshold where the human body can't make mild adjustments. It seems these places just have climates well suited for nudity. 

So the idea is that comfortable temperature ranges precluded the opportunity for apparel to establish itself past the point of perpetuation. Archaeologist Ian Gillian presents a sort of guideline using units of clo. Clo essentially counts layers of clothing needed to protect the human body from overexposure (due to temperatures, wind, etc.).

Using this system, Gillian found that there was only one stretch of time during which early Australians would require regular dress. Thus, looking for (historically) colder environments, he studied the comparably cooler regions of southern Australia and Tasmania for his research. In the Late Pleistocene, Tasmanian populations would have been experiencing their own cooling period.

This map presents a number of excavation sites as well as the approximate geography and landscape approximately 18,000 ca. before present.

a. basalt plain, grassland
b. very open woodlands, grasslands, heaths
c. alpine open herbfield and steppes, including glaciated areas
d. open eucalypt forest and woodland
e. tall eucalypt forest
f. dense closed forest
Source: http://www.andaman.org/BOOK/chapter52/8-Tasmania-ancient/archaeology.htm

This represents cold at its extreme, with much of the region consisting of glaciated stretches. It is in places fielding such harsh conditions that sites indicating an increase in awls and blade technology, as well as gratuitous hunting and skinning of Bennet's wallaby, have been discovered. Because mega-fauna had by this time been over-hunted, the fur coats of the wallaby would be the next logical choice, assuming an intent to skin and wear the pelts. The pelt procured would be modest in size and would require sewing to tailor it to the human figure, hence a shift to more complex tools. Living in this region would necessitate more clo, and [by the evidence collected at these sites] it seems that some of the early culture and technology was possibly lead by this requirement.

Bennett's wallaby
Source: http://www.goodacres.org/2008_11_01_archive.html

Although this environment was harsh, it was relatively brief. As soon as it disappeared, Gillian reports, there was a concomitant regression in stone and bone technology, a foregoing of likely sowing paraphernalia, and, consequently, a disappearance of what were likely clothes.

But how does this relate to agriculture? There is a lot of evidence from sites in Eurasia for the domestication of non-edible plants. Wild, edible plant breeds tend to be small and require lots of processing with little payoff. Non-edible plants like hemp, ramie, and paper mulberry are cultivated very early and have multiple potential uses, such as cordage and--what is quite important to the present discussion--clothes (Gillian). Considering the cooler temperatures of many sites outside of Africa, clothes might have been a more propitious incentive for domesticating plants. This could also be an incentive to produce smaller, more delicate, and more complex technologies (as was fleetingly seen in the Tasmanian archaeological record).

Thus, for some populations, agriculture might have been a byproduct of an interest in self-clothing. We might guess as much: some cultures were clothed and had domesticated animals, but did so without agriculture, suggesting  the former may precede--and indeed necessitate--the latter (Gillian). Also, many cultures without habitual clothing tend to have no proclivity towards agriculture at all, a point which further evidences this reasoning.

Regardless of the ultimate veracity of the claims, it is a compelling idea that certainly deserves further investigation and research.


Sources:
Ian Gilligan
    2007 Clothing and modem human behaviour: prehistoric Tasmania as a case study. Archaeol. Oceania 42:     102-111

Ian Gilligan
    1990 Clothing and Farming Origins: The Indo-Pacific Evidence
    World Archaeology:1-10