When Did Ancient Humans Start Wearing Clothes?

When Did Ancient Humans Start Wearing Clothes? The first thing a human ever wore rotted away long ago — clothing doesn't fossilize, so there's no oldest coat in any museum. Yet we can still date the invention to somewhere between 83,000 and 170,000 years ago. The witness that gave it away wasn't buried in the ground. It was a parasite still crawling on us today. Time stamps👇🏾 0:00 - The Clothes That Left No Trace 0:39 - The Witness That Never Left 1:00 - The Bug That Dates the First Coat 1:19 - A Parasite Made Entirely of Clothing 2:08 - The Clock Hidden in Louse DNA 3:04 - The Coat Came Before the Cold 4:06 - When the Tools Finally Catch Up 5:04 - The Third Louse and What It Revealed 5:48 - The Oldest Technology on Your Body All research and sources are linked below. 📚 RESEARCH & SOURCES: ▸ Clothing doesn't fossilize — animal hide, plant fiber, thread and leather all decay within a few thousand years, so the earliest garments leave no direct physical trace. General archaeological reference. ▸ Body louse biology — the body louse lives and lays its eggs in the seams of clothing, not on skin or hair, and dies within a couple of days off a clothed host. Its entire species depends on our invention, which turns its origin into a timestamp for clothing. Human-parasitology reference. ▸ Origin of clothing (louse DNA) — "Molecular Evolution of Pediculus humanus and the Origin of Clothing" (2003, Current Biology) https://doi.org/10.1016/S0960-9822(03... — body lice split from head lice around 72,000 years ago, the first genetic estimate for when humans began wearing clothes. ▸ Revised (older) clothing date — "Origin of Clothing Lice Indicates Early Clothing Use by Anatomically Modern Humans in Africa" (2011, Molecular Biology and Evolution) https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msq234 — a larger dataset and better model push the date back to at least 83,000 and possibly as far as 170,000 years ago, while humans were still in Africa. ▸ Migration out of Africa — the great dispersals into Europe, Asia and the freezing north mostly happened within the last ~70,000 years, meaning clothing existed before humans walked into the cold. "The coat came before the cold." General human-dispersal reference. ▸ Bone tools & early sewing — "Early bone tools from the Middle Stone Age at Sibudu Cave, South Africa" (2012, Journal of Archaeological Science) — sharpened bone points around 61,000 years old, possibly among the earliest sewing tools ever found. ▸ Oldest eyed needle — a ~50,000-year-old, 7 cm bird-bone needle with a drilled eye from Denisova Cave, Siberia, the oldest complete sewing needle known. https://www.archaeology.org/news/4784... ▸ Dyed flax fibers — "30,000-Year-Old Wild Flax Fibers" (2009, Science) https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1175404 — spun, knotted and dyed wild flax from Dzudzuana Cave, Georgia, including turquoise and pink; someone was choosing the color of their clothes 30,000 years ago. ▸ Ötzi's tailored outfit — "A whole mitochondria analysis of the Tyrolean Iceman's leather provenance" (2016, Scientific Reports) https://doi.org/10.1038/srep31279 — the 5,300-year-old Iceman wore a coat stitched from several different animal species, a designed garment rather than a draped hide. ▸ Pubic louse & body-hair loss — "Pair of lice lost or parasites regained: the evolutionary history of anthropoid primate lice" (2007, BMC Biology) https://doi.org/10.1186/1741-7007-5-7 — the human pubic louse jumped to us from gorillas around 3.3 million years ago, quietly dating when our ancestors lost the rest of their body hair. ———————————————————— PEOPLE & SITES MENTIONED IN THIS VIDEO: ▸ Mark Stoneking — geneticist at the Max Planck Institute who led the 2003 study that first dated the origin of clothing from the DNA of lice. ▸ Melissa Toups — biologist whose 2011 reanalysis, with more lice and a better model, pushed the clothing date back to between 83,000 and 170,000 years ago. ▸ Sibudu Cave — Middle Stone Age shelter in South Africa that yielded sharpened bone points ~61,000 years old, possibly some of the earliest sewing tools ever found. ▸ Denisova Cave — Siberian cave famous for the Denisovans; also produced a ~50,000-year-old eyed needle carved from bird bone, the oldest complete sewing needle ever found. ▸ Dzudzuana Cave — cave in Georgia holding ~30,000-year-old wild flax fibers that were spun, knotted and dyed turquoise and pink, the earliest evidence of people coloring their clothing. ▸ Ötzi the Iceman — a 5,300-year-old man frozen in the Alps, found in a tailored outfit stitched together from several different animals. ———————————————————— 🎨 Animation by Ink Explainer ———————————————————— #ancienthumans #clothing #prehistory #humanhistory #archaeology #stoneage #humanevolution #paleolithic #lice #dna #iceage #outofafrica #history #explainer #animation #education #anthropology #neanderthal