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EARLY MODERN HUMAN CLOTHES
Raquel Welch in1 Million Years B.C. According to Archaeology magazine: No one is exactly sure when people began wearing clothing, but a new discovery at a site in Catalonia in Spain suggests that the first modern humans in Europe were already tailoring their garments 40,000 years ago. A recently discovered animal bone with a series of small indentations may have been used as a punchboard when making holes in animal hides. It is the oldest known tool of its kind. The pieces of perforated leather could then be sewn together to create better-fitting apparel.[Source: Archaeology Magazine, August 2023]
Although taboo for many today, humans have been wearing fur coats for at least 300,000 years. One of the earliest examples of hominins removing animal hides to use them as clothing comes from the site of Schöningen in Lower Saxony. Experts believe that cut marks on metatarsal and phalanx bones from the paws of extinct cave bears found there were not made during the normal butchering process, since there was little meat in the paws. Instead, they were likely made when the pelts were removed to be worn as protection against the harsh winter elements. [Source: Archaeology Magazine, March 2023]
Mark Stoneking of the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig calculated that our human ancestors began wearing clothes about 114,000 years ago based on comparing the DNA of head lice, which have been around millions of years, and body lice (which are misnamed as they appear on clothing rather than the body), which are a relatively new species. His reasoning goes that a new species evolves when there is a new environment (in this case clothing for the body lice) and if he could figure when body lice branched off from head lice (which he did using by comparing the DNA of the two species) he could figure out when early man first wore clothes.
The discovery of bone needles indicates that ancient men probably sewed together hide and fur garments. This helped them expand into colder climates. Sewing and needles also allowed the creation of water-resistant clothing and the ornamentation of clothes with beads, animal teeth, and shells.
The first needles appeared about 20,000 years ago and the earliest garments were probably form-fitting animal-skin tunics, leggings and boots stitched together with linen thread. A teenage boy and girl found at a 20,000-year-old site called Sungir near Vladimir and Moscow, Russia were buried with clothing with 3,000 ivory beads attached to it. The arrangements of the beads indicates that the boy wore long pants, a cape, short cloak, and knee-high boots. A hat and belt were decorated with Arctic fox and cave lion teeth.
See Separate Article: EARLIEST CLOTHES AND SHOES europe.factsanddetails.com
Oldest Bone Tools for Clothesmaking and Leatherworking — 120,000 Years Old — Found in Morocco
In September 2021, scientists reported in IScience that they had found the oldest bone tools for clothesmaking — 120,000 years old in Morocco. “"It's a major discovery because while older bone tools have been found elsewhere, it's the first time we have identified bone tools (this old) that were used to make clothing," Moroccan archaeologist Abdeljalil El Hajraoui said.[Source: AFP, September 24, 2021]
AFP reported: “The international team discovered more than 60 tools in Contrebandiers (Smugglers) Cave, less than 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the North African country's capital. They had been "intentionally shaped for specific tasks that included leather and fur working", the team wrote in a study published in the journal iScience. “The discovery could help answer questions on the origins of modern human behaviour, said El Hajraoui, a researcher at the National Institute of Archaeology and Cultural Heritage (INSAP). Sewing is a behaviour that has lasted" since prehistory, he told AFP. "Tools like those discovered in the cave were used for 30,000 years, which proves the emergence of collective memory."
Fred Flinstone
Daniel Weiss wrote in Archaeology Magazine: While sorting through some 12,000 bone fragments excavated from Contrebandiers Cave near the Atlantic coast of Morocco, archaeologist Emily Hallett of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History noticed that some were smooth and shiny, as if they had been intentionally shaped by human hands. Upon consultation with colleagues, she determined that 62 of the fragments are bone tools dating to between 120,000 and 90,000 years ago. These include a number of tools made from animal rib bones of a type well known for its use in fur and leatherworking. “Once you have an animal skin, there are a lot of steps that have to be taken to process it so it’s supple, smooth, and ready to wear,” says Hallett. “These tools remove the connective tissues and fats from the skin without piercing and damaging it.” [Source: Daniel Weiss, Archaeology Magazine, January/February 2022
Amid the assemblage, Hallett also identified bones of carnivores such as sand foxes, golden jackals, and wildcats that had marks indicating they had been skinned for their hides or fur. Together, the carnivore bones and bone tools appear to provide the earliest known evidence of people making clothes. This fits well with previous genetic studies of clothing lice that suggested clothing was first worn by humans in Africa up to 170,000 years ago. Hallett says it’s also possible that people at Contrebandiers Cave produced leather to string small beads together to make symbolic personal ornaments. Pierced shells from the snail genus Nassarius dating to around the same time as the bones have also been found in the cave.
“The iScience paper predicted that "given the level of specialization of the bone tool material culture at Contrebandiers Cave, it is likely that earlier examples will be found." The team also discovered living spaces dug into the ground or built in the cave, as well as perforated seashells apparently used as ornaments. "This was a cultural evolution that still needs study," El Hajraoui said. Morocco has been the location of a number of significant archaeological findings, including the 2017 discovery of five fossils at Jebel Irhoud in Morocco, estimated at 300,000 years old, overturning evolutionary science when they were designated Homo sapiens.
Early Weaving and Textiles
The oldest known clothe is a 3-by-1½-inch, 9000-year-old piece of fabric found in southeastern Turkey in 1993 and partly fossilized. Evidence that textiles was invented between 20,000 and 30,000 years ago include bone needles and other sewing tools and impressions of interlaced fibers on clay shards found at Upper Paleolithic sites. Braided fibers found in a pit in Lascaux, France hints not only of thread but also rope, cord, fishing lines, and perhaps woven garments and baskets.
Becky Wragg Sykes wrote in The Guardian: “People were already making finely worked bone needles 20,000 years ago, probably for embroidery as much as sewing animal skins, like the thousands of ivory beads and fox teeth that covered the bodies of a girl and a boy buried at Sunghir, Russia, around 28,000 years ago. And at Dzudzuana Cave in Georgia, 30,000 year old spun plant fibres were found which had been dyed: pink, black and turquoise blue! [Source: Hadley Freeman, fashion expert, Becky Wragg Sykes, The Guardian May 20, 2013]
Weaving is an ancient textile art and craft that involves placing two sets of threads or yarn called the warp and weft of the loom and turning them into cloth. The earliest evidence of weaving comes from the Czech Republic – impressions of textiles and basketry and nets on little pieces of hard clay, dating from 27,000 years. The 26,000-year-old Venus sculptures found in Willendorf, Austria and Brassempouty have what look like knotted hair. Anthropologist Olga Soffer of the University of Urbana-Champaign has suggested the hair on statues may in fact be replicas of hats.
The earliest known evidence of ceramics and textiles have been found at the Doiní Vestonice and Pavlov hill sites in the Czech Republic that were the home of prehistoric seasonal camps. Evidence of these things are impressions left on clay chips recovered from clay floor that was hardened by a fire. The meshlike impressions of textiles indicate that these people may have made wall hangings, cloth, bags, blankets, mats, rugs and other similar items. It is We don't actually know for sure that these were used for clothes, but the materials weren't heavy duty, and the variety in weaving styles suggests a long tradition.
Early Modern Human Ornaments
conch shell necklace from Blombos Cave
During the Aurignacian cultural period (about 40,000 to 28,000 years ago), modern humans wore rings, beads, pendants, anklets and necklaces made from bear, fox, or lion teeth interspersed with seas shells or ivory beads and other carefully-crafted personal adornments made of ivory, soapstone, bone, marine and freshwater shells, fossil coral, limestone, schist, talc-shistlignite, hematite, pyrite, teeth from other animals and the fossilized shells of extinct squids. [Source: Randal White, Natural History, May, 1993]
Early modern humans was very choosy about the materials chosen for ornaments. Only teeth of certain animals were selected. Of the thousand or so shell species available only a dozen were chosen. Facsimiles of shells and animal teeth were sometimes made with soapstone. Beads were sewn into clothing and carnivore teeth were used in belts and headbands.
Ivory was used almost exclusively to create adornments, not weapons or tools. Modern humans developed various techniques for working ivory, including drilling, gouging, carving and polishing it with metallic abrasives such as hematite. Some items have been found hundreds of miles from their sources, which seems to indicate that some form of trade existed.
The inhabitants of the Russian site of Sungir made elaborate personal ornaments of ivory and schist that often were in the form of abstract geometric designs. These include a wheel-like carved ivory disk, found in the 28,000-year-old grave of two children. See Burials
Beads found in France, dated to between 33,000 and 32,000 years ago, were made in several steps. First pencil-like rods were fashioned from ivory or soapstone and then inscribed and broken off in half-inch to three-quarter-inch sections. They were then perforated — by gouging the top of the section from both sides and meeting in the middle — and ground and polished into a bead with a hematite abrasive.
At a 36,000 year-old site in the Don Valley of Russia, archaeologists found beads from an amber-like mineral called belemnite that had been drilled from each side. Experiments have shown that each bead took about an hour to make. At a 20,000-year-old site called Sungir near Vladimir and Moscow, Russia an adult was buried with 3,000 beads and a child was found with 5,000 beads, representing between 3,000 and 5,000 hours of work. Scientists have speculated that beads buried with the child either were an expression of extreme grief or an indication of the child's high status.
World's Oldest Jewelry? — 150,000-Year-Old Shaped Shells from Morocco
In September 2021, researchers said in an article published by Science Advances they had discovered 33 shaped marine snail shells, dated as far back as 150,000 years. Ago, in a cave near Essaouira, about 400 kilometers southwest of Rabat, which they described as "the oldest ornaments ever discovered". According to the Robb Report: “The artifacts, which were discovered in the Bizmoune Cave near Morocco’s Atlantic coast between 2014 and 2018, have been through a series of rigorous tests to determine the age of shells and the surrounding sediment. Many of the beads are said to be between 142,000 and 150,000 years old. [Source: Rachel Cormack, Robb Report, November 25, 2021; AFP, September 24, 2021]
shell beads from Bizmoune Cave
“Spanning roughly half an inch long, each bead was made from the shells of two different sea snail species. According to the excavation team, the holes in the center of each bead as well as the markings from wear and tear indicate that they were hung on strings or from clothing. Ancient beads from North Africa, such as these 33, are associated with the Aterian culture of the Middle Stone Age. These ancient settlers are widely considered to be the first to have worn what we now call jewelry.
Archaeologist Steven L. Kuhn and his team say the shell beads are the earliest known evidence of a widespread form of non-verbal human communication—that is, using jewelry to relay things about ourselves without the fuss of conversation “They were probably part of the way people expressed their identity with their clothing,” Kuhn said in a statement. “They’re the tip of the iceberg for that kind of human trait.” Kuhn, who also works as a professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona, believes the discovery shows that people used accessories to convey parts of their personality even hundreds of thousands of years ago. The beads, Kuhn said, are essentially a fossilized form of basic communication. The news comes shortly after a 23,000-year-old bead, which has been labeled the world’s oldest known piece of colored jewelry, was put on display in Japan.
In 2013 Becky Wragg Sykes wrote in The Guardian: The earliest examples of jewelry “keep getting pushed back in time: they currently stand at about 75,000 years ago, and maybe as much as 100,000 years ago. At one site in South Africa, we even have the first evidence of style as we know it, with a shift in the way shell beads were strung together over time.” [Source: Hadley Freeman, fashion expert, Becky Wragg Sykes, The Guardian May 20, 2013]
100,000-Year Perforated Shells from Israel and Algeria — Jewelry?
Very old jewellery was found in caves on the slopes of Mount Carmel in Israel. Alok Jha wrote in The Guardian: “Dated to around 100,000 years ago, the ancient shells and beads had similar holes made into them, which would have allowed them to be strung together into a necklace or bracelet. They represent an early comprehension of symbolic behaviour – wearing jewellery sends messages of identity and self-expression to those around us.” [Source: Alok Jha, The Guardian, November 15, 2012 |=|]
In 2006, scientists said 100,000-year-old beads from sites in Algeria and Israel may represent the oldest known attempt at self-adornment known at that ttime . The beads, made from shells with holes bored into them, are 25,000 years older than similar beads discovered in 2004 ago in South Africa, the scientists reported in a June 2006 issue of the journal Science. "Our paper supports the scenario that modern humans in Africa developed behaviors that are considered modern quite early in time, so that in fact these people were probably not just biologically modern but also culturally and cognitively modern, at least to some degree," said study co-author Francesco d'Errico of the National Center for Scientific Research in Talence, France. [Source: Randolph E. Schmid, Associated Press, June 22, 2006 /*]
130,000-Year-Old Golden Eagle Neanderthal jewelry from Kaprina, Croatia
Randolph E. Schmid of Associated Press wrote: In the past some researchers have argued that the ability to use symbolism did not develop until people had migrated to Europe some 35,000 to 40,000 years ago. Alison Brooks, head of the anthropology department at George Washington University, said the new find reinforces that people developed behaviors gradually. That this find is older than the beads uncovered in South Africa "does not surprise me," she said in a telephone interview. "There were no revolutions in human behavior, there was a gradual accumulation of behaviors." The perforated shells from Blombos in South Africa and those now coming to light are of the same genus, Nassarius, she noted. "So, the question is, is this a single cultural tradition? Probably not," she concluded. "Clearly it's learned behavior."/*\
“By the time people were populating Europe, behavior had continued to develop and beads were being made from teeth, bone, stone, "every sort of material," said Brooks, who was not part of the research team. "It just is improbable that that sprang from nothing, and this is a logical antecedent." Sally McBrearty, an anthropology professor at the University of Connecticut, also was pleased with the find extending the time range for such symbolic activity. "It's the category of object that everybody is willing to accept as being something that signals modern behavior," McBrearty said. "It's not quite as wonderful as Blombos ... but it is fairly securely dated." McBrearty was not part of the research team. /*\
“The new find involves just three shells, two from Skhul in Israel the researchers said were about 100,000 years old and one from Oued Djebbana, Algeria, estimated to be 90,000 years old. The researchers said the shells were found many miles from the sea, indicating they were brought to those locations deliberately, most likely for beadworking. Brooks agreed, adding that the shells are too small to have had any food value. "I think we're looking at symbolic value ... it's very exciting," she said. D'Errico had been part of the group that found the earlier perforated shells at Blombos and he and other scientists were trying to find similar beads in other locations. /*\
“The newly identified shells were found in a study of museum collections. The shells from Skhul were excavated in the 1930s. The researchers were able to date them by comparing sediment stuck to one of them with layers containing human skeletons that were 100,000 or more years old. The Algerian site was excavated in the 1940s and the researchers said the date of 90,000 years is based on the technology and style of the stone tools found there. /*\
82,000-Year-Old Shell Jewelry Found in Morocco Cave
In 2007, archaeologists announced that they found tiny shells coated in red clay, dated to 82,000 years ago, in the Grotte des Pigeons at Taforalt in eastern Morocco. They were described as one the oldest known forms of human ornamentation. Kate Ravilious wrote in National Geographic: “Each shell has a hole pierced through it and a covering of red ochre, an ancient pigment made from clay. "The fact that they are colored and have deliberate perforations indicates that they were used as ornamentation," said Nick Barton from the University of Oxford in England, one of the archaeologists on the team. Some of the shell "beads" show signs of wear inside the perforation, indicating that they were strung together as necklaces or bracelets. "They were definitely meant to be seen," Barton said. [Source: Kate Ravilious, National Geographic, June 7, 2007 |]
“The shells come from a genus of marine snail called Nassarius, which is not found along the Moroccan shoreline today. The nearest place where the snails live is an island off Tunisia that lies more than 800 miles (1,280 kilometers) away. "It is possible that these beads were brought here from Tunisia and were very special objects," Barton said. In a paper published in the June 2007 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the archaeologists suggest that the beads mark a shift in human development and the beginnings of modern cultural behavior. "We think that they were capable of thinking symbolically and able to use one thing to represent another," Barton said. Possibly the beads were used to establish group identity and indicate where certain people belonged. Similar cultural signs, such as specialized tools and personal decoration, didn't arrive in Europe until around 40,000 years ago. |
“The Moroccan find is not the first example of ancient Nassarius shells that might have been beads. In June 2006 the same team reported that snail shells found at sites in Israel and Algeria were likely to be the world's oldest bead jewelry. Initial analysis of the shells from Israel indicated them to be between 100,000 and 135,000 years old, while the Algerian shells were determined to be more than 35,000 years old. |
“For their latest study the team established the Moroccan shells' ages using four different dating techniques. This means the beads qualify as the world's oldest, they say, because the shells are the only ones to be dated so conclusively. Abdeljalil Bouzouggar, from the Moroccan Institute of Archaeology, and colleagues found the shells in the Grotte des Pigeons alongside burnt stone remains in well-layered soil. The team has also uncovered similar shells at other sites in Morocco and are currently awaiting dating results. "Shells from other sites may turn out to be even older," Barton said, "and we may well be looking at ornamentation beyond a hundred thousand years ago."” |
world's oldest jewelry from Morocco
Changing Styles of 75,000-Year-Old Beaded Necklaces from South Africa
Eric A. Powell wrote in Archaeology magazine: Even Paleolithic people knew that while fashions fade, style is eternal. A team led by University of Bordeaux archaeologist Marian Vanhaeren found that beaded necklace patterns changed in a relatively short time around 75,000 years ago, possibly within a few generations. [Source: Eric A. Powell, Archaeology magazine, July-August 2013]
“Vanhaeren and her colleagues analyzed shell beads from Blombos Cave, South Africa. Beads from two separate layers displayed patterns of wear distinct from one another, which suggested that they had been strung and worn differently at different times. The archaeologists made some beads of their own and strung them in a variety of styles. They then subjected them to use, and exposed them to a water-and-vinegar solution meant to mimic human sweat and accentuate the marks that came from everyday wear.
“Voilà,” says Vanhaeren, “we had the wear patterns.” From the experiment, she concluded that in the older layers, shells hung freely on a string, while in the upper layers the shells were knotted together in a more complex pattern. Vanhaeren notes that the beads in both layers probably came from numerous necklaces. “All the people respected the rules and wore the beads in these specific patterns,” she says. In other words, the Blombos Cave people were slaves to fashion.
50,000-Year-Old Ostrich Eggshell Beads
Ostrich eggshell beads — about one centimeter (0.4 inches) in diameter and dated to 50,000 to 33,000 years ago — have been found at several sites in eastern and southern Africa. According to Archaeology magazine: Eggshells may not seem like the best material with which to make something built to last, but ostrich eggshells can withstand the weight of a bird of up to 350 pounds sitting on them during incubation. For the Paleolithic hunter-gatherers living in eastern and southern Africa, an ostrich nest was a wealth of material, and once the chicks hatched, the shells left behind didn’t require special skills to collect, explains archaeologist Jennifer Miller of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. “The shells are extremely strong and an ideal material to make something, like beads, that you want to be durable but lightweight,” she says. According to Miller and Max Planck Institute paleoclimatologist Yiming Wang, tracing where Paleolithic ostrich eggshell beads are found — and when they disappear from the archaeological record — tells a story of changes in the landscape upon which people depended.[Source: Jarrett A. Lobell, Archaeology Magazine, March/April 2022
Miller and Wang have cataloged and analyzed 1,516 beads and found that, even though they were made by groups separated by as much as 2,000 miles, styles that people developed early on remained nearly unchanged for a period of more than 15,000 years — rare, very ancient evidence of cultural behavior shared by people living across a wide landscape. “Using symbolic items like these beads to communicate is one of the unique traits of our species,” Miller says. “The beads were valuable and could have been traded for other goods or given as gifts the way they still are today.”
modern ostrich shell beads
About 33,000 years ago, these beads disappeared in southern Africa, but were still commonly made in the continent’s east. Wang suggests that this might signal varying ways people adapted to climate change. Increased rainfall led to flooding of the Zambezi River catchment, which bridges eastern and southern Africa. This flooding may have blocked connections between the east and south. While the east remained fertile, Wang explains that after the climate shifted, the south may have only supported smaller population groups in which people no longer needed to invest in something like making beads.
Early Humans Went to Great Lengths to Make Jewelry in Spain 30,000 Years Ago
Early modern humans of Spain — who lived between 25,000 and 30,000 years ago — traveled long distances to collect and carefully create jewelry, according to a study published on May 30, 2023 in the journal Environmental Archaeology based on research by Spanish and German v4w who excavated a near Malaga, about 540 kilometers (330 miles) south of Madrid. [Source: Brendan Rascius, Miami Herald, June 7, 2023].
According to the Miami Herald: The researchers discovered about a dozen modified seashells inside the cave, which were likely used by Paleolithic people as pendants to adorn their bodies The shells are considered incredibly rare, particularly because, unlike similar discoveries, they were found far from the coast, indicating travel was required for their collection. Early humans trekked at least 50 kilometers (30 miles) to reach the shells found in the Mediterranean Sea, researchers said, and it’s likely they traveled even farther since the coastline shifted over the ensuing millennia.
The cave in which the shells were found, known as the Cueva de Ardales, was considered to be a site of symbolic activities, researchers said. Over 1,000 ancient engravings and paintings have also been found in the “hugely important” cave, which was likely on and off again occupied by humans for around 58,000 years, according to a study published in 2022 in the journal PLOS One. Ornaments made from seashells that date to the Paleolithic Era have also been found in Siberia, around 4,000 miles away, according to a study published in 2021 in the journal Quaternary International.
very old ostrich shell beads
Possible Make-Up Used by Humans 164,000 Years Ago in South Africa
In an article published in Nature in 2007, researchers found evidence of reddish pigment from ground rocks — along with harvested and cooked seafood and early tiny blade technology — at Pinnacle Point overlooking the Indian Ocean near South Africa's Mossel Bay dated to between 176,000 and 152,000 years ago. The reddish pigment could be used for paint or body adornment it was presumed. "Together as a package this looks like the archaeological record of a much later time period," said study author Curtis Marean, professor of anthropology at the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University. [Source: Seth Borenstein, Associated Press, October 17, 2007]
Seth Borenstein of Associated Press wrote: Marean found 57 pieces of ground-up rock that would have been reddish- or pinkish-brown. That would be used for self-decoration and sending social signals to other people, much the way makeup is used now, he said. There have been reports of earlier but sporadic pigment use in Africa. The same goes with rocks that were fashioned into small pointy tools.
“Seafood harvesting, unlike other hunter-gatherer activities, encourages people to stay put, and that leads to more social interactions, he said. Yet 110,000 years later, no such modern activity, except for seafood dining, could be found in that part of South Africa, said Alison Brooks, a George Washington University anthropology professor who was not associated with Marean's study. That shows that the dip into modern life was not built upon, said Brooks, who called Marean's work "a fantastic find." Similar "blips of rather precocious kinds of behaviors seem to be emerging at certain sites," said Kathy Schick, an Indiana University anthropologist and co-director of the Stone Age Institute. Schick and Brooks said Marean's work shows that anthropologists have to revise their previous belief in a steady "human revolution" about 40,000 to 70,000 years ago.”
perforated shells from Blombos cave site
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons except Blombos Cave objects from Blombos Cave website and shell beads from Bizmoune Cave from Researchgate and ostrich shell beads from Jennifer Miller of the Max Planck Institute
Text Sources: National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Nature, Scientific American. Live Science, Discover magazine, Discovery News, Ancient Foods ancientfoods.wordpress.com ; Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, BBC, The Guardian, Reuters, AP, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, and various books and other publications.
Last Updated May 2024