Expert: John Shea - 8/7/2006

Question
Hi John,

  I'm playing around with a writig project, and I need information concerning the clothing of early man to add detail. i'm asking with a tropical setting in mind. First of all, what prompted man to seek clothing? Why didn't Mankind retain its hairy covering in the first place. Also, do you have any knowledge about the history is cotton? How (and possibly, when) did Man start harnessing cotton fibres as cloth? Do you know how and when the practice of weaving originated?
  Looking forward to a reply within your earliest convenience. Thanks in advance!

- EQ.

Answer
Dear Emmanuel
Sorry for delayed reply, I was unexpectedly off campus and away from email for a week.
What prompted man to seek clothing?
Most archaeologists assume it was shelter from elements, either the sun (in tropics) or from cold (temperate zones).  Both are possible, but it is likely that clothing also served cultural purposes (modesty, signifying cultural roles, gender, etc.), much as it does among living humans.
Humans' relatively little body hair is usually attributed to a need for more sweat glands to regulate body temperature during high levels of physical activity. The activity most scholars of this subject have in mind is locomotion, either running or prolonged walking.  According to the skeletal evidence, such increased running probably occurred with the appearance of Homo erectus/ergaster, around 1.7 Mya (= million years ago).
We have no direct evidence for the antiquity of clothing, but a researcher named Mark Stoneking recently identified variation in different species of human hair and body lice that he argues indicate clothing came into use among Homo sapiens around 70 Kya (= thousands of years ago).
The oldest evidence for weaving is around 25 Kya, from a site called Dolni Vestonice, in the Czech Republic.  This evidence takes the form of impressions of woven fabric left on clay artifacts that were later fired and preserved.  It is almost certainly the case that fiber-based clothing is much older than this, but tropical environments do not usually preserve such organic remains.
Oldest evidence of cotton and weaving are both fairly young, from Neolithic contexts in the Near East, after 10 Kya.  Again, it is almost certainly the case that both the use of cotton and weaving are much older than this.
Sadly, this whole topic is one of those archaeological "blind spots" where we can give only very qualified answers.
For what it is worth, I think early humans were intelligent creatures and that they very quickly appreciated the potential applications of fiber and weaving technology.  I would venture a guess that simple woven garments of one kind or another were in use by at least 50 Kya (when Homo sapiens dispersed out of Africa) and that such garments were preceded by a long period during which leather clothing of one kind or another were in use.  Again, it is a guess, but I suspect leather clothing was in use by no later than 0.5-0.7 Mya, the point after which there is fairly consistent evidence for humans (Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo neanderthalensis) living in temperate habitats.
Good luck with your project.
A suggestion: for some hints of what tropical early humans might have worn, look for some of the most broadly-distributed (and therefore probably most "primitive") clothing types seen among pre-industrial populations in the African and Asian tropics.
Cheers,
John Shea