Humans May Started Making Clothes 12,000 Years ago

A new study shows that our early ancestors could have started making Clothes with the help of bone tools 120,000 years ago. The study also estimated that Homo sapiens first began wearing garments around 170,000 years ago. It wasn’t until 50,000 years later that they got a little more sophisticated.

Archaeologists have discovered ancient bone tools in a Moroccan cave that they believe were used to work leather and fur into garments between 90,000 and 120,000 years ago. Previous research shows that it wasn’t until 40,000 years ago that humans began making more fitted Clothes using a needle and thread.

Emily Hallett, of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany, said that these bone tools have shaping and use marks that indicate they were used for scraping hides to make leather and for scraping pelts to make fur. Clothes made of fur and hides likely played an important role in the ability of early humans to move into colder parts of the world during the Pleistocene.

The study documented the evidence for clothing in ancient humans as stone tools found at archaeological sites such as Gran Dolina in the Spanish Atapuerca Mountains, associated with Homo antecessor and dated to around 780,000 years ago, which may have been used to prepare animal hides.The study also included proof that the Neanderthals, who lived as far back as 400,000 years ago, as the pattern of musculature on their arms has suggested that they carried out tasks such as hide preparation.When modern humans were taken into account Clothes wasn’t worn until at least 170,000 years ago in Africa.