Spring 2014 New York Fashion Week winds down today. And in the spirit of the season, National Geographic takes a look back at the history of fashion—way, way back, like, to Neanderthal times.
While prehistoric Homo sapiens may not have had Paris runways, celebrity-studded front rows, Karl Lagerfeld, or supermodels in sky-high stilettos, it turns out that lots of scientists belief they did have clothes. Some studies even indicate that our cousins, the Neanderthals, were into girding their loins in constructed garments, as well!
Here are four cool things I learned from reading National Geographic's "As Fashion Week Ends, Pondering the Origin of Clothes."
1. The reason no one knows for sure when clothes were invented is because—like your favorite jeans or shoes—clothes don't last forever! "Clothing doesn't readily fossilize," Brian Switek writes. "Much like the soft tissues that wrap our bones, fabrics and other body coverings decay rapidly."
2. Still, archeologists and anthropologists have found some really ancient stuff—like 8,000-year-old sandals and 5,000-year-old beaded dresses (in Egypt). Even when clothes disintegrate over time, some clues remain that they once existed—like in the 28,000-year-old graves in Sungir, Russia, where scientists found beads and teeth they believe are remnants of garments.
3. One way scientists can be pretty sure that clothes existed a long time ago? Lice. Yes, lice. According to the article, "A 2011 study found that lice that live on clothing have a genetic trail going back to between 83,000 and 170,000 years ago."
4. Even our cousins the Neanderthals, who we make fun of, wore clothes, maybe. "There is one tantalizing indication that they were tanning leather about 100,000 years ago," says Universit� Bordeaux archaeologist Rebecca Wragg Sykes. "Organic scraps—left on a stone tool from Neumark Nord in Germany—that contain high levels of tannin from an oak that was present during this warm phase." And in 2012, Nathan Wales, a U. Conn. grad student, hypothesized that Neanderthals living in cooler regions probably wore "nontailored clothing" to cover 80 percent of their bodies.
So maybe our ancient ancestors didn't dress like Fred and Wilma Flintstone, but how cool is it to think that even Neanderthals were getting into leather tanning! I wonder what the It bag of 100,000 B.C. was....
Photo: Getty Images